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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 01

Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament

The Message of Fatima

Reaffirming the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence of Christ, and the Loss of the Dogma of the Faith

By Father Ladis J. Cizik

GUEST COLUMNIST

Part I: The First and Final Messages

TheMessage of Fatima is a compendium of Catholic Church teaching and a reaffirmation of the Gospel. The Message of Fatima is especially relevant today. Dogmas and other Catholic beliefs and traditions, denied in our time, were reaffirmed at Fatima. Among those Catholic truths being denied today, but reaffirmed at Fatima are: the existence of angels and demons; the reality of Hell and Purgatory at a time when most believe that all go to Heaven; the fact that we are all sinners in need of God’s Divine Mercy; and the importance of the Rosary and the Brown Scapular. But, the most important truths denied today, and reaffirmed at Fatima, are: the Real Presence of Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, in the Most Blessed Sacrament; and the Sacrificial nature of the Holy Mass.

In Fatima's all important first and final messages, the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are reaffirmed. We know ourselves that the most important messages that we give to people are the first and the last messages; the "First of all…" and the "In conclusion…"

~ Message of Fatima/ Page 17

The Message of Fatima

Reaffirming

the

Holy

Sacrifice

of

the

Mass,

the

Real

Presence

of

Christ,

and

the

Loss

of

the

Dogma

of

the

Faith

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THE FIRST MESSAGES OF FATIMA The Angel Appearances The 1916 Appearances of the Angel to Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia are intensely Eucharistic. In the very first appearance of the Angel, he taught them, what is commonly known as the " Pardon Prayer:" "My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee! I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust, and do not love Thee."

This prayer was repeated by the children three times, kneeling with the Angel, with foreheads touching the ground. It the perfect prayer for us to memorize and repeat in front of the Tabernacle or at the Consecration of the Mass. Note that the Pardon Prayer makes reference to those who do NOT believe, do NOT adore, do NOT trust and do NOT love God – this is the problem in our times, especially with respect to the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Blessed Francisco would refer to the Real Presence of Christ in the Tabernacle as "the Hidden Jesus," as he spent hours of adoration before the Tabernacle at the Fatima parish church.

In the last of the 1916 Angel appearances, the Angel came to a rocky hollow on the Cabeco, near Aljustrel, holding a chalice, along with a Host above it, from which drops of Our Lord’s Precious Blood were falling into the chalice. The Bleeding Host and the chalice remained suspended in the air as the Angel knelt before Our Eucharistic Lord with the Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia. He had the three shepherd children repeat what is known as the "Angel Prayer" three times: "O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly.

I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the Tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners."

This is a wonderful prayer to say before the Tabernacle or during Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament. We need to reflect upon what the Angel meant by

About the Author: Father Cizik was the National Executive Director of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, USA, from 2000 to mid-2003 and the Editor of SOUL magazine. He now serves as Chaplain to numerous nursing homes and as the Spiritual Director of the Divine Child Jesus Saint Padre Pio Prayer Group and the Beaver Valley Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, all in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

" outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is Offended." Those words are referring to conditions in the present day Church that lead people to doubt the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and to no longer view the Divine Liturgy as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Message of Fatima is warning us to avoid these " outrages, sacrileges and indifferences."

In addition, the Angel Prayer is directed to the Most Holy Trinity, Who is worshiped and adored, in the most excellent way, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which the Unblemished Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, is offered to God as the Perfect Sacrifice. At the consecration at Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the whole substance of bread becomes the substance of the Body of Christ, and the whole substance of wine becomes substance of the Blood of Christ. "This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly named transubstantiation."

1 The Tabernacle is where this Blessed Sacrament, from the Holy Mass, is reserved under the appearance (accident) of Bread. There, reserved in the Tabernacle, Jesus Christ is really and truly present: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity; and is to be worshipped and adored.

Our Lady’s First Appearance

Our Lady of Fatima’s First Appearance to the three shepherd children, May 13, 1917, continued to develop the Message of Fatima pertaining to the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament. At this first apparition by Our Lady, Lucia wrote in her memoirs that the three shepherd children were so moved by the radiance they perceived, that they were supernaturally compelled to pray, what is known as the "Eucharistic Prayer:" "Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee! My God, my God, I love Thee in the Most Blessed Sacrament!"

This prayer ties in nicely with the socalled "Final Vision of Fatima" at Tuy, Spain on June 13, 1929, involving all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. In an age where so many "Catholics" seem to no longer believe in the Divinity of Christ, it affirms that the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, is really and truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Many "Catholics" financially supported the blasphemous book and movie, the Da Vinci Code , which denied the Divinity of Christ. Neo-Catholics would be just as likely to have that despicable book on their coffee table or go to that debased movie, than anyone else, lining the pockets of Christ-hating authors and producers with great wealth. To deny the Divinity of Christ relates to denying Him as the Necessary Victim in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

2

May 13th was also the date that Saint Peter Julian Eymard’s Congregation of the Most Blessed Sacrament was authorized by Rome, in 1921, to celebrate a solemn commemoration of "Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament." This was a title first given to Our Lady by Saint Peter Julian Eymard in May of 1868. He described that Her statue should be as follows: "The Blessed Virgin holds the Infant in Her arms; and He holds a chalice in one hand and a Host in the other." He exhorted his community to invoke Our Lady in the following prayer: "Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, pray for us who have recourse to Thee!"

3 So the very date of May 13th has Eucharistic significance. On May 13, 1917, at the same hour that Our Lady was appearing at Fatima, Pope Pius XII, then Monsignor Eugene Pacelli, was consecrated a bishop in the Sistine Chapel by Pope Benedict XV. Pope Pius XII would come to be known as the " Fatima Pope" and warn against changes in the Divine Liturgy.

He is honored at Fatima with a heroic outdoor statue showing him giving a papal blessing. At the Monastery of the Perpetual Rosary of Pope Pius XII in Fatima, the Irish Dominican Sisters pray the Holy Rosary in front of the Blessed Sacrament around the clock.

Pope Pius XII would have much to say about the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that exposes modern day errors that Our Lady came to Fatima to warn us about.

May 13th was also the date of the ancient Feast of Our Lady and All the Martyrs . This has significance to the third part of the Secret of Fatima (aka: the "Third Secret") where the children had a vision of martyrs going up a steep hill toward a Cross in a city that was half in ruins. This vision can be tied into present day’s errors concerning the Eucharist and the Mass.

The Cova da Iria

The Cova da Iria (Saint Irene’s Cove), where Our Lady chose to appear in Fatima from the beginning to the end, May 13th to October 13th, is named after a Portuguese martyr, Saint Irene of Tomar. This, perhaps, puts emphasis on the martyrdom that traditional Catholics would have to suffer in defense of the dogma of the Faith. She is especially revered in the city of Santarem (Saint Irene), Portugal, named after her, where her martyred body was pulled from the River Tagus in the year 653.

There, at Santarem, in the year 1247, a Consecrated Host changed in appearance to Flesh and Blood. This Eucharistic Miracle can still be seen today in the Church of Saint Stephen of the Holy Miracle recognized, since 1997, as the Shrine of the Most Holy Miracle. This Eucharistic Miracle of Santarem took place about twelve miles from Fatima and is often visited by pilgrims going to or from the Cova da Iria .4 Fatima pilgrims today are led, by Our Lady, to recognize and adore the Real Presence of Her Divine Son in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

THE FINAL MESSAGES OF FATIMA The Miracle of the Sun

The Miracle of the Sun took place on October 13, 1917, the last of Our Lady of Fatima’s six historic appearances at the Cova di Iria. The great Miracle of the Sun was witnessed by over 70,000 people over a radius of seventy miles.

It came in prayer to one of the Handmaids of Mary Immaculate, Mother Mary John, who served at the National Blue Army Shrine in Washington, New Jersey, that the Miracle of the Sun was Eucharistic. One of the witnesses to the Miracle of the Sun, Dr. Aleida Garrett described it as follows: "I …saw it [the sun] as a disc with a clean cut rim, luminous and shining, but which did not hurt the eyes. I do not agree with the comparison which I have heard made in Fatima - that of a dull silver disc. It was a clearer, richer, brighter color, having something of the luster of a pearl … I felt it to be a living body … It looked like a glazed wheel made of mother of pearl…"

5

The Sun spinning out of control represented a modern day decrease in belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The sun appeared to look like a large Host. As the sun came crashing to earth (lack of belief in the Real Presence) there was chaos. Once the witnesses confessed their sins out loud, the sun (Eucharist) returned to its high and rightful place and order was restored. In the original Eucharistic Adoration Chapel at Fatima (now used for small group Masses) there is only one stained glass window – and it is of the Miracle of the Sun. Saint Padre Pio said that "the world could exist more easily without the sun than without the Mass." 6

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The Final Vision of Fatima

(God the Father*)

, upon His breast was a Dove of Light

(Holy Spirit*),

(God the Son*).

7

(* my additions)

"lights about this Mystery"

that Sister

Lucia was

"not permitted to reveal"

The Third Secret

Flaming Sword

"The religion of God Who became man has met

the religion of man who makes himself God.

"

He continued:

8

Pope Paul VI then

Cova da Iria

Penance, Penance, Penance!"

outrages, sacrileges and indifferences."

of the Church, held back the wrath of the Angel.

who

going up towards the big Cross

.

At

10

Cardinal Silvio Oddi, in the magazine

30 Giorni

, stated that:

"

11

Pope Paul VI would admit:

of

God.

"

12

13

Novus Ordo

outrages, sacrileges and indifferences"

It is as if the Church were destroying herself

."

14

15

The faithful

Mass had never been abrogated.

16

And so, Our Lady’s

believe

in

the

Sacrificial

nature

of

the

Mass?

To be Concluded Next Issue…

The Final Vision of Fatima took place in Sister Lucia’s convent in Tuy, Spain, on June 13, 1929. There is no doubt that this "final vision" relates to both the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. As Sister Lucia describes: "Being alone one night, I knelt near the altar rails in the middle of the chapel and, prostrate, I prayed the prayers of the Angel. Feeling tired, I then stood up and continued to say the prayers with my arms in the form of a cross. The only light was the sanctuary lamp. Suddenly the whole chapel was illumined by a supernatural light, and above the altar appeared a Cross of light, reaching to the ceiling. In a brighter light at the upper part of the Cross could be seen the face of a Man and His body as far as the waist

and, nailed to the Cross, was the Body of another Man

A little below the waist, I could see a chalice and a large Host suspended in the air, on to which drops of Blood were falling from the Face of Jesus Crucified and from the wound in His side. These drops ran down on to the Host and fell into the chalice. Beneath the right arm of the cross was Our Lady and in Her hand was Her Immaculate Heart (… it was Our Lady of Fatima, with Her Immaculate Heart in Her left hand, without sword or roses, but with a crown of thorns and flames. ..). Under the left arm of the Cross, large letters, as if of crystal clear water which ran down upon the altar, formed these words: 'Grace and Mercy.' I understood that it was the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity which was shown to me, and I received lights about this Mystery which I am not permitted to reveal."

This Final Vision calls to mind the Eucharistic prayers taught by the Angel. It also happened as Lucia was near the altar rails, with her arms in the form of a cross, with a lit sanctuary lamp (indicating that she was before a tabernacle containing the Real Presence), and that the apparition appeared above the altar – clear reference points to the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Precious Blood of the Crucified Christ falling down upon the Host and into the chalice speaks loud and clear as to the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament and to the Sacrificial nature of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Perhaps the

were of this dogma of the Faith that would be denied, relating to the Third Secret of Fatima.

The last of the final Messages of Fatima would be that third part of the Secret (the "Third Secret") of Fatima, which the Vatican released on June 26, 2000, pertaining to the Angel with the flaming sword and the Big Cross on top of the steep hill.

The

of the Third Secret might be the consequence of a man-centered religion that has put us in the position of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve sought to become equal to God by eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Upon attempting to become God’s equal, they were punished by expulsion from paradise and were kept out, and away from the Tree of Life, by Angels with a flaming sword.

Sister Lucia said that the Third Secret would become clearer in 1960. Consider these words from Pope Paul VI’s Closing Address to Vatican Council II on December 7, 1965:

"And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none… We, too, in fact, we more than any others, honor mankind."

came to Fatima, on May 13, 1967, and delivered the unusual "Men be men" homily at the

.9 In the Third Secret, the Angel cried out in a loud voice to mankind: "

This warning to a people who have lost all sense of sin, who no longer go to Confession, who receive sacrilegious Communions, who no longer believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, who deny the Sacrificial nature of the Holy Mass, who offend God with their "

The New Eve, the sinless Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother

Then, the three shepherd children saw, in the Third Secret, a "bishop dressed in white… afflicted with pain and sorrow… who passed through a big city half in ruins…"

"prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on the way"

"the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross, he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God." Sister Lucia wanted the Third Secret opened in 1960 for two reasons: 1st) "Because Our Lady wanted it; and 2nd) "Because then (1960) the Secret will become clear"

The Secret of Fatima contains a sad prophecy about the Church and, for this reason Pope John (XXIII) did not divulge it. And neither have Paul VI or John Paul II. It seems to me that what is basically written is that the Pope would convene a Council in 1960 which, contrary to expectations, would indirectly result in many difficulties for the Church."

"We believed that after the Council would come a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. But instead there has come a day of clouds and storms, and of darkness of searching and uncertainties…And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. It is as if from some mysterious crack, no, it is not mysterious, from some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple

The Third Secret was prefaced by these words from Sister Lucia’s memoirs: " In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc."

This indicates that "the dogma of the Faith" would not be preserved in other places; that "the dogma of the Faith" would be preserved by the Fatima Message, given on Portuguese soil.

Post-Vatican II comments from Pope Paul VI on the 60th Anniversary of the Fatima apparitions included: "The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic World. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church"

In its 2000 release of the Third Secret, the Vatican speculated that Pope John Paul II was the "bishop dressed in white," but that does not explain why the assassination attempt on his life in 1987 would "become clear in 1960." Nor does it explain the fact that the "bishop dressed in white" dies, and yet Pope John Paul II survived. Nor does it explain the "city half in ruins" and the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions who were killed.

Today, for the first time since Our Lady of Fatima delivered the Third Secret in 1917, we have a "bishop dressed in white" who is not the Pope. Pope Emeritus Benedict, who did much to restore the Tridentine Mass and to correct abuses in the

Mass, is now the "bishop dressed in white" who is not the Pope.

In addition, today there are various "bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions," who are suffering with "

toward the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament.

They are mocked on the way to their Calvary, just as Jesus was mocked. Such a traditional remnant are often marginalized and figuratively left for dead, if not one day actually being subject to martyrdom by bullets and arrows.

The attack on the remnant who hold to Church Tradition was perhaps expressed by Pope Paul VI, shortly after Vatican II ended: "The Church finds herself in an hour of anxiety, a disturbed period of self-criticism, or what would even better be called self- destruction. It is an interior upheaval, acute and complicated, which nobody expected after the Council. It is almost as if the Church were attacking itself. We looked forward to a flowering, a serene expansion of conceptions which matured in the great sessions of the council. But ... one must notice above all the sorrowful aspect.

Modernists and liberals were gleeful in their thought that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Tridentine Rite, was abolished when the Missal of Pope Paul VI was issued in the 1970’s. The Traditional Latin Mass, said for centuries upon centuries, was forbidden – or so it was said. There was a remnant that resisted and said that the Canonized Mass of the Saints could not be and was never abrogated. How could something so very holy now be considered so very evil?

remnant was marginalized and some even considered to be "outside the Church." However, before his resignation, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that the Latin

Fatima Message began on May 13th, which is still celebrated in Rome as "Our Lady and all the Martyrs" and now ends with the Third Secret’s depiction of martyrs. Recall that as Our Lady of Fatima delivered the three parts of the Secret on July 13, 1917, She said: "The good would be martyred, the Holy Father would have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated." What can be a worse "annihilation" than to lose the dogma of the faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament and to no longer

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 01

Quo Vadis, Franciscus

By Christopher A. Ferrara

What

is one to think of the Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium ( EG)? In a document of 50,000 words spanning 223 typeset pages—straining the hortatory genre beyond all reasonable limits—one would naturally expect to find a good deal of orthodox Catholicism; and that is there.

Francis is, after all, the Pope, even if he doesn’t like to call himself that and refuses to add the traditional pontifical "P.P." to his signature on this or any other document. Then again, in a document of this length one would also expect to find a good deal of what has made this Pope so beloved by the worldwide mass media: radical-sounding bombshells about how wrong the Church is and how much Francis must do to make it right, in all humility. That too is there—in spades. And no, I am not referring to EG’s emphasis on love of neighbor and concern for the poor, or its biting commentary on globalist capitalism and the idolatry of money. Such things may be pleasing to liberals of a socialist bent, but they are also entirely consistent with the social teaching of a long line of Popes before and after Vatican II.

And please spare me the dudgeon of fat and happy faux conservatives who are just liberals of the bourgeois variety.

They "have no problem with gays" or even abortion so long as it is legalized according to "states’ rights," but utter a peep against capitalism and they begin barking like trained seals about capitalist abundance and Third World poverty, failing to notice that capitalist abundance depends upon Third World wage slaves, so that Third World poverty actually proves the Church’s point about the moral deficiencies of capitalist social order. To decry those deficiencies, as the Popes have always done, is not to advocate socialism.

A word about EG’s forthright condemnation of abortion ( EG 213).

While quite admirable as far as it goes, Francis immediately undermines it by indulging his crowd-pleasing penchant for reckless and unfounded accusations against the Church: "On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty.

Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?" ( EG 214).

Perhaps Francis should speak for himself. No one has done more to assist women tempted by abortion than the members of the worldwide Catholic pro-life movement. As President and

~ Quo Vadia/ Page 7

Quo Vadis, Franciscus

C. Ferrara/ C P

Chief Counsel of the American Catholic Lawyers Association, I represent in state and federal court many pro-life advocates who devote their lives to "accompanying women in very difficult situations" and have saved thousands of babies from death in the womb. Here Francis provides yet another opening to the Church’s enemies: "See, the Church condemns abortion but does little to help women in very difficult situations, as Pope Francis admits! No wonder they choose abortion. Shame on the Church for condemning but not helping those in need!"

A Progressivist Dream on Paper

From our perspective, however, the most serious problem with EG lies in what we suspected was coming: a cocksure presentation of an outmoded ecclesial progressivism, long since shown to be a total failure, as a bold new prescription for the Church. And, of course, the mass media are ecstatic. Rave reviews in The New York Times ("Francis Sets Down Goals for an inclusive Church"), USA Today ("Francis Calls for Big Changes in the Roman Catholic Church"), The Los Angeles Times ("Pope Francis Calls for Decentralized Church in Manifesto") and Fox News ("How Pope Francis is reenergizing the Catholic church: New pontiff celebrated by liberal Catholics") are typical of the latest eruption of liberal rapture over Francis the Wonderful. The liberal media love EG even more than Francis’s scattered utterances in other forums, including the infamous Scalfari interview, finally removed from the Vatican website after it became too hot to handle, but without the Pope retracting a single word of it.

Small wonder: EG develops the same themes Francis related to Scalfari.

The media love EG for another reason: it leaves no wiggle room for the indefatigable explainers of What The Pope Really Meant To Say, Or What He Would Have Said If He Had Said What He Meant Rather Than What He Said, Which Was Misinterpreted And Taken Out Of Context. The New York Times notes that while during the first nine months of his pontificate Francis only "parceled out glimpses of his vision for remaking the church," with EG he has "announced his agenda in his own unfiltered words, reaffirming the impression that he intends to jolt the church out of complacency and enlist all Catholics in his ambitious project of renewing the church [sic] by confronting the real needs of people in need…."

Like the liberal media, both modernists and their neo-Catholic enablers are over the moon about EG.

Michael Sean Winters of National Catholic Reporter exults: "At times, the text is lyrical, like an aria. At other times, it has all the accessibility of a recitative. Either way, it is a song."

Say it loud and there’s music playing.

Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.

Comments like these are a sure indication that EG has little to do with concrete Catholic teaching and very much to do with a new papal personality cult.

Francis sings his progressive song with voluptuous abandon: "I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything , so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation."

Haven’t we already been there and done that? It was called something like "the renewal of Vatican II." Does the Pope seriously propose a massive do-over of this disaster?

In the same vein Francis declares: "certain customs not directly connected to the heart of the Gospel, even some which have deep historical roots , are no longer properly understood and appreciated. Some of these customs may be beautiful , but they no longer serve as means of communicating the Gospel.

We should not be afraid to re-examine them." Excuse me, but after fifty years of a liturgical revolution that has leveled the entire structure of Catholic worship, along with unprecedented "reforms" in virtually every other aspect of the practice of our religion, exactly which customs are left to "re-examine"?

Moreover, how can a beautiful custom, deeply rooted in Church history, not be a means of communicating the Gospel?

What on earth is Francis talking about?

The lyrics of the Song of Francis resonate with the platitudinous cant of the reformist avant-garde of forty years ago. Francis’s dream is precisely what— in EG— he criticizes in the thought of others: "empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real ( EG 231)…" Apparently, we are not supposed to notice that during Cardinal Bergoglio’s tenure as Archbishop of Buenos Aires (19982013) there was no Catholic renewal but rather a drastic decline in every index of ecclesial well-being, especially the number of priests and religious. The Bergoglio legacy is in keeping with the overall decline of Brazilian Catholicism, with millions of Catholics, following a "renewal" that replaced bread with stones, defecting into Protestant sects.

"I wasn’t being fed" is practically the mantra of ex-Catholics turned Protestants.

For all its talk of a more openminded conception of the Church’s mission, EG is a narrow-minded document, rooted in parochial, seventies era Latin American prejudices against the Church universal. Francis writes from the blinkered perspective of a reformist mentality that refuses to concede the indispensability of what the post-Vatican II "reforms" insanely suppressed: the Church’s Latin liturgical tradition, her intrinsically militant opposition to error as a sign of contradiction in the world, her essentially monarchical constitution as a reflection of the kingship of her divine Founder, and her very existence as a fortress against the Adversary.

Instead of leaving his prejudices behind in Buenos Aires along with his Pinocchio Mass and his lighting of the Menorah—a symbol of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem—Francis would like to impose his outmoded parochial progressivism on the entire Church.

CNN’s story on EG puts it most succinctly: "Pope Francis: No more business as usual...." The article reports that EG calls "for big changes in the Roman Catholic Church—including at the very top—saying the church needs to rethink rules and customs that are no longer widely understood or effective for evangelizing." And that is exactly what EG does say.

Deconstructing the Papacy

Francis’s "dream Church" involves nothing less than a deconstruction of the papacy in favor of a synodal model governed—God help us!—by the national bishops’ conferences:

… I am conscious of the need to promote a sound "decentralization"…. Since I am called to put into practice what I ask of others, I too must think about a conversion of the papacy

[to]… help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization…. We have made little progress in this regard. The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion ….

[A] juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority , has not yet been sufficiently elaborated. Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church's life and her missionary outreach. (EG 16, 32)

One must be frank: Francis’s opinion that the traditional exercise of the papacy is unfaithful to "the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it" is a dangerous delusion. The ecclesial crisis represents precisely a practical breakdown in the papacy as established by Christ: the rock on which the Church is founded, the principle of ecclesial unity, the authority that binds in heaven and on earth. The erosion of papal authority since the Council has meant a collapse of faith and discipline like no other in Church history. Incredibly, Francis proposes to finalize the collapse by giving juridical reality to autocephalous national churches à la the schismatic Orthodox. EG specifically cites "the dialogue with our Orthodox brothers and sisters" through which "we Catholics have the opportunity to learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and their experience of synodality." ( EG 246) If Francis were to succeed in implementing his "dream," it would be the final triumph of the ruinous novelty of "collegiality." And if it happens, we can be certain that the neo-Catholic papalators will continue to perform their paradoxical role of undermining the papacy by "blindly and indiscriminately defend[ing] every decision of the Supreme Pontiff," to quote Melchior Cano, theologian of the Council of Trent. They will defend even the Pope’s decision to attack his own authority. Catholics of this mentality, to quote Cano, "are the very ones who do most to undermine the authority of the Holy See—they destroy instead of strengthening its foundations." (Quoted in Weigel, Witness to Hope , p. 15).

The "New Evangelization"—Again?

EG also calls for more of a "new evangelization" that amounts to no evangelization beyond an amorphous proclamation of joy over salvation.

According to Francis, the New Evangelizers—or should we say the New New evangelizers?—"[i]nstead of seeming to impose new obligations… should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but ‘by attraction.’" ( EG 15) The world’s response to a sharing of joy without "proselytization" or any talk of obligations has been a collective yawn.

After all, one can always share this joy, whatever it is, in the next life, if there is a next life, especially if no "new obligations" are involved in obtaining it. And, to the modern mind, there are "delicious banquets" aplenty in the here and now.

Of course the Church grows by attraction, but this attraction is aided, not impeded, by what Francis derides as "proselytism." From the first moment of her existence, when Peter preached baptism and repentance to the three thousand who converted on the spot through his "proselytism," down through all the Christian centuries, the Church has grown through the simple preaching of her missionaries on the divine imperative of conversion. But one will search the sprawling text of EG in vain for a clear indication that anyone is in danger of damnation for rejecting Christ, His Church and the sacraments by which one achieves and maintains the state of grace. Rather, EG persists in the false antithesis Francis earlier expressed in the

Civiltà Catolica interview: between a supposed "obsession" with doctrines and "rules" and an attractive proclamation of the Gospel:

Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed …. [T]he message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary…. ( EG 35).

If this invitation does not radiate forcefully and attractively, the edifice of the Church's moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards … [I] t is not the Gospel which is being preached, but certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options. The message will run the risk of losing its freshness and will cease to have "the fragrance of the Gospel." ( EG 40) … [M]y hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a

C N P

www.RemnantNewspaper.com ~ THE REMNANT

Apparently, we are not supposed to notice that during Cardinal Bergoglio’s tenure as

Archbishop of Buenos Aires (1998-2013) there was no Catholic renewal but rather a drastic decline in every index of ecclesial well-being

Quo Vadis, Franciscus

C. Ferrara/ C P

false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges … ( EG

49)

What does Francis mean by " fragrance of the Gospel"? What is the Gospel if not the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, which are not an incessant "sharing of joy" but rather are replete with "hard sayings," condemnations of sin, and admonitions concerning damnation as the consequence of sin (which Christ mentions far more often than heaven). And yet, with this, there is also the sure hope of eternal happiness for those who respond to grace, believe, are baptized, and persevere to the end in

obedience to Christ’s commandments.

There is nothing particularly "fragrant" about Our Lord’s warning: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; he who believes not shall be condemned (Mk. 16:16)." It is simply the Gospel truth. Nor could one consider sweet-smelling Our Lord’s warning that on the Last Day "he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41)." In postconciliar preaching, including Francis’s, we hear endlessly that God loves us, but why do we never hear that we must love Him in return and show our love by following His teaching? "If any one love me, he will keep my word , and my Father will love him , and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him. (Jn.14:23-24)."

Which doctrines would Francis propose as the "essentials" of a "beautiful," "grand" and "appealing" pastoral ministry? Which are to be omitted? Mortal sin? Hell? Purgatory?

The necessity of baptism? The papal primacy? The status of the Catholic Church as the only ark of salvation?

Mary as Mediatrix? The Church’s "hard sayings" on marriage and procreation?

The impossibility of remaining for very long in the state of grace without the sacraments? And what does Francis mean by his posited opposition between the "fragrance of the Gospel" and "certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options"? What ideological options? Does not this remark expose all of Catholic moral theology to dismissal as mere ideology, compared with "fragrant" Gospel preaching?

This "fragrant" Gospel is the same half-truth the overwhelming majority of the Church’s pastors have been preaching timidly since the Council: mercy without judgment, salvation without the threat of eternal punishment. Francis even goes so far as to assert: "To understand this reality we need to approach it with the gaze of the Good Shepherd, who seeks not to judge but to love… " ( EG 125). The Catholic Church, even in her new catechism, begs to differ: "From thence he will come again to judge the living and the dead." (Apostles’ Creed; CCC, I.II.2, Art. 7). And it is none other than the Good Shepherd who warns us, in one of the most "fragrant" passages of the Gospel, that "when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats." (Matt. 25:31-32). We all know the fate of the goats, but Francis does not seem interested in letting the world in on the story, as if Our Lord’s most dire warnings were bluffs finally called at Vatican II.

And where in the Church today does one see an "obsession" with doctrine and rules? One sees instead an obsession, clearly shared by Francis, with proclaiming joy and mercy to the exclusion of all "hard sayings." The word joy appears 109 times in EG and mercy 32 times, but there is not one word about how God’s mercy is bound up with His justice or how the joy He promises comes only with obedience to His law. It is not merely facetious to ask whether there is any material difference between the "new evangelization" and this popular sentiment: The sun is shinin’ c’mon get happy, the Lord is waitin’ to take your hand.

Shout Hallejulah c’mon get happy, we’re going to the Promised Land.

"Get Happy,"© Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler

I have barely addressed the problematical content that has the world exulting yet again over Francis’s "headline-grabbing papacy." EG’s unprecedented suggestion that Judaism and essentially all other religions are ways to salvation would require an article in itself. (Cf. EG 247-53). But there is only so much one can say without unpardonably burdening the reader. I will have to conclude by noting another persistent theme of Francis’s developed in EG: his loathing of traditionalists.

More Insults for Traditionalists

As the always brilliantly witty Hilary White has observed: "[O]ne of the reasons the libs love this pope so much is that he enjoys insulting the same people they do, namely the Catholics who believe everything the Church teaches—and has ever taught—and try to live by it." In EG Francis perversely heaps still more vitriol on his loyal subjects, thus belying his public persona as the merciful, non-judgmental father the Church has been longing for: "the self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past."

"[a] supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying….

"insidious worldliness…. an ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy, for doctrine and for the Church’s prestige, but without any concern that the Gospel have a real impact on God’s faithful people and the concrete needs of the present time. In this way, the life of the Church turns into a museum piece or something which is the property of a select few."

As we can see, it is Francis who "analyzes and classifies others," deriding traditionalists—but only them—as neopelagian, self-absorbed, superior to others, intransigent, insidiously worldly, ostentatious, elitist, narcissistic and authoritarian. That’s nine pejorative classifications applied to one unlucky group of faithful Catholics!

Moreover, it is Francis who is "intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past"—a seventies progressivism that today looks like the ecclesial equivalent of a lava lamp. Now, if everything Catholics held in common in their practice of the Faith before Vatican II can be tossed aside as a "Catholic style from the past," if the concept of fashion is now operative in the Church, why is it not the case that the "reforms" of the 1970s have also fallen out of fashion and should be abandoned? Further, if it is merely a matter of Catholic "styles," why not bring back the old style in the manner of "retro" trends in secular fashion? Many Catholics are attracted to the old "style" of the traditional Latin liturgy. Who is Francis to judge?

Of course, ecclesiastical tradition is not a matter of style but rather part of what the Church hands down through the centuries. That is why Pope Benedict issued Summorum Pontificum : to liberate the Church’s sacred liturgy from the ecclesiastical equivalent of fashion police. Francis seems to lack an appreciation of the incommutability of ecclesiastical traditions as the living embodiment of doctrine. He does not seem to understand the maxim lex orandi, lex credendi . In a Pope this is cause for grave concern.

With the laughably wordy prejorative "self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism," Francis likewise accuses others of what he is guilty of.

Prometheus is the Greek deity whose intellectual pride leads to his theft of fire, which he gives to man, and his eternal punishment by Zeus, while Pelagius is the heretic who taught that men are saved not by grace but by their own efforts. Nothing examples "promethean neopelagianism" better than Francis’s "dream" about "transforming everything," or the hubristic, brutally imposed post-conciliar program of man-made "renewal" in a vainglorious attempt to please a hostile "modern world," including a fabricated liturgy whose fruits are declining Mass attendance, widespread boredom, growing apostasy, sacrilege and banality. Traditionalists, on the other hand, trusting the Church rather than men, simply hold fast to precious traditions preserved for centuries by the Holy Ghost, which the promethean neopelagians of "renewal"—including Francis—insist on substituting with their clumsy and vulgar human contrivances.

Tellingly, Francis has nothing to say about the plague of neo-modernism that has spread throughout the Church since the Council, undermining Church teaching, making a mockery of the liturgy, and animating radical dissent in every nation. Rather, he continues to condemn as cold and faithless ideologues traditional Catholics who, in the midst of the ruins, have taken refuge in the few edifices still standing after fifty years of a "renewal" even he admits has never happened. This is unheard-of behavior for a Pope. And Francis behaves this way knowing full well that the various traditional societies and orders are practically the only places where the Church is experiencing robust health.

What is to account for this obsessive antipathy toward Catholics who practice the faith of their fathers, have large families, and follow the teachings of the Church on faith and morals? Perhaps the aging progressivist from Argentina fears what even The London Economist can see: that young Catholics are forming a worldwide "traditionalist avant-garde" dissatisfied with "the trendy liberalism" of the Vatican II generation. Perhaps he fears, as The Economist observes, that "traditional Catholicism is attracting people who were not even born when the Second Vatican Council tried to rejuvenate the church" and that—oh, the horror!—"[i]t’s trendy to be a traditionalist..." Thus, irony of ironies, it would be the mentality EG represents that is standing in the way of true reform and renewal in the midst of a "spiritual desertification" of the Christian world even Francis ( EG 86) is forced to acknowledge.

Our readers know how hard The Remnant has tried to put the best face on Francis’s seemingly endless torrent of crowd-pleasing utterances. The Editor has even counseled against "piling on" the Pope. But this circus has gone far enough. I hereby exercise my Godgiven right to protest the Pope’s abuse of his office, which reopens wounds that were slowly healing—thanks to Pope Benedict—reignites the very divisions Francis professes to deplore (cf. EG 98), and degrades the Church’s image, to the world’s delight, with the spectacle of a Pope publicly hectoring and humiliating his own sheep for nothing more than their fidelity to Tradition. I urge my fellow Catholics to join me in making their concerns known to Pope Francis as the law of the Church contemplates. (Cfr. CIC 1983, Can.

212, §§ 2-3). As we read in the press two weeks ago, the Italian traditionalist intellectual Mario Palmaro, exercising that very right, co-authored a scathing critique of this pontificate entitled "We do not like this Pope" which was published in a major Italian newspaper.

In response, Palmaro received a telephone call from Francis during which the Pope stated that "he had understood that those criticisms had been made with love, and how important it had been for him to receive them." Perhaps you will be favored with one of those disarming phone calls. If you are, I hope you will not waste the opportunity to tell the Pope what it is important for him to hear. v

What is to account for this obsessive antipathy toward Catholics who practice the faith of their fathers, have large families, and follow the teachings of the Church on faith and morals?

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~

Editor's Desk/

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note that the current edition of The Remnant is a double issue. At 32 pages, Volume 46, Numbers 19 & 20 is a combination of the November 15th and 30th issues. I'm grateful for your patience as The Remnant experiences some growing pains. Combining these two issues allows us to put muchneeded resources into the completion of The Remnant's new and vastly improved website.

With the election of Pope Francis, the winds of change are blowing, obviously, as the beleaguered Church Militant braces for what looks to be yet another seven years of spiritual famine. But The Remnant is adjusting accordingly.

Do we need help? Absolutely! But the needed financial assistance is not for the purpose of propping up a dying venture, thanks be to God. If you wish to help drag The Remnant, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, please spread the word about our TV and social network outreach. Also, please take advantage of our Christmas special (see page 2) to order gift subscriptions for friends and family; pick up a Remnant book or two for Christmas (see page 22); subscribe to Remnant TV’s YouTube channel (it’s free); or just recommend our website to your friends: www.

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As I’ve often insisted in this column, we are not giving up on newsprint.

Our NEWSPAPER must survive if The Remnant is to have any chance of weathering the coming Internet purge of all things Catholic. So we’ve got a survival plan firmly in place and, with

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God’s help and yours, we’re forging ahead. All we need is a little help.

Donations to The Remnant Foundation are vital to the success of this effort— and tax deductible too, by the way.

Pope Francis

There are several articles in this issue of The Remnant that I’m publishing with a heavy heart. They have to do with the increasingly troubling pontificate of our Holy Father, Pope Francis.

Ever since the conclave, when John Rao and I stood in the Piazza San Pietro, rain pouring down, watching with dread in our hearts as the white smoke still billowed from atop the Sistine Chapel, I have been unable to shake a nagging sense of foreboding. Like many others, I was skeptical of the abdication of Pope Benedict, and, to a large extent, still am.

To me it smelled of a classic coup d’état, with intrigue ripped straight from the pages of a Malachi Martin novel. Was the abdication forced on some level? I have a hunch, but only time will tell…I hope.

Still, when it comes to the new Bishop of Rome I have tried manfully to "put on a happy face". To some extent we’re still holding out hope that Francis might do something to render these feelings of dread misplaced. I'm still convinced we must proceed with caution, making every attempt not to 'pile on' but rather to minimize the papal gaffes (always augmented by the mainstream media) wherever possible and for the sake of the Church. But… The Pope’s recent Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium has left even the most optimistic commentators scratching their heads. (See Christopher Ferrara’s Quo Vadis, Franciscus elsewhere in this issue.) One of the most troubling aspects of it has to be the rave reviews it garnered from liberals and progressives, and with good reason. As E. J. Dionne Jr points out in "The Heart of Pope Francis’ Mission" (The Washington Post): In light of a recent past in which conservatism was gaining the upper hand in the American Catholic church, progressives have reason to be elated. Conservative Catholics know this. That’s why they are torn between expressing loyalty to a pope who has captured the popular imagination and fretting over whether he is transforming the church with a speed that few thought was possible.

Indeed, Francis seems to be moving ahead with vigor. The endless stream of papal chitchat about "dialogue", "ecumenism", "Vatican II", "joy" and throwing off the shackles of "rigid tradition" indicates there is nothing new in all of this. After all, the "new trends" of the hippy era are about as progressive as a Jane Fonda workout video.

Nevertheless, the pretending seems to have ceased, with the closet doors having been thrown open wide, revealing the leprous visage of the Revolution.

The revolutionaries themselves, aged but confident of total victory, are convinced the traditionalists—the only speed bump on the road to Modernist nirvana— have been successfully controlled and contained within the coral of Legitimate Liturgical Aspirations. With little to fear from us, their secret plotting is no longer necessary, their masks can come off, and the old Church is in danger of becoming little more than a collection of faint memories in the minds of a few old men. And what’s next? "And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days," (Daniel 12:11) It is day 1,291, only this time it will not be the idol of Jupiter set up in the sanctuary, but rather the idol of Vatican II itself, clothed in the ecclesial robes of false ecumenism. Consider the bizarre novelties we see and hear spewing forth every day from the pulpits to the papacy: "Atheists are saved, just as all Christians are." "Jews are saved by the Old Covenant." "Even the Pope can’t say that homosexuals are living an intrinsically evil lifestyle. After all, who is he to judge?" "Hell is empty."

"Limbo doesn’t exist." And on and on it goes, where it stops nobody knows.

Given the Church’s infallible teachings on death, judgment, heaven and hell, this "new theology" is an unholy abomination at the very heart of the Church of Vatican II.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ became man, died on a Cross and rose from the dead in order to found a Church whose mission to save souls was established by God Himself. Speaking to his Apostles, Our Lord said "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

(Matthew 28: 19) It is the ultimate abomination of desolation when the successors of the Apostles begin giving the impression they've essentially rejected this Divine mandate in favor of one crafted by the Spirit of Vatican II—one which constitutes a de facto cease fire between the Church and the World. The new mandate can be summed up as: "All power is given to the Second Vatican Council. Go therefore and dialogue with all nations, assuring them that they need not be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost anytime soon."

Indeed if this is not what our Church leaders intend to say why do we keep hearing it? And when will the pope and his bishops begin clarifying the confusion and indifference this 'new orientation' is causing throughout the whole world?

Where is Francis going? Indeed.

Pray for the Pope. The Church needs all of her loyal sons and daughters to pray for him but also to hold fast to the mast of sacred Tradition until the storm passes, for in the darkness and confusion of a roaring sea anyone can be washed overboard. Let us resolve to keep the old Faith even if popes and bishops do not.

We must know our God and never doubt that in His mercy He will be with us always, even when they no longer are.

"And such as deal wickedly against the covenant shall deceitfully dissemble: but the people that know their God shall prevail and succeed." (Daniel 11:31) v

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The Remnant Speaks

Letters to the Editor: The Remnant P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025 Editor@RemnantNewspaper.com

Whom Am I to Judge?

(An E-mail Exchange Among Friends)

Editor’s Note: The Roman episcopacy of Francis has seen a proliferation of new pontifical literary genres, including the broadcasting of daily quasiimprovised homilies, that the tea leaves may be read, and the tea regurgitated, by certain quarters of the professional Catholic press. So, in that spirit, why not a new genre of letters to the editor? Forthwith, an E-mail Exchange Among Friends: Editor, The Remnant : Who am I to judge if Francis is the Pope? Benedict is still alive and seemingly in decent health...

Yours, with best wishes, Alan Tank Dear Alan: This is the perfect line, the ultimate "who am I to judge." One thing is for sure: we’re dealing with the greatest spectacle of false humility and misrepresentation in the history of the world.

…Hooah!, Father Rod Trod Hi, Alan: Certain popes of yore would have changed the first word from a subject to an object: "Whom am I to judge?" As in: "Take a number, have a seat, I’ll judge you shortly." …Semper Fi!, Vox Humana New Mass Blues

Editor, The Remnant : I want to tell you how grateful I am for your publication.

It is an encouragement to know I am not alone. I attend a Novus Ordo Mass only because the nearest Traditional Mass is about 300 miles away. I’m very disheartened by it. I find I am offering up the Mass with the intention of making reparation for all the things taking place in the very same Mass.

The music, ranging from folk music to the national anthem; the talking before, during and after about the farm report, football game, vacations etc.; the spandex miniskirts and short shorts; the announcements during Mass, including events at the Masonic Lodge; the lack of prayerfulness or reverence of any kind; and of course the Protestantized prayers and orientation of the New Mass—all these things are a discouragement to me, not only because of the lack of beauty and holiness which lift our minds and hearts to God, but because of how offended our Lord and Savior must be.

He so deserves all our devotion, love, worship and thanksgiving and a Mass that reflects His glory. How His heart must break to see this.

So it isn’t really about which Mass we prefer or enjoy. The question is: Which Mass does our Almighty God prefer? May He bless your efforts at The Remnant always as you proclaim and defend all of the truths of our Faith.

Margie in California

Deeply Concerned

Editor, The Remnant : I’m sure I am not the only Catholic who is deeply concerned that in Pope Francis’ new Apostolic Exhortation, a Successor of Peter has unambiguously affirmed - for the first time in the 2000-year history of the magisterium - that under the New Covenant, non-Christians (pantheists, polytheists, Muslims and Jews) can already be in the state of grace ("justified by grace") provided they just "follow their conscience" ( Evangelii Gaudium , art. 254).

Equally troubling is that the Holy Father says their various non-Christian rituals, even though they don’t have the same "significance and efficacy" as Christian sacraments, are nonetheless prompted by the Holy Spirit working within them in virtue of the "sacramental dimension of sanctifying grace".

Does that mean John Paul II was actually cooperating with the Holy Spirit when he convoked Assisi I and II, and poured out that libation to African spirits in 1985 at the request of the Togolese shaman?

Francis' words "justified by grace" are in quotation marks, but his footnote reference (note 199) is not to some previous magisterial intervention (and by the way, no magisterial document prior to Vatican II is cited in the 300 or so footnotes to EG). No, the highest "authority" Francis could find for his novel teaching is article 72 of a 1997 document of the International Theological Commission on the Church’s dialogue with World Religions. (That’s the ineffably scholarly body that gave us, among other things, a document on unbaptized children which omitted all mention of various key magisterial statements on the topic.) After that 1997 ITC document was published, the CDF and John Paul II affirmed in 2000 ( Dominus Iesus , #7) that Catholics must "firmly believe" that the beliefs held by non-Christians do not constitute "theological faith". That is, the beliefs in the mind and heart of a non-Christian are not the supernatural virtue of faith in Christ which is the "foundation and root of all justification", according to the infallible teaching of Scripture, Tradition and the Council of Trent.

Pope Francis makes no reference to Dominus Iesus. Nor does he attempt to tell us how, if pagans and Jews (i.e., all those who explicitly profess any religion other than the Trinity and Incarnation) can already be in the state of sanctifying grace, it can also be true, as the Council of Florence taught infallibly in Cantate Domino , that they are simultaneously "outside the Church", and so will "go to the eternal fire" unless they are aggregated to her before death.

The whole point of EG is supposed to be promoting evangelization in today’s world. But where’s the urgency in evangelizing non-Christians if they can already be in the state of grace (and hence, ready for salvation) without knowing Jesus Christ, merely by "following their conscience".

Father X (name and address supplied) "Piling On" Pope Francis

Editor, The Remnant: I just wanted to write in to let you know how much I appreciated Michael Matt’s recent video on not piling on Pope Francis ("Pope Francis and The Three Amigos" (https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrB2TMH MAc& list=TLymRIgsCz1RRb0atbrsiaS hq4AO7qyb1C.) After watching it, I was imagining that you may have received some angry replies, but I think you’re right on the money. Keep doing what you’re doing!

Carl Wolk Silver Springs, MD Editor, The Remnant : Although I don’t want to "pile on", I’m somewhat alarmed at attempts to minimize or dismiss things that Pope Francis has said which appear problematic and are giving many, many people the perception that he’s a theological liberal with a liberal social justice agenda. Perception is how we come to know reality. If someone is giving a certain perception, that’s how they’ll be understood, even if that’s not their intent. That’s why it’s important to be attuned with the perceptions we inspire, particularly if we hear them from different sources.

The observations of the appearance of theologically liberal perspectives coming from Pope Francis have been expressed by people with allegiances and viewpoints across the political and theological spectrum, from the secular liberal media, to agenda driven liberal "Catholic" dissidents, to observers without a dog in the race, like Sarah Palin, to conservative Catholics, particularly those affiliated with the pro-life movement and those quoted in the New York Times, and traditionalists like Pat Buchanan and those affiliated with Rorate Caeli. I’d posit that it’s not the fault of conservative or traditionalist Catholics that the pope is giving this impression, it’s perfectly appropriate for them to point it out and seek clarification from him, that liberals will attempt to

Letters Continued Next Page

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Speaks

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hijack and/or undermine him regardless of conservative and traditionalist reactions, and that a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil reaction, or one that seeks to reinterpret what has been said and done so as to minimize or dismiss the apparent problems coming from his statements and actions, will confuse people.

We need to be people of truth and light. The pope seems mature and open enough to be receptive to expressions of concern and requests for clarification.

He’s even thanked critics and agreed that they’d been helpful. Am I way off?

Respectfully, Mike Tripoli Editor, The Remnant: I enjoyed your Remnant TV episode Pope Francis and The Three Amigos. For the most part you were spot on! For the record, I recognize Francis to be the Pope, my Pope and I am not a Sedevacantist. I am still apprehensive and cautious of Francis but at times I have defended him.

One example was here in my home state of Illinois when the Democrat speaker of the Illinois house, and pretend Catholic Michael Madigan, rounded the troops to pass our new Sodomite marriage law. He prefaced his support by taking Francis’s statement on gays totally out of context. He indicated that Francis said that gays should be entitled to live their lives as they wish, and he was only following the Popes directive. To me Francis was saying "hate the sin but love the sinner" and indicated absolutely no support of same sex marriage. The bill then went to another pretend Catholic, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn who gladly signed it and said it was about time such a law was passed.

I think this illustrates what you were getting at, Michael, that the left, in this case the left within the Church, is purposely misinterpreting Francis to destroy Catholic teachings. What Madigan never mentioned was that Bishop Paprocki of Springfield came out very vocally against the proposed law, along with Bishop Malloy of Rockford and these two Bishops obviously represent the wishes of the Vatican, more proof Madigan twisted the Popes words to achieve his own agenda. Again Francis was not the choice I wanted to see as Pope. However, the holy spirit did seat Francis on the chair of St. Peter after all, only time will tell us why.

Al Schroeder Jr. Elgin Illinois Editor, The Remnant : I hope Traditionalists manage to develop a cogent strategy for dealing with the new papacy. It will be challenging but for the reasons you cite in your "Remnant Underground" program, it’s indispensable. I like to say maybe he doesn’t want to sleep in the papal apartments because that’s where curia jackals would have him at their mercy. Or maybe that’s where the butler did in his predecessor and he doesn’t want to let anyone do that to him. Maybe he feels he has better protection in Domus Mariae where, should anything happen to him, there are far more witnesses. Maybe he wants a more casual atmosphere to foster a greater familiarity with visiting prelates.

Whatever. It’s important to take people on face value, although sometimes what this pope says face-to-face is downright scary. The most important thing is that Traditionalists dispense with the internecine bickering and concentrate on fighting the real enemy, our detractors on the left.

Beatriz in Florida

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From One Ex-Lutheran to Another

Editor, The Remnant: I wanted to thank Nate Metger for his good article What Has Happened to the Catholic Mass? I, too, am a convert and can totally relate to his experience. I wanted to tell him not to give up, that he has been graced to find the Latin Mass which is the most sublime thing this side of heaven.

We truly experienced the diabolical disorientation as new Catholics.

For myself, I also had the added disillusionment of not being able to find anyone to support me in leaving the homosexual lifestyle. Everyone in the Novus Ordo Church, clergy, religious and lay alike looked at me like I was from Mars because the Holy Spirit freed me from this very painful and deep depravity of soul. One religious sister told me I was in denial of my true sexuality when I approached her for support in the lonely way I was trying to go - lonely because I could find no one to help me! I spoke for two hours to a priest once, and, afterwards, he managed to stumble out that he thought my words were of God, as if he had been wondering all that time if I, too, were a heretic. Yes, truly bonkers. I wanted to tell Nate, don’t give up! You have found the treasure of treasures! It took about a year for me to realize what I had found after I attended my first Latin Mass.

After that, nothing else would do. I will pray for you – that, somehow, God will help you find a way to go to this Mass.

Mary Grace Miller Guadalajara, Mexico

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 04

A Tribute to the Set Designer at Remnant TV

Editor,

The Remnant:

Is this some kind of joke? Chris Ferrara and Michael

Matt discussing "religious liberty" in the Catacombs? Why don’t you discuss religious liberty here at home? It would be a lot less costly and expensive. I mean, why do you both need to travel all the way to Rome in order to discuss religious liberty. Give us a break!

Tim Moore Post Falls, ID

Editor’s Note: Quite right, Mr. Moore.

FYI: We’re not actually in Rome when we shoot The Remnant Underground.

But, quite obviously, we are blessed with a very talented set designer.

MJM

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 04

Seeking Pilgrimage Partners

Ave Maria!

Dear Remnant Readers, My name is Olivia Rao and I am 15 years old. I am a home-schooled highschool sophomore currently taking online classes at a Catholic academy.

I am writing to request financial aid in order to attend the Pentecostal pilgrimage to Chartres Cathedral.

I have grown up hearing about the Chartres Pilgrimage from my father, John Rao, who has participated in the Pilgrimage for the past ten years as a chaperone and lecturer; each year, he tells us about his experiences, and each year, my desire to one day go myself increases.

I have been blessed to grow up in a Traditionalist Catholic family, in a devotedly Traditionalist community in New York City, and to be able to attend the Latin Mass every Sunday at the Church of St. Agnes. The Latin Mass has been an integral part of my life, and I am deeply dedicated to it.

I am writing to you to request your financial aid in order to attend this Pilgrimage. I would be extremely grateful for any assistance you could give me which would defray the cost and make this possible. I will carry with me on the Pilgrimage the intentions of all my sponsors.

Jesus et Maria sit nobis in via.

In Corde Matris,

– Olivia Rao

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Dear Remnant Reader: My name is William Bischel and I am a sophomore at Miami University in Oxford, OH. Fortunately, all my life I have attended the Traditional Latin Mass. I attended a Traditional Catholic school for the majority of my education, homeschooled during my primary school years, and also went off for my freshman year of high school to a Traditional Catholic boys' boarding school in Illinois. For some of my grade school years, and all of my high school years, I was exposed to Catholicism and to the Sacraments as I attended Mass every school day.

Now, while attending a secular college, I do not have the opportunity to attend Mass nearly as often. I am funding my own college education and am using my earnings from my three part-time jobs to keep my education debts at a minimum.

The Pilgrimage to Chartres is something that would give me the opportunity to gain intense spiritual benefits and do penance in this quest to revitalize Catholicism.

I discovered this invaluable opportunity to be sponsored by kind patrons when I ordered a Remnant subscription for my mother as a Christmas gift last year.

Helping send students to France for this exciting and truly penitential pilgrimage is not only an enriching spiritual venture for us, but also a generous gift of the sponsor.

I have heard about what the journey is like from friends who have made the Pilgrimage to Chartres themselves.

Hearing their stories sparks a great desire to experience it for myself!

Everything about the Pilgrimage—from the tremendous spiritual rewards, to the camaraderie of the pilgrims from our country, to the penance of blisters and soreness—are all things I dream of experiencing.

I am the oldest of ten siblings, with one in heaven already. About five years ago my youngest sister at the time, died in an accident at the age of one year old. If I am fortunate enough to get the opportunity to make this Pilgrimage, I will be able to bring her with me. My prayers before, during and after the march will surely be joined with my sister, St. Monica’s, intercession for my potential sponsor. Please consider helping me continue to fight for the True Faith. For your kindness and consideration I will be deeply grateful.

Sincerely, William Bischel Harrison, OH

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 04

Remnant Tours’ Youth Fund

PO Box 1117 Forest Lake, MN 55025

Young pilgrims will walk the pilgrimage in the name of their sponsors. As in years past, the names of sponsors and their special intentions will also be carried to Chartres and read aloud each day on the Pilgrimage. MJM

Waiting for Sponsors:

Margaret Walsh, Thomas Aquinas College Alexander Kunkel, Ohio Olivia Rao, New York William Bischel, Ohio

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 05

A View From Rocco's...

Now, More than Ever, Every Man at His Post!

By John Rao, Ph.D.

Well, here I am, finally writing once again from my Stammtisch at Rocco's Pasticceria in New York. It isn’t as though I have ever physically abandoned working here. I simply took a rather lengthy sabbatical from this column in order to finish my book on Black Legends and then play needed "catch up" on fund raising for the Roman Forum. As sabbaticals go, this was a very fruitful one, but it seems crystal clear that it is now time to "come home" to do my journalistic duty. The reason for the homecoming is one that I think has a general significance for all of us: a belief that the facts of life of the pontificate of Pope Francis are such as to require every man, more than ever, to stay loyally at his normal post.

Why should remaining at one’s normal post be especially important now?

Because just as I noted in my interview with Michael Matt on Remnant TV during the recent pilgrimage to Rome, of the three types of pontificates identified traditionally by Italians—the "holy", the "scholarly", and the "political"—this one seems to me as though it is going to be a politically charged reign. And politically charged pontificates-which are in no way new to Church History— can nevertheless entail wild roller coaster rides in which it is necessary first and foremost to hang on to one’s hat and seat.

By "politically charged", I mean the type of reign where decisions are made primarily with reference to secular concerns that are perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be of great public importance; the type of reign where papal words are primarily addressed to the audiences stirred up by such issues and engaged socially in dealing with them. Such pontificates can be very bewildering in character. In their focus on immediate and mundane matters, they result in statements and actions that can, at times, seem to neglect and even undermine the unchanging faith and morals that they will inevitably also defend—even if such a defense may come only in perfunctory ways, as part of a divine institution’s "standard operating procedure". Moreover, the confusion that the focus on the quotidian arouses can become all the greater when this primarily political approach is itself purely reactive in character, merely responding to public issues as "the world" enunciates them. Under these circumstances, Catholic men and women will search in vain for consistent signs of its "rightist" or "leftist" character. Quite frankly, such consistency will simply not exist.

Those cultivating the customary Catholic respect for Reason may well wonder how believers can function on two different tracks: one that is seemingly a-doctrinal and political in character, and the other that continues a support of faith and morals on the "standard operating procedural" level, through the declarations of the various Vatican dicasteries. I am not in any way arguing that such a two-track approach is rational. I am merely saying that students of Church History know that it reappears on a regular basis, and at every level of ecclesiastical life, both clerical and lay.

As I pound this article out, the figure of Cardinal Richelieu comes to mind: a man who was totally supportive of Tridentine Church reform inside France who nevertheless destroyed the chance for Catholic victory over Protestantism outside his nation due to his purely political opposition to the strength of the Hapsburg Family. But why go that far back and that far afield? All too many of our Catholic countrymen, conservatives and traditionalists alike, adopt the same two-track approach on a daily basis, vigorously affirming their commitment to orthodox truths—and then, simultaneously, the right of America to ignore those truths’ moral implications because of a devotion to our nation’s supposed "exceptionalism".

As readers of The Remnant are all too consciously aware, conservative Neo-Catholics and Sedevacantists will try to "square the circle" and "rationalize the irrational" of the two-track approach.

They both are bound to the idea of a pope and a pontificate unblemished in its words, actions, and overall wisdom.

The only difference in their common vision of such a never-existing Papacy is that for the conservative Neo-Catholic everything that a reigning pontiff says and does must be praised and defended, while for the Sedevacantist the reality of unacceptable papal statements and actions indicates either that the pontiff’s election was invalid from the outset or that his fall from perfection indicates that he has lost his throne.

Of course we can pray that the statements made and the actions taken by a politically charged Papacy will somehow have the ultimate effect of defending the faith. Nevertheless, the experience of the last fifty years in dialoguing with "the world" over issues which are in no way capable of being harmonized with Catholic Truth does not give much grounds for encouragement in that regard. Still, what I most fear is that as this pontificate moves along, solid traditionalists will be tempted down one or the other of the paths taken by the Siamese twins mentioned above. What most frightens me is that in their honest efforts to make complete and harmonious sense out of what will most likely be the wild roller coaster ride that political pontificates entail, some traditionalists overwhelmed by the inconsistency of it all may end up swelling the ranks of the Sedevacantists.

Meanwhile, others desperate to have some good news may actually veer into the camp of the Pollyanna Neo-Catholics.

This brings me to the specific reason why I, personally, am returning to my regular post at Rocco’s. I need to use that post, first and foremost, to show my fellow believers that there is absolutely no need to use the excuse of contemporary confusion to take the pathway to Cloud Cuckoo Land inhabited by the idolaters of the nonexistent Church of Perfect Pontificates.

And, secondly, I need to use my post— this column—to indicate to them, that their job is to man their normal posts during the current roller coaster ride with commitment and vigilance as well.

A View From Rocco's allows me to do my duty in the only way I have any ability to offer some meaningful contribution to Catholic life: through reference to the "teaching" that comes from Church History. What I intend to do in each column, in each subsequent issue of The Remnant , is to address some immediate problem of the Church in general, and this pontificate in particular, in the light of related crises in past eras of the Church. In doing so, I know that I can drive home—and in the repeated way that all of us holding onto our seats and our hats will very much need—a variety of clear points: that the Church, despite all appearances to the contrary, is still alive; that we have a true reigning pope; that roller coaster rides are to be found in every epoch of the past, even if the one that we have in many respects been on for more than fifty years is a particularly bumpy one; that we have every right to criticize and warn of dangers coming from current policies to our hearts content without being frightened by the excommunications thundered from on high by the inhabitants of Cloud Cuckoo Land; and that we can learn to go about our defense of Tradition all the more justly, charitably, patiently, and effectively from what we learn of the trials of our brothers in faith gone long before us to their eternal rewards. But in order for my work to be effective, its message needs to be digested by my fellow Catholics, and kept in mind to maintain their courage in manning their own posts, and in manning them properly, without false optimism and without false pessimism.

After 43 years of fighting The Tradition Wars I have almost given up the hope of getting the ear of either the Sedevacantists or the Neo-Catholics, and convincing them to admit that there has never been a de fide teaching indicating that the Holy Spirit directly chooses the pope, and that every use of the Holy Father’s vocal chords is either willed by God or infallible in character. For many of the members of these two camps their error seems invincible, and capable of being cast out only by prayer and fasting.

Nevertheless, the fact that many Neo-Catholics work with a mysterious Statute of Limitations that allows for criticism of past pontiffs for their mistakes and downright stupidities still gives me some grounds for thinking that they might eventually be willing to move the date that permission for legitimate rational questioning kicks in closer to the present. And I cannot help but cling to the dream that the many intelligent people whom I personally know to belong to the Neo-Catholic army due to a misplaced Führerprinzip requiring obedience to each and every thought of The Leader can be awakened to the truth that they are themselves regularly duped by neo-conservative proponents of the two-track approach that I noted at the start of this article: the one that raises the banner of Catholic Obedience, while using it to demand room for American Exceptionalism to wreak havoc with faith and morals.

In the final analysis, however, the columns to come are primarily aimed at solid Traditionalists, along with those future converts who can be attracted into our ranks. It is them that I have the greatest hope of strengthening in the Remnant issues to come in an attitude of "full steam ahead" in our long-standing liturgical, educational, and moral projects of such sacred and exalted character. We have been engaged in such labors too long to give up now.

There is no need for us to throw up our hands in despair. Roller coaster that we may be forced to ride, it is still a roller coaster that is built upon a track that has a divine foundation. We may all know that truth in theory, but what I want to do now, with historical vignette after historical vignette—and from every age of Church History, even those which many traditionalists mistakenly think to have been unmarred in their glory—is to instill the courage to put our theory into action in our day to day lives, where we are needed, and with charity, patience, and humor as we fix our bayonets in place. Now, more than ever, every man at his post! v

www.RemnantNewspaper.com ~ THE REMNANT

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 09

On the Culture Front…

The Art of Social Dance: A Revival of True Culture

By Kate Larson

Irecently attended my second barn dance in the span of a month. There’s something so delightfully old-fashioned yet timeless about stepping from a crisp, dark autumn evening into the light of a warm, bright room filled with groups of laughing people, dancing to live folk music. You feel as though you’ve stepped into a secret – because that sort of thing just doesn’t happen anymore in our age of technological alternativerealities and anti-culture. People don’t do things together, especially not in a personal or communal way.

These particular dances have been the initiative of a group of brothers from our parish and a friend of theirs, aged thirteen to twenty, who wanted to do something real with their compatriots.

They felt they lacked outlets for socializing with their friends in a meaningful way, so they turned to dancing. They already had a bluegrass band, the Misty Mountain Boys, so live, traditional folk music was covered; all they needed were a place to dance and a caller, and those were procured shortly in the form of a hundred-year-old schoolhouse and a short, small man with a very large mustache.

The first dance was a tremendous success. As the caller announced the beginning of the dance, there was a moment of anxiety: Will anyone actually dance? Will this work? Is it going to be awkward? A few brave couples formed squares, and the dance began. It worked.

There wasn’t another awkward moment, and the small schoolhouse filled with dancers of all ages, from toddlers to grandparents (though two-thirds of the dancers were under twenty-five). We spent the evening doing square dances, circle dances, line dances, and even the occasional waltz or polka. Everyone seemed happy, and it was remarkable to watch the cooperation between individuals and the sense of community that the dance created. Because of the great success of the first dance, the Misty Mountain Boys hosted another two weeks later, and despite the fact that they advertised less, even more people came.

Why, I have to ask myself, have these dances been so successful? What is it about them that seems to appeal to people so much? I think it has to do with the true culture and the social order implicit within them. Social dance offers a beautiful model for the way in which a community should interact.

Interaction between Individuals

Clearly, even a group dance is built around individual couples, so there are many lessons about interacting with others (especially of the opposite sex) to be gleaned from social dance. On a very basic, practical level, social dance teaches men and women courtesy towards one another: men are to ask women to dance with them (not simply assume they’re willing) and women, in turn, are to respond graciously to such requests. At both the beginning and the end of most dances, the men and women bow to one another, indicating an acknowledgement of, and a respect for, the other person – both very important virtues to develop in an age which promotes informality, disrespect, and objectification of the opposite sex.

Finally, at the end of the dance, the gentleman traditionally escorts the lady off of the dance floor, symbolizing the man’s role as provider and caretaker.

These customs allow for proprietous, respectful interactions with the opposite gender – an opportunity sorely lacking in our society.

Social dance also reflects the proper roles of husband and wife: in both marriage and dance, the man has to lead, and the woman has to let him. Neither of these is a particularly easy task in our age of emasculation, feminism, and the resulting confusion about gender roles.

Generally, women tend to be better dancers than men (don’t ask me why this is) and are more than capable of leading if the man can’t or won’t – just as most women can and will lead a family if their husbands refuse to.

When a woman leads, the dance goes along smoothly enough and no one bumps into anyone else, but it lacks a bit of its potential grace and spirit.

However, when a man leads (and the women relinquishes control), they can each dance with greater ease and pay more attention to the details and form of the dance because both partners are doing what they’re supposed to be doing (and not compensating for a lack in the other). The dance becomes much more impressive and beautiful since it’s working the way it was designed to work. Just so, a marriage becomes much more smooth and virtuous when the man takes up his role as leader of the family because it, too, is working as it was designed to work.

The couple-centric nature of social dance not only mirrors the Catholic idea of the relationship between men and women, but also the Catholic concept of society: just as the most fundamental unit of society is the family (which begins with the husband and wife), so the most fundamental unit of the social dance is the couple (traditionally a man and a woman). However, this smallest unit cannot separate itself from the group of dancers as a whole; the couple must see themselves as a part of the larger society and must conduct themselves in a way conducive to the success of the dance as a whole – not just their individual whims. This is symbolized within the dance itself by the fact that, at the beginning and end of each, not only does one bow to one’s partner, but also to the "corner," i.e. the person on your other side.

If the couple forgets that they’re dancing with other couples, they will collide and everyone will end up hopelessly confused (not to mention sore). This should ring a bell in the Catholic mind: a husband and wife (or even yet-unmarried lovers) must see themselves in the context of the larger society; they cannot be so individualistic that they no longer recognize that their actions have an impact on the community around them.

In fact, it is upon them, the smallest unit of society, that the community is based.

Interaction between Generations

One of the most beautiful things to see at these barn dances was the way in which generations interacted. Because such dances are rare in our day, most of the younger people had no experience whatsoever, but not so for the older crowd. Many of our grandparents grew up dancing. Thus, people of their generation were able to teach the young how to dance – and the young, in turn, gave the older generations a reason to dance. Barn dancing is a tradition, and as such, it is meant to be passed on from one generation to the next. In fact, it has to be in order to survive. These dances were possible not only because the older generations had something to teach, but because the younger generations were willing to learn.

Most of our society distains tradition in all its forms, instead looking always to the newest trend and entirely rejecting the things of the past – including previous generations. Thus, our culture has a tendency to shove the elderly "under the rug," scoffing at their wisdom, refusing its duties towards them, and eventually hiding them away in nursing homes. What could someone from an older generation possibly have to teach us? I mean, they don't even know how to use a cell phone!

Social dance, however, clearly disproves the assumption that those outside one’s peer group are "boring" or "ignorant" or "just don’t get it." Rather, here in this tiny, old, one-room schoolhouse, most of the knowledge and ability lay with the older people in the room, not the twentysomethings. On a very basic level, if the dances were to be made up entirely of the young and we didn’t have an older, experienced caller giving us directions, we would be completely lost. Thus, because we were learning the dances from an older generation, a dynamic of respect for their greater knowledge arose amongst the young folk.

This parallels the proper attitude towards our elders in all situations. They often do know more than we, and we can learn a great deal from their experience if we’re willing to listen. The idea that one should primarily associate with one’s peers pervades society, but why would we intentionally place ourselves in a situation of "the blind leading the blind" when we could much more easily learn the answers to many of life’s riddles from those who have lived longer? Most of us owe a great deal of our knowledge and even our material situation to our elders who have prepared the way for us and handed down to us the wisdom of generations. Even when this isn’t the case, they still deserve our respect as representing those who have struggled longer in this "vale of tears."

Of course, not only do the younger people learn from the older, but both find that they can actually enjoy time spent together because united in a common pursuit. For example, one little, blond girl (probably five years old or so), dressed up in her blue and white Easter dress, threw herself fearlessly into the fray, dancing with young and old.

Despite her age and diminutive size, she was able to follow the dances quite well, protected from being trampled or losing her place by the older dancers and clearly thoroughly enjoying herself.

The little five-year-old is just as likely to learn and enjoy the dance as the twenty-one-year-old, and this gives them a way to relate to one another. Thus, in dancing, we find that we're capable of enjoying time spent with people of all ages, both older and younger -- not just those of "our generation."

C N P

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The Art of Social Dance

C P

Even as the evening wore on and the older folk grew tired, taking up places in the chairs around the outer edge of the room, there existed still a connection between old and young. The old were able to participate in the energy and excitement of the young as they watched, smiling, for here was a new generation carrying on the traditions of their youth.

Interaction within a Community

Finally, group dances offer a model for the proper interaction of a community.

The truly Christian community is focused on a very specific goal: the eternal salvation of its members. This goal is one which the structure of the community must enable and which, ideally, all of the individuals within the community must strive to align themselves with.

A dance models the Christian community in that it, too, establishes a structure (the pattern and rules of the dance) aimed at enabling the individuals to attain a goal (the creation of something ordered and beautiful).

Just as the structure of the Christian society is based upon the smallest unit of society (the family) so the structure of the dance is based upon the smallest unit of the dance (the couple). And just as the culture, wisdom, and substance of the Christian society is something handed down from one generation to another in the form of tradition, so the dance itself is a tradition handed down from one generation to another. Social dance, then, is in its orientation a very Catholic art: it is universal; it is traditional; it is social. Our society is a culture-less society because it lacks these essential elements, but reviving social dance may be a means by which we can begin to restore a bit of a true culture. I believe this is why the Misty Mountain Boys’ dances have been so popular, for there is a goodness and wholesomeness in them that attracts everyone seeking something more, something beyond what mainstream society offers. The hall was filled with such a wide variety of people interacting with one another: old, young, traditional Catholics, Novus Ordo Catholics, Protestants, musicians, farmers, students.

As I dwell on this image of the dancers, I am reminded of a medieval tapestry depicting all the strata of a society, not just a single class or generation.

In the medieval model, no part of the community stood alone, for all were bound together by a common cause: the establishment of Christ’s reign on earth and the attainment of eternal salvation.

Thus, they had a culture which grew out of a recognition of the purpose of society and the individual’s place within its hierarchy. Here, too, I witness in miniature a community bound by a common cause, though certainly of a much lesser nature. But the parallels with such an ordered, Catholic society make this dance something real, I think: a fragment of true culture. v

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 11

The Big Bully Pulpit

U P F A M

By Brian McCall

TheOxford English Dictionary defines a bully pulpit as "a public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue." The term was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt who was unable to enact many of the laws he favored and so instead spent much time "preaching" to the public on issues dear to him. He answered the critics of his "sermons" and explained his view of the Presidency this way: "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!" Roosevelt realized that his immense authority as president gave him a great platform to persuade people to do what he wanted without enacting a single law.

Since the first Pentecost, the devil has been trying to legislate heresy and error into the Church. Yet, the charism of infallibility bestowed upon the Church has thwarted his attempts to corrupt the officially and definitively taught Deposit of Faith. At the Council of Jerusalem, the first Church council, the devil attempted through his operatives to get the Church to declare the continued effectiveness and obligation of the Mosaic Law for Christians. He failed.

The first Pope under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost stood up and proclaimed the truth that all men were welcome in the Church of Christ and need not become religious Jews first. Yet, the devil did not give up his fight to undermine the Church. He used St.

Peter himself, the very person who under the protection of the Holy Ghost had officially preserved dogma, to undermine the Council's decision. The devil figured out that the protection of infallibility is not universal. It does not extend to the bully pulpit but is limited to definitive, final and binding teaching acts of the universal Church.

St. Peter then used his "bully pulpit" to support the losing party at Jerusalem.

He avoided eating with Christians who had not complied with Jewish religious law until he was "resisted to the face" by St. Paul.

Three hundred years later Arius lost at the Council of Nicea and the true dogma regarding our Lord’s divinity was proclaimed. Notwithstanding this grace, for almost a century thereafter 98% of the bishops of the world, including a few popes, used their authority to bully people into thinking the Arian error was true. The most extreme case is that of Pope Liberius who under pressure from the Arians excommunicated St.

Athanasius and signed an ambiguous doctrinal declaration that could be interpreted either as Nicea taught or as the Arians proposed. Thus, not even intense pressure or even torture could result in a pope officially invoking his charism of infallibility to contradict the Deposit of Faith. But this protection did not prevent Pope Liberius from using his authority and prestige as pope to apparently support heresy and error and in point of fact lead many in the Church to accept and believe Arian error.

The historical examples could be multiplied. The point is that the devil will never receive the satisfaction of hearing a pope teach ex cathedra heresy.

Yet, he has throughout the centuries found from experience that an awful lot of chaos, damage and loss of Faith can be achieved without doing so. The Pope as holder of the supreme authority on earth, possessing a universal jurisdiction, has a supreme and universal bully pulpit. He can change people’s minds and hearts without acting officially and definitively as teacher of the universal Church. As a wise priest once told me, the devil doesn’t care how he gets souls as long as he gets them. The nineteenth century witnessed a new bitter struggle for the mind and soul of the Church. The heresy of Modernism sunk its teeth into the heart of the Church. Pope St. Pius X considered this heresy the greatest assault so far as it was the synthesis of all heresies. He definitively crushed the Modernists’ attempts to remake the Deposit of Faith into a Modernist Deposit of Faith. In Pascendi , he definitively condemned in whole and in part Modernist errors. He then used the pulpit of the papacy to reinforce his definitive condemnation. He purged the seminaries and offices of the Church and continued to sermonize against the Modernists throughout his papacy.

Having realized that attempts to officially change the Deposit of Faith in authoritative documents of Ecumenical Councils (having tried and failed twenty times), the devil evidently determined that his best hope was to transform the Second Vatican Council from an event clothed with infallibility into a giant bully pulpit—what was called a ‘pastoral council’. From this bully pulpit he could see Modernism preached or at least tolerated. Since the pastoral preaching of a Council is nothing other than the use of a bully pulpit and not the pulpit of the infallibly protected Magisterium, he realized he was not doomed to failure for the twenty-first time.

Thus, contrary to the rules of the Council itself (not to mention two centuries of customary law) the schemas of the Council that were to teach as other Councils had done were thrown into the trash can. In their place were substituted verbose (often rambling) expository documents containing no canons and no anathemas. The bully pulpit worked.

The intentionally ambiguously-worded pastoral sermons of the documents (like the intentionally ambiguously-worded declaration of Liberius) convinced most of the people that the Church had reversed long held dogmas. Of course the Church, the Bride of Christ, had not really done so but this Council, covered with great media frenzy, became a bully pulpit like no other.

For the next several decades bully pulpits were set up all over the Church, reinforcing the new message. From papal, episcopal, parish and school pulpits people were urged to accept and embrace radical changes in Faith and Liturgy. The rival bully pulpit proclamations starting from the ambiguous texts of the Council now transformed into a super Council (according to Pope Benedict XVI) drowned out centuries’ worth of definitive Church teaching. Most members of the Church thought that the loud cries of the bully pulpits must be right as they were nearly universal. This use of the bully pulpit had become a full-blown rival magisterium to the real one now drowned out by the ever longer ramblings of words and ambiguities.

Aided with the newly equipped worldwide media, the devil1 could now accomplish much more than he had by making use of St. Peter or Pope Liberius. Fifty years later, enter Pope Francis.

Unlike his immediate predecessors who exhibited some level of prudential restraint in dealing with the worldwide bully pulpit built and maintained by a global media industry, he has

1 I hope my use of the example of St. Peter has made clear that I am not suggesting that everyone using such bully pulpits is consciously and willingly working for the devil. The devil has shown himself willing to use not only overt disciples but unintentional cooperators. Thus, with reference to all the Fathers of Vatican II or Pope Francis himself I am not intending to argue that any of them is intentionally doing the devil’s work. I leave to God to read the intentions of the heart. The devil may use and inspire our acts in his design, a design which will ultimately fail due to God’s complete Providence.

climbed the steps to this mega bully pulpit with gusto. He seems to seek out opportunities "to speak out on any issue." From off the cuff remarks in weekday sermons, to interview on planes, to calling up atheist journalists and inviting them to tea-time chats—he drops bombshell after bombshell that never quite declare but heavily suggest massive changes to Catholic dogma and praxis. From giving communion to divorced Catholics pretending to be married to other people, to proclaiming universal salvation for all sincere atheists, to the possibility of women Deaconess Cardinals, the bully pulpit ceaselessly trumpets new possibilities.

Such events and interviews have produced reams of commentary and prognostication. Will Pope Francis accept divorce and remarriage? Will he really appoint a woman Cardinal?

In many respects the answers to these questions are utterly irrelevant. He doesn’t actually have to do any of these things. His off the cuff remarks have convinced many people that such things are possible, and, if they are possible, there is nothing wrong with treating them as good and true in principle. After all, the Pope has spoken.

Shortly after Pope Francis’ "who am I to judge" comment about homosexuality, I heard a Catholic priest on National Public Radio predict that such comments will directly affect what people hear in local parish pulpits on Sunday. He said he would have been afraid to say what the pope said on this issue before but now people can say it from the pulpit, citing the Pope himself.

Another example proving the negative effect of these papal remarks is the divorce issue. Almost instantly after Pope Francis’ off the cuff remarks the bishops of Germany move forward with a "pastoral" plan to allow Catholics living with people not their spouses to receive the sacraments. The message from the bully pulpit was heard and acted upon.

Thus, I think any speculation on what Pope Francis might do or not do officially is in the long run unimportant.

Like the ambiguities of Vatican II, like the ambiguous declaration of Liberius, like the excommunication of St. Athanasius, like St. Peter’s avoiding eating with non-Jewish Christians, the messages of the alternate Magisterium of the bully pulpit will continue to have their effect. The only way to put an end to the bully pulpit is to once again take up the charism of infallibility and restate Catholic truth with unambiguous clarity in clear acts of the extraordinary Magisterium. This is what the Church had to do to finally end the Arian heresy. The Council of Constantinople which codified the Nicean Creed finally silenced the bully pulpits of Arianism.

From what we’ve see thus far, alas, this does not seem to be in the cards for the current pontificate. v

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What the Church Teaches…

Pope Francis, the Catholic Church, and Homosexuality

By Fr. Michael Rodríguez

GUEST COLUMNIST

(Continued from Last Issue)

Introduction

With respect to Church teaching on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality, there are some who trumpet the false claim, "everyone already knows what the Church teaches," and thus skirt and avoid the "hard teachings" (and most beautiful teachings!) of our Blessed Lord and His Church. Please reflect on this at length: do we really know what the Church teaches?

To know what Christ and His Church teach means to love this truth and to conform one's life (i.e. the intellect and will) to this truth, even to the point of shedding one’s blood! Yet how many millions of innocent, precious babies have been murdered in this country? How many millions of "Catholics" are contracepting? How many millions of "Catholics" believe in "tolerance," "not judging," and granting some form of legal recognition to sodomy? Granting legal recognition to sodomy? Granting legal recognition to sinful behavior that cries to heaven for vengeance? What, dear faithful, has happened to God's holy Church?

It gets worse, because faced with such

massive apostasy, there are Church prelates who downplay Church teaching on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality, and summarily reply, "everybody knows Church teaching."

Can this be possible? What dreadful diabolical disorientation has taken hold of the minds and hearts of so many . . .

even at the highest levels of the Church?

At the root of the grave sins of abortion, contraception, and sodomy, is the vice of impurity and the deadly sin of lust. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2351), "lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure." Do all Catholics really know and understand what the Church teaches (i.e. the truth ) about lust and impurity? The special pleasure which God has attached to the acts whereby the human race is propagated is permissible only to husband and wife. This pleasure is permissible to the married couple, provided they use it for the purpose for which marriage was instituted; outside of this it is strictly forbidden. Is there anyone who can seriously argue that "everybody already knows what the Church teaches" in this regard? Quite the contrary, the Church’s beautiful teachings on purity, virginity, chastity, and the sacredness of the marital act are likely the least known and understood of all her teachings! Oh, how immense is the need for Catholics to know, understand, accept, and live Holy Mother Church's teachings on purity!

Truly knowing what (and why) the Church teaches about abortion, contraception, and sodomy includes understanding the foundational moral and spiritual principles upon which this teaching is based, e.g. Church teaching on purity.

How can anyone possibly think that "everybody already knows what the Church teaches" concerning purity? Only a tiny remnant (pun intended) know the what and the why of the Church’s heavenly teaching on purity!

Here is one simple example of the very few Catholic mothers who actually have some knowledge and appreciation of Church teaching on purity. One Catholic mother blogged on "ten ways to give your child the gift of purity," and two of those ways are: "don’t allow, and then strictly limit, social media," and "be the gatekeeper for visual images." This is very wise advice. However, how many Catholic parents are actually adopting these practices? Of all the millions and millions of Catholic parents, how many are actually extremely vigilant when it comes to their children’s use of any social media, e.g. television, telephone, texting, internet? Guarding against any and all impure images is essential for inculcating the virtue of purity.

The following are some of the valuable comments made by other mothers to the aforementioned blog:

_ Excellent, excellent post! I remember not allowing my teenagers to watch "Beverly Hills 90210." We also had "moles" (title my kids gave neighbors) that mentioned any activity seen that was not constructive.

_ Beautiful post. My dear husband and I were never into TV or tech products, and were committed to filling their free time with lots of outdoor activities and books. (We homeschooled.) One other thing I did was this: at bedtime, after they’d fallen asleep, I went in and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads with holy water, and asked God to protect their purity. I figured if they got that right, most everything else would fall into place.

_ I’ve been reading "The Big Disconnect," and then yesterday saw the latest Miley Cyrus video. The girl is beautiful and the video is clearly porn, and I’m thinking, how in the world am I supposed to keep my adolescent boys from encountering that because they won’t be the same once they’ve seen it.

If only all Catholic parents had the basic appreciation of Church teaching on purity which is manifested in the comments quoted above, how different our world would be! If everybody really knew (and practiced!) what the Church teaches about the virtue of purity, the hideous sins of abortion, contraception, and homosexual activity would be vanquished . . . wiped away.

Conclusion: Hopefully, this introduction has served to demonstrate that among the Church’s most important and urgent pastoral needs, under the heading of recovering her doctrine, is: to ensure that all the faithful really know why she condemns the nefarious sins of abortion, contraception, and homosexual acts, and to teach and spread the truth about purity, virginity, and marriage.

(1) God the Creator

The Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality is of great importance because these gravest of sins strike against God Himself as Creator! Gen 1:26-28, "And God said: ‘Let us make man to our image and likeness.’ And God created man to His own image, to the image of God He created him: male and female He created them. And God

C N P

C P

blessed them, saying: increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." At the

very beginning

(and center) of Divine Revelation—God’s revelation of Himself and His love—stand God’s sacred

gift of life

and God’s creation of man as male and female. Abortion, contraception, and homosexuality are the complete, diabolical overturning of the order established by God, and the greatest assault upon all of God’s attributes, i.e. how He, the Almighty, has revealed Himself to man.

Yes, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in their Pastoral Letter on Marriage, November 2009, state correctly, "One of the most troubling developments in contemporary culture is the proposition that persons of the same sex can ‘marry.’ This proposal attempts to redefine the nature of marriage and the family and, as a result, harms both the intrinsic dignity of every human person and the common good of society." It is definitely true that public acceptance of homosexual "marriage" harms "both the intrinsic dignity of every human person and the common good of society," because this is an attack (i.e. an outright rejection ) on the God-given nature of marriage and the family.

However, the first one Who is terribly offended by this sin is God Himself! As faithful Catholics, we must always keep Holy Mother Church’s supernatural perspective in the forefront. She evaluates everything, first, in its relation to God and eternity, not in relation to "human dignity." In other words, the acceptance of sodomy is a most heinous offense against the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; it is a diabolical desecration of His marvelous creation of man, and therefore, it necessarily harms marriage, the family, the common good of society, and the dignity of every human person. Satan is "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44), and the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is a horrible

lie

about our human nature.

We were created male and female to the image and likeness of God! The sin of contraception is another horrific lie about our nature! God made us to be co-creators with Him, and He is the only One Who has sovereignty over the transmission of life. However, as just noted above, the worst offense is that these sins—abortion, contraception, homosexual acts—are the ultimate blasphemy against God, grotesque lies about Who He is.

About the Author: Fr. Michael Rodríguez is a priest of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. He is currently the parochial vicar of Santa Teresa Catholic Church in Presidio, Texas.

(2) The Salvation and Damnation of Souls Well-grounded in the supernatural perspective of the Catholic Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church (1696-1787), preached a sermon entitled, "Hell’s widest gate: Impurity."

Below are some excerpts from that sermon.

Behold, the four gates [hatred, blasphemy, theft, and impurity] by which the greater number of souls enter hell; and it is of these four that I mean to speak today, in order that you may amend and cure yourselves of these four vices, otherwise God will cure you of them, but by your own destruction.

Hell’s widest gate: Impurity

We have now to speak of the fourth gate of hell, which is impurity, sexual sins.

It is by this gate that the greater number of the damned enter. The impure say, ‘God has compassion on us who are subject to this vice, because He knows that we are flesh.' What do you say?

God has compassion on this vice? But you must know that the most horrible chastisements with which God has ever visited the earth have been drawn down by this vice. St. Jerome says that this is the only sin of which we read that it caused God to repent of having made man, for all flesh had become corrupted (Gen 6:6-12). And so it is, St.

Jerome says, that there is no sin which God punishes so rigorously, even upon earth, as this. He once sent fire from Heaven upon five cities, and consumed all their inhabitants for this sin (Sodom and Gomorrah, Gen 18-19). Principally on account of this sin did God destroy mankind, with the exception of eight persons, by the flood. It is a sin which God punishes, not only in the other life, but in this also. St. Remigius says that the greater number of the damned are in hell through this vice. St. Bernardine of Siena wrote: ‘This sin draws the whole world, as it were, into sin.’ And before him St. Bernard and St. Isidore said that ‘the human race is brought under the power of the devil more by lust than by all the other vices.’

The ultimate mission of the Holy Catholic Church is to save souls from eternal damnation. This alone, more than justifies why her teaching on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality is of utmost importance.

(3) The Passion and Death of Our Blessed Savior

Pope Francis is quoted as saying, "A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality.

I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person."

Of course, the person must be considered, but if the person is committing sinful actions, he is destroying himself, i.e. spiritual suicide!

Indeed, the person must be considered, but in the light of eternity: what is the state of the person’s soul? Can any true Catholic "stand by idly," if a person’s soul is being torn away from God, if such a soul is on the path of damnation due to grave sins of impurity? If one fails to condemn mortal sin, does one care about the person's salvation?

Furthermore, if one fails to oppose sins which cry to heaven for vengeance, is not one contributing to the human race— all persons —being brought under the power of the devil? If one fails to condemn abortion, contraception, and sodomy, is one not making a mockery of God—His holiness, His goodness, and His love?

In posing his question above, the Holy Father directed his attention, first, to "the person." Holy Mother Church—with the witness of the angels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and saints—might very well respond to Pope Francis’ question with some queries of her own. She, however, directs her eyes, first, heavenward. She looks up at the Cross, considers the sacred wounds of her Blessed Savior, adores His Precious Blood, shed for man’s salvation, weeps tears of gratitude and in reparation, and asks:

_ Dear soul, will you sin in such a way as to scourge, spit upon, and beat your Most Blessed Savior?

_ Dear soul, will you sin in such a way as to drive thorns into His sacred head, and nails into His blessed hands and feet?

_ Dear soul, will you sin in such a way as to pierce the Immaculate Heart of His Mother with yet another sword, will you scoff at her unimaginable sorrows, grief, and suffering at the foot of the Cross, and add to them? v

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R A A I

By Rose O’Donnell

Mystery,

thriller, suspense, romance, drama, even some comedy thrown in for good measure; plus recorded testimonies of second chances, real stories about people bearing faith of steel, hopeless causes turned into actual miracles, never ending love, and so much more fill the pages of this most printed book of all time…The Holy Bible.

Some groups of book experts consider it to be the world’s most read book and it has also been put in the category as the world’s bestselling book for all times.

All households should have one copy readily available being that the acronym for the word BIBLE was formed appropriately enough to read as: "" Basic I B L E

To recap: the Holy Bible is not only the most printed book, but also the most read and the bestselling book of all times! How captivating is that?

I always have the best of intentions at the beginning of each year of reading the Bible from cover to cover. Promising myself that I must read at least one chapter per day. Then something happens: My bookmark gets lost, I don’t want to wake up the house by turning on a bunch of lights as I suddenly remember I never made the time to read as I lay in bed ready to fall asleep. I always mean to get back on track with my daily reading of at least one chapter, but something always seems to happen and this endeavor is once again prolonged.

Maybe I’m not cut out to read cover to cover. Maybe God has a better way for me to read His words.

I know that attending Mass on a regular basis is one of the easiest ways to listen and follow along to the words from this great book.

Another way I get totally involved and can’t put down the book is when I hear or read a quote taken from the Bible that stirs my heart in such a way where I must get out my Bible to re-read the verse and find myself caught up in the unfaltering faith of the writers. Or I love it when I’m doing a Bible crossword puzzle and I need the Bible to cheat "just a little" on the answers and not only do I figure out the seven-letter word, but one line flows into the next and I'm so moved by the power of the word of God I’ve read more than my one chapter that I always wished I could fulfill.

Then there are the times when I need help and sitting right there propped up on my bookshelf is that beautiful old book that gives B I B L E . Nestled inbetween the pages I find a cure for my aching heart, a way to soothe my racing mind, a gentle reminder of true love from a God alive and well.

The Holy Bible…You must read all about it! v

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O L F

O G T T B

B B L M

by Nate Metzger

In a previous article, I argued briefly that, despite the common aesthetic problems of Novus Ordo worshipstyle, it was not in the best interest of traditionalists to focus on these deficiencies, but to instead focus on the problematic nature of the new prayers.

Let me briefly say a bit more about this here.

I know a Catholic fellow who, while perfectly nice and polite, I can’t seem to understand. He is pleasant enough, to be sure. In fact, he is extremely generous and kind. But he doesn’t drink alcohol and he doesn’t follow baseball. And for these reasons, I have a hard time relating to him.

Actually, he doesn’t follow any sports.

Of course, as Catholics, we should be mostly concerned about his lack of interest in God’s favored sport. I fear— for I’m afraid to ask—that he doesn’t even really know the rules of the game, let alone know any of the players, current or past. I live in a city that has severe emotional attachments to their baseball organizations; but as baseball is God’s favorite game, this is one feature of New York that I find virtuous, even heroically so. That this colleague of mine does not participate in this city-wide neurosis, I find disturbing.

As to the other of my colleague’s peculiar features, I have it on good authority that he is neither recovering from prior addictions nor reacting to other traumas: he is simply averse to spirits of all sorts, and always has been. As for me, while details are between me and my confessor, I have no qualms in mentioning that I appreciate a good pint in a pub. Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, indeed. How one would not like this activity, I do not know.

So this acquaintance of mine: he baffles me. Now, not drinking alcohol for no other reason than personal preference, or worse yet, not loving baseball—these are signs of social disorders in and of themselves, to be sure. And where you find some disorders, you are bound to find others. For our purposes, I should mention one more peculiar quirk of this man. What I write next should not surprise any of the readers of this fine newspaper, given what I’ve written so far: this man, he also cares rather little for the old mass or traditional rubrics, and he rolls his eyes at those who agonize over these adiaphora. This colleague of mine is perfectly fine with versus populum and communion on (in?) the hand, he cared not at all that—for example--the recent beach party mass in Rio featured bikinied ‘ministers’ handing out hosts from plastic cups, and he does not cry in horror at Paul VI Audience Hall or worse yet, the wretched Domus Sanctae Marthae Chapel.

Moreover, as far I can tell, he seems content with the hellishly awful music that infects his Paul VI Mass. The music—dear God, the music—it seems to affect him negatively not at all. Yes, he is a strange fellow.

I am not expert enough in the Ways of Man to say if his frightening vision of the world is a product of barbaric habituation, some sort of devilish, self-induced beta-blocking, or a glitch in his DNA; but I’m quite convinced that there is a connection between his tee-totaling, his complete ignorance of and disinterest in God’s favored game, and his ambivalence towards liturgy. I haven’t done any sort of formal study, but I’d be willing to bet that a large survey of the American Catholic populace would reveal strong connections between a disinterest in baseball and a disinterest in good liturgy and good lager.

This isn't to say that the best place to find those who appreciate the Old Mass is the local pub on game night, but—no, maybe that is the best place to find such people. I don’t know: we should do a study (or just check the pub and see, and while we’re there…).

This is all to say that we can speak not just of conflicting visions of the good, but large divisions over the nature of the beautiful. And these divisions run deep.

This makes sense, if one takes a rather old-fashioned view of taste as something that tracks, if ordered rightly, objectively beautiful things. Those who have the virtue of good taste, argued Aristotle, find (really) beautiful things beautiful.

Such a philosophy seems, prima facie, terribly pretentious and elitist from our modern, egalitarian perspective (and that Aristotle would include this virtue in his ethical treatise, no less, makes us gasp!).

But once we get over our indignation, most are resigned to admit that Aristotle is on to something here. Indeed, even the utilitarians are happy to say, along with John Stuart Mill, that there are higher pleasures to be pursued, simply because we are humans and not animals (I'll leave it to the utilitarians to figure out how Mill’s concession concerning the insufficiency of the 'satisfied pig' doesn’t collapse utilitarianism entirely).

No, it seems perfectly correct to speak of good taste and bad taste. And therefore it seems perfectly correct—as terrible as this might sound—to speak of the more refined tastes of those who prefer certain liturgical rubrics over others.

But here is where our problem begins.

Because forget about bad liturgy for a second. Forget about communion in the hand, songs about gathering, liturgical dancing, and the barren wasteland of ‘ordinary time’. How, pray tell, do you get someone who does not like baseball to like it? I suppose you could answer: the same way that you get someone to enjoy a good glass of wine. You get them to acquire a taste for it.

Yes, acquisition and acclimation through habituation. That’s the name of the game, to be sure. Aristotle is right: proper habituation is everything. Assuming that poor taste is not a result of faulty physiology, I suppose we could get my colleague to like baseball by dragging him to Yankee Stadium, in the same way that we drag those at the bottom of Plato’s cave, kicking and screaming, to the light.

But just as Plato’s cave dwellers have been habituated to appreciate the shadows in their flickery darkness, and just as they fastly flee back to the safety of the darkness upon being dragged out by those in the know, my baseball and beerhating colleague will most certainly be rather annoyed at my insistence that he must accompany me once again to the afternoon game. But drag him I must, one might argue.

And yes, the required tie-in to the Old Mass, can now be briefly made, and some point about how the Old Mass ‘takes some getting used to’, and how this also requires some acclimation by those not previously disposed to such worship style, can be written. Of course.

So consider this here the requisite mentioning of this point.

Very good. But enough about that. It is more important to point out what a lousy state of affairs this is. For the answer to our problems—habituation—has revealed a troubling aspect of getting things right in the beauty game. However successful this acclimating program for our aesthetically-blind acquaintances might be, we should note more importantly how, from the beginning, we have recognized that there is simply no straightforward appeal to reason available.

One cannot simply offer a written argument for the beauty and grandeur of baseball, or Guinness, let alone the Traditional Latin Mass. Believe me, I’ve tried with my colleague regarding all three. It appears that it’s habituation or nothing. If you do not see the beauty of any of these things, the best I can do, given my fortunate access to this ‘inside information’, is to get you too to ‘try them’. I cannot present a PowerPoint presentation for their aesthetic superiority (I’ve also tried this), and expect anyone who isn’t already convinced, to be convinced. So enough about baseball and beer. If you do not see the beauty

t of the Old Mass, of ad orientem, of the Latin language, of Gregorian chant—if you do not recognize the superiority of these forms of worship, then nothing that anyone says about these things will do any good. If someone has been poorly habituated, then, as Aristotle rightly said, they will see the ugly as beautiful, and the bad as good. Sadly, a distorted sense of taste cannot be corrected by the offering of a syllogism.

This isn’t to say that beauty isn’t rational. It’s entirely rational, and therefore knowable. Beauty supervenes on being, and being is intelligible. But not all knowledge is built on a priori, self-evident truths that can be found regardless of one’s lot in life, simply by transcending the confines of a wrongly encultured mind, and thinking upon things ‘purely’. To think this is possible— this is one of the many myths of the Enlightenment. Most certainly, there are deft philosophical arguments for why certain things are objectively beautiful and others are not (and many of these arguments are right). Moreover, as the work of Benedict XVI on liturgy attests, there are arguments that connect good theology with good liturgy and proper reverence and form. But Benedict does not proceed like Euclid, by building up a large set of necessary truths from initially posited self-evident principles.

A traditionalist cannot build up a logically air-tight case for the insanity of communion in the hand. Likewise, I cannot make an argument for the stupidity of my colleague’s favorite hymn (you don’t want to know) in such a way that reveals that he is in fact offering a logical contradiction by disagreeing with me.

At the end of the day, after all arguments are made, and all theological and philosophical matters unpacked and explained, we still have to appeal to a proper vision of reality in order to make our arguments for the beautiful, and getting this proper vision takes some real work on the part of the poorly trained. If one’s eyes aren’t trained, then reading or arguing will only do so much good.

So what does this mean? It means, among other things, that if failure of a purely logical appeal to the beautiful is impossible, then we should not be surprised that so many in the world of the Novus Ordo simply can’t see what traditionalists see, and we should not be surprised, moreover, that Novus Ordo types get annoyed at traditionalists constantly pointing out to them their ridiculous music, their architectural disasters, and their irreverent forms of worship. Traditionalists cannot proceed by axioms, but neither can they hold up a CD of Tomás Luis de Victoria in one hand, pound their other hand on the table, and declare, "If you’d just LISTEN to this, you’d understand!" It’s not that easy.

This isn’t to say that we should cease trying to train those who are amenable to being trained. And drag we must our friends to the Old Mass. But in the meantime, we can appeal to aspects of the Old Mass that require no habituation or privileged vision to understand. There are features of the Old Mass that are superior to the New Mass, but that require no inside information to grasp.

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C P

The prayers. The content of the Old Mass. If there is any straightforward 'empirical' or strictly 'scientific' argument to be made, if there is any argument that does not transgress the so-called fact/ value divide, if there is any appeal to the superiority of the Old Mass that does not threaten the sensibilities of those who actually like songs about gathering, it’s the prayers themselves.

We do not need to properly habituate or reorient anyone’s vision to see the problematic nature of the prayers of the New Mass. We simply need to do a quick compare and contrast. Whereas explicit references to Catholic dogma saturate the collects, secrets, and antiphons of the Old Mass, the same cannot be said of the prayers in the New Mass. When it comes to the content of the prayers, we do not need inside information to understand the problem. In fact, one does not even need to be Catholic to see the differences in the prayers. One simply has to know what Catholics teach regarding the Real Presence, the merits of the saints, propitiation, and the like. Thus, to focus on the worrying prayers of the New Mass is not to make an appeal to a properly formed vision, nor is it even to appeal to specifically Catholic sensibilities. It's simply to appeal to facts about Catholic belief. Any Methodist could tell you, if (you found one and) had him quickly compare the prayers of any given Mass for any given day, that one Mass had more Catholic-rich content than the other.

For this reason, focusing on content is the safest strategy a traditionalist can take. There is no risk of offending anyone when we simply focus on the fact that these prayers do, and these prayers do not, reference particular Catholic dogmas. It is to simply focus on facts. Facts, as philosophers point out, do not offend.

Only values do. Moreover, to point out faulty content is to focus on aspects of the New Mass that do not run the risk of attacking faulty character. To focus on content is not to criticize any one parishioner’s taste, and more importantly, it is not to criticize any one priest. After all, not only are priests overworked and underpaid, but they can’t help what they are given to work with. The prayers are what they are. It is not the fault of any priest or any parishioner, nor is it a mark of anyone’s poor taste, that the content of the New Mass is what it is. Most importantly, to focus on content is not to present yourself as superior in any way.

In my case in particular, this is quite important, as such a self-presentation would be impossible. I’ll probably never get my colleague to appreciate the joys of a good glass of wine by demanding, again and again, that he try it. I similarly have had no success convincing him of the joys of baseball. But I should be able to convince him of the superiority of the Old Mass, simply by appealing to his knowledge of Catholicism, and then showing him the differences in the content of the prayers of the two Masses.

Who knows: perhaps when he sees the factual differences, he’ll start attending the Old Mass, and this will start a process that will properly habituate him, and rightly form his sense of taste. Before you know it, he’ll be joining me for a pint in the pub for the night's game. v

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L S

St. Isaac Jogues and the North American Martyrs

Editor’s Note: In a recent interview, Pope Francis referred to proselytism as "solemn nonsense" which "makes no sense." What did he mean? The standard definition of "proselytism" is to "convert or attempt to convert someone from one religion to another." Surely, the Holy Father wasn’t referring to the dogmas that one must be baptized and subject to the Roman pontiff in order to be saved. Doesn't this naturally lend a degree of urgency to the Catholic mission to baptize all nations, based on Christ’s mandate? Our neo-Catholic friends assure us that the word has a new meaning, which has to do with swearing off "coercion" and/or intimidating people into becoming Catholic. Now that’s a serious problem!, c oercing people into the baptism fount. Please! By all accounts, the more pressing problem these days is that most Catholics just don't care. One wonders if this new, pejorative meaning of "proselytism" isn’t based on a novel understanding of salvation itself, on a new ecumenism, and on the presumption of God’s mercy on the practitioners of false religions. In the meantime, sans papal clarification, the world is left to construe that St. Isaac Jogues and the other martyr-heroes of our Faith back to eleven of the twelve Apostles, may well have given their lives for "solemn nonsense". God help us, Holy Father, please explain. MJM

St.Isaac Jogues and his seven companions were the first martyrs of the North American continent.

Isaac was born in Orleans, France. He entered the Society of Jesus, and after his ordination he was sent as a missionary to Canada, assigned to work among the Huron Indians. The Huron tribe was frequently attacked by the Iroquois.

During one of these attacks, Isaac and many of the Hurons were captured.

The Iroquois were a savage tribe and they treated their captives in a most cruel way. Isaac and his companions were dragged from village to village. They were beaten and tortured and made to watch their Huron converts being put to death.

Isaac finally was ransomed and was able to escape to New York and then to return to his home in France. The Iroquois had cut, chewed or burned off several of his fingers, so he was no longer able to say Mass, but Pope Urban VIII gave him special permission to offer Mass, and that gave him great joy.

After a few months, Isaac and a companion, Jean de Lalande, sailed for the mission among the Hurons and resumed their work. Then he was asked to try to make peace with the Iroquois.

He started on this peace mission but he was captured by a Mohawk war party, tomahawked and beheaded. His companion, Jean Lalande, was beheaded the next day.

The first of the missionaries to be martyred was Rene Goupil, a layman like Lalande, who had offered his services to the missionaries. While a captive, he was killed by an Iroquois who saw him trace the sign of the cross on the forehead of some children.

John de Brebeuf (1593-1649) was a French Jesuit who had served among the Indians for many years. He taught the Huron language to all the new missionaries, wrote catechisms, and saw seven thousand Hurons profess their belief in Jesus before his death. He was captured by the Iroquois and suffered a most cruel and inhuman death.

Father Gabriel Lalemant (1610-1649) had taken a fourth vow—that of devoting his life to the work of a missionary. He had been in the missions less than three years as an assistant to Father Brebeuf before suffering with him the same dreadful death.

Father Anthony Daniel (1601-1648) was also killed by the Iroquois on July 4, 1648. As the Iroquois suddenly attacked the Mission of St. Joseph, Father Anthony baptized as many catechumens as possible. Then he ran to the cabins of the old and sick to baptize them. Going back to the church, he was surrounded by Iroquois, and they shot their arrows into him. Afterward his body was thrown into the chapel which was then set on fire.

Father Charles Garnier (1605-1649) was shot to death during an Iroquois attack on the Petun village of St. John, and Father Noel Chabanel (1613-1649) was killed by a Huron who hated Christians.

These martyrs were men of great faith and heroism. They brought the teachings of the Lord Jesus to the primitive Indians of seventeenth-century America. Their only thought was to teach the Indian people about God’s love for them, even though they knew that martyrdom would be their reward. At the suggestion of the hierarchies of Canada and the United States, canonization procedures for Isaac Jogues and his fellow martyrs were begun in 1912. All eight Jesuit missionaries were proclaimed saints in 1930. Together they are called the North American Martyrs. v

T THE SAINTS BOOK B K D OP

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 16

On the other hand…

The Outgoing Tide

By Timothy J Cullen

" But such a tide as moving seems asleep,/ Too full for sound and foam,/ When that which drew from out the boundless deep/ Turns again home. " ("Crossing the Bar," Tennyson)

Noone can say with certainty when the tide can be said to have turned in one’s life nor when God will call one home to where the tide will turn no more, but it can be said with certainty that it is never too early to prepare for that moment. Upon reflection, one might say that the tide begins to go out at birth, a process that may be fast or slow, depending upon God’s will, but in the normal course of events for those who live for the Biblical span of three-scoreand- ten or for a longer period, there certainly comes a point at which one becomes aware that in terms of time, the tide has turned.

Those who raise children to adulthood cannot help but sense a sea change in the course of their lives when the nest empties and sacred family responsibilities have been fulfilled.

Worldly concerns ebb, the flow of events and changes slows, one’s attention begins to become fixed more on the hereafter than on the here-and-now.

Those who have married will eventually face the loss of their life’s companion.

Those who have lived unmarried will eventually face the prospect of a final solitude as well. All these will come to understand that in the final accounting the "crossing of the bar" will lead them into the boundless depths of eternity, depths of either light or darkness, depending upon how each has prepared for the voyage.

All too often, as the metaphorical river of one's life flows to the sea, one gives little attention to what awaits when the flow ceases. The running of the rapids that is youth tends to focus the attention of the young with the thrill of carving out a course, unwary of the rocks both hidden and visible, unwary of the Scylla of sin poised to strike the unwary.

Charting the course does not depend upon the "skill of the helmsman," as Chairman Mao declaimed, but rather upon closely following the chart to salvation drawn by the Church and her teachings. This metaphorical "chart" is tried and true and while nautical charts must be updated to conform to changing physical conditions, the same is not true for the chart that guarantees safe passage through the unchanging conditions of the metaphysical; that "chart" is as valid today as it was when it was first drawn.

It is the responsibility of parents and the Church to ensure that the young learn this and learn it well, to teach them to carefully study the symbols and warning signs, the safe channels as opposed to the uncharted waters that could well be marked with the warning of yore:

Hic sunt leones , though the alternate form Hic sunt dracones might be more appropriate, given that it was used not merely to mark the unexplored but to indicate danger as well.

Dragons there are, if we take the dragon to be a symbol of the seven deadly sins, as is the case in The Apocalypse of John. Dragons that come in all shapes and sizes, dragons everywhere you look. The legend on the map of today’s societies might just as well read Ubique sunt dracones outside that narrow channel charted by the Church. Temptation is now indeed practically ubiquitous, even in the backwaters. The young can so easily be lured off course by the siren songs of concupiscence; of greed for goods the media convince them to covet; of envy by the soul adrift unable to differentiate between needs and wants; of the false pride that comes with feeling oneself au courant with ever-changing fashions and mores; of the gluttony that can be served up on every city block and country crossroads; of the free-floating anger that creates a collision course between abstract collectives of "us" and "them"; of the sloth that sends the soul into the slough of despond. Dragons here, dragons there, dragons, dragons everywhere !

As the years pass and the metaphorical tidal river widens on its way to the sea, the flow begins to slack as we sailors meet the high tide of middle age, but as the tide turns toward its end, the outgoing tide then exerts its pull. During middle age, those who have successfully navigated through the first zone of dragons and become captains of their fate are still some distance from being masters of their souls. In calmer waters, the dragons lurk beneath the surface awaiting their opportunity to strike.

These are the years in which one must balance worldly concerns with the spiritual, neglecting neither one’s worldly duties nor the needs of one’s immortal soul. The co-captains of the family ship must keep the household on course while instructing the younger crewmembers in how to take the helm in their stead, the course they must follow, the dangers both in plain sight and hidden. The middle-aged represent the mainstream of a society and the Church must be their polestar lest they go aground.

The Church is the flagship of the Catholic fleet with Peter at her helm in his papal role as Admiral of the Fleet of the Faithful. His responsibilities are those of the prudent householder raised to an exponential degree. High or neap, full or slack, he can never take the tide for granted. Imagine: he must oversee the captains and commodores, who oversee the executive officers and the lieutenants, those who tend to a farflung flotilla that covers the globe. Urbi et Orbi says it well, particularly in an age when orbi has through technology become an urbi if not quite yet Marshall McLuhan’s "global village". As Pope Francis is learning the hard way, "loose lips sink ships," but this is a lesson we all must learn at one time or another.

There is a Spanish saying that fits in well with the nautical metaphors being floated throughout this essay: " Por la boca muere el pez ," which translates literally as "The fish dies by way of the mouth." Prudence is almost always a better plan than "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead," at least while one takes the measure of the Enemy, the Trickster known for frequent changes of tactics but never a change in his grand strategy, made clear to all long, long ago. Pope Francis should not expect smooth sailing; one doubts that he does. What he does have a right to expect is that he need not fear a mutiny while he is still getting his sea legs. One hopes and prays his expectations will be met even by those who must stand watch as lookouts always ready to warn of danger ahead.

The Barque of Peter has gone off course repeatedly in the past, has even foundered, but has not sunk. Remember Who it was that calmed the frightened sailors just as He calmed the waters that had shaken their faith. His is the Voice that knows what must be whispered into the papal ear, His is the Voice that the pope will follow, His is the Voice to which we must first pay heed, the Voice to which if we listen carefully in the stillness of the sanctuary will call us all to silence when silence is called for. Voices always raised in anger soon become strident and shipboard stridency is never welcomed by anyone aboard, even when opinions may be shared.

Tantrums are best left to toddlers, to be corrected in measured tones; how much more true should that be in the case of those who have reached middle age?

Storms calm, and the ship sails on. Be still and hear the voice of God rather than the echoes of one’s own angry words.

When one has reached a certain age, one becomes well aware of the pull of the outgoing tide and the boundless deep that lies ahead. The Four Last Things act as lighthouses to warn of the final dangers to be faced and how to steer clear of them by trusting to those lights and the message they convey. If one’s course has stayed true, the boundless deeps are in fact the safe harbor that awaits at voyages end. One wishes to know that one has discharged responsibilities to God and to shipmates, and can finally become the master of one’s soul soon to cross the bar. That crossing is not to be feared if one has kept the faith and discharged the attendant duties. One can say that one has a weather eye peeled for that bar as the pull of age’s outgoing tide grows stronger and stronger. One looks back with nostalgia and a small touch of wonder at what one recalls of the landmarks along the voyage, the ship’s company present and departed, but one’s gaze grows more firmly fixed upon what lies ahead at voyage’s end. And when that outgoing tide reaches the fullness that makes it seem "asleep, too full for sound and foam," one who has arrived there in a state of grace "turns again home." v THE REMNANT ~ www.RemnantNewspaper.com

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 19

On the Ecumenical Front…

Ordinary Time, Ordinary Ministers, Ordinary Everything

By Nate Metzger

I’ve

written previously of my anti-climactic conversion from Lutheranism, and I don’t want to bore the good readers of this magazine by opining at length over an issue that is merely testimonial in nature. But allow me the indulgence to speak of this one last time. Confessional Lutherans who convert to Catholicism are a peculiar lot. We are in the rare position, among converts, of knowing quite well what Catholics actually teach, long before converting. Certainly, I was under some slight misapprehensions, but my coming to the Church was not a matter of discovering that the picture of Catholicism I had been taught by my teachers and pastors growing up was full of gross exaggerations, outrageous mischaracterizations, and outright falsehoods. In catechism class, we read the Baltimore Catechism and looked at the Tridentine Mass. It is not uncommon to find a confessional Lutheran kid, attending his parish school, who knows more about Catholicism than the kid at the Catholic school down the road. In fact, these days, that’s what one should expect.

Reading conversion stories by former evangelicals is always enlightening for this reason. I confess to finding it slightly amusing learning what some of these poor fellows thought of Catholicism during their super-protestant days. As compared to them, I knew full well that Catholics didn’t worship Mary or the pope, for example. I knew that there was nothing ‘pagan’ about their religion, and I wasn’t weirded out by the kneeling, the incense, or the genuflecting. They were wrong on a lot of important, nay crucial, doctrinal points, I thought; but they had a lot of things going for them. And anyway, I was taught that it was far better to be Catholic than a bloody Calvinist or Methodist, or some other hyper-Anabaptist, iconoclast mutation that eschews all sacraments, thinks of the bread and wine as mere ‘symbols’ of something or other (God knows what), doesn’t cross himself at invocations of the Trinity, has no real notion of holy orders, and is wary of creeds and councils.

As for T.U.L.I.P., God save us. And as for Baptists and their ilk, confessional Lutherans look with curiosity on anticreedal churches, they have no patience for liturgy-free worship, and they have no idea what it means to accept Jesus in your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.

I remember back as a Lutheran kid, I attended my buddy’s Baptist service. It was utterly, frighteningly bizarre: there was a big projector with the words of some stupid song on a white movie screen, the singing was accompanied by pre-recorded rock music, there was lots of hugging (a nightmare for a Lutheran kid), and a sermon that was more of a self-help talk than a meditation on the day’s scripture readings—of which there were none. People got up midway through the service (not that there was any real order to anything anyway) and told the whole congregation of their problems and the help they received from God. It occurred to me that this is what an AA meeting must be like, if such meetings included canned music about Shouting to the Lord. What struck me as the weirdest and most troubling aspect of it, though, was the pressure it put on the poor pastor to perform. It was all on him to inspire and lead: his panache had to do it all. Moreover, all of his prayers were impromptu, with lots of ‘we just wannas’ sprinkled throughout. It was so foreign and wild, that it might as well have been a feature in National Geographic, as far as this Lutheran kid was concerned.

No, if a ranking system was called for, any confessional Lutheran kid would tell you that Catholics were better off than these other sorts of Christian metamorphosis. In fact, most confessional Lutheran kids wince at being told they are protestant. Protestants don’t believe in the Real Presence, they get around to baptizing (or usually just ‘christening’) their kids when they are six or seven, they reject liturgical time, they think on the bible as an exnihilo and exclusive guide to dogma and morality, and they have empty crosses behind whatever it is that they have in place of an altar.

Yet, perhaps precisely because of the confessional Lutheran’s general antipathy towards the wide world of Protestantism, many of this ilk feel the pull to Holy Mother Church. The reasons are myriad, to be sure, but there are some common, core features that many Lutherans, suffering ennui in their own milieu, long for. Despite the fact that confessional Lutherans use the liturgical calendar, it is one that is less ‘full’ than the one used by the Church. Despite the Lutheran’s good and holy enmity toward the putrid and wicked Zwingli, the iconic riches of the Roman Church make many Lutheran churches look downright puritan by comparison. Despite the liturgical riches of Lutheran worship, it looks impoverished next to the Traditional Latin Mass.

Generally speaking, many Lutherans love the clutter of Catholicism. They envy the unending saint days, feasts, and ferias, the colloquial customs and countless liturgical addendums, the processions, the statues, the beads, the novenas and medals, the apparitions, the mystics, even the hagiography. In addition, they love the commitment, and the rigid calls for discipline. Many Lutherans envy the formidable set of rules that Catholics must abide by, and even the guidelines for corporal and spiritual mortification. What many modern Catholics see as repressive and stifling, many Lutherans see as liberating.

I can’t begin to fathom the complicated psychology of a woman, but I can tell you with more or less certainty that there is nothing better for a lax twenty or thirtysomething man- wary of ‘freedom’ afforded by modern times, yet quite happy nonetheless to do the minimal amount called for—than to be told that he must perform certain religiouslysignificant actions in the course of a week, month, or year. The great thing about Catholicism is that when it comes to disciplined living, we never have the problem that the Baptist minister has when trying to figure out what to pray: it’s simply not on you. There are rules to follow, and specific guidelines to abide by, in order to stay on the straight and narrow. Catholics must attend Mass. No exceptions. They must get to confession. They must abstain from meat on Fridays. They must fast certain days of the year. There’s no rationalizing allowed, nor is it possible to find some other suitable form of sacrifice. You can't just give up chocolate and think it's fine, or think that you’re good with God by thinking about nice things on your couch. You can’t feast on steak on Friday and then make it up by giving up bacon and eggs the next morning, or have a nice chat with the Almighty on your way to the gym. You can't make up the rules to fit your situation, and it ain’t just about poverty of the heart. There are certain actions that must be done, and you as a practicing Catholic can’t make yourself some sort of exception or think that the peculiarities of your circumstance give you a pass. You aren't a special little snowflake. You gotta do it. Nope, no excuses. Just do it.

Brilliant, says your average man, stifled by the existentialist and hedonistic freedom bequeathed to him by a modernity obsessed with subjective experience. Brilliant, and liberating. Rules? Men need them. Give us rigidity; give us structure and custom-saturated discipline. Go figure, the one true faith is as cluttered with devotions, feasts, and fasts. It is a bag or riches, able to sustain the attention spans of an ADD riddled populace. And it is endless: there are always deeper levels to explore. It is as we should expect.

So, despite their own rich and brilliant devotions and disciplines, many confessional Lutherans find solace and liberation in a Catholic Church that is, on the face of it, that much more disciplined and liturgically-saturated.

They would, that is, if it weren’t for the fact that the Catholic Church, this side of the Council, has decided to clean up the clutter. Curious confessional Lutherans, longing for something even more messy, rich, and layered, end up leaving their own tradition-saturated, liturgically-heavy communities for something discombobulated, sparse, minimal, neat, and tidy. The Lutherans arrive in their new, sanitary environment with confusion. What he thinks is an upgrade is more like, well, the opposite of that. He leaves the one year lectionary for the three, and a highly structured liturgical calendar for the nihilistic, desert wasteland of ordinary time. Often, depending on where he attends Mass now, our Lutheran convert even leaves behind chanting, kneeling, and reverence, for…well, something else. He leaves behind a disciplined church searching for even more, only to get weird looks when he opts for a fish fillet on a Friday, when he announces that he’s fasting for Ember Days, or when he makes it clear, to the chagrin of the usher, that he’s going to abstain from going up for communion. He leaves a church that cherishes tradition, and has a plethora of it, for a church that is more or less self-loathing, that can’t seem to run fast enough from its past, and that eschews feast days and fast days as if they were forms of repression.

New springtime my foot, says the Lutheran. More like spring cleaning.

Curiously, most converts to the Faith aren’t able to catch the hospital-like sterility of their new environment. And that makes sense, I suppose. If my childhood Baptist friend attended even the most comically lame of Novus Ordo masses, and the most tradition-loathing of churches, he’d still be intimidated by all of the form and order. He’d be wowed by the kneeling and crossing. He’d be impressed with the very fact that these people follow something called ‘liturgical time’. The year starts in December? he’d query. Amazing! How historical and traditionbound! he’d opine. He’d be overwhelmed by the structure of it all. As compared to the anarchic and ‘contemporary worship’ service he came from, one which puts as much stock in its national holidays as it does its ‘religious’ ones and looks on the liturgical calendar and the feast day with a McCarthyesque suspicion, even the most inane of Novus Ordo Masses would look damn near druidic, and the church as a whole would seem other-worldly.

But for confessional Lutherans? Not so much. For us, conversion is a massive case of false advertising. Sorry, but we aren’t impressed. We know what you had. We’ve studied it. We’ve written endless pages of polemic against it. As far the confessional Lutheran is concerned, Catholics have jumped ship.

Of course, as mentioned, this insight is only available to those of us with the fortunate fate of a particular enculturation. For the most part, the Church has gone about its de-cluttering on the sly. I’m sure that Vaticanistas are all too happy to have yet another evangelical convert rave about the liturgical riches and structure of his new home.

Alas, it seems that we confessional Lutherans who convert are the Second Vatican Council’s worst nightmare, because we can call their bluff. We know about the disciplines and dogmas, the creeds and councils, the feasts and traditions. We came for the holy mess, and we know that you’ve sent in a cleaning crew. You can’t wow us with the remaining smells and bells, icons, and formal worship and prayer. Been there, done that. We know that by comparison, what you offer now is simply a shadow of what you once had. v

www.RemnantNewspaper.com ~ THE REMNANT

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Recalling the Coming Persecution…

A Chinese Handmaid of Christ

By Theresa Marie Moreau

Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.

– Saint Luke 1:38 a darkened cattle car, Catherine

Inside

and Juliana Wang clung to one another, as they looked for a spot to sit on the manure- and urine-stained floorboards. In the elbow-to-elbow crowd of women prisoners, the sisters sat and leaned back against a wall of rough-hewn boards. Eventually, the locomotive’s engine roared. Metal clanged upon metal, as the joints between railcars tightened. Then the train, filled with convicts, sluggishly rolled out of Shanghai’s West Railway Station.

It was October 1958, a dangerous time to be faithful Roman Catholics in the revolutionary, Communist-controlled People’s Republic of China. Prisoners of conscience, the Wang sisters – declared enemies of the State for their unwavering Catholicism – were being transported, like beasts, from Shanghai to a prison in Chinghai province, the province of prisoners, the province of banishment.

The province of unconquered vast open spaces to be conquered with bare hands and bent backs of men and woman on the wrong side of the Revolution.

Only 13 years earlier, on August 15, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan, signaling the end of World War II, life in the Republic of China had looked promising, especially in Shanghai, the highly cultured, international port city, praised as the Paris of the Orient. On that day of true liberation, planes flew over the city dropping leaflets, THE WAR IS OVER!

People ran into the streets, with their arms raised, hollering with joy. Celebratory firecrackers exploded, with bits of singed red paper flying everywhere, covering everything.

It was the end of the Japanese occupation. No more air raid sirens. No more Imperial Japanese Army soldiers.

No more ID check points. No more shakedowns. No more on-the-spot strip searches. No more prisoner-ofwar internment camps. And the Wangs shared in that optimism, even though the family had to squeeze into a humble, third-story walk-up apartment on Boulevard de Montigny (former name of Xizang Road South). It was wonderful to live in the city’s French Settlement, a district known for its streets shaded by London plane trees with showy marbled bark, pseudo-maple leaves and dangling seed balls.

With the future looking hopeful, the Wang family embraced life, even its daily struggles. During the Plum Rain Season, when abundant rainfall coaxed the beauty of the pink plum blossoms along the Yangtze River, rivulets of rain poured through the holes in the ceiling. Ten-year-old Catherine, warm and dry under a pile of quilts, watched with contentment as her mother, affectionately called Mm-Ma, rushed about, mopping the floor, happily emptying the overflowing wood tub, sauce pot, wash bowl and even the drinking mug.

At times, moments of enchantment filled the evenings.

When Catherine’s father, her Ah-Bà, returned home from his job as a secretary in a Belgian-owned real estate company, sometimes the musical instruments hanging on the wall were retrieved from their places of honor. Ah-Bà sat, and upon his thigh he placed an erhu, a two-stringed Chinese violin held in one hand and bowed with the other. Mm-Ma wrapped her arms around a yueqin, balanced on her lap, as her fingers plucked the traditional Chinese fourstringed lute nicknamed the moon guitar for its hollow body shaped like a full moon.

In the dim light of the apartment, Catherine listened as the tones of the erhu married the tones of the yueqin. A peace and calm fell upon her. Once in a great while, Ah-Bà and Mm-Ma splurged and treated the two oldest children, John and Catherine, to a traditional Chinese opera. In the evening, after dinner, the family walked a few short blocks north, up the wide and busy Boulevard de Montigny, dodging pedestrians in Chinese gowns, limbless beggars, noodle vendors and barefoot rickshaw runners.

At the corner of rue du Consulat (former name of Jin Ling Road East) stood the very famous Gold Theater.

Catherine’s favorite opera "Suo Lin Nang" ("The Jewelry Bag") hinged on the chance meeting of two brides, one wealthy, the other poor. The plot unfolded, revealing universal themes of generosity, gratitude and reversal of fortune, while embracing the Confucian philosophical ideal of reciprocity. From the back row, the least expensive seats, she watched as Yin-Qiu Chen, one of the "famous four" actors, played Xiang-Ling Xue, a bride from a very wealthy family. Catherine sat transfixed as Chen, dressed in a brightly colored bridal costume and exaggerated makeup, traveled in a luxurious sedan, across the stage, followed by a long procession of servants playing horns and gongs, carrying the bride’s trousseau. With his tones of sorrow, Chen’s singing stabbed at Catherine’s heart and wrenched emotions from her, forever leaving deep impressions. Chen was one of the "famous four" for a reason.

On the mundane side of day-to-day life, Catherine began her education at a local municipal primary school. Even though lacking knowledge of the very basics – because the war had made education a difficult pursuit – she quickly caught up. Then in 1947, at the age of 12, she transferred to Aurora University’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Catholic university’s auxiliary all-girl preparatory secondary school.

Catherine’s Ah-Bà, as a child, had attended the famous Franco-Chinese School, located in the French Settlement and run by the priests of the Society of Jesus. Always a brilliant student, year after year he received the No. 1 test score, for which he was always rewarded with the No. 1 Seat in the classroom.

And because of his academic excellence, the school also granted to him free tuition, which allowed him to continue his education, all the way to university.

Ah-Bà, who was orphaned at a young age, and Mm-Ma had both been raised as pagans. In traditional Chinese style, they followed Buddhism, especially on Chinese New Year’s Eve, when custom mandated that children kowtow three times before an image of Buddha. One day, I will adore a real God, thought Catherine’s father as a boy, when forced to kneel down and touch his forehead to the ground in front of a stone-cold potbellied statue. Slowly, over the years, as Ah-Bà continued his education in Catholic schools, he began to feel drawn to the Church. After his marriage and the birth, in 1929, of their first child, a son, all three Wangs were baptized at the same time, in 1932, with holy water cupped from the marble font in Saint Peter’s Church, the collegiate church of Aurora.

Ah-Bà was baptized Louis, after Saint Louis the King. Mm-Ma received the baptismal name Mary. And their son was baptized John, after Saint John the Apostle. And when their first daughter was born in 1935, she was readily baptized Catherine, after Saint Catherine of Alexandria (282-305), the brilliant and beautiful Virgin Martyr who was scourged, imprisoned, then finally beheaded. Then Juliana arrived, and, eventually, the youngest, Cecelia.

Despite a religious home and an education in a prestigious Catholic school, Catherine, unlike Ah-Bà, didn’t particularly feel an attraction to the sacred life. She was the type of girl who preferred fun and pleasure. Rather then spend time reading passages from the Bible, she preferred to spread the pages of the newspaper before her, to look at the pictures and read the short serialized stories, even though her educated father hinted that she should seek deeper understanding in life. "One should also read editorials," he counseled.

Editorials weren’t fun. And neither were the after-school weekly catechism classes on the fundamentals of the faith, taught by any one of the many Jesuit priests affiliated with the Aurora campus. But there was no escape, because as she and the other girls walked down the stairs to leave the school for the day, the nuns, the Mesdames of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, were always waiting at the bottom step, to direct them, with a glance of an eye and a point of a finger, straight to the lecture hall.

Until one day, when Catherine, a girl as clever as she was pretty, figured out a way to escape the dreaded catechism class. Instead of going down the stairs, she walked up the stairs, to the roof, through the roof terrace, down the stairs of the convent next to the school, through a large garden tended by the sisters, continued straight out the back gate, smiling to herself all the way to the street where she was free!

But such a carefree life for Catherine, and others, didn’t last.

On February 1, 1949, the Communists "liberated" the ancient city of Peking (old form of Beijing), the northern capital. Then on April 23, they marched triumphantly into Nanching (old form of Nanjing), the southern capital, in Chiangsu (old form of Jiangsu) province. Nanching was only 187 miles from Shanghai, also in Chiangsu province. It would just be a matter of time. And it didn’t take long. The following month, on May 27, 1949, the Communists "liberated" Shanghai, the city in the East built by the West.

Although the nearby countryside had been scarred by military battles, the city proper escaped unscathed. Catherine never heard a single gunshot, perhaps because she lived in the center of Shanghai, which sprawls over an area of more than 2,000 square miles. The only sign of "liberation" that she noticed was the following day, when she saw People’s Liberation Army soldiers lying around, reclining on the pavement in the streets, relaxing in their glorious victory.

Not much changed, at first.

When the school year began, the People’s Liberation Army Cultural Troupe entered the school campus freely every day after classes. Being a teenager looking for excitement and diversion, Catherine readily joined the music group. She enjoyed being with the Communists. They were fun. The old songbooks filled with the beautiful lyrics of the ancient poets formerly sung in school were tossed away by the Communists. Instead, the army troupe performers, decked out in impressive and enviable gray uniforms, taught Catherine and the other students how to sing revolutionary songs, which mostly consisted of shouting slogans. "Where the Party points, there we go!" Catherine and others chanted in unison. "Mao Tse-Tung Thought is the beacon, lighting our advance!"

To go along with the slogans, students were also taught how to play the yaogu, a canister shaped, doubled-ended drum tied at the waist and beaten with sticks.

The students were ready to march by the time Chairman Mao stood atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Peking’s Tiananmen Square, on October 1, 1949, and announced, "The Central People’s Government Council of the People’s Republic of China took over office today in this capital." To celebrate the glory of the Communist Party on that very first National Day, the army troupe organized the students to form a primitive parade, which consisted of shouting slogans and playing their waist drums as they walked along the crowded city streets, which were being renamed because of the city’s "liberation" from the despised reactionary and counterrevolutionary factions. Those streets with bourgeois names were being replaced with names that honored the Revolution. "Heaven and earth are great, but greater is the kindness of the Party! Father and Mother are dear, but no dearer than Chairman Mao!" an exuberant Catherine shouted with the others.

All day and into the late night, Catherine paraded around, aimlessly and endlessly

C N P

THE REMNANT ~ www.RemnantNewspaper.com

C

C

Didn't the Communists promise freedom of religion? Why are their actions not keeping with their promise?

following the others along the streets of Shanghai. Exhausted, she wanted to go home, but had no idea where she was, until she realized that she was along the Huangpu River. And just around the corner was Saint Joseph Church, where she and her family attended Sunday Mass. So she sneaked away and hurried home. By the time she quietly opened the door to the apartment on Boulevard de Montigny and tiptoed to her bed trying not to wake anyone, it was almost midnight. "If you bring that drum home next time, I’ll throw it out!" her brother, John, threatened. Apparently not everyone had been asleep.

Back at school, Catherine continued with the troupe. But then, some of the students held a meeting to start up a branch of the Communist Youth League. They invited Catherine, and she happily attended. Held in a small classroom, only a handful of students showed up.

Quickly, she noticed that the meeting was completely different from the music group, in its tone. Fun-loving Catherine listened carefully to what was said, and what she heard in the hate-filled ideology, she didn’t like.

The leader, who addressed the group, mocked religion, slandered the priests and nuns.

Catherine wondered. After that meeting, Catherine refused to take part in any of their activities.

Instead, sometime in the spring of 1950, when classmate Ma-Li "Mary" Gu asked Catherine to join the Legion of Mary, a religious organization, she readily accepted the invitation. Since she had dropped out of the Communist-led groups, and the government had begun banning all forms of entertainment except that which pushed the revolutionary propaganda, she had not much else to do to occupy her free time.

For Legionary work, and in adherence to the virtuous corporal works of mercy, Catherine and her fellow Legionaries went in pairs to visit the sick children in Guang Ci Hospital, which was a big Catholic hospital, originally named L’Hôpital Sainte-Marie. The little patients were very young, very thin and very frail, as a result of their illnesses, but when they saw the Legionaries, they immediately filled with joy.

The Legion brought a new beginning, a new meaning to Catherine’s life. The seed of spirituality that had been planted in her heart began to sprout. It seemed as if she had finally begun to heed her father’s advice of seeking a deeper understanding in the world, not only of the natural, but also of the supernatural.

Around the same time, the Wang family moved to an apartment at the corner of Jinling Road East (formerly rue du Consulat) and Yongan Road (formerly rue Montauban). After the move, they regularly attended the daily 6 a.m.

Mass at Saint Joseph Church, at 36 Sichuan Road South, headed by Jesuit missionaries from France. Perhaps the family had been inspired by the cross gleaming atop the middle tower, which they could see from their apartment windows, just one parallel block over.

Or perhaps it was the tolling of the bell three times a day, at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m., signaling the faithful to pray the Angelus. Or perhaps it was a simple need for something spiritual in a world becoming all too materialistic under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, led by the totalitarian Communist regime.

After Mass, Catherine rushed home for a quick breakfast, grabbed her school books, then rushed down the street and jumped on the electric streetcar that ran along Jinling Road East and turned onto HuaiHai East Road (formerly Joffre Avenue). She rode all the way until her stop at Ruijin Road, where she hopped off and headed to school. When the final bell rang at 3:30 p.m., she and her classmates walked down Ruijin Road half a block and crossed the street to Christ the King Catholic Church, staffed with American and Chinese Jesuits.

The priests were all friendly and kept their young flock busy with plenty of religious activities. For Catherine, first there was homework, followed by choir practice until the service that began each afternoon at 5:30 p.m. It consisted of the rosary, doctrinal instruction and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Also included was regular catechism class for the elder students. By that time, Catherine loved catechism class. But by the autumn of 1950, the Communist wind shifted.

In an attempt to break with the "imperialistic" Holy See, the People’s Government created the Three-Self Reform Movement, so-called for its aim to be Self-governing, Self-supporting and Self-propagating. It was the establishment of the new-and-improved revolutionary Chinese catholic church, independent from the Pope, despised as the "running dog of the American imperialists," and the Vatican, described as the headquarters of the "imperialistic cultural invasions." The Religious Affairs Bureau, the long arm of the People’s Government, would regulate and control all religious activities, all religious persons and all religious houses – all required to be registered with and approved by the Bureau.

Roman Catholics were ordered to align themselves with the State's official church, backed and promoted by the Party. Those who did not, were warned that they would suffer the consequences.

In 1951, the Purge began. On October 8, 1951, the official attack against the Legion of Mary began. Hit pieces in the regime’s newspapers declared that the religious organization was nothing but a counterrevolutionary clique, and that its members were running dogs of the Imperialists. Mao publicly condemned the Legion, labeling it Public Enemy No. 1. Legionaries were ordered to resign immediately and were given a deadline, December 15, 1951. They were to report to special centers overseen by the Military Control Committee, which had been assigned to organize the attacks.

Outside the centers, 6-foot-tall signs posted: SECRET SUBVERSIVE ORGANIZATION, LEGION OF MARY, MEMBER REGISTRATION CENTER.

Clemency was promised to those who resigned; otherwise, punishment, prison, and possible death were the end results for those who refused to comply.

Authorities contacted Catherine’s school administrators, who ordered her to go to the police station. Obedient, she appeared before officers. They sat her down. They threatened her, repeatedly.

They hollered, repeatedly. They banged their fists on the desk, repeatedly. They cursed every filthy word imaginable, repeatedly. They demanded that she sign a document claiming that the Legion of Mary was counterrevolutionary, repeatedly. Catherine remained silent.

She refused to sign anything.

Finally, the officers permitted her to leave, and she returned home. But it was only a temporary reprieve. Since she did not resign, she would pay the consequences. Not if, but when. At the Wang home late one night, long after everyone had gone to bed and fallen asleep, someone pounded at their door. Police had arrived to arrest John, Catherine’s older brother.

After the Communist takeover of China, Mao had ordered the directive: Harness the Huai River! And whatever Madman Mao ordered, was done. In late 1951, college seniors were forced to stop their studies and go to Honan (old form of Henan) province, to participate in the campaign. John had been studying architectural engineering and, at that time, had just entered his senior year at Aurora University, his father’s alma mater. Helpless to keep him from being banished to the countryside like millions of other students, the "sent-down youth," the Wang family could do nothing for John but quickly gather supplies: a quilt, some extra clothing, bits of food.

When they arrived at the police station with the bundle, they were told that he had already been sent to Honan. But authorities accepted the bundle, with assurances that John would receive the items. He never did. In fact, when he returned home the following year, on December 27, 1952, his feast day, his family learned that he had never received any of the supplies they had sent to him. While being forced to labor like a peasant, including the butchering of pigs, he wore shoes that were so worn out, they barely covered his feet.

He never resumed his studies; instead, he preferred to visit with the Jesuits at Zikawei.

In the spring of 1953, the year Catherine was to graduate from secondary school, all the students in her school were ordered to be present at a meeting in the Big Hall. The girls lined up at the door in single file, and as Catherine entered, something above the raised stage caught her eye. A huge character poster with big square characters: ACCUSATION MEETING OF THE IMPERIALISTS’ DOG – REN-SHENG WANG.

Catherine knew Father Ren-Sheng "Louis" Wang (1909-60, Society of Jesus) very well. He was a man of strong character, adored by the students.

When his mother died, Catherine and many others rushed to the apartment where the woman’s body lay. Around her death bed, all stood, openly weeping, all except Father Wang. Catherine watched his face turn redder and redder, as he fought to hold back the tears.

Father Wang had been appointed principal of the Aurora University’s College of Arts and Sciences following the expulsion, in 1952, of English-born Mother Margaret Thornton (1898-1977, Society of the Sacred Heart). But prior to the accusation meeting, Father Wang had been replaced by Wen-Yao Wu, a Communist.

Replacements, as such, were a common part of the Communist progression in China, which included the cleansing of foreigners and foreign sympathizers from all religious institutions, which were subsequently confiscated by the People’s Government. At that time, every leader of every unit, especially in the spheres of learning and science, had to be a Communist, who could be and would be controlled by other Party members. At the accusation meeting in the Big Hall, Catherine and others in the graduate classes were seated in a place of prominence. In the middle, Catherine waited. She waited to hear what position her Catholic classmates would declare about Father Wang, who was not present at the meeting. School authorities wanted the students to make accusations against him, in his absence.

In the Big Hall, the atmosphere was already tense. When the leader of the accusation meeting prepared to speak, silence spread throughout the hall.

"Accusation of Wang, Ren-Sheng!" the leader shouted. Catherine promptly stood up, turned around and walked out of the hall. One by one, other students stood up and followed her out.

A week later, the day before she and the other students were to take the physics examination required for graduation, Catherine was called to Principal Wu's office. Extremely upset, she sat attentively, but heard nothing, as the principal gave her a long lecture.

"Be a good citizen after you leave school," was the only thing she heard him say as she left his office.

She feared expulsion. The next day, she took the physics exam, but the results were not good. She received a failing grade of only 50 percent. Catherine

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A Chinese Handmaid of Christ

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couldn’t believe it. Neither could her physics teacher. And Catherine wasn’t the only one who failed. All those students who had walked out during Father Wang’s accusation meeting received failing grades, as well.

Days later, the failing grades were followed up with written disciplinary warnings, delivered by special messengers dispatched from the school to the homes of the students and needed to be signed by parents. Catherine wasn’t expelled, but a serious mistake had been noted on her record, in her file. Not long after, when Catherine and the other Catholic students took the national university entrance examination needed in order to enroll in universities, the results were much the same. When the enrollment lists were subsequently published, not a single name of a Catholic graduate was on the roll. And all received the same notice from the enrollment head office, including a senior who had signed up to take the exam but decided not to and opted to join a religious community, instead.

The notice: "Your mark on the entrance exam does not meet the standard for enrollment." Unable to pursue their studies, their futures looked bleak. Catherine and the others were devastated. But not long after, she read a book that changed her life: "The Story of a Soul," the autobiography of Carmelite nun Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. The written reflections of the saint, who was born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin of Lisieux (1873-97) and canonized in 1925, captivated Catherine. Feeling that she, too, may have a vocation for the religious life, she prayed to the Little Flower, trying to discern, whether or not she should enter the convent, and if she were to enter, she promised that she would take her name – Thérèse.

Catherine shared her religious aspirations with her spiritual director, Father Yuen-Tang "Joseph" Chen (Society of Jesus). A philosopher and a man of few words, he said nothing about the matter until the following month when they met again. "Visit the Mother Superior of the Carmelite convent," Father Chen suggested. Catherine took his advice and traveled to the western part of the French Settlement, to Zikawei (translation: Zi family together), to visit the Mother Superior of the Holy Cross Convent, commonly referred to by the Shanghainese as Sun Yi Yuan, the Holy Clothes Court.

The grounds of Zikawei could be spotted from far away, especially the twin gothic spires of the red-brick Saint Ignatius Cathedral that towered above all. Spread out over an area taking up several blocks, there were many buildings, including the minor and major seminaries, the dome-topped observatory and Tu San Wei, a gift shop where the faithful could purchase rosary beads, prayer books and religious pictures.

Catherine walked toward the convent, in the southeast section. Behind a high wall, in observance of the papal enclosure norms of the time, a barrier separated the cloistered nuns from the outside world. But they didn’t need the outside world, for their grounds included a large wheat field, a garden filled with vegetables, fruit trees, a flower nursery, grape trellises, a chicken coop and a graveyard.

With permission to enter the reception room, which was divided into two, Catherine took a seat in front of a curtain that covered the grille between her and Mere Marie Cecile de Jesus, the Mother Superior from France who had joined the Carmelites when she was 25. Also there was Soeur Thérèse d’Eli, who acted as an interpreter. After the first visit, Catherine visited again and again, each time the curtain remained down, in front of the grille. She could only hear soft throaty accents of French, between tones of Chinese interpretations. During her final visit to the convent, Mother Superior requested that Catherine sing, "I Want to Be Close to God."

As Catherine's soprano voice filled the

m

reception room, she heard the clanking of metal. The grille opened, then a hand pulled back the curtain. For the first time, Catherine saw Mere Marie Cecile’s face, surrounded by the purity of the white wimple. Catherine had never seen such a beautiful face. The eyes, an unforgettable pure beauty. With the veil cascading down past Mother Superior’s shoulders, Catherine didn’t notice that she had a big humpback. Only later, Soeur Thérèse d’Eli informed her that the deformity had been caused by making too many sacrifices.

On February 2, 1955, the Feast of the Presentation, Catherine stood on the steps of the convent. In her hands, she clasped a bouquet of five calla lilies wrapped in white paper. To commemorate the special occasion, she posed at the foot of the convent steps for a few photographs with her father, sister Juliana, and Peng-Sheng Wang (the brother of Father Ren-Sheng Wang, who was still in prison). With final farewells, Catherine climbed the eight steps to the double-door entrance of Holy Cross Convent. The doors opened, and she crossed over the threshold to become mystically betrothed to Christ. The doors closed, and she left behind the secular world for the sacred.

A Preview of Part II,

Next Issue….

"Catherine! Catherine! Wake up!

The Communists are coming!" Soeur Madeleine warned. More than 20 Communist soldiers, men and women, had used extension ladders to climb over the high enclosure wall. They jumped into the garden, used their nightsticks to smash the windows then ambushed the nuns in the convent. v

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 23

What Catholics Believe…

The Philosophy of Charity

By Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

"In the broad sense of the term, everything in the world is a sacrament, for everything in the world can be made a means of leading us on to Christ and hastening the reign of Christ."

is a philosophy behind charity

There

as there is a philosophy behind everything else in life. What is that philosophy in relation to the tendencies in modern social service, in light of Catholic philosophy? The first tendency in modern charity is towards greater organization, even to the extent of making it one of the big business concerns of the country. The breadbasket stage, the penny-in-the-cup stage, the handout stage, have given way to the bureau and the scientific-giving stage. Statistics are replacing sympathy, and social workers are replacing emotions.

The second tendency in modern charity is towards a deification of society at the expense of the individual. The philosophical principle behind this tendency is not that of the common good, which claims that individuals shall effectively cooperate for the well-being of society, but rather the principle that individuals be submerged for the sake of the collectivity. Some socialists carry glorification of society to the detriment of the individual to such a height that he makes "the service of God consist in the service of men," and consequently denies any such thing as an individual sin. The only sin is the social sin: "disloyalty to society".

The final tendency in modern philanthropy is toward absoluteness— not in the sense that it seeks to rid the world of poverty, crime and disease, but in the sense that the alleviation or partial elimination of these ills constitutes its full and final purpose. Giving bread means filling empty stomachs-it means nothing more and it can mean nothing more. Improving home conditions means better light, better food, warmer temperature—and nothing more. It is assumed throughout the whole process of alleviating the ills of mankind that mankind has no other destiny than the present, and that the fruits of helpfulness and philanthropy, if they extend beyond a stomach, a playground or a clinic, never go any further than a formula gleaned from those experiences.

The true philosophy of charity would not condemn these modern tendencies and ask for their destruction. Rather it would ask that they be elevated to conform to these three principles: 1) Charity must not only be organized, but must be organic 2) Charity must deal not only with society, but also with individual souls 3) Charity must not be absolute, but sacramental—not only of the earth earthy, but of the heavens heavenly.

The assumption behind organized charity is that charity work becomes organized when individuals come together and unite themselves for the purpose of remedying the social ills of mankind, as men might come together to form a club.

It is further assumed that charity work develops horizontally, that is, it begins with men and ends with men, proceeding from the organization through the social worker and finally out to the needy.

This conception of charity is not the Christ-like one. For us the source of charity is not the will of men, but the will of God. The origin of charity lies not in effective human groupings, but in divine life, and hence its development or unfolding is not horizontal which begins with men and ends with men, but vertical, beginning with God at its summit, and ending with man as its term. According to our philosophy, charity begins within the bosom of the Triune God, for charity is the definition of God. Charity, then, is not horizontal, extending from kind-hearted men to needy men, but vertically extending from the infinite source of charity, God Himself, down to the members of the mystical body, through the Incarnation.

Charity, then, is not organized, nor is charity work accomplished through organizations. The first charity bureau was in Bethlehem. Its first case was the case we are still working on—the salvation of humanity through the infinite life of Jesus Christ.

If there are certain members of Christ’s society who are thirsty, hungry or in need—it is we the whole body, who are thirsty, hungry and needy, for we are members one of another in the body of Christ. Their needs, their wants, are not theirs but ours, and no charity can call itself Christian unless is realizes this. And so, the sufferings of the poor weak members of the mystical body are our sufferings, and the sufferings of the body are the sufferings of Christ.

There is a charity-sentiment, divine in its inspiration, that we should love all those who are near and dear to us. In addition to the charity-sentiment, there is the charity-duty, which is based not upon natural affection for one another, but upon the divine affection of Christ for members of His body. There may be much in humanity that is worth loving, even from human motives, but there is little to love in the wrecks that come to charities. If there is to be love for them, it must be inspired by Some One Who first loved some one who was not worth loving--I mean Christ loving us—and unless the social worker sees Christ in the needy, he will not long love the needy.

The true philosophy of charity cannot accept without correctives the modern tendency to regard as the absolute end of charity the alleviation of the ills that afflict mankind, nor can it regard as an ideal a society that is free from disease, hospitals, and prisons—not because such an ideal is wrong, but because it is incomplete. It is a tenet of the Catholic philosophy of charity that the lessening of the ills of mankind and the diminution of the traces of disease are not ends in themselves, but rather means to an end. In other words, philanthropy is not absolute in its end but sacramental.

In the strict sense, there are seven sacraments—material things used as means of spiritual sanctification. In the broad sense of the term, everything in the world is a sacrament, for everything in the world can be made a means of leading us on to Christ and hastening the reign of Christ.

It is this sacramental, transparent character of charity that lends dignity and worth to its duller and harder side.

It is love of society that enables some men to get out from their individual self-centeredness and selfishness….But if there is no Christ beyond society, if there is nothing but society, then where can society find something that will make it forget its self-centeredness and selfishness?

Charity workers are therefore to do with these great realities what He did. First of all, we are to offer our individual human natures to Him, that He may continue the work of His Incarnation—human natures in which He might visit the sick, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, open blind eyes to the light of His sunlight, unstop deaf ears to the music of the human voice. Secondly, we are to make use of things, our possessions, our talents, as kinds of sacraments, each one of which has pronounced over it the consecrating words: "This is offered on account of You, O Lord!" in order that the whole universe may become sacramentalized for His Honor and Glory.

This is the philosophy of Catholic charity. It has never been quite right to say that God is in His Heaven and all is right with the world; for Christ has left the heavens to set it right and He is found amongst us.v

Edited for The Remnant by Connie Bagnoli from "Old Errors and New Labels" 1931

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 24

The False God of Poverty

By Peter Crenshaw

Inkeeping with his vision of a Church "of the poor and for the poor" Pope Francis met with and suspended the Bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartzvan Elst last week. The bishop had been in the news for the better part of a month due to costly renovations of his residence totaling upwards of forty million dollars. The German Bishops’ Conference is currently conducting an investigation into the affair and no punishment will be permanently set until that time. However, Vatican observers are predicting that if the Bishop is found guilty, he will not be reinstated as the Bishop of Limburg. This episode is noteworthy, as Tebartz-van Elst was previously appointed by Pope Benedict to allegedly, "combat ‘progressive’ tendencies in the German church."

1

Capitalizing on the Pope’s emphasis on the poor, auxiliary Bishop Robert McElroy of San Francisco, in an October 21st article in America Magazine, suggested that poverty was an equivalent moral issue to abortion. He stated:

If the Catholic Church is truly to be a "church for the poor" in the United States, it must elevate the issue of poverty to the very top of its political agenda, establishing poverty alongside abortion as the pre-eminent moral issues the Catholic community pursues at this moment in our nation’s history.

2

In addition, Bishop McElroy also implied that opposition to certain progressive government welfare programs and tax policies is a sin:

…choices by citizens or public officials that systematically, and therefore unjustly, decrease governmental financial support for the poor clearly reject core Catholic teachings on poverty and economic justice. Policy decisions that reduce development assistance to the poorest countries reject core Catholic teachings. Tax policies that increase rather than decrease inequalities reject core Catholic teachings. 3

Along these same lines, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida lashed out at Pro-Life groups in August, equating the issue of abortion to the issue of "food aid" as well as immigration and the death penalty:

I am convinced that many so called Pro-Life groups are not really pro-life but merely anti-abortion. We heard nothing from the heavy hitters in the prolife movement in the last week when Florida last night executed a man on death row for 34 years having been diagnosed as a severe schizophrenic. Which personality did the state execute? Many priests grow weary of continual calls to action for legislative support for abortion and contraception related issues but nothing for immigration reform, food aid, and capital punishment. 4

Also, just this month Dr. Candida Moss, Professor of New Testament Studies

1 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/pope-francis-wasteslittle- time-in-taking-the-hard-line-with-suspension-of-germanbishop- 1.1571161 2 http://www.americamagazine.org/church-poor 3 http://www.americamagazine.org/church-poor 4 http://bishopsblog.dosp.org/?p=5837

at Notre Dame University, argued on

The O'Reilly Factor that Jesus was a socialist. As evidence of this premise she cited examples of Jesus and his followers giving away "free health care" as well as Jesus’ "insistence that the wealthy give away their possessions."

5

It goes without saying that few Catholics, Traditional or otherwise, would look kindly on a bishop spending forty million dollars to upgrade his residence. Similarly, few Catholics would deny that we have an obligation to assist those in genuine material need.

To do so would be to deny the very teachings of Christ Himself regarding the corporal works of mercy. However, with all of the recent focus and elevation of poverty as the premiere issue in the Church, we would do well to remember that the mission of the Church is not to eliminate poverty on earth, but to save souls. Christ Himself told us that the former mission is impossible: "The poor you will have with you always" 6; while the latter mission is essential.

We also should remember that the Communists, especially in Latin American democracies, have historically exploited the problem of poverty.

Fundamental Marxist tactics have always involved stirring up anger at the injustice of poverty and directing it towards the affluent ruling classes.

The infiltrating Communists then foment a class-war with the intention of overthrowing the existing government, promising a worker’s paradise to those who assist in the effort. As we have seen, however, once the Communists seize power, they have no need of their former impoverished workers. They then live just as their former affluent rulers did,

5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD1IzvCv9AQ 6 Matthew 26:11

except with poverty further expanded instead of eradicated.

In implementing their ideology over the last century, Communists have unfortunately found friends in idealistic Catholic priests who, inspired by the Communist’s false affection for the poor, have developed an entire "liberation theology" around the issue.

Even assuming the best of intentions on their part, these priests have often served as unwitting facilitators of Communist propaganda. For "Liberation Theology" caricatures true Catholicism, transforming it into a mere religious arm of Marxism.

This Marxist "god" of poverty should be examined even more closely in the United States. In this country, those considered below the "poverty line" and worthy of assistance by the government, often have a higher standard of living than the middle class and even the "rich" in some third world countries.

According to a U.S. Census Report released in September, the following was true of American households in "poverty" in 2011: 97.8% had refrigerators, 96.6% had gas or electric stoves, 96.1% had televisions, 93.2% had microwaves, 83% had some sort of DVR, 80.9% had cell phones along with their landline phones, and 58.2% had computers.

7 With these statistics in mind, can we, as Catholics, truly argue that these "impoverished" individuals are entitled to the same victim status as aborted children? Similarly, can we say that failure to support government welfare programs for these people is the moral equivalent of supporting proabortion politicians?

7 http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p70-136.pdf

In addition to poverty, the virtue of humility has been focused on recently to a great degree. The message has been clear that humility and poverty are intertwined. The idea has been put forward that, to be a truly humble churchman, one must eschew everything of value to the point of refusing the natural accoutrements of ones office; even to the point of refusing those things donated and sacrificed for that office by Catholics over the span of two millennia. In contrast to this narrative, I’d like to propose a different Catholic view of humility and poverty. I’d like to do so by telling a story. There once was a boy who grew up as the son of a postman. He was very poor and one of eight children.

Knowing that his parents had no money to afford new shoes, he carried his own shoes on his back during long commutes to and from school to save them from wear. This boy would later become a simple country priest before eventually being elected pope over his own protests. Afterwards he would be embarrassed by the pomp of the papal court. "Look how they have dressed me up," he would say in tears to an old friend. To another, "It is a penance to be forced to accept all these practices. They lead me around surrounded by soldiers like Jesus when he was seized in Gethsemane."

Yet accept them as penances he did. He knew that all of this pomp was not for him, but for the office of Christ's vicar to which the faithful longed to show their generosity and adulation. For by honoring Christ’s vicar they honored Christ Himself. In this same vain, he spared no expense on his Divine Lord as he encouraged giving Him only what was most beautiful in art, architecture, and music.

Though very generous to the poor, at one time filling the Apostolic Palace with refugees from an earthquake, poverty was not the focus of his pontificate.

Instead his focus was the eradication of error from the Church as well as purity of doctrine and worship.

For he knew these things were essential to the Church’s mission of saving souls and must always take priority.

Nevertheless he lived such an interior life of poverty and humility, it inspired him to write the words, "I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor" on his last will and testament. This great man was Pope St. Pius X.

In Pascendi, Pius X’s great encyclical on the Modernists, he rebuked those who would advocate a false humility and false poverty in the Church. His prophetic words seem even more relevant today:

Their general direction for the Church is as follows: that the ecclesiastical authority, since its end is entirely spiritual, should strip itself of that external pomp which adorns it in the eyes of the public. In this, they forget that while religion is for the soul, it is not exclusively for the soul, and that the honor paid to authority is reflected back on Christ who instituted it. 8 v 8 PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS, p. 25.

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 25

On the Question of Evolution…

Playing With Fire

By Peter Wilders Monaco

Inthe eyes of the world the Catholic religion is no longer a supernatural force to be reckoned with. The reason is not hard to find. In the past it spoke for God in the affairs of man. Now, He has been replaced as the great architect of creation by a blind force named by Charles Darwin as "natural selection".

Primarily because of its history and the number of people it claims to represent—the majority of whom no longer practice the faith—the Catholic Church is accorded respect by heads of state in its public functions, but not as a prophet.

Evolution theory replaces the concept of "ex nihilo" Creation. Put another way Creation is producing something from nothing: evolution is changing a preexisting thing into a different thing. In the latter case there is always something to start with: in the case of Creation nothing pre-exists. The two are poles apart.

The Profession of Faith by Catholics (the credo ) is an affirmation of belief that God created heaven and earth from nothing. Belief in evolution theory is a denial of such an affirmation.

Throughout the Catholic world the credo is recited at Sunday Mass. According to statistics, however, the vast majority of Catholics believe in some form of Darwinism, i.e. macroevolution.

How can this blatant contradiction be explained, and, even if it can, is it important?

The answer to the first part of the question should really come from a business psychologist. It concerns packaging a product to attract a buyer.

Here the product is evolution theory and the buyer the public. Whatever their IQ, people are impressed by professionalism. Darwinism is espoused by royalty, Nobel laureates, university professors, leaders in the great professions, the entire media; no representative of the public is exempt. It is taught from the womb to the tomb.

Better to be accused of self-contradiction than to be an opponent of evolution: the reigning paradigm of science.

As to whether the subject is one for which it is worth stepping out of line is a question answered by the quantity and quality of its supporters. When to all appearances the whole Curia appears to see no objection one is reassured, especially by the leading theologians who seem quite able to reconcile Darwinism with the Church’s teaching. The situation is not dissimilar to the Galileo affair. The principal difference is that at the time of Galileo more was known within the Church about cosmology and its biblical connotations than is known about creation today. The former was taught openly. For several generations creation has been a taboo subject. As a result it is not discussed and reliable information is not circulating within Catholic academia.

Nonetheless two distinct camps concerned with evolution exist in the world. On the one hand there is the scientific community claiming evolution to be an established scientific fact, on the other are the predominantly Protestant fundamentalist creationists. Because of their respective preconceptions, both sides are closed to objective truth: evolutionists, because they exclude ex nihilo Creation as an acceptable explanation of origins, and Creationists because they prefer hypothesizing from biblical premises rather than established scientific phenomena. For instance the latter will seek an explanation for a geological formation from the assumption that the rocks resulted from the Genesis Flood. The bottom line of all this is that the two sides are vehemently opposed and scientific truth is the victim. The second part of the question concerned the importance of the subject.

It is clear from the exchanges in this and other traditional Catholic journals that things have gone badly wrong both in the Church and in the world. Is this pure pessimism, or is there truth in it? Could the remark in Hamlet that something is rotten in the state of Denmark be equally applied to the Vatican state today? From the known facts and statistics of the diminished state of the Catholic religion, the answer is a resounding "yes". The thousands flocking to the Vatican square give the impression that all is well. If questioned, however, how many would pass the litmus test of catholicity? How many for instance consider Darwin and Teilhard de Chardin enemies of the Church? Put another way, can they reconcile themselves with human history existing prior to Adam and the big bang? If, as the majority of Catholics, they can, they have, albeit unintentionally, positioned themselves with one foot squarely outside the Church. But what about the others? The clergy who run with the hare of creation and hunt with the hounds of evolution. They proclaim Genesis Creation from the pulpit and allow Darwinism to be taught by their catechists. The word "hypocrite" used by Christ against the Pharisees describes them perfectly.

For a Catholic, the unassailable truth is that the world and the prototypes of all living things in it were created ex nihilo by God alone unaided by secondary causes. Catholics believed this without doubting because it was an article of faith revealed by God and inscribed in the Church’s magisterial teaching. It was traditional teaching even before being promulgated dogmatically by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

There is, therefore, no excuse other than to plead invincible ignorance: a plea difficult to sustain with modern communication technology. Theistic and atheistic believers in evolution face just as formidable a refutation of their evolutionary beliefs. This is because evolution theory is based upon the assumption that rocks and the fossils in them are very old. Now experimental research confirmed by field observation has shown that sedimentary layers of rock formed rapidly: they did not take millions of years to form www.

sedimentology.fr . Thus, twenty-first century natural science, whilst being kept very much a State secret, has destroyed the very foundations of the evolutionary paradigm!

It should now be apparent that Darwinism was a Trojan horse. Once inside the walls of Rome, its cancerspreading troops caused untold havoc.

It was an insidious process. At first Darwin’s theory was strenuously resisted. Pope Leo XIII was an opponent as were the Jesuits of the day. Little by little, as the attractions of evolutionary thinking took hold, the materialist tendency of academia strengthened.

Already to many intellectuals science was leading the way, dazzling the world with technological marvels, like radios and airplanes. These technological achievements seemed to give natural scientists an aura of infallibility to answer questions beyond the proper limits of the natural sciences—such as questions concerning origins. The fact that the answers were hypothetical could be overlooked provided they were "scientific" in nature. Science had become the opium of the people. The ever present anti-clerical materialism of the philosophical elite had been kept at bay by papal loyalty to the Magisterium over the centuries prior to Darwinism.

Even the first Vatican council in 1869/70 stood firm on the question of evolution theory by maintaining the Lateran IV definition of Creation. The natural selection mechanism proposed by Darwin, however, seemed to justify transforming a philosophical hypothesis into a fully-fledged scientific theory almost overnight. It was exactly what the atheists had been looking for ever since the so-called scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries.

From then on, it was just a question of undoing the work that missionaries had been doing since the Apostles were given their divine mandate to go forth and teach. The painstaking work of nearly 20 centuries has been deconstructed in just 5% of that time. If this is thought to be an exaggeration, look at the data.

Darwinism says helium gas evolved into man over billions of years whereas the Church (Lateran IV) dogmatically propounds that the prototype of all things including man was created in an instant from nothing pre-existing ( ex nihilo). One does not have to make fruitless attempts to explain how these conflicting positions can be reconciled with each other. As the ex nihilo one is magisterial teaching, Catholics have no choice. Yet, unbelievably, most of them have rejected the Church’s teaching for an unproven evolutionary h th i I d d t f th b hypothesis. Indeed, most of the members of the Curia have opted for evolution. In the light of Lateran IV’s unambiguous declaration of the Catholic doctrine, it will be worth examining how faith in the traditional doctrine was chipped away.

To start with there was Pope Pius IX:

Let him be anathema ... Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine.

As orthodox as the pope’s words are, the fact remains that evolution was known to be opposed to revealed doctrine. Was it the "spirit of freedom" that allowed this truth not to be mentioned?

Then Pius’ successor, Leo XIII, in 1893 wrote in Providentissimus Deus :

Let them [scholars] loyally hold that God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures - and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures. If, then, "apparent contradiction" be met with, every effort should be made to remove it.

Once again the words are beyond criticism, if the evolutionary movement active in Catholic academic circles is overlooked: as for instance the Jerusalem Biblical School already promoting Darwinism. This school in the 1890’s under Fr. Lagrange was using geology to show the "contradiction" between the Genesis Creation account and Darwin’s theory based on long ages. The problem is that if the contradiction is only apparent it is presumably not really contradictory. In his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Leo XIII allowed the caveat "not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires".

Evolutionists propose geology to justify the contradiction. Once the literal sense of Genesis is removed, the interpretation of Genesis of the Church Fathers, upon which the Lateran IV definition of Creation was based, must have been wrong. Yes, of course the modernist argument is used that the Fathers were ignorant about 21st century

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Humani Generis

science. However, it only highlights one of the many attempts made over the last century not to face the facts.

According to the Magisterium, the creation of the prototypes of all things was out of nothing; but evolution is always out of some pre-existing thing.

Could there possibly be a more glaring contradiction? It is a clear case of the human "authority" of the scientific community overriding the Church’s infallible teaching authority. St. Pius X was hardly an advocate of evolution theory. As the following words show, however, he was aware that traditional Creation theology and metaphysics, the Church’s principal defense against evolutionary errors, were being abandoned:

With regard to secular studies, let it suffice to recall here what our predecessor [Leo XIII] has admirably said: "Apply yourselves energetically to the study of natural sciences… If you carefully search for the cause of those errors

you will find that it lies in the fact that in these days when the natural sciences absorb so much study, the more severe and lofty studies [i.e., theology and related disciplines

have been proportionately neglected--some of them have almost passed into oblivion. [Encyclical "On the Doctrine of the Modernists"]

It is difficult to determine when the dethroning of these "lofty studies" deplored by St. Pius X began, but the process has continued and worsened.

Cardinal Ratzinger told the presidents of the doctrinal commissions in 1989 that traditional creation theology and metaphysics had already disappeared from the theological manuals. How far must one go back to find priests equipped with adequate arms to combat evolution, the deadliest enemy known to the faith? Instead of protection, recent generations of Catholic scholars and seminarians have been given the intellectual tools to adapt themselves and Christ’s teaching to it. The drift from orthodoxy to heterodoxy was relatively slow. The popes mentioned above recognized the opposition of Church teaching to Darwinism, but they seemed unwilling to discuss it. There were also forces abroad, as witnessed by the suppression of traditional creation theology, which insured that several generations of seminarians and university students were denied access to it. The first time the subject of evolution was openly confronted in a magisterial document was in Pius XII’s encyclical

in 1950. He stated that the encyclical concerned errors of thought that "threaten to undermine Catholic doctrine." He wrote:

Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution

(5)

These words regarding the nature of evolutionary speculation are, of course, enough to ban it from being taught in Catholic institutions. By using the word "some", however, Pius XII gives the impression that only a minority are concerned – whereas at the time it had already become the majority position. The reality is that he describes the paradigm to which the scientific community as a whole subscribed.

Anyone teaching otherwise does so without authority from the scholastic establishment. Microbes to man evolution may not be explicitly identified as "monistic and pantheistic," but, upon analysis, it will be found to be exactly that. If there is any doubt on this score, examine any natural science text book by a mainstream publisher and it will be found to teach that all living things have evolved through natural processes over aeons of time. Fifty years after Humani generis, all caution on the subject of evolution was abandoned. Pope John Paul II expressed himself clearly with his now famous declaration:

Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical [ Humani Generis ], new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. [...] It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory. And if, at first sight, there are apparent contradictions, in what direction do we look for their solution? We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth (cf. Leo XIII, encyclical Providentissimus Deus ).

Although the statement is not magisterial and therefore not binding upon the faithful, it strongly reflects the thinking of Church leaders. It shows an opening to evolution—a willingness to argue in favor of the evolutionary hypothesis.

It also demonstrates the influence of scientific speculation upon revelation.

Although over history there are examples of ecclesiastics, even Popes, who contradicted prior Magisterial teaching, it has never been on such a virtually Church-wide scale as today.

Even during the Arian heresy there was still a significant number remaining loyal to the Magisterium. This would hardly seem to be the case since Darwin. However, it must be pointed out that Pius XII did forbid the faithful to embrace an opinion

…that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.

He continued:

…it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin. [Humani Generis 37]

Such a

caveat

effectively bans evolution from being taught to Catholics because it is,

inter alia

, contingent upon mankind ( homosapiens sapiens ) originating in different geological zones from different parents. This reservation indicates, however, the Holy Father’s unwillingness to be more specific.

Although he raises the fundamental objection from revelation of humanity originating from one single man Adam, the encyclical remains silent regarding the metaphysical aspect of ex nihilo creation, i.e. the infallible teaching which precludes Adam having evolutionary ancestors whether man or beast. Such magisterial teaching, if explicitly reaffirmed, would have damned evolution from the outset.

Today, State intervention legislating against the Church’s moral teaching on marriage, abortion and euthanasia is an inevitable consequence of the latter’s apparent tolerance of the error of evolution. Once Church leaders had capitulated on Christ’s foundational teaching on the origin of mankind and the world, the secular authorities had no supernatural obstacle to overcome in imposing its laws in other social matters. The proof is painfully obvious. All entries to the eternal city are blocked by decadence of one form or another.

Whichever way one turns there is error.

The fountain of Grace to overcome our temporal problems is on hold until such time as God’s shepherds restore traditional norms. It is a reciprocal matter. To get the grace needed to turn the tables man has to show he loves God. He does this by keeping Christ’s commandments enshrined in the Magisterium. Our Lord says:

John14:23 If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

The bottom line is that by abandoning Christ's teaching on Creation as defined by the Magisterium—as well as the traditional theology and metaphysics needed to defend and explain it— Church leaders have unwittingly aligned themselves with the society in which they live. The latter is broadly materialistic in philosophy—and thereby removed from God's grace. v

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C O A R M

Revolution Revealed

The Triumph of Modernism and the End of the Traditional Catholic Church

By Peter Crenshaw

Cardinal

Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga is a very important man in today’s Catholic Church. In addition to being the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, he is the pope’s principal advisor and the chair of a group of eight advising cardinals established by Pope Francis to revise the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia. He also serves as the president of Caritas Internationalis, is a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education, and was considered a serious contender for the papacy during the last conclave.

What he says matters.

In late October, Cardinal Maradiaga gave two keynote addresses in the United States, purportedly to set the agenda for the carrying out of Francis’ plan for the Church. The theme of the talks was, "The importance of the New Evangelization." The first address was given at the University of Dallas’ Ministry Conference, while the second was given at the closing assembly of Miami’s year-long Archdiocesan Synod. The basic text of both addresses was recently published online.

1

In the past, the "conservative" Catholic media has been quick to dismiss the traditionalist critique of post-Vatican II statements coming from the hierarchy.

Since the problematic elements in these statements were often subtle or ambiguous (much like the Conciliar texts themselves) Neo-Catholic commentators would simply apply their own "conservative" interpretation, declare the statements perfectly orthodox, and then move on. They also dismissed the historical evidence of the takeover of the Second Vatican Council by revolutionary progressives as the stuff of conspiracy theory. They confidently assured the faithful that the plan of Vatican II was no revolution, but in complete conformity with the Church of the past.

Reigning in the Revolution

Now, with the recent unprecedented words of the pope’s top advisor spoken for the entire world to hear, all previous Neo-Catholic assurances to the faithful have been shattered. Previously, the extremes of the revolution had been

1 http://www.miamiarch.org/ip.asp?op=Article_13102810144642

held in check and tempered, at least officially, by Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. These men were all Council Fathers who shared many of the general ideals of the more radical periti such as Kung, Rahner, Congar, and Schillebeeckx. However, in contrast to these open radicals, the popes understood that any lasting change to the Church must take place gradually and must attempt to be connected and reconcilable with the Church’s previous teaching. Thus, these popes made exhaustive pains to try to find seeds of the revolutionary ideas of the Council (religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality) in past Magisterial texts, the obscure writings of Early Church Fathers, and appeals to the "development of doctrine." These were all "hermeneutic of continuity" popes.

They were men who had experienced the pre-Vatican II Church. Though they wished to reform it, they also wished to keep the essence of what it was.

Thus, over the past 50 years we have witnessed a sort of confusing doublespeak emanating from the Vatican, which at times authoritatively repeats traditional Catholic doctrine, and at other times proposes and enthusiastically supports novelties which undermine that doctrine. If anything, the past 50 years have been a frustrating and futile effort to reconcile the irreconcilable, resulting in a mass confusion and falling away of the faithful.

A Son of the Council

Now, it seems we have entered a new era. With the election of Pope Francis, we have the first pope since the Council who was not a Council Father. More than this, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was only twenty-five years old when the Council opened in 1962 and was not ordained a priest until December 13, 1969. Thus the Novus Ordo Missae, which had entered into force just two weeks earlier on November 30, 1969, is the only Mass Pope Francis has known as a priest. Also, unlike recent popes, Pope Francis’ life is not so much a bridge between the past Church and the present Church. Where previous popes had been ordained in the Old Rite and formed in Tradition, Pope Francis was ordained and has existed as a priest only in the post-Conciliar era. Thus we have the first pope who is not a father of the Council, but is rather a son of the Council.

Whereas his predecessors took great pains to try to reconcile their actions with the pre-Conciliar Church they had known, Pope Francis’ starting point is not the pre-Conciliar Church but the Church of the Council. Thus, Francis does not seem to have the same pressing need to justify current novel acts by relating them to a past Church he never knew as a priest and that a growing number of faithful have never experienced. The Church Fr. Bergoglio came into as a priest in 1969 was a Church of change, of innovation, of "the people". For him, religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality were not novel teachings, but teachings of the Church; the Mass of Paul VI was not the "new" Mass, but the Mass. Let no one doubt that we are moving into an era where memories of the Pre-Vatican II Church will remain only as ghosts in pictures, movies, and stories. Soon, everyone who has a memory of such a time will have passed from this world.

Our next pope may very well have no memories of this period at all.

The era in which Pope Francis lived out his priesthood, and a growing majority of Catholics have lived their lives is one where only the Conciliar Church has existed. In this era, acceptable belief and practice for Catholics has been much more defined by what the authority is willing to allow rather than what has always been done. This is the first effective step of the revolution.

For once Church doctrine and practice is tied only to the will of authority, all that is left is to get that authority to change it. We see this attitude from many on the left who perceive women’s ordination and approval of homosexual relations as completely achievable goals as long as they can elect a pope who would approve of such things. For now, the authority has been unwilling to compromise on such things, but will this be the case in the future? As the idea that tradition is changeable (and should be changed) grows in the Church, will there be a future pope who attempts to follow this legal positivism to its logical conclusion? Will the remaining threads tying the current Church with its past remain, or will they attempt to be explained away as "reformable" teachings? Only time will tell.

For now, however, it is enough to look at the words of the pope’s principal advisor. The ideas of the revolution could not, up till now, be spoken of openly by Vatican officials. Any talk of a break between the pre- and post-Conciliar Church was frowned upon by authorities as continuity was seen as the key to acceptance and credibility of the reforms. Now, with Cardinal Maradiaga’s speeches come a watershed moment and turning point in the Church. Ideas explicitly condemned by the Church have now been, not only publicly spoken by the pope’s top Cardinal, but applauded by millions of Catholics. The Neo-Catholics, previously used to hearing such radical ideas only from dissenting priests and perhaps a few wayward bishops over the years, have met the Cardinal’s shocking pronouncements with a profound and confused silence. Sadly, they can hardly do otherwise, as to do so would be to contradict the public statements of the pope’s own advisor about the implementation of Francis' pontificate; statements they cannot dismiss as easily as the personal ramblings of a dissident priest.

"The Church is Rising?"

Cardinal Maradiaga introduced his remarks by referring to Vatican II as both, "an event of grace and a paradigmatic reference." The paradigm he sees in the Council is a frightening one, which will be discussed in a moment. The Cardinal then immediately launched into a defense of the fruits of the Council. As no good fruits of Vatican II are readily evident, it seems

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the Vatican must, from time to time, point out to the faithful where such good fruits are to be found. This is redolent of the tailors pointing out to the Emperor how nice his "clothes" are.

According to the Cardinal, the post-Conciliar Church is "rising." Knowing that the Church in the West is not rising and the Church in Europe is on life-support, the Cardinal predictably describes the places where the Church is purportedly thriving. Of course, these are all places of which most Catholics in the United States have little intimate knowledge. In addition, hard statistics to back up these claims never seem to come. Nevertheless, even if we assume that there is some sort of measurable growth in these places, it is never explained in what way "the Council," brought this growth about. Especially since in the very places Vatican II was implemented most vigorously, the United States and Europe, the Church has been dying ever since.

The Cardinal then moved on to mention a "hostile culture" in Europe, "fed by secularism and laicism." Seeing as how the Cardinal goes on to later praise secularism and laicism in the Church, it becomes hard to see how he can criticize it in Europe as a destructive force to the culture. Do forces which destroy secular culture somehow work towards the opposite goal in the Church? As for the United States, the Cardinal informs us that:

...the Gospel of Christ is…alive and effective. George Weigel assures us in The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church (Basic Books, 2000) that, 200,000 people embraced the Catholic faith in the United States in Easter of 2002, a number that for us is cheerful, and optimistic, and "a vital sign."

Even though Weigel is considered by many Neo-Catholics to be a prophet, how he can assure us in a book published in 2000 that 200,000 people would embrace the Faith in 2002 is not clear. To be fair, I searched in the post-2002 versions of Weigel’s book to find any sort of reference to 200,000 people in any context and could not do so. Nevertheless, even if we assume that the number of those entering the Church in the US in 2002 was higher than usual, what we are not told is how many people exited the Church in the same year and, more importantly, what church these people believed they were entering. For if they believed they were entering the church the Cardinal is about to describe, it is not a Catholic Church any Traditionalist, or even conservative Catholic, would recognize.

"…An End to the Hostilities Between the Church and Modernism"

At this point, Cardinal Maradiaga proceeds to drop a bombshell on the Catholic world that the Neo-Catholic press has virtually ignored:

The Second Vatican Council was the main event in the Church in the 20th Century. In principle, it meant an end to the hostilities between the Church and modernism, which was condemned in the First Vatican Council. On the contrary: neither the world is the realm of evil and sin –these are conclusions clearly achieved in Vatican II—nor is the Church the sole refuge of good and virtue. Modernism was, most of the time, a reaction against injustices and abuses that disparaged the dignity and the rights of the person. The Vatican II Council officially acknowledged that things had changed, and captured the need for such a change in its Documents…

This overt justification of what Pope Saint Pius X condemned as the "synthesis of all heresies" by the premiere Cardinal advisor to the successor of Peter in front of the entire world stands as a watershed moment in the history of the Church. Although previous progressive cardinals and prelates have made statements based on Modernist principles, or have preached Modernism using veiled and ambiguous terms, never before have any of them been so brazen as to state that Vatican II ended the Church’s condemnation of Modernism. That day has now arrived.

That the premiere Cardinal in the Church has absolutely no reservation in stating such a thing on two different occasions in laying out Francis’ plans for the Church in the United States should indeed be chilling to every Catholic. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning. After attempting to preemptively disarm all opposition by dismissing in one paragraph all previous condemnations of the Modernist heresy by the Church, the Cardinal then went on to lay out the principles of the revolution in the Church for the world to see. Take note that this is the very revolution we were warned about for years by such figures as Michael Davies and Archbishop Lefebvre, the very revolution documented in historical accounts of the Council and proclaimed by the revolutionaries themselves, and the very revolution we were assured did not exist.

"The People of God"

The Baltimore Catechism defines the Church as, "the congregation of all those who profess the faith of Christ, partake of the same Sacraments, and are governed by their lawful pastors under one visible head." In contrast, the Cardinal lays out as his first principle that which is the Conciliar redefinition of the Church as "the people of God." All that is needed to cut through the tomes of liberal verbiage used to explain this phrase is to replace the word "of" with the word "are." What is really being said by the revolution is that "The people are God." The Cardinal drives this home by continually demeaning the hierarchy of the Church and raising up the laity as the true authority. For instance, the Cardinal explains that,

The People of God" is, for the Council, the all-encompassing reality of the Church that goes back to the basic and the common stuff of our ecclesial condition; namely, our condition as believers. And that is a condition shared by us all. The hierarchy has no purpose in itself and for itself, but only in reference and subordination to the community. The function of the hierarchy is redefined in reference to Jesus as Suffering Servant, not as "Pantocrator" (lord and emperor of this world); only from the perspective of someone crucified by the powers of this world it is possible to found, and to explain, the authority of the Church. The hierarchy is a ministry (diakonia = service) that requires lowering ourselves to the condition of servants. To take that place (the place of weakness and poverty) is her own, her very own responsibility.

If we find partial truths in the Cardinal's statement, we should not be surprised.

Modernism is itself a mixture of truth and error. This is precisely what makes it so dangerous. While it is true that the Church hierarchy "serves" the laity, this has always been understood in the sense of faithfully passing down the Deposit of Faith and providing the laity with the sacraments and spiritual formation; in other words, providing them what is necessary to save their souls. As Our Lord said, "I did not come to be served, but to serve." However, is this the manner in which Cardinal Maradiaga is speaking? Or instead, is he trying to level the playing field of power and authority between the hierarchy and the laity? The answer becomes clearer as the Cardinal reveals his thoughts on the priesthood. However, before moving to that topic, we would do well to remember the words of Pope St.

Pius X in Pascendi as he described the Modernist’s vision of authority in the Church:

They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized. 2

"This Change in the Concept of Priesthood is a Fundamental One…"

The Cardinal then goes on to reveal a "change in the concept of the priesthood" which is a remarkable claim since we have been told time and time again since the Council that the concept of the priesthood has not "really" changed at all. The Cardinal states:

Within the people, there is not a dual classification of Christians –laity and clergy, essentially different. The Church as a "society of unequals" disappears: "There is, therefore, in Christ and in the Church no inequality" (LG 12 32).

No ministry can be placed above this dignity common to all. Neither the clergy are "the men of God," nor are the laity "the men of the world." That is a false dichotomy.

To speak correctly, we should not speak of clergy and laity, but instead of community and ministry. All the baptized are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood (LG 10).

Therefore, not only we clergymen are "priests," but also, side by side with the ordained ministry, there

2 Pius X, PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS, p. 38.

is the common priesthood of the faithful. This change in the concept of priesthood is a fundamental one: "In Christ the priesthood is changed" (Hebrews 7: 12). Indeed, the first trait of the priesthood of Jesus is that "he had to be made like his brothers in every respect.

Yet is this true? Are the laity and the clergy not essentially different? Is not the soul of the priest stamped with an indelible sacramental mark at ordination that makes him essentially different from a layman? Is the previous view of the Cardinal in keeping with Tradition?

Consider the words of Archbishop Lefebvre:

A confusion has been made with regard to the relation of the priesthood of the faithful and that of priests.

Now as the cardinals said who were appointed to make their observations on the infamous Dutch catechism, "the greatness of the ministerial priesthood (that of priests) in its participation in the priesthood of Christ, differs from the common priesthood of the faithful in a manner that is not only of degree but also of essence." To maintain the contrary, on this point alone, is to align oneself with Protestantism.

The unchanging doctrine of the Church is that the priest is invested with a sacred and indelible character.

"Tu es sacerdos in aeternum."

Whatever he may do, before the angels, before God, in all eternity, he will remain a priest. Even if he throws away his cassock, wears a red pullover or any other color or commits the most awful crimes, it will not alter things. The Sacrament of Holy Orders has made a change in his nature. 3

Also consider the words of the Roman Catechism:

…the faithful should be shown how great is the dignity and excellence of this Sacrament considered in its highest degree, the priesthood.

Bishops and priests being, as they are, God’s interpreters and ambassadors, empowered in His name to teach mankind the divine law and the rules of conduct, and holding, as they do, His place on earth, it is evident that no nobler function than theirs can be imagined. Justly, therefore, are they called not only Angels, but even gods, because of the fact that they exercise in our midst the power and prerogatives of the immortal God.

In all ages, priests have been held in the highest honour; yet the priests of the New Testament far exceed all others. For the power of consecrating and offering the body and blood of our Lord and of forgiving sins, which has been conferred on them, not only has nothing equal or like to it on earth, but even surpasses human reason and understanding. 4 3 http://www.sspxasia.com/Documents/Archbishop-Lefebvre/ OpenLetterToConfusedCatholics/Chapter-7.htm 4http://www.cin.org/users/james/ebooks/master/trent/tsacr-o.htm

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Catholic Apologetics...

Is the Old Covenant Still Valid?

By Robert J. Siscoe

REMNANT COLUMNIST, TEXAS

Since

the close of Vatican II, and especially during the papacy of John Paul II, the doctrines of the Faith have been undermined by a repeated pattern. It would begin, for example, with a statement from John Paul II that was either overtly heterodox, or at least appeared so when taken at face value. In response, Traditional Catholics would rise up in defense of the Faith by condemning the misleading statement and citing the pertinent magisterial documents in defense of the Church’s teaching. This would be followed by a reaction from the usual suspects, who would criticize the Traditional Catholics and defend the person of the Pope by claiming that his words were being misinterpreted. They would then proceed to explain what the Pope "really meant", even though the Pope himself would never offer a clarification for his misleading statement, nor give reason to believe that his words were being misunderstood. His defenders would usually come up with a creative interpretation to explain away the obvious meaning of his words, and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Then the issue would die down, or be eclipsed by another scandal. The next step in the process is that the obvious meaning of the seemingly heretical statement would be taught by other members of the hierarchy, who would use the Pope’s words as the authority for their erroneous teaching.

The false teaching would then filter down and eventually be accepted by the average Catholic in the pew, who would also use the Pope’s words to defend the error they had embraced. The end result is that a majority of Catholics in the pew would reject a perennial teaching of the Church and fall into error, with the early defenders of the misleading statement playing a key role. Once this process was complete and the damage done, those who continued to adhere to the traditional teaching of the Church were labeled "dissenters" and accused of being "more Catholic than the Pope".

This process repeated itself over and over again during the papacy of John Paul II.

As an aside, it is interesting to see that what occurred with doctrine, during the reign of John Paul II, is now happening to morality under Pope Francis. John Paul "the Great" undermined the Faith he was duty-bound to protect by his repeated misleading statements regarding Church doctrine, and now Pope Francis "the Awesome" is doing the same with his misleading statements on moral issues. If this pattern continues, within a decade, we will likely see abortion, "gay marriage", and divorced and remarried Catholics being permitted to receive communion, accepted by mainstream Catholics (both priests and laity), while those who uphold traditional morality will be labeled as extreme "radical Traditionalist", or "haters", whose defense of traditional morality will itself be considered "immoral".

One of the many doctrines undermined during the reign of John Paul II, was the teaching that the Old Covenant has been superseded by the New, and is now null and void. Speaking to a group of Jews in Mainz, Germany, on November 17, 1980, the Pope said:

The first dimension of this dialogue, that is the meeting between the people of God of the Old Covenant, never revoked by God and that of the New Covenant is at the same time a dialogue within our Church, that is to say, between the first and the second part of her Bible.

Due to this apparently heterodox statement, the consistent teaching of the Church, clearly understood and taught by the Magisterium since the time of the apostles – namely, that the Old Covenant has been revoked by God – is now rejected by most Catholics.

In this article, we will attempt to clear up the confusion spawned by John Paul II’s misleading statement, as well as later misleading statements from other members of the hierarchy on the same point, by distinguishing between two different Old Covenants: one that God made with Abraham (the Promise), and another that God made with Moses (the Law). We will also distinguish between "Israel according to the flesh" (1 Cor.

10:18), and what St. Paul calls "the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). We will conclude by considering what can only be explained as a diabolical form of anti-Semitism being promoted to this day by high ranking prelates in Rome.

We will begin by distinguishing between two Old Covenants (or "Testaments"): an immutable Covenant that was fulfilled, and never revoked; and a temporary Covenant that was fulfilled and then rendered null.

The Covenant with Abraham

The first Covenant we will discuss is that which God made with Abraham. This Covenant contained a temporal promise and a spiritual promise.

Temporal Promise

The temporal promise was that God would give to the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan (Genesis 15:18). The Old Testament records this promise descending from Abraham to his son Isaac (Gen 17:21), and then from Isaac to his son Jacob, and finally through Jacob to all of his posterity (Gen. 28:3-4). Later in the book of Genesis, we see that Jacob’s name is changed to Israel (Gen. 35:10). This is why the Jews, who are the descendants of Jacob/Israel, are referred to as "the children of Israel", or simply as "Israel", or as St. Paul calls them, "Israel according to the flesh" (1 Cor. 10:18).

This temporal promise of the land of Canaan was fulfilled: "And the Lord God gave to Israel all the land that he had sworn to give to their fathers: and they possessed it and dwelt in it" (Josue 21:41).

Spiritual Promise

Unlike the temporal promise, which was given to Abraham’s natural descendants alone during the time of the Old Testament, the spiritual promise would apply to all the nations of the earth. When Abraham showed his willingness to sacrifice his own son in obedience to God (prefiguring the sacrifice of God's own Son on the cross), God said to him: "By my own self I have sworn, saith the Lord: because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake: I will bless thee… And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed , because thou hast obeyed my voice" (Genesis 22:16-18). In this passage we see that, according to this spiritual promise, "all the nations of the earth" would be blessed by Abraham’s seed. But what is this seed God is referring to? Is it a reference to all of the natural descendants of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob? In other words, is this seed that will bless the earth the children of Israel collectively?

If so, why did he say "seed" (singular) and not "seeds" (plural)? Or was God referring to a particular seed that would be born from the children of Israel? We find the answer to this question in the divinely inspired words of St. Paul to the Galatians, in which the Apostle explains that the seed God was referring to was Christ: "To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He saith not, ‘and to his seeds’, as of many: but as of one, ‘and to thy seed’, which is Christ" (Gal.

3:16).

Jesus is not only the natural seed of Abraham, as are all the other children of Israel; He is also the seed of God – God Incarnate – who would save His people from their sins. Jesus, the King and Savior of mankind, is the literal fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham. St. Paul explains that those who are baptized in Christ become one with Christ, and heirs according to the Promise. He wrote:

For you are all children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then you are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the Promise (Galatians 3:26-29).

Jesus was the fulfillment of the Promise God made to Abraham, and all who are members of His Mystical Body are heirs according to that Promise. Therefore, the Covenant God made with Abraham was never revoked, but rather fulfilled in Christ.

The Mosaic Covenant

Between the time God made the Covenant Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ almost two thousand years later, God established a separate temporary Covenant with the children of Israel.

This is the Covenant God established with Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 1924) four hundred and thirty years after the Covenant with Abraham (Galatians 3:17). The Mosaic Covenant, which is often referred to simply as the Law, is what the term "Old Covenant" traditionally refers to. The purpose of this Covenant was to signify and prefigure Christ, the Promised One, and the New Testament He would establish. It also served as a temporary "schoolmaster" (Galatians 3:23-25) until God's Promise to Abraham was fulfilled. St. Paul explains:

To Abraham were the promises made… Now this I say, that the testament which was confirmed by God, the [Mosaic] law which was made after four hundred and thirty years, doth not disannul, to make the Promise of no effect. For if the

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inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. Why then was the law? It was set because of transgressions, until the seed should come, to whom He made the Promise… (Galatians 3:16-19).

Our Lord lived under the old Law, obeyed its precepts and fulfilled its types, and rendered it null by his death, "fastening it to the cross" (Col. 2:14).

He then established the New Testament in His Blood, for the remission of sin (Mt. 26:28), replacing the Mosaic Law with "the Law of Christ" (1 Cor. 9:21).

(1) St. Paul wrote: "And therefore is He [Christ] the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of His death… they that are called may receive the Promise of eternal inheritance" (Hebrews 9:15).

In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma , we read: "On the Cross, Christ consummated the building of the Church. The Old Covenant ceased and the New Covenant sealed with the blood of Christ began". (Pg 292) The establishment of the New Covenant was predicted by Jeremiah, who said: "Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… not according to the covenant I made with their fathers" (Jeremiah 31:31). Commenting on this prophecy, St. Paul explains: "now in saying a new [Covenant], he hath made the former old" (Hebrews 8:13).

In Mystici Corporis Christi, Pope Pius XII confirms that by the death of Christ the Old Law was rendered null:

And first of all, by the death of our Redeemer, the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished ; then the Law of Christ together with its mysteries, enactments, institutions, and sacred rites was ratified for the whole world in the blood of Jesus Christ. For, while our Divine Savior was preaching in a restricted area - He was not sent but to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel (Mt. 15:24) - the Law and the Gospel were together in force; but on the gibbet of his death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees (Eph. 2:15), fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross (Col: 2:14), establishing the New Testament in His blood shed for the whole human race (Mt 26:28). ‘To such an extent, then,’ says St. Leo the Great, speaking of the Cross of our Lord, ‘was there effected a transfer from the Law to the Gospel, from the Synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to one Victim, that, as our Lord expired, that mystical veil which shut off the innermost part of the temple and its sacred secret was rent violently from top to bottom’.

(Mystici Corporis Christi, #29)

There is a fascinating fact recorded in the Jewish Talmud, of all places, which confirms that the old Law was rendered null with the death of Christ on the Cross. I will quote the Jewish convert, Roy Schoeman, who explained it in an interview he gave in December of 2003.

Most Christians are aware of the many ways in which the Old Testament supports Christianity’s claims that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but few are familiar with the passages in the Talmud — a strictly Jewish "scripture" based on oral tradition and written down several centuries after the death of Jesus — which do the same thing. I discuss about a half dozen of these passages in my book.

Probably my favorite is the "Miracle of the Scarlet Thread". Shortly put, the Talmud recounts that when the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the sins of the Jewish people were taken away each year on one day, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies with a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people for the preceding year. Each year, a scarlet thread was affixed to the entry to the Holy of Holies, and miraculously, when the sacrifice within was accepted, the thread would turn white as a sign that the sins had been forgiven. Well, the Talmud recounts that, for no clearly identifiable reason, the miracle ceased to take place about 40 years before the destruction of the Temple. In other words, after about 30 A.D. the thread never again was turned white!

We know, as Christians, that that was precisely when the Temple sacrifices lost their efficacy - at the moment of the Crucifixion, about 30 A.D., when, as a sign of the fact, the curtain in the Temple was rent in two (Matthew 27:51).

It is interesting to see that even the Jewish Talmud confirms that the old Law is null and void, and therefore no longer efficacious.

The Council of Florence infallibly teaches that not only is the Old Law null and void, but those who seek to be justified by it sin mortally:

[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and teaches that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament or the Mosaic law, which are divided into ceremonies, holy sacrifices and sacraments, because they were instituted to signify something in the future, although they were adequate for the divine cult of that age, once our Lord Jesus Christ who was signified by them had come, came to an end and the sacraments of the new Testament had their beginning. Whoever, after the Passion, places his hope in the legal prescriptions and submits himself to them as necessary for salvation and as if faith in Christ without them could not save, sins mortally . It does not deny that from Christ’s passion until the promulgation of the Gospel they could have been retained, provided they were in no way believed to be necessary for salvation. But it asserts that after the promulgation of the gospel they cannot be observed without loss of eternal salvation" (Cantate Domino).

Pope Benedict XIV taught the same: "the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law were abrogated by the coming of Christ and… can no longer be observed without sin after the promulgation of the Gospel" (Ex Quo Primum #61). St. Thomas explains why it is a mortal sin to practice the Old Law:

Question : Whether since Christ’s Passion the legal ceremonies can be observed without committing mortal sin?

I answer that, All ceremonies are professions of faith , in which the interior worship of God consists.

Now man can make profession of his inward faith, by deeds as well as by words: and in either profession, if he make a false declaration, he sins mortally. Now, though our faith in Christ is the same as that of the fathers of old; yet, since they came before Christ, whereas we come after Him, the same faith is expressed in different words, by us and by them.

For by them was it said: ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,’ where the verbs are in the future tense: whereas we express the same by means of verbs in the past tense, and say that she ‘conceived and bore.’ In like manner the ceremonies of the Old Law betokened Christ as having yet to be born and to suffer: whereas our sacraments signify Him as already born and having suffered.

Consequently, just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity. (2)

This teaching of St. Thomas explains why Catholics should not take part in a Seder Meal, which constitutes active participation in a false religious ceremony, and is therefore equivalent to a false profession of faith.

Two Covenants prefigured by Isaac and Ismael

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul speaks of an interesting allegory in the pages of the Old Testament, which prefigures the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant in Christ. Before considering what he wrote, let us recall the people from the Old Testament that are used in this allegory.

Before Abraham’s wife Sarah bore his son, Isaac, the Patriarch had another son named Ismael with the slave girl Agar (Gen. 16:15). God promised Abraham that He would give him a son (Genesis 15:4); but due to his old age and the apparent sterility of his wife Sarah, she convinced him to marry the slave girl Agar in the hope that she would bear him a son. After Ismael was born to the slave girl, Sarah conceived Isaac who was the fulfillment of God's promise (Gen. 21:12). After the birth of the promised one, Isaac, Sarah said to Abraham: "cast out this bond woman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac" (Gen. 21:10).

Now, in the letter to the Galatians, God explains, through the pen of St. Paul, that these two children prefigure the two Covenants. In the allegory, Isaac (the child of the promise) prefigures the New Covenant in Christ, which includes those who have been baptized in Christ and are members of his mystical body. Ismael (the child of the slave girl) prefigures the unbelieving Jews "according to the flesh" who reject Christ and instead seek to be justified by the Old Law. St. Paul wrote:

Tell me, you that desire to be under the law, have you not read the law?

For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bond woman [Ismael], and the other by a free woman [Isaac]. But he who was of the bond woman, was born according to the flesh : but he of the free woman, was by promise . Which things are said by an allegory. For these are the two testaments. The one from Mount Sina [the Mosaic Law], engendering unto bondage, which is Agar: … Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he, that was born according to the flesh, persecuted him that was after the spirit, so also it is now. But what saith the Scriptures?

‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman’. So then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free: by the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free (Galatians 4: 21-31).

The unbelieving Jews who cling to the slavery of the Old Law are compared analogously to Ismael, the child of the slave girl; while the faithful Jews (those who accepted Christ), along with the believing Gentiles, are compared to Isaac – the child of the promise.

The Israel of God

Israel, during the time of the Old Testament, prefigured the Catholic Church in the New Testament. The Jewish religion, which was the true religion at the time of Christ, ceased to be the true religion when its hierarchy rejected Christ, as Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton explains:

The rejection of this message constituted an abandonment of the Faith itself. By manifesting this rejection of the Faith, the Jewish religious unit fell from its position as the company of the chosen people.

It was no longer God’s ecclesia [Church], His supernatural kingdom on earth.

The book of Romans teaches that the unbelieving Jews have been cut off from the house of Israel and the believing Gentiles grafted in (11:17-21), so that, as we read in Ephesians, "the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body, and co-partners of His Promise in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 3:6). After the death and resurrection of Christ and the promulgation of the Gospel, true spiritual Israel consists of both Jews and Gentiles who have true Faith in Christ, and are members of His mystical body, as St. Paul teaches:

Know ye therefore, that they who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham? And the scriptures, foreseeing that God justifieth the Gentiles by faith, told unto Abraham before: ‘In thee shall all nations be blessed’. Therefore they that are of faith, shall be blessed with faithful Abraham. … Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law… That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus: that we may receive the Promise of the Spirit by faith… There is neither Jew nor Greek… For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then are you heirs according to the Promise (Galatians 3).

Today, the believing Jews and the believing Gentiles together embody, what St. Paul calls, "the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16).

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Diabolical Disorientation

This brings us to our last point. There is, today, what can only be described as a diabolical form of anti-Semitism being promoted by high ranking prelates in Rome, which is masked under the cloak of opposing anti-Semitism.

Due to John Paul II’s statement that the Old Covenant "was never been revoked by God" (which has since been repeated many other times by Church authorities), and based on a heretical "interpretation" of Vatican II which is at variance with 2000 years of Catholic teaching, many misguided prelates are doing all they can to stifle any missionary efforts to convert our Jewish brethren to Christ, thereby hindering them from becoming heirs according to the Promise, and partakers of eternal life. These same men are going further still by claiming that the Jews can be saved by the Mosaic Covenant, which, as we have seen, is not only null and void, but constitutes a mortal sin when practiced. Not to mention the fact that the sacrificial rites of the Mosaic Law, by which the Jews had their sins forgiven, have not been offered since 70AD when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple.

While we cannot judge the intentions or motives of these churchmen, there is no question that their words and actions toward the Jews constitute,

in their effect

, the worst form of anti-Semitism, since they serve as a positive obstacle to the Jews accepting Christ as the Messiah.

Father Lombardi recently said "Anti-Semitism

in all its forms

is a non-Christian act and the Catholic Church must fight this phenomenon with all her strength". Therefore, let us do our part to oppose these misguided churchmen who claim that the Old Covenant "was never revoked by God", and who do all they can to stifle missionary outreach to the Jews, thereby mercilessly depriving them of life in Christ and access to His life-giving Sacraments.

We can begin now to oppose this form of anti-Semitism by including, as an intention in our daily Rosary, the conversion of our Jewish brothers and sisters throughout the world. May this small act of true charity on our part serve to counter the effects of the diabolical disorientation that has come over these misguided churchmen. We will end with the beautiful prayer of Pope Pius XI for the conversion of the Jews:

Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life. Amen

Footnote: 1. S.T. I-II, Q 106 2. S.T. I-II, Q 103, A 4 3. "[The Most Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics can ever be partakers of eternal life, but that they are to go into the eternal fire 'which was prepared for the devil and his angels,’ (Mt. 25:41) unless before death they are joined with Her" (Council of Florence, Cantate Domini).

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Sat, 30 Nov 2013 | Cover | Page 31

The Last Word…

Bracing for Jane Cardinal Doe

By Father Celatus

Reading

ancient history is not only informative and important so that past mistakes are not unnecessarily repeated, it is also interesting. Take for instance the second century work, De vita Caesarum , commonly known as The Twelve Caesars , written by Gaius Seutoneus Tranquillus. The work was very popular in its time and remains a primary source on Roman history. It reads like an ancient celebrity scandal magazine.

But scandal and intrigue were the substance of the imperial reigns of the Caesars of Rome. There was the Emperor Tiberius who reigned during the time of the Crucifixion of our Lord, who often retreated to his royal residence on the island of Capri, where he pursued a life of utter debauchery.

The Emperor Nero, regarded by many Christians as a candidate for the anti-Christ of the Apocalypse, had a quaint custom of dressing up as a sort of werewolf and attacking innocent citizens of Rome in the darkness of the night.

Somewhere between the reigns of these two perverts was yet another Caesar, equally debauched: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known as Caligula, meaning "Little Boots." His own atrocities are legion but one in particular is of interest here.

Caligula named his horse a senator.

More precisely, he intended to appoint his horse a consul to the senate but was assassinated before he could carry this out.

So what is wrong with naming a horse as a consul? Apparently much because the Roman senate was outraged and the Roman citizens were appalled at such a preposterous proposal. Some things are just so obviously wrong and contrary to good sense that it is a waste of breath and time to debate about them.

The same can be said for the recent preposterous proposal to name a woman as a cardinal of the Church. It does not appear that such a proposal comes directly from the Pope but the idea has been floated out by some highly placed source. Ah well, we are accustomed under this pontificate to expect the unexpected.

As has also been the pattern under this pontificate, responses from various factions are predictable. Radicals are enthusiastic and see this as repudiation of the patriarchal hierarchy. Neo-Catholics scramble to make sense of nonsense, noting that popes can do anything they want and that there is nothing that forbids it. Sure, and Caesar could do anything he wanted and nothing forbade horses as consuls either! As for Catholics who have not lost their minds or their appreciation for tradition, they roll their eyes and continue to question: how much crazier can things get in the Church and in the world before we collapse? Actually, on this nonsensical issue of women cardinals , I have drawn the proverbial line in the sand. If a pope were to ever attempt to appoint a woman as a cardinal, its gloves off and time for ultimate fighting.

But even apart from the many indisputable arguments based in divine revelation and traditional practice that could be brought to bear upon this ridiculous idea, there is a practical argument against it as well. Without doubt, based upon the experience of the past fifty years since the smoke of Satan drifted into the Church by invitation, women candidates for such a lofty position would be feminists of the first degree.

As women religious abandoned traditional apostolates starting in the sixties, consider how many of them migrated into positions of power that were formerly the domain of men, usually clerics. No longer content with the power appropriate to running parish schools and mother houses, they shed their religious habits in favor of pantsuits and padded shoulders and secured high level positions in dioceses and in chanceries.

Now the issue of women in the traditional roles of clerics is not primarily competency, as is true with a parallel issue of girls serving at the altar. In many cases, girls may actually perform in that role better than boys, but performance is not the issue. The sanctuary is the domain of men and more specifically men who are clerics.

In like manner, those with ecclesiastical authority over clerics should normally be clerics.

When such is not the case, there often is a dynamic set up which is strained and a potential for conflict. One diocese recently learned this lesson the hard way; or rather the lesson is only just beginning. The diocese and players in this situation need not be named, though many of the details are nationally known.

It is the story of a diocese which hired a religious sister as its chancellor for canonical affairs many years ago.

When it came time for sister to retire, she insured that her place was taken by another woman. The new chancellor, a graduate of a feminist Catholic university, was certainly diligent and competent, though many clerics found her overbearing on several canonical issues. For a short time, things seemed fine.

But then things started to go badly and the gossip among priests is that the lady chancellor was not well treated by some of the powerful male clerics within the chancery itself. One thing led to another and after some internal clashes the second woman chancellor had resigned and a third woman in this succession of feminine figures took her place as the chancellor. Men need not apply for this formerly clerical position.

But the story does not end here, for the disillusioned former chancellor went straight to the police with allegations of sexual abuse cover-up by her superiors in the chancery and then to the secular media with thousands of pages of internal memos and confidential records. For nearly two months now the local papers and broadcasts of that area have run daily stories on a history of abuse and cover-up in the diocese.

Leading clerics have resigned from their positions, priests have been removed from assignments, dozens of lawsuits are pending and it is possible that the vicar general and bishop himself could be investigated. As one paper put it, "The diocese is slowly dying the death of a thousand cuts." How sweet is revenge!

Hell hath no fury like a feminist scorned. This is what happened when a lady chancellor was badly treated by a chancery. Imagine what the payback would look like with an angry Jane Cardinal Doe in the Curia! v

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