UNA VOCE of Chesapeake, VA

Beauty

2011-07-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

"We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.

We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past – whether he admits it or not – can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love."

-Father Hans Urs von Balthasar

Photos from the New Chapel at Saint Benedict's Parish, Chesapeake

2011-03-06T12:39:00.001-05:00

Will add more as they appear on the web.

Learn About Distributism

2011-02-19T21:32:00.004-05:00

From Mr. Dale Ahlquist...

Greetings, Friends of the American Chesterton Society!

Recently, Gilbert Magazine and The Distributist Review teamed up to produce an entire issue of Gilbert dedicated to the misunderstood and misrepresented topic of Distributism!

Contents of the Distributist issue include:

G.K. Chesterton: The Guild Idea

Thomas Storck: What’s the Use of Having Stuff Anyway?

John Médaille: A Distributist Banking System

Bill Powell: Permaculture and Backyard Gardening

Donald Goodman III: Distributism and Marxism

Ryan Grant: Distributist Education

David W. Cooney: Subsidiarity

Richard Aleman: The D-PAC

In order to receive Gilbert Magazine you have to become a member of the American Chesterton Society, however, due to the popularity of this issue the editors ofGilbert Magazine are offering you a chance to purchase this single issue!! (For a limited time, while supplies last.)

The price of the single issue is $6.00 plus shipping and handling. Buy a few for your friends, family, or for yourself!

One reader, new to Distributism, had this to say about the Gilbert Magazine Distributist issue:

“I went through a serious paradigm shift while reading mine!”

Why stop with one issue? Support the American Chesterton Society, become a member (here), and receive Gilbert Magazine all year round. Besides Gilbert Magazine, members of the ACS receive a 20 percent discount on books.

This issue, chock full of Distributism, includes book reviews of John C. Médaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market and Christopher A. Ferrara’s The Church and the Libertarian.

PLUS: Dale Ahlquist on Hilaire Belloc, an interview with (Distributist) Thomas More College President Dr. William E. Fahey and much, much more!

To order, click here.

To become a member of the American Chesterton Society, click here.

Extraordinary Progress!

2011-02-17T17:45:00.001-05:00

Latin Mass of Southwest Virginia reports from their blog...

Fr Joseph Mary Lukyamuzi, OSB, has begun offering regular monthly Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the southwest Virginia region of the Diocese of Richmond. The November 7th Mass, at Our Lady of Peace in Appomattox, was well attended by folks from Lynchburg, Lexington, Radford and other locations.

Recent words from the Bishop at one of his townhall meetings indicated that the Fraternity of Saint Peter may be establishing a presence in that area. Let's pray and hope.

Holiness & Orthodoxy Attract

2011-02-17T17:34:00.000-05:00

CARA Reports on Religious Life Confirm Tradition

From the article:
"Thus, the data of this earlier CARA report confirms what most Catholics already know: those who have vocations to religious life have a strong preference for the practices of tradition. A strong and enthusiastic love of Christ and his Church, fidelity to his teachings expressed through the magisterium, the wearing of the religious habit, vigorous common life and common prayer, a focused apostolate, joyful and faithful members of the community, all these are essential in attracting new vocations. Of course.

Death wish? This has been clear for some time now and why some religious communities do see the obvious and adapt is mystifying to say the least. The clear message of the Holy Spirit who inspires vocations, the clear admonition of Rome which has strongly requested the return to the habit and other reforms, and the obvious preference of the young people who vote with their feet, is a clarion call. Communities that follow these simple truths are growing, some are growing rapidly. Communities that refuse to follow these simple truths would appear to have a death wish."

Philip Johnson on His Vocation

2011-02-13T13:39:00.000-05:00

Read more about Philip at his blog, In Caritate Non Ficta or check out his biography page from the Diocese of Raleigh.

Your donations to the Father Damian Abbaticchio Vocation Fund, sponsored by Una Voce of Chesapeake, actually support Philip and three other seminarians from our parish.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

2011-01-30T17:53:00.005-05:00

The "Lost Novels" of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson

2011-01-16T18:06:00.001-05:00

Everybody knows about such classics as Lord of the World and By What Authority? but did you know that the noted Catholic writer Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) wrote “mainstream” novels as well?

A member of the gifted Benson literary clan, Father Benson’s career spanned the early years of the 20th century. All of his siblings were published authors — you may be familiar with E. F. Benson’s “Lucia” novels, or the horror stories of A. C. Benson. Midway in his writing career, Father Benson switched from the historical sagas like The King’s Achievement and “sensational” stories like The Sentimentalists by which he had established his reputation, and began turning out novels about ordinary people set in contemporary (i.e., early 20th century Edwardian) England.

With its clear moral orientation, Benson’s fiction enjoyed astonishing popularity among the general public, both Catholic and Protestant. “Hugh,” as his friends and family called him, was a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury. His conversion as a priest from the Anglican Communion to Catholicism created a sensation that almost rivaled that of Blessed John Henry Newman nearly sixty years before. In great demand as a speaker in both England and the United States, Father Benson wrote from a Catholic perspective but with real understanding of and sympathy for the Protestant position.

In 1910 Benson’s writing took a different and, possibly, unexpected direction. Having established a reputation for solidly researched historical novels and gained popular acclaim as an author of “sensational” fiction (admittedly exciting, but not precisely sensational by modern standards), he suddenly turned his attention to writing “mainstream” contemporary novels, turning out half-a-dozen in rapid succession.

Overshadowed by such deservedly renowned works as By What Authority? (1904), an early entry in the “historical saga” genre, and Lord of the World (1907), a satirical “future war” science fiction epic of the type so popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Benson’s mainstream efforts exhibit an insightful understanding of human nature and of society that places these works solidly among the minor classics of English literature. Remarkably free of the saccharine often associated with religious-themed novels, Benson’s contemporary fiction combines a deceptively light style with pointed, yet oddly gentle barbs. Father Benson’s mainstream novels reflect a mature approach and a finely honed satiric sense that delighted Evelyn Waugh, the “Catholic voice” of the “Lost Generation.” Father Benson’s six mainstream novels — A Winnowing (1910), None Other Gods (1911), The Coward (1912), An Average Man (1913), Initiation (1914) and Loneliness? (1915) — show Benson at the height of his powers.

A Winnowing (ISBN 978-1-60210-005-3) examines our cultural attitudes toward death and its rituals, contrasting the belief that death has meaning, with the secular attitude that only the material world is of value. None Other Gods (ISBN 978-1-60210-006-0) takes a look at our tendency to absolve ourselves of responsibility and expectation that some higher authority, be it God or the State, will take over and run our lives for us. The Coward (ISBN 978-1-60210-007-7) takes on the soul-destroying propensity to adhere unthinkingly to social conventions. An Average Man (ISBN 978-1-60210-008-4) — possibly Father Benson’s most subtle and yet most mature work — dissects the idea that full participation in the common good is only for an elite, promoting the revolutionary concept that life is for everyone.

Initiation (ISBN 978-1-60210-009-1), a complex work, is a study of redemption through pain, especially pain inflicted on the innocent. Finally, Loneliness? (ISBN 978-1-60210-010-7), published posthumously, highlights the tendency to judge people for what they can do for us, rather than their value as human beings.

As part of an ongoing effort to present morally oriented fiction of past generations to a new audience, Once • and • Future Books, an imprint of Universal Values Media, Inc., has republished the full collection of Father Benson’s contemporary novels in newly edited and formatted unabridged editions. This is the first time that some of the novels have been widely available in nearly a century. Each volume features footnotes and a foreword specially written for the collection by Benson scholar Michael D. Greaney.

http://just3rdway.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-titles-from-universal-values-media.html

In light of the rapid spread of moral relativism noted by many civil and religious leaders, the world needs novels such as those of Robert Hugh Benson now more than ever.

A Liturgical Parable - The Hard Truth

2011-01-15T08:44:00.000-05:00

....We seem to slip out of that golden sense of ultimate truth in two ways. The first is by losing any real awareness of the holy. The second is by denying that it has been lost. Without lapsing into cricitism that would be out of place, suffice it to say that the worship of holiness is weak in our culture, and the beauty of holiness has been smudged in transmission through the revised liturgy. For without impugning its objective authenticity in any degree, its bouleversement [Complete overthrow; a reversal; a turning upside down] of the traditional Roman rite marks the first time in history that the Church has been an agent, however unintentionally, in the deprivation of culture, from the uprooting of classical language and sensibility to wanton depreciation of the arts.

....It is immensely saddening to see so many elements of the Church, in her capacity as Mother of Western Culture, compliant in the promotion of ugliness. There may be no deterrent more formidable to countless potential converts than the low estate of the Church's liturgical life, for the liturgy is the Church's prime means of evangelism. Gone as into a primeval mist are the days not long ago when apologists regularly had to warn against being distracted by, or superficially attracted to, the beauty of the Church's rites. And the plodding and static nature of the revised rites could not have been more ill-timed for a media culture so attuned to color and form and action.

-Father George Rutler, A Crisis of Saints, pp 107-108.

Our Savior is Coming

2010-11-27T09:03:00.000-05:00

Father Damian Abbaticchio Vocation Fund Drive Results

2010-09-24T16:57:00.002-04:00

Una Voce of Chesapeake has wrapped up the August 2010 collection drive and raised over $3,200 dollars that will go towards supporting four seminarians. Thanks for all who helped out.

Living the Liturgy

2010-08-25T19:08:00.002-04:00

Ever Watch the Vortex?

2010-07-10T18:00:00.001-04:00

Knights of the Altar

2010-06-27T18:59:00.013-04:00

Saints Benedict's Chapel had its very first installation ceremony for the the Knight of the Altar with Father Neil Nichols, FSSP presiding. All in all over 25 young men entered the ranks.

Re-Christianizing Our World

2010-06-14T21:46:00.000-04:00

ZENIT: Why do you feel that following the traditional Roman rite is vital to "re-Christianizing" our world?

Father Goodwin: The Traditional Mass is a very important element in the re-Christianization of the world because it so clearly and fully embodies the faith of the Church. The whole notion of Christ's sacrifice is the central point of the Mass.

Of course, the primary objection that's most often offered to it is "Why would you want to celebrate the Mass in a language that people don't understand?" But that makes the assumption that the relationship of people to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is primarily one of comprehension; that the Mass is a piece of information to be learned and understood.

Today, Mass is most often celebrated in the world where people can see everything that is going on and understand everything that's said. Can we honestly say that the result of this has deepened their appreciation for what's going on? When pollsters tell us that 80% of Catholics under the age of 59 have a non-Catholic idea of what the Blessed Sacrament is, the whole communication thing may not be so successful. That should not be the primary goal. The primary goal is the worship of God.

The Mass is not a bunch of jumbled elements that we put together or we construct in order to make something that is meaningful to us. The Mass is something that exists in itself, to which we conform ourselves, so that we can more perfectly unite with God.

I think that's what young people find in the Traditional Mass. They're not looking for an explanation; they're looking for the presence of Christ. This is, in a very primary way, about reverence, piety and devotion.

ZENIT: While priestly vocations are waning in many other orders in the United States and around the world, ordinations within the Fraternity of St. Peter are increasing. What do you think draws these men to the Fraternity?

Father Goodwin: We have seminarians who have grown up with the Traditional Mass. We also have seminarians who have come to us after seeing the Traditional Mass two or three times before they entered. One found it on the Internet and said, "As soon as I saw it, I knew that it was for me."

The vocations come from God. He is sending them to us. He picks [these men] and he points them toward that perennial treasury of the Church. Prayer and faith, having spoken to human hearts for 2,000 years, is hardly likely to become a dried-up, unusable source just over a couple of decades. The human heart does not change and God's appeal to it does not change.

We started the seminary here about 10 years ago. We've had, more or less, 12 or 15 candidates a year. This year we have more than 25 coming in. We could take more if we had the room and the staff to take care of them.

Read the full interview...

Young Men Need to be Challenged with Respect to Vocations

2010-06-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

All too often, the attempts to make young men aware of the priesthood have utilized weak messages that amounted to nothing more than a glorified Peace Corps. While public service is certainly part of being a priest, there is of course much, much more. It's a higher calling and should be presented as such. If done properly and with sound orthodox formation, young men will respond.

The Church Too Must Use the Shepherd's Rod...

2010-06-14T21:04:00.000-04:00

"Your rod and your staff – they comfort me": the shepherd needs the rod as protection against savage beasts ready to pounce on the flock; against robbers looking for prey. Along with the rod there is the staff which gives support and helps to make difficult crossings. Both of these are likewise part of the Church’s ministry, of the priest’s ministry. The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod, the rod with which he protects the faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the flock astray. The use of the rod can actually be a service of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted and chipped away, as if it were something that we ourselves had invented. As if it were no longer God’s gift, the precious pearl which we cannot let be taken from us. Even so, the rod must always become once again the shepherd’s staff – a staff which helps men and women to tread difficult paths and to follow the Lord.

Benedict XVI
Homily for the Feast of the Sacred Heart

The Pope Speaking on Celibacy (Just in Case there is any Doubt)

2010-06-11T21:51:00.001-04:00

"For the world where God is not present, celibacy is a great scandal... that should disappear."
-Pope Benedict XV1

Fortunately for us all, the Church doesn't follow the whims of the World.

Ave Crux!

2010-06-11T21:43:00.002-04:00

Viva il Papa!

2010-06-10T21:05:00.002-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI brings the Year of the Priest to an end along with 15,000 priests.

Sancte Jean Marie Vianney, ora pro nobis.

Andrea Bocelli tells a "little story" about abortion.

2010-06-06T18:38:00.002-04:00

FSSP: The Battle for the Ancient Mass

2010-05-30T20:37:00.000-04:00

From the North American FSSP website, this hour long talk given by Father Calvin Goodwin discusses "the history and struggles associated with the Traditional Latin Mass."

Please Give

2010-05-29T09:53:00.003-04:00

Make checks payable to:

Una Voce of Chesapeake

100 Burr Court

Chesapeake, VA 23320

ALL DONATIONS ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE AND 100% OF ALL PROCEEDS GO TO TRADITIONAL SEMINARIANS IN NEED.

For more information on the fund, go HERE or email us at uvchesapeakeva@gmail.com.

Catholics Come Home

2010-05-28T18:58:00.000-04:00

Holiness Attracts

2010-05-16T19:14:00.000-04:00

From Kansas Catholic, a beautiful photo from yesterday's professions by the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles in Kansas City in the presence of His Excellency Bishop Robert Finn. Another example of the return of the traditional Church. Holiness and orthodoxy do attract. Please go and view all of the pictures. You won't be disappointed. You might want to also consider supporting this traditional order. While the older orders that have turned away from the faith are slowly dying, young orders like this that firmly embrace the faith are thriving.

May Crowning of Mary at Saint Benedict's

2010-05-09T14:01:00.001-04:00

Chesterton on the Faith

2010-03-27T09:45:00.000-04:00

For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908.

But the Gates of Hades Shall not Prevail

2010-01-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

The issue was between two forces. On the one hand was the instinct which we all have within us, that Europe is Catholic, must live as Catholic, or must die; that in the anarchic religious rebellion was peril of death to our art, our culture, to that from which they proceed, our religious vision. On the other had arisen an intense, fierce, increasing hatred against the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament, the whole transcendental scheme; a hatred such that all who felt it were, in spite of a myriad differences, in common alliance. That hatred fed upon an original popular indignation against the corruption of the clergy, and especially against their financial claims. But the hatred was far older than any such late medieval trouble; it was as old as the presence of the Catholic Church in this world."

-Hilaire Belloc, How the Reformation Happened, 1928.

Father Emil Kapaun, Priest, POW, Servant of God

2010-01-08T13:23:00.004-05:00

More on this self-sacrificing priest here.

Interview with Father James Fryar, FSSP

2009-12-30T19:39:00.000-05:00

Dr Senior on the Old Mass

2009-12-19T22:58:00.000-05:00

Whatever we do in the political and social order, the indispensable foundation is prayer, the heart of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ Himself, Priest and Victim, recreating in an unbloody manner the bloody, selfsame Sacrifice of Calvary. What is Christian Culture? It is essentially the Mass. That is not my or anyone's opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of two thousand years of history. Christendom, what secularists call western civilization, is the Mass and paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it.

-Dr. John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture, IHS Press.

Venerable Pius XII

2009-12-19T15:50:00.002-05:00

From the Pope

2009-11-26T22:45:00.002-05:00

"Speaking against the Magisterium of the Church is presented as courageous. In reality, however, it does not take courage for this, since you can always be sure of audience applause. . . .Rather it takes courage to adhere to the faith of the Church, even if it contradicts the 'scheme' of the contemporary world. It is this non-conformism of the faith that Paul calls an 'adult faith'."

- Pope Benedict XVI

Father Dom Francois de Feydeu - Requiescant in Pace

2009-11-22T18:10:00.004-05:00

Clear Creek’s Subprior, Father de Feydeau, Dies at 57

11/16/2009 - EOC Staff

The Requiem Mass and Funeral for the Rev. Father Dom Francois de Feydeau, subprior of Clear Creek Monastery, was held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17 at the Benedictine monastery located near Hulbert.
Father de Feydeau was a priest and monk of Our Lady of Fontgombault Abbey, France, of the Congregation of Solesmes, of the Order of St. Benedict. He was among the founding members of the Clear Creek Monastery. He died Nov. 15 at 57 and was in his 33rd year of monastic profession and 27th year of his priesthood. For some months, Father de Feydeau had suffered a brain tumor.
“May his soul and those of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God and the intersession of Our Lady, rest in peace, Father Philip Anderson, Clear Creek’s prior said in an email notifying Bishop Edward J. Slattery and the Diocese of Father de Feydeau’s death. Bishop Slattery was in Baltimore for the annual fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Father François de Feydeau was born on March 16, 1953 to French parents of noble extraction living in Bizerte, Tunisia, where Mr. de Feydeau worked for a time as an engineer. The family later returned to France, where François grew up near the town of Versailles.
Always interested in sailing, he joined the French Sea Scouts and after preparatory school was admitted to the French Naval Academy, from which he graduated at the top of his class. Shortly after being commissioned an officer and sailing around the world in the Naval Academy ship the Jeanne d’Arc, he found himself free to pursue the vocation he had felt from a very early age and entered the novitiate of the Benedictine Abbey, Notre-Dame de Fontgombault.
He pronounced his perpetual vows as a monk in 1980 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1983. After having several important jobs at the abbey, including that of assistant novice-master, he was chosen to be among the founders of Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery, arriving in Oklahoma in August 1999.
At Clear Creek Father de Feydeau was named sub-prior, cellarer (in charge of the daily work of the monks and all business matters) and master of ceremonies. He later became master of the students and taught moral theology.
He also served as spiritual director for many of the monks. His capacity for work and exquisite charity amazed all who knew him, both inside and outside the monastery.
On May 21st Father de Feydeau was diagnosed with incurable brain cancer. After many weeks of suffering during which he displayed the utmost patience and abandonment to God’s will, he rendered his soul to God early in the morning of Nov. 15th and was buried at the monastery on Nov. 17th.

Vaccines from Abortion - A Presentation and Discussion 14 December 2009

2009-11-18T22:36:00.005-05:00

A free event for all interested in the practice of using aborted fetal cells for use in vaccinations and other medical products. A must see for those involved in the Pro-Life movement.

CLICK ABOVE TO ENLARGE.

Read About Two of Our Seminarians

2009-10-18T16:37:00.000-04:00

Philip Johnson

Rob Schmid, Jr.

Prayer After Receiving the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord in the Eucharist

2009-10-17T21:51:00.000-04:00

I offer the Eternal Father His well beloved Son with the merits of His death and Passion in exchange for...

When Mother Theresa Received the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-11T21:34:00.000-04:00

In December of 1979, Mother Theresa of Calcutta received the Nobel Peace prize for her many years of tirelessly devoting her life to the care of the poor. Even at then, her effort over many years had a lasting impact on the lives of many. Below is her acceptance speech in its entirety.

“As we have gathered here together to thank God for the Nobel Peace Prize I think it will be beautiful that we pray the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi which always surprises me very much - we pray this prayer every day after Holy Communion, because it is very fitting for each one of us, and I always wonder that 4-500 years ago as St. Francis of Assisi composed this prayer that they had the same difficulties that we have today, as we compose this prayer that fits very nicely for us also. I think some of you already have got it - so we will pray together.

Let us thank God for the opportunity that we all have together today, for this gift of peace that reminds us that we have been created to live that peace, and Jesus became man to bring that good news to the poor. He being God became man in all things like us except sin, and he proclaimed very clearly that he had come to give the good news. The news was peace to all of good will and this is something that we all want - the peace of heart - and God loved the world so much that he gave his son - it was a giving - it is as much as if to say it hurt God to give, because he loved the world so much that he gave his son, and he gave him to Virgin Mary, and what did she do with him?

As soon as he came in her life - immediately she went in haste to give that good news, and as she came into the house of her cousin, the child - the unborn child - the child in the womb of Elizabeth, leapt with joy. He was that little unborn child, was the first messenger of peace. He recognised the Prince of Peace, he recognised that Christ has come to bring the good news for you and for me. And as if that was not enough - it was not enough to become a man - he died on the cross to show that greater love, and he died for you and for me and for that leper and for that man dying of hunger and that naked person lying in the street not only of Calcutta, but of Africa, and New York, and London, and Oslo - and insisted that we love one another as he loves each one of us. And we read that in the Gospel very clearly - love as I have loved you - as I love you - as the Father has loved me, I love you - and the harder the Father loved him, he gave him to us, and how much we love one another, we, too, must give each other until it hurts.

It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. And so this is very important for us to realise that love, to be true, has to hurt. It hurt Jesus to love us, it hurt him. And to make sure we remember his great love he made himself the bread of life to satisfy our hunger for his love. Our hunger for God, because we have been created for that love. We have been created in his image. We have been created to love and be loved, and then he has become man to make it possible for us to love as he loved us. He makes himself the hungry one - the naked one - the homeless one - the sick one - the one in prison - the lonely one - the unwanted one - and he says: You did it to me. Hungry for our love, and this is the hunger of our poor people. This is the hunger that you and I must find, it may be in our own home.

I never forget an opportunity I had in visiting a home where they had all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them in an institution and forgotten maybe. And I went there, and I saw in that home they had everything, beautiful things, but everybody was looking towards the door. And I did not see a single one with their smile on their face. And I turned to the Sister and I asked: How is that? How is it that the people they have everything here, why are they all looking towards the door, why are they not smiling? I am so used to see the smile on our people, even the dying one smile, and she said: This is nearly every day, they are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten, and see - this is where love comes. That poverty comes right there in our own home, even neglect to love. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried, and these are difficult days for everybody. Are we there, are we there to receive them, is the mother there to receive the child?

I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given into drugs, and I tried to find out why - why is it like that, and the answer was: Because there is no one in the family to receive them. Father and mother are so busy they have no time. Young parents are in some institution and the child takes back to the street and gets involved in something. We are talking of peace. These are things that break peace, but I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child - I will not forget you - I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible - but even if she could forget - I will not forget you. And today the greatest means - the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. And we who are standing here - our parents wanted us. We would not be here if our parents would do that to us. Our children, we want them, we love them, but what of the millions.

Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child - what is left for me to kill you and you kill me - there is nothing between. And this I appeal in India, I appeal everywhere: Let us bring the child back, and this year being the child's year: What have we done for the child? At the beginning of the year I told, I spoke everywhere and I said: Let us make this year that we make every single child born, and unborn, wanted. And today is the end of the year, have we really made the children wanted? I will give you something terrifying. We are fighting abortion by adoption, we have saved thousands of lives, we have sent words to all the clinics, to the hospitals, police stations - please don't destroy the child, we will take the child. So every hour of the day and night it is always somebody, we have quite a number of unwedded mothers - tell them come, we will take care of you, we will take the child from you, and we will get a home for the child. And we have a tremendous demand from families who have no children, that is the blessing of God for us. And also, we are doing another thing which is very beautiful - we are teaching our beggars, our leprosy patients, our slum dwellers, our people of the street, natural family planning.

And in Calcutta alone in six years - it is all in Calcutta - we have had 61,273 babies less from the families who would have had, but because they practise this natural way of abstaining, of self-control, out of love for each other. We teach them the temperature meter which is very beautiful, very simple, and our poor people understand. And you know what they have told me? Our family is healthy, our family is united, and we can have a baby whenever we want. So clear - those people in the street, those beggars - and I think that if our people can do like that how much more you and all the others who can know the ways and means without destroying the life that God has created in us.

The poor people are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things. The other day one of them came to thank and said: You people who have vowed chastity you are the best people to teach us family planning. Because it is nothing more than self-control out of love for each other. And I think they said a beautiful sentence. And these are people who maybe have nothing to eat, maybe they have not a home where to live, but they are great people. The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition - and I told the Sisters: You take care of the other three, I take of this one that looked worse. So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: Thank you - and she died.

I could not help but examine my conscience before her, and I asked what would I say if I was in her place. And my answer was very simple. I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself, I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain, or something, but she gave me much more - she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face. As that man whom we picked up from the drain, half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home. I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for. And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die like that without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel - this is the greatness of our people. And that is why we believe what Jesus had said: I was hungry - I was naked - I was homeless - I was unwanted, unloved, uncared for - and you did it to me.

I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we are touching the Body of Christ 24 hours. We have 24 hours in this presence, and so you and I. You too try to bring that presence of God in your family, for the family that prays together stays together. And I think that we in our family don't need bombs and guns, to destroy to bring peace - just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world.

There is so much suffering, so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. It is to God Almighty - how much we do it does not matter, because He is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving.

Some time ago in Calcutta we had great difficulty in getting sugar, and I don't know how the word got around to the children, and a little boy of four years old, Hindu boy, went home and told his parents: I will not eat sugar for three days, I will give my sugar to Mother Teresa for her children. After three days his father and mother brought him to our home. I had never met them before, and this little one could scarcely pronounce my name, but he knew exactly what he had come to do. He knew that he wanted to share his love.

And this is why I have received such a lot of love from you all. From the time that I have come here I have simply been surrounded with love, and with real, real understanding love. It could feel as if everyone in India, everyone in Africa is somebody very special to you. And I felt quite at home I was telling Sister today. I feel in the Convent with the Sisters as if I am in Calcutta with my own Sisters. So completely at home here, right here.

And so here I am talking with you - I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people. And find out about your next-door neighbour - do you know who they are? I had the most extraordinary experience with a Hindu family who had eight children. A gentleman came to our house and said: Mother Teresa, there is a family with eight children, they had not eaten for so long - do something. So I took some rice and I went there immediately. And I saw the children - their eyes shinning with hunger - I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And she took the rice, she divided the rice, and she went out. When she came back I asked her - where did you go, what did you do? And she gave me a very simple answer: They are hungry also. What struck me most was that she knew - and who are they, a Muslim family - and she knew. I didn't bring more rice that evening because I wanted them to enjoy the joy of sharing. But there were those children, radiating joy, sharing the joy with their mother because she had the love to give. And you see this is where love begins - at home. And I want you - and I am very grateful for what I have received. It has been a tremendous experience and I go back to India - I will be back by next week, the 15th I hope - and I will be able to bring your love.

And I know well that you have not given from your abundance, but you have given until it has hurt you. Today the little children they have - I was so surprised - there is so much joy for the children that are hungry. That the children like themselves will need love and care and tenderness, like they get so much from their parents. So let us thank God that we have had this opportunity to come to know each other, and this knowledge of each other has brought us very close. And we will be able to help not only the children of India and Africa, but will be able to help the children of the whole world, because as you know our Sisters are all over the world. And with this prize that I have received as a prize of peace, I am going to try to make the home for many people that have no home. Because I believe that love begins at home, and if we can create a home for the poor - I think that more and more love will spread. And we will be able through this understanding love to bring peace, be the good news to the poor. The poor in our own family first, in our country and in the world.

To be able to do this, our Sisters, our lives have to be woven with prayer. They have to be woven with Christ to be able to understand, to be able to share. Because today there is so much suffering - and I feel that the passion of Christ is being relived all over again - are we there to share that passion, to share that suffering of people. Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society - that poverty is so hurtable and so much, and I find that very difficult. Our Sisters are working amongst that kind of people in the West. So you must pray for us that we may be able to be that good news, but we cannot do that without you, you have to do that here in your country. You must come to know the poor, maybe our people here have material things, everything, but I think that if we all look into our own homes, how difficult we find it sometimes to smile at each, other, and that the smile is the beginning of love.

And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something. So you pray for our Sisters and for me and for our Brothers, and for our Co-Workers that are around the world. That we may remain faithful to the gift of God, to love Him and serve Him in the poor together with you. What we have done we should not have been able to do if you did not share with your prayers, with your gifts, this continual giving. But I don't want you to give me from your abundance, I want that you give me until it hurts.

The other day I received 15 dollars from a man who has been on his back for twenty years, and the only part that he can move is his right hand. And the only companion that he enjoys is smoking. And he said to me: I do not smoke for one week, and I send you this money. It must have been a terrible sacrifice for him, but see how beautiful, how he shared, and with that money I bought bread and I gave to those who are hungry with a joy on both sides, he was giving and the poor were receiving. This is something that you and I - it is a gift of God to us to be able to share our love with others. And let it be as it was for Jesus. Let us love one another as he loved us. Let us love Him with undivided love. And the joy of loving Him and each other - let us give now - that Christmas is coming so close. Let us keep that joy of loving Jesus in our hearts. And share that joy with all that we come in touch with. And that radiating joy is real, for we have no reason not to be happy because we have no Christ with us. Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor that we meet, Christ in the smile that we give and the smile that we receive. Let us make that one point: That no child will be unwanted, and also that we meet each other always with a smile, especially when it is difficult to smile.

I never forget some time ago about fourteen professors came from the United States from different universities. And they came to Calcutta to our house. Then we were talking about that they had been to the home for the dying. We have a home for the dying in Calcutta, where we have picked up more than 36,000 people only from the streets of Calcutta, and out of that big number more than 18,000 have died a beautiful death. They have just gone home to God; and they came to our house and we talked of love, of compassion, and then one of them asked me: Say, Mother, please tell us something that we will remember, and I said to them: Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family. Smile at each other. And then another one asked me: Are you married, and I said: Yes, and I find it sometimes very difficult to smile at Jesus because he can be very demanding sometimes. This is really something true, and there is where love comes - when it is demanding, and yet we can give it to Him with joy. Just as I have said today, I have said that if I don't go to Heaven for anything else I will be going to Heaven for all the publicity because it has purified me and sacrificed me and made me really ready to go to Heaven.

I think that this is something, that we must live life beautifully, we have Jesus with us and He loves us. If we could only remember that God loves me, and I have an opportunity to love others as he loves me, not in big things, but in small things with great love, then Norway becomes a nest of love. And how beautiful it will be that from here a centre for peace has been given. That from here the joy of life of the unborn child comes out. If you become a burning light in the world of peace, then really the Nobel Peace Prize is a gift of the Norwegian people. God bless you!.

As Catholics, Do We Really Believe?

2009-10-11T13:52:00.001-04:00

For whatever reason, I was forced this last weekend to forgo Mass at my regular parish and instead go to a Novus Ordo vigil Mass to fulfill my Sunday obligation. Now I do attend (almost daily during the work week) a reverent Novus Ordo Mass onboard ship but it had been some years since I had gone to a surrounding parish church where Mass was celebrated in the Ordinary Form. I was hesitant, given my fears of what I might encounter, and even talked with my parish priest to express my concerns given my expectations. While he understood my apprehension, he of course reaffirmed that I must fulfill my Sunday obligation and reminded me that if Christ can condescend to come to us under the appearance of bread and wine, even amid many liturgical abuses and disrespect, that I can certainly "offer up" my displeasure. And while I did ultimately know this and had every intention of going to Mass, I think I needed from my priest a bit of a pep talk before going.

The church itself was beautiful. A historic building, it has retained much of it's original glory coming from a time when churches were built to honor God and inspire us towards Heaven. The high altar remains. It too is majestic and a fitting location for the celebration of Mass. But of course the layout of church has been modified with the altar rails removed and the addition of a free standing altar table outside of the sanctuary. As far as such medications go, I suppose it is fairly typical of that done in the 70's but this one looks particularly out of place and disjointed. Now I suppose I could lay out a very extensive list of things that I found displeasing. The use of altar girls, communion in the hand, the female cantor dressed in clerical clothing (surplice and cassock), the over use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (all but one being woman) who circled the altar doing the consecration, etc, etc, etc. I'm sure some will casually dismiss my objections as just the rantings of some "traditionalist" but I believe they, like many of my fellow worshipers the other night they will have missed the point.

Do we as Catholics truly and actually believe that Christ is present in the Eucharist? Yes, we go to Mass regularly, receive the Eucharist and even verbally acknowledge His Presence. But do we truly believe? Do our actions say that we believe? Do we act like Christ is truly present on the altar during Mass? I would say that for the most part, based upon what I witnessed at a typical parish the other night, most Catholics don't really believe. From our posture, our dress, our manner of receiving Communion in the hand as if it is nothing more than snack cracker, the destruction of the traditional layout of the altar and the mindset that unless we are engaged in some physical activity at Mass that mimics a priest that we aren't participating, our actions don't convey such belief.

Now I am truly thankful that God did provide me the opportunity to receive the Eucharist, even in such a setting. And even though I realize that the majority of Catholics that were present have the best of intentions, it saddened me to see such a display and left me feeling sorry for them given they don't seem to even realize what they are missing. I am grateful to God for bringing me and my family to the Mass of Ages, the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven. May we always treasure it for what it is and always truly believe in our heart and with our actions that Christ is present.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel Comments on Communion on the Hand, Liturgical Abuses and the Extraordinary Form

2009-09-30T10:05:00.002-04:00

A must hear from Una Voce Carmel.

The Catholic Mind

2009-09-29T17:08:00.001-04:00

What is peculiar to Catholicism, I have always thought, is its refusal to leave anything out. In my short book, "The Regensburg Lecture," I was constantly astonished at the enormous range of the mind of the present Holy Father. There is simply no mind in any university or public office that can match his. He is a humble man, in fact.

It is embarrassing to the world, and often to Catholic "intellectuals," to find that its most intelligent mind is on the Chair of Peter. I have always considered this papal intellectual profundity to be God's little joke to the modern mind.

The modern mind has built up for itself theories and ideologies whereby it prevents itself from seeing the truth that a man like Benedict XVI spells out for it in lucid and rigorously argued terms – terms fully aware and familiar with all of modern philosophy itself.

But Benedict XVI is a messenger of the Logos.

- Father James V. Schall, S.J., Zenit, 28 September 2009.

The Beauty of Catholic Tradition

2009-09-27T21:28:00.000-04:00

The Catholic Church-Behold, I am with you all days!

2009-09-27T21:16:00.000-04:00

Why I Love Thee Mary

2009-09-27T19:23:00.000-04:00

Fain would I sing, O Mother blest! the reasons why I love thee;
Why e'en to name thy name, with joy, O Mary! fills my heart;
And why the glorious thoughts of thee, in greatness far above me,
Inspire no fear within my soul, so dear and sweet thou art.

Yet, if I were to see thee now, in majesty stupendous,
Surpassing all the crowned saints in highest heaven above,
Scarce could I dream I am thy child, O truth sublime, tremendous!
For I should think myself to be unworthy of thy love.

The mother, who desires to be her child's best earthly treasure,
Must ever share its grief with it, must understand its pain.
Queen of my heart! how many years, thy sorrows had no measure;
What bitter tears thine eyes have shed, my worth less heart to gain!

So, musing on thy earthly life, in Scripture's sacred story,
I dare to look upon thy face, and unto thee draw nigh;
For when I see thee suffering, concealed thy mar velous glory
It is not hard, then, to believe thy little child am I.

When Gabriel came from heaven's courts, to ask thee to be mother
Of God Who reigns omnipotent to all eternity,
I see thee, Mary! then prefer to that great grace, another,
Through all thy consecrated life a virgin pure to be.

And so I now can comprehend, immaculate white maiden!
Why thou wast dearer unto God than heaven itself could be;
And how thy humble, human frame, with mortal weakness laden,
Could yet contain the Eternal Word, Love's vast unbounded Sea.

I love thee when I hear thee call thyself the handmaid only
Of God, Whom thou didst win to earth by thy humility;
All powerful it made thee then, above all women, lonely,
And drew, into thy bosom chaste, the Blessed Trinity,

The Holy Spirit, Love Divine, o'ershadowed thee, 0 Mother!
And God the Father's only Son incarnate was in thee.
How many sinful, sorrowing souls shall dare to call Him Brother!
For He shall be called: Jesus, thy first born, eternally.

And oh! despite my frailties, dear Mary! well thou knowest
That I at times, like thee, possess the Almighty in my breast.
Shall I not tremble at the gift, O God! that Thou bestowest ?
A mother's treasure is her child's: I still my fears to rest.

For I, O Mary, am thy child! O Mother dear and tender.
Shall not thy virtues and thy love plead now with God for me?
Then, when the pure white sacred Host, in all its veiled splendor,
Visits my heart, thy spotless Lamb will think He comes to thee.

Oh, thou dost help me to believe that e'en for us, frail mortals,
'Tis not impossible to walk where we thy footsteps see;
The narrow road before us now, thou lightest to heaven's portals.
Who lowliest virtues here below didst practise per fectly.

Near thee, O Mother! I would stay, little, unknown and lowly;
Of earthly glory, oh! how plain I see the vanity!
In the house of St. Elizabeth, thy cousin dear and holy,
I learn of thee to practise well most ardent charity.

There, too, I listen on my knees, great Queen of all the Angels!
To that sweet canticle that flows in rapture from thy soul;
So dost thou teach me how to sing like heavenly, glad evangels
And glorify my Jesus, Who alone can make me whole.

Thy burning words of love divine are mystic flowers victorious,
Whose fragrance shall embalm the long, long, ages yet to be.
In thee, indeed, the Almighty King hath done great things and glorious!
I meditate upon them now, and bless my God in thee.

When good St. Joseph did not know the great arch angel's story,
Which thou wouldst fain conceal from men in thy humility,
O tabernacle of the Lord! thou didst not tell thy glory,
But veiled the Saviour's presence in profoundest secrecy,

Thy silence, how I love it now, so eloquent, so moving!
For me it is a concert sweet, of melody sublime;
I learn thereby the grandeur of a soul that God is proving,
That only looks for help from Him and in His chosen time.

Then later still, O Joseph! and O Mary! I behold you
Repulsed in little Bethlehem by all the dwellers there;
From door to door you vainly went, for all the people told you
They had no place to shelter you, no time to give you care.

Their rooms were for the great alone; and in a stable dreary
The Queen of Heaven gave birth to Him Who made both heaven and earth.
O Mother of my Saviour! then, thou wast not sad nor weary;
In that poor shed how grand thou wert! how pain less was that Birth!

And there when, wrapped in swaddling bands, I see the King Eternal,
When of the Word divine, supreme, the feeble cry I hear
O Mary, can I envy e'en the angels' joy supernal?
The Master Whom they worship is My little Brother dear.

What praises must I give to thee, who, in earth's gloomy prison,
Brought forth this lovely heaven sent Flower, before our eyes to bloom!
Though unto shepherds and wise men a star had grandly risen,
These things were kept within thy heart as in some secret room.

I love thee when I see thee next, like other Hebrew women,
To Israel's temple turn thy steps when dawned the fortieth day;
I love thee yielding humbly up, to aged, favored Simeon,
The Lord Who should redeem us all when years had fled away.

And first my happy smiles awake, to hear his glorious singing,
That "Nunc Dimittis" that shall ring till Time itself shall die;
But soon those joyous notes are changed, and my hot tears are springing;
"A sword of grief must be thy lot," thus runs his prophecy.

O Queen of all the martyrs host! till thy life here is ended,
That sharp, sharp sword shall pierce thy heart! At once, it pierces sore.
That thy dear Child from Herod's wrath may surely be defended,
I see thee as an exile fled to Egypt's pagan shore.

Beneath thy veil thy Jesus slept, thy peace no fears were daunting,
When Joseph came to bid thee wake, and straight way flee from home;
And then at once I see thee rise, as called by angels chanting,
Content, without a questioning word, in foreign lands to roam.

In Egypt and in poverty, I think I see thee, Mary,
All glad at heart, all radiant, with joy beyond com pare.
What matters exile unto thee? Thy true home can not vary.
Hast thou not Jesus, with thee still? and with Him Heaven is there.

But, oh! in fair Jerusalem, a sorrow, vast, unbounded,
Indeed o'erwhelmed thy mothers heart with grief beyond compare;
For three days Jesus hid Himself; no word to thee was spoken.
Thou truly wast an exile then, and knew what exiles bear.

And when, at last, thine eyes again were thy Son's face beholding,
And love entranced thee, watching Him among the doctors wise,
"My Child!" thou saidst, "now tell me why didst leave my arms enfolding?
Didst Thou not know we sought for Thee with tear endimmed eyes?

The Child God answered to thee then, to thy sweet, patient wooing,
O Mother whom He loved so well, whose heart was well nigh broken!
"How is it that you sought for Me? Wist not I must be doing
My Father's work?" Oh, who shall sound the depths those words betoken?

But next the Gospel tells me that, in His hidden mission,
Subject to Joseph and to thee was Christ, the Holy Boy;
And then my heart reveals to me how true was His submission,
And how beyond all words to tell, thy daily, per fect joy.

And now the temple's mystery I understand, dear Mother!
The answer, and the tone of voice, of Christ, my King adored.
'Twas meant the pattern thou shouldst be, thereafter to all other
Tried souls who seek, in Faith's dark night the coming of the Lord.

Since Heaven's high King has willed it so His Mother and His dearest
Should know the anguish of that night the torn heart's deepest woe,
Then are not those, who suffer thus, to Mary's heart the nearest?
And is not love in suffering God's highest gift below?

All, all that He has granted me, oh! tell Him He may take it!
Tell Him, dear Mother! He may do whate'er He please with me;
That He may bruise my heart today, and make it sore, and break it,
So only through Eternity my eyes His Face may see!

I know, indeed, at Nazareth, O Virgin rich in graces!
As the lowly live, so thou didst live, and sought no better things;
Of ecstasies and wonders there, our eyes can find no traces,
O thou who daily dwelt beside the incarnate King of Kings!

On earth, we know, is very great the number of the lowly;
With neither fear nor trembling now we dare to look on thee.
By common lot and humble path, our Mother dear and holy,
Thou wast content to walk to heaven, and thus our guide to be.

Through all my weary exile here, I fain would walk beside thee.
O my pure and precious Mother! be near to me each day!
Thy beauty thrills my heart with joy. Deign now to guard and guide me!
What depths of love are in thy heart for me thy child, alway!

Before thy kind maternal glance, my many fears are banished;
Thou teachest me to gently weep, and then to sing for joy;
Thou dost not scorn our happy days, nor hast thou wholly vanished;
Thou smilest on us tenderly, as once upon thy Boy!

When bride and groom at Cana's feast knew well the wine was failing,
And knew not whence to bring supply, their need thine eyes perceived,
To Christ, the Master, thou didst speak, who knew His power availing,
The Maker of created things, in Whom thy soul believed.

But first He seemed thy mothers heart's kind prayer to be denying.
"What matters this, O woman! unto Me and thee?" said He.
But "Mother," in His soul's deep depths, His filial heart was crying;
And that first miracle He wrought, Mother, lie wrought for thee.

One day, while sinners crowded round to hear what He was saying,
In His desire to save their souls and them to heaven beguile,
Lo! thou wast there amid the throng, and thou wast meekly praying
That they would let thee nearer come, and speak with Him awhile.

And then thy Son spoke out this word mysterious like that other.
To show us thus His marvelous love for all the souls of men;
He said: "Who is My brother, and My sister, and My Mother?
'Tis he who does My Father's will!" The Father's will, again!

O Virgin, pure, immaculate! O Mother, tenderest, dearest!
Hearing these words that Jesus spake, this time thou wast not grieved.
No! thy great heart it leaped for joy, O thou His friend the nearest!
Because our longing souls likewise to kinship He received.

Oh, how thy heart is glad to know His love to us is given,
The treasure, that cannot be weighed, of His Divinity!
Who shall not love thee well today, and bless thee in high heaven,
Seeing thy tender care for us, thy generosity!

For truly thou dost love us all as thy Child Jesus loves us;
And for our sake thou didst consent to stay when He had risen.
Since, if we love, then all to give, e'en self, both tries and proves us,
So thou, to prove thy love, didst stay in earth's dark, dreary prison.

Thy love for souls our Saviour knew, that love His heart had sounded;
He left thee to us when He went to God's right hand on high.
Refuge of sinners! on thy prayers how many hopes are grounded!
Christ gave thee to us from His cross; for us He hears thy cry.

For thou His Mother there didst stand, that awful day, on Calvary;
As a priest before God's altar, at the cross so thou didst stand.
And to appease the Father's wrath, didst offer up, O Mary!
Thy Jesus, our Emmanuel, at God's supreme command.

A prophet had foretold this thing, O Mother broken hearted!
"Is any sorrow like to thine?" Thy grief no words can say!
Blest Queen of martyrs! left on earth when Jesus had departed!
'Twas thy heart's blood for us was given on that unequalled day.

Henceforth thy shelter in thy woe was St. John's humble dwelling;
The son of Zebedee replaced the Son Whom heaven adored.
Naught else the Gospels tell us of thy life, in grace excelling;
It is the last they say of thee, sweet Mother of my Lord!

But that deep silence, oh! I think it means that, up in glory,
When time is past, and into heaven thy children safe are come,
The Eternal Word, my Mother dear, Himself will tell thy story,
To charm our souls, thy children's souls, in our eternal home.

Soon I shall hear that harmony, that blissful, won drous singing;
Soon, soon, to heaven that waits for us, my soul shall swiftly fly.
O Thou who cam'st to smile on me at dawn of life's beginning!
Come once again to smile on me.... Mother! the night is nigh.

I fear no more thy majesty, so far, so far above me,
For, I have suffered sore with thee; now hear my heart's deep cry!
Oh! let me tell thee face to face, dear Virgin! how I love thee;
And say to thee forevermore: thy little child am I.

-Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Pope Pius XII...a Man Wrongly Maligned

2009-09-27T19:11:00.006-04:00

The myth of Pius XII collaborating with Hitler still endures in some circles. Fortunately, much is being revealed to combat both the ignorance and calumny of this good and holy man.

- A Righteous Gentile
- FIRST THINGS On the Square » Blog Archive » The Silence of Saul Friedlander
- Inside the Vatican - Monthly Catholic Magazine
- Pius XII. A Book and an Essay Shed Light on the Black Legend

- Pius XII, the Hitler's Pope and the II World War (EWTN) Part 1 of 4
- Pius XII, the Hitler's Pope and the II World War (EWTN) Part 2 of 4
- Pius XII, the Hitler's Pope and the II World War (EWTN) Part 3 of 4
- Pius XII, the Hitler's Pope and the II World War (EWTN) Part 4 of 4

Sacrifice at the Siege of Malta

2009-09-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

It was at the close of this day that a Knight of Auvergne, Abel de Bridiers de la Gardampe, was shot and mortally wounded. As his friends ran to help him, he motioned them back with the words: "Count me no more among the living. Your time will be better spent looking after our other brothers."

While the cannon thundered, and the fire rained down from the walls, and Janissaries came on in wave upon shouting wave, La Gardampe dragged himself to the chapel of St Elmo. In the afternoon, when the Knight of the Order made their way to the chapel to give thanks for the what seemed almost a victory, they the Knight of Auvergne stretched dead at the foot of the altar.

-The Great Siege, Malta 1565, Ernle Bradford, 1961.

Living the Extraordinary Catholic Life

2009-09-20T17:56:00.000-04:00

Listen Here

Fully Participating in Mass

2009-09-20T08:08:00.000-04:00

And it has nothing to do with moving about in front of the parish or carrying things around...

But to participate in the sacrifice of Chirist in not merely to assist at the expressive drama in order to acquire thereby renewal of interior devotion. It is above all to unite our intention with that of Christ in the very act of offering. It is to offer with Him in a mysterious Oneness: which enables us to share in the infinite merits which are the fruit of the offering on Calvary.

-Revue des Sciences Phil. et Theol., Father Mennesier, O.P., 1931, page 284.

The Galileo Myth

2009-09-20T07:52:00.000-04:00

Here is they myth about the Galileo case that is still popular with people who should know better.

Galileo discovered that the earth goes around the sun, using a telescope, which he invented. The Church, hostile to science, opposed him because of biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism. Hauled before the dreaded Inquisition, Galileo would not deny his findings. He was imprisoned in a dungeon, tortured, humiliated, and at length gave in. He signed the abject declaration they put before him and was sentenced to prison. As he tottered out of the court, a broken old man, he muttered, "E pur, se muove!" ("And yet, it does move!") This was a sinister triumph of obscurantism over science.

Every one of the above statements if false, an actually this legend was concocted over a hundred years after the death of Galileo, when it began to be used to stigmatize the Church as anti-science. Here is the real story. Most ancient Greek scientists accepted the geocentric theory, elaborated by Ptolemy. It is apparently so accurate in accounting for the position of the stars that it is still useful for navigation; in was in short, a theory that worked. Aristarchus proposed and alternative theory, the heliocentric, but it lacked the symmetry demanded by Greek thought (perfectly circular orbits, for example) and his calculations did not work very well. Hence, Ptolemy's remained the mainstream astronomical theory for many centuries. Dissatisfaction with it surfaced in the Middle Ages; inklings of gravity can be found in the work of some medieval physicists, and even Saint Thomas wrote that "the hypotheses of the astrologers (astronomers) are not necessarily true; in employing them they seem to explain the facts, but one is not forced to believe that they are right; perhaps some scheme which is still unknown to man can serve to explain all the appearances of the stellar universe."

Thomas would have had no problem with someone proposing an alternative to the reigning Ptolemaic orthodoxy, and in the early sixteenth century the Catholic cleric Copernicus did so. The Catholic Church allowed the publication of his work, but Calvin and Luther (who called Copernicsu and ass) condemned it on scriptural grounds. Some of the technical difficulties with Copernicus' theory were dealt with by Kepler; they made the geocentric theory more plausible, but Kepler was persecuted by the Protestants in Tubingen and had to flee to the Jesuits for protection in 1596.

Enter Galileo. Obviously, he did no invent the heliocentric theory, but he championed it strongly as not merely a theory but a fact. He was a better physicist than he was an astronomer, and astronomically he was often on shaky ground. He did not invent the telescope, though he did improve it. He did not discover sunspots either. He wildly wrong about the "moons of Jupiter" and the movement of the tides (as at least on pope tried to explain to him) and though comets were and optical illusion. Catholic scholars of the time may be forgiven for refusing to admit Galileo's version of heliocentrism as a fact, especially since differently formulated theories had not yet been disproved. Galileo, however, with his oversized ego and fiery temperament, become more and more intransigent as his theory met with increasing skepticism. Pope Urban VIII, once so much of a Galileo fan that he wrote an ode in his honor and showed him other signs of favor, suggested that his friend suppor the Copernican system without insisting on its absolute truth because it had not been proved. Galileo's response was to write his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems - Ptolemaic and Copernican, in which he places the Pope's words in the mouth of a dunce. This amounted to public mockery of a man who was not only Pope, but also a fellow Florentine almost as fiery and hot-tempered as himself.

In publicly trumpeting his theory as fact despite its apparent contradiction of Scripture, Galileo took it upon himself to interpret Scripture his own way, in spite of his lack of training as an exegete. "I commenced to play the theologian," he said, commenting on an after-dinner conversation with royalty and scholars. He was ordered to pipe down, but continued to stir up trouble until at length he found he had gone to far. Galileo was summoned to Rome to answer to a committee of cardinals. (In case you've seen pictures of a trembling old man in the midst of a mob of bloodthirsty Inquisitors, those present were exactly four: Galileo, two officials, and a secretary.) The grounds for complaint against the astronomer were, that if stated as a a fact, his theory could be seen as contradicting passages in Scripture and upsetting the faith of simple people; the public insults to the Pope; the fact that his assertions were not proven; and his apparent claim to the right to decide what Scripture meant in the light of unproven theory.

During the investigation, Galileo lived in a Vatican palace with a servant, his food and wine provided by the Tuscan ambassador. He was never in prison, and was neither tortured nor in fear of torture. The tribunal of cardinals read and voted on the report of the two officials who dealt with the accused; three refused to vote and the Pope never confirmed the verdict. As Descartes remarked, the action taken against Galileo was merely the disciplinary action of a committee. Galileo was ordered to remain in his home in Tuscany, where he lived for ten peaceful years, during which he did his best work -on motion and gravity- which would later be built upon by Newton. This whole sordid episode, the basis for the supposed opposition between science and religion, need never have happened at all if the Galileo had been reasonable as his opponents. Here is Saint Robert Bellarmine's position: "I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the center of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say that that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false. But I will not belief that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown to me." As Arthur Koestler remarks in The Sleepwalkers, "Galileo did not want to bear the burden of proof; for the crux of the matter is...that he had no proof."

-Catholic Thought and Culture in the Seventeeth Centry. The Scientific Revolution, Diane Mozcar, The Latin Mass, Fall 2006, pages 50-51.

Summorum Pontificum Survey

2009-09-12T21:04:00.004-04:00

Ecclesia Dei has a survey out to ascertain the growth of the Traditional Latin Mass to include success stories and instances where requests for Mass in the Extraordinary Form has been denied. The survey is open to anyone and can be downloaded here. Please help and get the word out. Pass this on to everyone you know.

Rights

2009-09-10T20:41:00.001-04:00

Benedict XVI, in Caritas in Veritate, addressed the troubled meaning of the word "right." Perhaps no word in modern philosophy has caused more trouble than this, at first sight, noble word. Many a philosopher and pope has tried valiantly to save this word from the meaning that it had when it first appeared in modern thought, generally with Hobbes. The word, literally, has no meaning. Or perhaps, better, it means whatever we want it to mean. It contains no inner criterion by which it must mean this or that. In the state of nature, people had an absolute freedom to do whatever they wanted. This freedom was called a "right." The state arose both to protect this empty "right" and to prevent it from justifying people killing each other off by doing whatever they wanted "by right."

-Called to Eternal Life: Babies and Rights, Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., Ignatius Insight, September 10, 2009

Blood Money

2009-09-06T16:18:00.003-04:00

To Christ Through Mary

2009-09-05T13:34:00.002-04:00

"Christ became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience that proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin, For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, "Be it unto me according to Thy Word" (Lk 1:38). And by her has He been born, to Whom we have proved so many Scriptures refer, and by Whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him."

-Dialogue with Trypho, Saint Justin Martyr, 150-160AD.

Prayer to Send Your Guardian Angel to Mass

2009-09-05T11:12:00.002-04:00

In those times when we cannot make Mass, we can ask our Guardian Angel to go for us.

O holy Angel at my side,
Go to church for me.
Kneel in my place, at Holy Mass
Where I desire to be.

At Offertory, in my stead,
Take all I am and own,
And place it as a sacrifice
Upon the Altar Throne.

At holy Consecration's bell,
Adore with Seraph's love,
My Jesus hidden in the Host,
Come down from heaven above.

Then pray for those I dearly love,
And those who cause me grief,
That Jesus' Blood may cleanse all hearts,
And suff'ring souls relieve.

And when the priest Communion takes,
Oh, bring my Lord to me,
That His sweet heart may rest on mine,
And I his Temple be.

Pray that this Sacrifice Divine,
May mankind's sins efface;
Then bring me Jesus' blessing home,
The pledge of every grace.

Padre Pio

2009-08-24T20:37:00.001-04:00

Eucharistic Adoration

2009-08-23T21:45:00.003-04:00

While nothing substitutes for actually going to a church for Eucharistic Adoration, there are times when this is not possible. However, one can still do so online.

Mass, Our Oneness with Christ

2009-08-22T17:54:00.002-04:00

The fundamental disposition of the soul of Jesus in the presence of God was one of unqualified docility, finding its completest expression in the sacrifice of the Cross. In the Mass, which the sacrifice of the Mystical Body, is found the same disposition expressed in a manner which is a sacramental presentation of the drama of Calvary. The Christian who enter wholeheartedly in the spirit of his incorporation with Christ and possesses in himself the mind of Christ towards life's circumstances, expresses through the Mass his oneness with Jesus in readiness to obey God unto death.

-The True Vine and its Branches, Father Edward Leen, P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1938, pages 9-10.

I get it now...

2009-08-21T20:14:00.003-04:00

From the comments section of another blog...

Craig Martin said...
Following the ordination of four priests in the Diocese of Kalamazoo, the youngest of the four celebrated his first Mass the next day--ad orientem! Latin Novus Ordo. The place was packed--with the new priest providing a brief catechesis prior to Mass as to ad orientem and the use of Latin, inviting all to enter into the sacred mystery more deeply.

A couple of observations--not a single person held hands (or orans) during the Pater Noster and there was no Exchange of Peace (and no one seemed to notice). As my wonderful wife remarked following the Mass in tears, "Uncle ... I get it now; I cried throughout the consecration".

Now she needs to go the Mass of Ages!

Oppressed by Spiritual Dryness

2009-08-21T18:56:00.003-04:00

When, therefore, you find yourself oppressed with dryness and distaste for spiritual things, ascertain whether or not it is to be attributed to any fault of your own, and if so, amend it instantly, not so much with a view to regaining that sensible enjoyment, but in order to banish everything that is the least displeasing to God. If, however, after careful scrutiny, you can discover no such fault, be not concerned about recovering your sensible fervor; rather exert yourself in the acquisition of that perfect devotion which consists in perfect conformity to the will of God. However barren and insipid your usual exercises may seem, be resolute and persevering in your execution of them, drinking cheerfully the bitter cup the heavenly Father has presented to you.

- Spiritual Combat, Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, 1589, Chapter 58.

Bring back the Auld Faith

2009-08-20T18:14:00.000-04:00

The Reformation was ‘an unmitigated disaster’ for Scottish Culture

Harry Reid turns history on its head in claiming that the Reformation was integral to establishing Scottish independence ("Are we feart to celebrate the Reformation?", The Herald, August 13). On the contrary, the Protestantisation of Scotland was the first and, historically, the most effective step in effecting the Englishing of Scotland. In this, it foreshadowed the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Act of Union of 1707.

The Scottish Protestant faction received direct military and financial support from the English. After the death of James V in 1543, the English envoys laboured openly to organise an Anglophile party of Scottish nobles, directed against the Catholic Church. To Elizabeth, Queen of Protestant England, it was intolerable that Scotland should exist as an independent Catholic state on her northern border, free to align herself with the enemies of her realm. This had to change.

Four campaigns were fought in Scotland by the English armies between 1544 and 1549, and in each case the imposition of Protestant worship followed the destruction wrought by the English armies.

John Knox and George Buchanan, the Calvinist, assumed the English party to be the progenitors of Protestantism. For them, the English were the "defenders of the Gospel", and the enemies of "idolatry" (that is, Catholicism). The overthrow of the Catholic Church was the raison d'etre of the English party. In September 1545, they boasted of the burning of the abbeys; in 1546, they claimed that "no mass was said" in Scotland.

Not only was the Reformation fatal for Scotland politically, it was, culturally, an unmitigated disaster. The vast bulk of Scottish Latin church music was destroyed during the Reformation.

In literature, we see the same post- Reformation sterility. After the makars, we have to wait until Burns and Scott before we hear an authentic creative voice again in Scotland.

The cultural damage caused at the Reformation was overwhelming. The Reformers "complained" that it took three days to destroy the archives at Rosslyn, a unique national treasure of Latin and Gaelic manuscripts held under the protection of the Sinclairs. The ruins of the great Borders abbeys, Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose, stand as mute witness to the material richness of Scottish medieval Catholic culture, a 1000-year-old legacy destroyed by the vandalism of the Reformation. And where are the glories of Scottish medieval stained glass or frescos and painting? For Gaelic culture especially, the Reformation was a death sentence.

I think the current hesitancy about celebrating the Reformation is perfectly understandable.

Brian Quail, Glasgow.

Saint Jean-Marie Vianney: Attacked by Satan

2009-08-19T20:30:00.002-04:00

From His Excellency, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix:

Satanic attacks were commonplace in the life of Fr. John Vianney.For 35 years, the devil taunted and harassed him, not only in spiritual ways but even in tangible and audible ones. These latter, demonic acts normally are quite rare. But, by the influence of the devil, the Cure of Ars’ bed was moved about, crashing noises resounded, fires were ignited, and other harassments occurred, all in an effort to stop or at least to curtail the priestly ministry of Fr. Vianney. Why did God allow these to occur? How did the saint respond? We shall examine these questions today. We shall also look, in subsequent parts of this series, at other defining characteristics of his life, namely his love for beauty, and his pastoral service of hearing confessions.

Infestations by the devil
Fallen angels, also known as devils and evil spirits, try to hinder all of us in our pursuit of holiness. Their ordinary ploy is by means of temptations, which God allows so that we can make good use of our freedom in resisting them and thus growing to fuller maturity in Christ.

In addition to these ordinary ploys, demons resort to other extraordinary acts, on rare occasions, with the same intention of thwarting the plan of God and undercutting our filial trust in Him. These harassments can be of three kinds: infestations, obsessions and possessions.

With infestations, the devil makes use of noises, outcries, rattling, apparitions and other extraordinary outbursts of some sensible nature aimed at terrifying people, intending to undercut their confidence in God. He used these repeatedly on the Cure of Ars, sometimes to keep him from getting badly needed sleep, at other times to disturb his peace of mind and to try to shake his trust in God. All these were aimed at disrupting the effective ministry of this holy priest.

Early on, Fr. Vianney became aware that these infestations were most outrageous just before an outstanding action of grace was about to occur through his priestly ministry, usually the conversion of a sinner. In fact, he remarked that the worst assaults of the devil happened when he was on the verge of “landing a big fish,” by which he meant welcoming back a baptized person who had fallen far into the darkness of despair. With this insight, Fr. Vianney calmly ignored the infestations, and looked forward with joyful hope to the next victory of grace about to occur through the Sacrament of Penance. If we ever have to deal with similar harassments, we should follow this saintly priest’s good example of calmly ignoring the devil, confidently turning to God in prayer, and deepening our communion with Christ through the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

Meditating upon Our Lady

2009-08-19T17:55:00.003-04:00

BESIDES THE METHODS of meditation already mentioned, there is another which is addressed particularly to the Blessed Virgin. We first consider the eternal Father, then Jesus Christ Our Lord, and finally, the Blessed Mother.

With regard to the eternal Father, there are two considerations. The first is the singular affection He cherished from all eternity for this most chaste Virgin whom He chose to be the mother of His Divine Son. The second is the eminent sanctity He was pleased to bestow upon her and the many virtues she practiced in her lifetime.

Meditating on the affection of the eternal Father for our Lady, you must begin by raising your mind above all created beings; look forward to the vast expanses of eternity, enter into the heart of God, and see with what delight He viewed the person destined one day to become the mother of His Son; beseech Him by that delight to give you sufficient strength against your enemies, especially those who most grievously afflict you. Contemplate, then, the virtues and heroic actions of this incomparable Virgin; make an offering of each or all of them to God, as they are of such efficacy as to obtain for you divine assistance in your particular necessities.

After this address yourself to Jesus, begging Him to be mindful of that loving mother who for nine months carried Him in her womb, and from the moment of His birth paid Him the most profound adoration. For this was her acknowledgment that this Child was at once God and man, her Creator and her Son. With compassion she saw Him poorly accommodated in a humble stable, nourished Him with her pure milk, kissed and embraced Him a thousand times with maternal fondness, and through His life and at His death, suffered for Him beyond expression. Present this picture to the Savior, that He may be compelled, as it were, by such powerful motives, to hear your prayers.

Appeal to the Blessed Virgin herself, reminding her of her commission from all eternity, to be the Mother of Mercy and the refuge of sinners, and that after her divine Son, you place your greatest confidence in her intercession. Present to her the fact, asserted by the learned and confirmed by miracles, that no one ever called upon her with a lively faith, and was left unaided.

Finally, remind her of the sufferings of her Son for your salvation, that she may obtain of Him the grace necessary to make proper use of His sufferings for the greater glory of that loving Savior.

- Spiritual Combat, Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, 1589, Chapter 48.

Pray for these Seminarians.

2009-08-19T17:45:00.005-04:00

Pray for the Seminarians of the Diocese of Raleigh. New this year are two young men from Saint Benedict's Chapel in Chesapeake.

Sancte Jean-Marie Vianney, Ora Pro Nobis.

The Ninth Day

2009-08-18T21:12:00.003-04:00

There are some movies that are "must see" for Catholics. The Ninth Day is one of those movies. Set in WWII, it accounts nine days afforded a Catholic priest "on leave" from the Dachau concentration camp. Sent to home in Luxembourg, he is challenged by the Gestapo to convince his bishop to accept and support the Nazi occupation in return for his own freedom.

Moving are the depictions of life inside the concentration camp as it recounts both the physical and mental cruelty employed the by Nazis inside of Dachau's block devoted entirely to Catholic priests. While we are all certainly familiar with the extensive genocide carried out by the Nazis against the Jewish people, many are not aware of their similar treatment to many other groups including Catholic priests. The movie also does a very good job of fairly discussing the response by the Catholic clergy during WWII with examples of both courage and cowardice as well as a historically accurate explanation of the Church and Pope Pius XII's methods of fighting Hitler's Germany. The movie does depict some very graphic violence, but all of it is in context of life in a concentration camp and in that regard, instructive for even Catholic children especially considering the strong depiction of moral courage.

While the names have been changed, the movie does actually portray the real life experience of Father Jean Bernard. His account of this experience can be found in the book, Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau.

Bishop of Tulsa on Facing the Lord

2009-08-18T20:37:00.006-04:00

In the latest Eastern Oklahoma Catholic, His Excellency, Bishop Edward J. Slattery has a great article on the beauty and fittingness of Ad Orientem Worship and the very negative effects of the priest facing the congregation. Of note, Bishop Slattery's diocese is home to the growing Our Lady of the Annunciation Monastery in Clear Creek that is home to the Benedictine Monks devoted entirely the Mass in the Extraordinary Form.

Lead us Your Excellency, Lead us!

Bethlehem Christians

2009-08-16T11:12:00.002-04:00

Please help support the remaining Christians who still reside in the Holy Land. Persecuted by both Muslims and Jews, there numbers are dwindling to the point that they are just below 2% of the total population. Many who still reside there have begin to handcraft Christian item such as Crucifixes, Rosaries and Nativity Scenes out of olive wood and export them to the United States for sale. In this way, they can make a living and remain in such places as the Bethlehem. More about them can be found on their website: www.bethlehemchristians.com

Traditional Wedding Mass Onboard Naval Station Norfolk

2009-08-16T10:22:00.007-04:00

Perhaps almost 50 years have passed since Mass in the Extraordinary Form has been celebrated on board Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia but that came to an end yesterday at Our Lady of Victory Chapel with Solemn High Mass following the wedding of a young officer and his beautiful bride. Both the wedding and Mass were absolutely magnificent from start to finish and truly a fitting way to honor God and begin a marriage. The Officiants were Father Neil Nichols, FSSP; Father Daniel Geddess, FSSP (Deacon) and Brother David Michael Spencer, O de. M (Sub-Deacon). Thanks to In Caritate Non Ficta for the picture.

New Website for Saint Benedict's Chapel

2009-08-16T10:17:00.003-04:00

Definitely worth a visit.

http://www.stbenedictschapel.org/

Our Lady of the Assumption

2009-08-15T12:00:00.000-04:00

The Assumption

Its flowers are too stainless to remain
Concealed in the dark caverns of the earth,
But must be lifted up by God again
To know a second spring - a glad rebirth!

How could Christ leave her body in the tomb
Who was above all other women blest,
Who gave Him refuge in her virgin womb,
And fed Him on the lilies of her breast?

Is she not fairer far than any flower?
What bloom could ever boast her loveliness?
What fragrance rose in its sequestered bower
Has ever vied with her in spotlessness?

Truly the Lord, her God, the Holy One,
Has placed His tabernacle in the sun.

[Thomas Burke, 1944]

Queen Mary Tudor

2009-08-09T20:52:00.005-04:00

"Her reign our deceivers have taught us to call the reign of "BLOODY QUEEN MARY"; while they have taught us to call that of her sister, the "GOLDEN DAYS OF GOOD QUEEN BESS." They have taken good care never to tell us, that, for every drop of blood that Mary shed, Elizabeth shed a pint; that the former gave up every fragment of the plunder of which the deeds of her predecessors had put her in possession, and that the latter resumed this plunder again, and took from the poor every pittance which had, by oversight, been left them; that the former never changed her religion, and that the latter changed from Catholic to Protestant, then to Catholic again, and then back again to Protestant; that the former punished people for departing from that religion in which she and they and their fathers had been born, and to which she had always adhered; and that the latter punished people for not departing from the religion of her and their fathers, and which religion, too, she herself professed and openly lived in even at the time of her coronation. Yet, we have been taught to call the former "bloody" and the latter "good"! How have we been deceived! And is it not time, then, that this deception, so injurious to our Catholic fellow-subjects and so debasing to ourselves, should cease?"

- A History of the Reformation of England and Ireland, William Cobbett, 1825, #223.

A Reminder of Our Baptism and its Salvific Effects

2009-08-02T16:59:00.008-04:00

At the door of the tabernacle was a laver of water wherein the priests washed; at the door of the temple of Solomon was a brazen urn filled with water, where the priests bathed to purify themselves for the ministry. They were figures of baptism. They were placed by command of God. And on entering the church you see water; it is a continuation of that ancient custom among the Jews. That water is placed at the entrance of the church to remind us of baptism and how we were washed from sin at the moment the water touched us, "and that we were born again of water and of the Holy Ghost." We take the water to put on our foreheads, for there it washed us when we were baptized; we put in on the forehead, for that is the noblest part of man; within that forehead is the brain, the instrument of the imagination in thought, and by that putting on of water we signify that all unholy thoughts are to be driven far from our minds in the church, by that water we are reminded of the promised we made at our baptism, to renounce the devil with all his works, and all his pomps; by the sign of washing ourselves with water we wash our souls with sorrow for all the sins we committed since last we entered the church, and that sorrow, sincere and lowly for past sins with take the water wipes out the little sins that we call venial. We make the sign of the cross. By that we signify that we bear the cross on our bodies, like St. Paul says: "For I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus in my body." Thus we as it were bear the cross on our bodies, not the visible marks of the wounds made by the nails and the spear, as on the bodes of St. Paul, St. Francis of Assisi, and many other saints, but by frequently making the sign of the cross on us we say that we are Christians, that is followers of Christ carrying our cross. Putting our fingers in that water, blessed and sanctified by the prayers of God's ministers, first we put our hand and touch our foreheads first because we must first have a knowledge of God; then our breast, because after knowing God we must love Him-the hear is the sea of love; then the left and right shoulders, the sign of work and labor, for after knowing God and loving Him, shown forth by the forehead and heart, we must work for Him with our hands, signified by touching the shoulder , saying" "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," the Trinity, the Three in One; in the name, not the names, to show that there are not thre Gods, but one God, not three natures or substance in God, but on nature and on substance, and for that reason we say in the name, the singular number, telling that there is but one God-head in the three diving Persons.

-Teaching Truth by Signs and Ceremonies or The Church, its Rites and Services, Explained for the People, Father James L. Meagher, Christian Press Association Publishing Co., 1896, Page 28-29.

Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word to Celebrate Solemn Mass

2009-08-02T14:37:00.003-04:00

Una Voce of Northern Alabama announced that the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word will celebrate a Solemen Mass on 22 August 2009 at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hanceville, Alabama from 0700-0800. It will be televised on EWTN and celebrated by Father Dominic Mary, Father Joseph Mary and Father Miguel Mary. This is of special note because it will be the first time such a Mass is televised on EWTN AND offered solely by the friars. Mother Angelica must surely be happy.

Pro-Life Rosary

2009-08-02T14:13:00.007-04:00

Saint Benedict's of Chesapeake sponsors a Group Rosary at Norfolk Planned Parenthood (425 W. 20th Street Norfolk, VA 23517) for the end of abortion every second Saturday following 9am Mass. The Rosary starts at approximately 10:30 am.

-Pray Centered-
-Family Friendly-
-No Signs-

Because It's True

2009-08-01T11:08:00.002-04:00

From Father Dwight Longenecker

"My older brother was asked by a Prot relative why he became a Catholic. Thinking that the response would be, "Well, I like stained glass windows and priests in vestments." His bald reply was, "Because it's true."

That's the sort of apologetics that makes the other side apoplectic. And it suits me."

The Church Will Never Change

2009-07-24T21:26:00.005-04:00

The Church will never change. And why? To tell all men, by these ancient customs, and olden forms, and quaint rites, that we never changed in anything since the times of the first Christians, of Apostles and of Christ. Men tell us, your Church has changed, your religion is not the religion of the Apostles and of the first ages, you have not the same belief as they in ancient times; you have all changed. But do you hear that Latin - that language of the Roman Empire? Do you see those garments of the clergy, observe those ceremonies, that music, those genuflections, those quaint and ancient rites, those peculiar forms, all so ancient, so peculiar, so different from the ways and the manners of the present day? They are the things of the ancient world, the manners and the customs of the east, the peculiarities of the people of ancient Rome and of Palestine, telling all men that we originated in olden times, throwing back in the faces of men the lie that we have changed, holding with wonderful tenacity to these rites, to tell the world how much stronger we hold the doctrine of God that we received from our Lord on the earth, teaching mankind in the silent but powerful eloquence of symbols and of imagery, that we are the same as in the times of the Apostles and the same as Christ made His Church and sent her forth to civilize, Christianize, and save the human race.

-Teaching Truth by Signs and Ceremonies or The Church, its Rites and Services, Explained for the People, Father James L. Meagher, Christian Press Association Publishing Co., 1896, Page 13.

Latin for Seminarians

2009-07-23T19:45:00.004-04:00

Sacrosanctum Concilium 36-1:
"The use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved in the Latin rites."

Optatam Totius 13:
"Moreover they [seminarians] are to acquire a knowledge of Latin which will enable them to understand and make use of the sources of so many sciences and of the documents of the Church. The study of the liturgical language proper to each rite should be considered necessary."

Code of Canon Law, Canon 249:
"The program for priestly formation is to make provision that the students are not only carefully taught their native language but also that they are well skilled in the Latin language."

Rules for Children at Mass (Really Rules for Parents)

2009-07-23T19:44:00.014-04:00

A recurring discussion that one often sees, centers around bringing children to Mass. Canon law does not require any Catholic under the age of seven (Canon 11, Canon 1247) to attend Mass, but certainly there is value in younger children attending both in the grace present and simple learning of what the Mass is all about. But detractors will often counter that the distractions of children either misbehaving or simply making noise takes away from their ability to participate. While my simple answer to the latter is "Offer it up" and out of charity give parents a chance to refocus their children as needed, I do believe that as parents we have an obligation to control our children to the best we can and ensure that they are behaving. By doing so, we not only show consideration to our fellow parishioners but also properly teach our children how they should behave and show the proper reverence to the Mass and our encounter with Christ.

In that regard, the issue isn't really children at Mass, but rather parents who don't mind their children at Mass or even perhaps have difficulty in minding their children. To that end, I present the following rules that my wife and I have either employed over the years or that I have gotten from others that will better enable parents to control and focus their children.

1. Sit near the front, preferably in the front three rows. This will allow the children to properly focus on the action at the altar. For infants, you may want to sit in the back as this will allow you to quickly egress without distracting others.

2. NO TOYS! That’s not for Mass. For the young ones who have trouble paying attention, give them Holy Cards or religious books to look at (preferably about the Mass). As they get older, provide them simple versions of the missal so that they can follow along.

3. NO FOOD! That provides another needless distraction. For the really younger children, a bit of water is sometimes necessary but should be avoided. Feed them before Mass and there shouldn't be any reason that they cannot go an hour or so without food. If a child needs to nurse, then do so discreetly in the pew.

4. Sit strategically with your spouse. Alternate so that you can have maximum presence among the children. Utilize older (and responsible) children in a similar manner to keep tabs on the younger ones. But remember, the ultimate responsibility for all of your children remains with you, the parent.

5. Face front. There is no need for your children to be looking at what is happening in the back pews. They will either become distracted by others or serve to distract others. Either way, no good comes of it. And besides, attention should be to what is happening on the altar.

6. If your children do misbehave (it happens to everyone), take them out and “fix” them even if it requires a discrete swat on the behind as an "attention getter" (That is, you are using it for effect vice to inflict discomfort). Let them regain their composure and then explain to them, kneeling on one knee so that you can look them straight in the eye, what is expected of their behavior and then return to the pew with them walking on their own. Do not carry them back. The last part is important as it allows them to return under their own self-control which is what we are trying to accomplish. Don’t worry about what others think when you are taking your child out in such instances. More than likely they will appreciate you being a parent.

7. Avoid the cry room (or “penalty box” as I call it). Often the behavior in there is out of hand. Not good reinforcement for what you are trying to do. But if you do find yourself in that position, the same rules should apply there as in Church.

8. Even before they receive their First Communion, have them accompany you to the communion rail and kneel beside you. Father may opt to give them a blessing but even if he does not, it is good training.

9. Some noise by the kids is to be expected. They are kids and it is part of our “overhead” in raising new Catholics. Just use good judgment on when you need to pull them out.

10. The Extraordinary Form of the Mass seems to calm and focus children much more than the Novus Ordo. Even with God's blessing of an overabundance of Children at Traditional Latin Mass parishes, the children are, in general, better behaved. I don't know all of the reasons why this is the case but I suspect one key factor has to do with everyone else quietly focusing on the Mass. Children learn by watching others to include older children.

Part of our participation at Mass is ensuring my children learn to do the same. We should bring all of our children to Mass, letting them know what is expected with regards to behavior and rectify accordingly when such expectations aren’t met. Yes they can act up at times but that is when we, as parents, simply need to excuse ourselves with child in tow to remedy the situation and then get them “back in the game.”

Modern Church Architecture, A Little Off Center?

2009-07-22T13:29:00.005-04:00

A friend of mine once told of a story of a local parishioner who was visiting another parish upon the construction of their new church. While touring the inside and noting that the tabernacle was not up on the altar and instead off to the side, he remarked to the priest, "Well Father, that's what you get when you go for the lowest bidder." Father replied, "How so?" To which the gentleman remarked, "Everything is a little off center." Perhaps that is more than just a metaphor. The following article by Deacon Fournier explains.

Bring Back the Tabernacle: A Call to Worship
By Deacon Keith A. Fournier
7/22/2009

Catholic Online

In the emptiness of our age, when men and women are hungering for an encounter with the Living Lord, we simply should not place that tabernacle in a hidden place.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - The Catechism of the Catholic Church says it clearly: “The tabernacle is to be situated "in churches in a most worthy place with the greatest honor." The dignity, placing, and security of the Eucharistic tabernacle should foster adoration before the Lord really present in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar.”

So why is the tabernacle hard to find? I wonder whether in an effort to encourage the recovery of a “sense of community”, as commendable as that may be, we have forgotten the One who invites us into the very communion of Trinitarian love and makes it all more than another secular experience.

How many times have you visited a Catholic Church and had to search for the tabernacle? Bishop D’Arcy is to be commended for his decision in his Diocese to promulgate norms on June 14, 2009, the feast of Corpus Christi, concerning the placement of the tabernacle.

In the emptiness of our age, when men and women are hungering for an encounter with the Living Lord, we simply should not place that tabernacle in a hidden place. There, the beauty of the Incarnation is revealed in the new “holy of holies.” There, Jesus Christ, who once dwelt in the womb of the Virgin, now dwells in the Eucharistic Sacrament, awaiting a dialogue of love with all who will come and spend time in prayer.

I am a “revert” to the Catholic Church who loves to spend time in prayer and adoration before the tabernacle. I love even more to come to the Altar during the Eucharistic Liturgy, to participate in the Mass. This is the when we who are mere mortals enter into the timeless sacrifice of Calvary and touch heaven itself; a time when we eat the bread of angels; when we come forward to receive the very body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. This God of the whole universe who condescended to become one of us gives Himself as food for our journey in the pilgrimage of life at this Eucharistic Sacrifice.

On that altar, Jesus Christ becomes true sustenance for us in our mission and sends us forth from the altar into the world to carry forward His redemptive work. This “work of worship” which is what “Liturgy” means, should be an encounter with the mystery, the grandeur, the intimacy and the pure wonder of a living God! So why are we also beginning to see the lessening of the use of the symbols which have for centuries made our sanctuaries so profoundly inviting?

Was the move of the Tabernacle out of the center of the sanctuary an over- reaction? I know it was intended to correct against a perceived “privatized piety” which some thought could distract from the community nature of the Eucharistic worship. Well, we truly need to ask ourselves whether the cure was worse than the perceived problem.

Has it also invited a trivializing of Liturgy? It seems that we have embraced a kind of minimalism in our worship. In some Catholic Churches there are no symbols that would even make you think that you have entered a Catholic Church. There are no icons or images reflecting the heavenly touching the earth, drawing the pilgrim into a transcendent encounter with the God in whom we are all invited to live and move and have our being.

How often at Liturgies are we reminded that this sanctuary is the place where the Lord will manifest Himself and give Himself away, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity on that Altar where heaven touches earth? Before the processional, we are more often invited to “greet everyone around us” then we are to prepare for that extraordinary encounter with the Living God. Why, at least in some of our parishes, have we discarded kneeling?

Though I understand that kneeling is primarily a western practice, there is usually no substitute such as bowing (primarily an eastern practice), no gestures of humbling ourselves in adoration before the living and true God. In effect, no use of the body in the profound act that is liturgical worship. Our bodies were made for gift and worship and gestures are a vital part of the language of worship. We are not Manichees!

I am not a Protestant Christian. I am a Catholic Christian. I have the utmost respect for my brethren who are Protestants in each of their confessions and communities. However, I am not one by choice. I don’t want a Protestant looking church building or stripped down worship.

I do not want barren liturgy and symbol-less Catholicism. Having tasted the full richness of liturgical life, I want to be fully Catholic. I also want to live my life, bring my wife, children, grandchildren and all who hunger for God, into a full, rich and beautiful experience of Catholic faith, worship and life.

There was a movement called Iconoclasm ("Image-breaking") in the eighth and ninth centuries in the Church. It was a heresy. The term has come to be associated with those who rejected icons, but I think it speaks to a broader problem. Icons are meant to put us in touch with the transcendent mysteries of our faith.

I pray with icons and have for many years. I cherish their role in the Eastern Church. In fact, one would never find an Eastern Church, Catholic or Orthodox, without icons. I maintain that the contemporary “iconoclasts” are those who now seek to de-mystify Christian faith, life, worship and practice. They are not the future of the Church but the past.

They sometimes think they are “freeing” the faithful from antiquated traditions; that the symbols of our worship, faith and life are a problem. They claim they have helped us by somehow making the faith ‘relevant”, “meaningful” or “contemporary.” They fail to grasp that by nature and grace human persons are symbolic. Man (and woman) is created in the image of God, and is a divine icon.Jesus Christ is the Icon of the Father. Symbols touch us at a much deeper level than words or emotive or affective participation. They touch us at the level where authentic religion and deep worship truly begins. It is there where we hunger the most for God.

Let’s bring the Tabernacle back into the prominent place where it belongs in our churches. I know the Lord is present in the people. I know He is present in His Word. However, I also know He is mysteriously and wonderfully present in that Tabernacle. Along with the Tabernacle, bring back the full beauty that is Catholic worship.

Imagine

2009-07-16T19:34:00.001-04:00

Saint Benedict's Announces the "Light of the World" Campaign

2009-06-28T17:08:00.005-04:00

Saint Benedict's Chapel has announced the "Light of the World" campaign in order to complete construction of their new chapel. From their brochure:

Saint Benedict Chapel located in Chesapeake, Virginia is a mission of St. Gregory the Great Church, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Formally established on September 13, 1992, at the initiative of Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, St. Benedict Chapel is a fully functioning chapel that has, at its spiritual and liturgical center, the ongoing use of the traditional sacramental rites of the Roman Church. Our aim is to carry on the Church's mission to edify and sanctify the faithful of the parish by means of its specific sacramental apostolate, under the authority of the local bishop.

One of the first chapels in America to offer exclusively the Traditional Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form) and Sacraments approved by Pope John Paul II, it has seen tremendous growth over the years. The chapel has grown from January 2008 with 111 registered families to February 2009 with over 170 registered families. The current chapel has a normal seating capacity of 150; we are unable to comfortably and safely service its young, growing congregation. Moreover, many visitors have expressed their desire to register once a new, "less crowded" church building is available. When completed, the church will have seating for nearly 300 and a spacious sanctuary. We are most grateful to Bishop Francis DiLorenzo who granted permission to build. Construction began soon after in August 2008. The completion date is December 2009.

On July 7, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the beauty and importance of the Tridentine Mass by issuing the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, a papal document encouraging and confirming the right of all Latin Rite priests to use this more ancient form of the Mass starting September 14, 2007. In reaffirming the essential place of the liturgy itself in the transmission of the faith, the Pope states that all priests may use the Missal of Blessed John XXIII. The Pope also encourages the use of all liturgical books in force in 1962. This text opens the whole Church to the treasures of these rites which presents many exciting opportunities for the future of the Catholic Church and the Richmond Diocese.

This is a worthy cause. Saint Benedict's Chapel is truly provides a traditional parish setting complete with orthodoxy and sound Catholic teachings, faithfulness to the Pope and Bishops and of course the Extraordinary Form of Liturgy. It is growing quickly as Catholics (and converts) rediscover their Catholic roots and traditions. And their are kids everywhere! Please consider giving. More can be found here: Light of the World

(New Liturgical Movement did a great piece on this chapel last November. Read about it here.)

Richtfest - Saint Benedict's Chapel

2009-06-28T15:48:00.024-04:00

Richfest is a particularly pleasant German tradition on which people who are building a house give thanks to the builders and all the other people involved in the construction work. It is celebrated when the walls of the house and the roof struts have been built. A wreath with ribbons tied to it known as a ‘Richtkranz, ‘Richtkrone’ or ‘Richtbaum’ is raised up onto the roof. The head carpenter recites a poem known as the Richtspruch or the Zimmermansspruch in which he thanks the client on behalf of all the labourers for work, wages and bread and asks for God’s blessing to be upon the house. The client drinks a toast of schnapps, or sometimes wine or sparkling wine and after the poem will throw their glass from the roof. The empty glass must break on the ground and brings good fortune and blessings onto the new house. The client will hammer in the last nail and says thanks to the workers by holding a feast. Here the guests enjoy schnitzel, bratwurst, pork knuckle or other savoury, German dishes washed down with beer. Friends, helpers, neighbours and relatives are also invited along to the Richtfest. (Source: www.freunde-deutschlands.de)

Saint Benedict's Chapel celebrated this event on 28 June with the cross being placed on top of the Church. From the artist's conception of the completed chapel, one can see that work is progressing nicely with an expected completion date of sometime near the beginning of new year (or earlier).

Interior of the new church.

Our priest, Father Neil Nichols, FSSP.

JLG ready to go aloft for a blessing.

Father Nichols and Mr. Matthew Sickelton (Supervisor) conduct final checks prior to going aloft.

Father Nichols blesses the cross.

Father Nichols releases his glass to be shattered after drinking a toast.

Mr. Matthew Sickelton drives the final nail to secure the cross.

If you are interested in helping with the construction of this chapel, please consider giving the the Light of the World Campaign.

May is Our Lady's Month

2009-05-16T18:44:00.000-04:00

May Crowning at Saint Benedict's Chapel

2009-05-10T17:38:00.002-04:00

Father Damian Abbaticchio Vocation Fund

2009-05-10T17:17:00.005-04:00

In initially sending out His Apostles, Christ instructed them to take nothing except the clothes on their backs, sandals and a walking stick. Their’s was a charge to cure the sick, cast out unclean spirits and most of all preach repentance. Everything else that they would need would come from the Lord through the hands of those that they met along the way.

In that spirit, we can assist the Lord in providing for our seminarians as they answer God’s call to become priests by supporting the Father Damian Abbaticchio Vocation Fund. Through a small monthly donation, you can support a local seminarian or other Catholics pursuing a monastic vocation by helping to offset costs associated with food, school books and other various living expenses that aren’t covered.

One hundred percent of all monies collected for this fund go directly to the cause. The only thing missing is your help and support.

Grants from this fund are open to individual Catholics in good standing with the Church who are enrolled in a traditional Catholic seminary or monastic order and in need of financial support. Selection will be based upon review by the Chairman, Vice-Chairman and Secretary-Treasurer. While grants will be directed almost entirely toward those in financial need with bona fide expenses related to pursuit of their vocation, UNA VOCE of Chesapeake will endeavor to support all applicants who meet the eligibility requirements as best possible.

All eligible applicants, upon acceptance, will be eligible for targeted grants by which donors can direct funding to a specific individual. Donations of a general nature (coming from non-targeted contributions and given for the overall good of the program) will be allocated on a continual basis in increments of $500 using a rolling schedule to cover all active recipients through their education.

To apply for this program or donate, please contact UNA VOCE of Chesapeake at:

757-842-6385
uvchesapeakva@gmail.com

All donations to this fund are tax deductible.

DOWNLOAD APPLICATION

Tax Exempt Status for UNA VOCE of Chesapeake

2009-05-09T19:50:00.003-04:00

UNA VOCE of Chesapeake is now recognized as a public charity exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions to UNA VOCE of Chesapeake are deductible under section 170 of the Code. Applicable documentation is available on request.

Benedictine Monks Need Help!

2009-04-09T17:51:00.000-04:00

While many contemporary monastic orders are suffering from declining vocations and aging members, some monks in France are dealing with a problem of an entirely different order: that of having so many vocations that they are running out of space. Although this problem is comparably enviable, it remains a problem nonetheless...

Read More...

From Una Voce International

2009-02-13T18:31:00.004-05:00

Statement

by Leo Darroch, Executive President of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce issued 11th February 2009

ARCHDIOCESAN GUIDELINES ON THE CELEBRATION OF THE MASS ACCORDING TO THE RITE OF THE ROMAN MISSAL PUBLISHED IN 1962 (TRIDENTINE MASS)

In accordance with the norms laid down by the Apostolic Letter, issued motu proprio, of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum, We hereby establish the following guidelines and conditions on the celebration of the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962 (Tridentine Mass) in the Archdiocese of Manila:

The regulation of the celebration of this extraordinary form of the Mass belongs to the Archbishop of Manila, through the Minister of the Ministry for Liturgical Affairs of the Archdiocese of Manila.

This form of Mass is to be celebrated only at the Christ the King Chapel of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Manila once a month, but not on Sundays and Solemnities.

The presider at this form of celebration should be a priest duly appointed by the Archbishop of Manila.

To ensure the solemnity and orderliness of the celebration of this form of Mass, the participation of other ministers (i.e., lectors, Master of Ceremonies, servers, choir, etc.) in the liturgy is to be determined and regulated by the Ministry for Liturgical Affairs of the Archdiocese of Manila.

The celebration of the extraordinary form of the Mass in this Chapel is open to any individual or group in the Archdiocese of Manila who may have the desire to participate in such celebrations.
Further requests from individuals or groups from the parishes of or who belong to the Archdiocese of Manila to celebrate this form of Mass is to be directed to join the monthly celebration at the Manila Cathedral.

It is highly encouraged that a missal / booklet of the rite in Latin and English be prepared to help the faithful follow the celebration. It is like wise encouraged that those who will participate in this Mass undergo a catechetical orientation before the celebration.

The Archbishop of Manila has jurisdiction over this celebration and, therefore, can decide to limit or discontinue this monthly celebration anytime he judges that this is not consonance with the whole pastoral direction of the Local Church.

Given in Manila, this 8th day of December 2008.

+GAUDENCIO B. CARDINAL ROSALES
Archbishop of Manila

COMMENT:

There is so much in error with these guidelines that even though they mention the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, it is clear that the person who drafted the guidelines cannot possibly have read the Motu Proprio. The writer seems unaware that the previous rigidly-controlled state that existed under the indults of 1988 (Ecclesia Dei adflicta) and 1984 (Quattuor abhinc annos) ended abruptly at midnight on 13th September 2007. Under these indults, people and priests had to obtain permission from their local Ordinary before any celebrations of Mass using the Missal of 1962 could take place. Under Summorum Pontificum, which took effect from midnight on 13th September (i.e. from 14th September 2007), the permission to celebrate Mass according to the Missal of 1962 has been granted by the Supreme Legislator, the Pope, to "each Catholic priest of the Latin rite, whether secular or regular," to "use the Roman Missal published by Blessed Pope John XXIII in 1962,…and may do so on any day with the exception of the Easter Triduum. For such celebrations……..the priest has no need for permission from the Apostolic See or from his Ordinary." [Summ. Pont. Art 2]. The fact that one does not need the permission of the local ordinary to celebrate or attend Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form, does not, in itself, derogate from the right of bishops to regulate liturgical matters in their sees. No doubt the Supreme Pontiff took that right into account when he assumed that no Catholic bishop would dissent from the superseding right of the Successor of Peter to regulate the liturgy for the universal Church.

Therefore, not only has any priest of the Latin rite the freedom to celebrate Mass on any day of the year (excluding the Easter Triduum but NOT excluding Sundays), but the Motu Proprio removes a need to obtain permission from anyone - either from the Holy See or his local bishop [Summ. Pont. Art.2].

To comment specifically on the detail of the guidelines:

1. Despite what is said in the opening statement these guidelines are NOT in accordance with the norms laid down by the Apostolic Letter of Pope Benedict XVI.
2. In Summorum Pontificum, the Supreme Pontiff dispensed local ordinaries from “regulating” the celebration according to the Extraordinary Form when, in his Letter to Bishops accompanying the Motu Proprio, His Holiness states "The present norms are also meant to free Bishops from constantly having to evaluate anew how they are to respond to various situations."
3. "The presider at this form of celebration should be a priest duly appointed by the Archbishop…." [Guidelines, para.4] There is no 'presider' at a Mass in the Extraordinary Form, this is a term introduced with the new order of Mass. In the Extraordinary Form of Mass there is a 'celebrant' who offers up the sacred mysteries acting in persona Christi.
4. Concerning paragraph 5 of the Guidelines - it is the duty of all Sacred Pastors to ensure the solemnity and orderliness of the celebration of ALL forms of liturgy in their diocese so it needs to be explained why the Extraordinary Form requires special attention? As the Extraordinary Form and the Ordinary Form are "two uses of the same rite" [Summ. Pont. Art. 1], is the participation of other ministers (i.e., lectors, Master of Ceremonies, servers, choir, etc.) in the Ordinary Form also to be determined and regulated by the Ministry for Liturgical Affairs of the Archdiocese of Manila?
5. It is commendable that a missal / booklet of the rite in Latin and English be prepared to help the faithful follow the celebration but why should those who wish to participate in this Mass have to undergo a catechetical orientation before the celebration? Will this requirement for a catechetical orientation apply equally to those attending the Ordinary Form?
6. The local Ordinary has jurisdiction over this celebration in the sense that he must ensure that ALL liturgy under his jurisdiction is celebrated in conformity with the laws of the Church. Whatever is decided in relation with the Extraordinary Form of Mass must be decided "in full harmony, however, with all that has been laid down by the new norms of the Motu Proprio" [Letter to Bishops]. It is an abuse of authority, and in disobedience to the law expressed by the Supreme Pontiff, our Holy Father, to interfere in the right granted by the Successor of Peter to any priest in good standing to celebrate the Extraordinary Form of Mass. The Pope, the Supreme Legislator, has issued a DECREE, for the benefit of all priests and faithful of the Roman Rite in the Universal Church and no local bishop can interfere with this law and impose his own conditions in an act of public disobedience to the Vicar of Christ .

The way forward for any priest or member of the faithful is clear. In accordance with article 7 of the Motu Proprio they must contact immediately the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei for clarification and send a copy of the guidelines that obstruct the provisions of Summorum Pontificum. They should write to:

H.E. Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos,
President, Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei,
Palazzo della Congr. per la Dottrina della Fide,
Piazza del Sant Ufficio,
00193 Rome,
ITALY.
Fax: +39 06 69 88 34 12. Email: eccdei@ecclsdei.va.

Leo Darroch, Executive President - International Federation Una Voce.
11th February 2009.

http://www.ifuv.org/docs/statement_manilla.html

Just in Case there is any Doubt

2009-02-11T15:38:00.002-05:00

Robert M. Forrest Jr.- Resquiescat in Pace

2009-02-10T15:15:00.002-05:00

VIRGINIA BEACH - Robert Meade Forrest Jr., 84, passed away Feb. 7, 2009. He was born March 15, 1924, in Norfolk, to the late Robert and Lillian Forrest. Bob was a businessman who owned and operated Forrest Exterminating Service. He was a parishioner at St. Benedict's Chapel where he served as a past choir director. Bob was a musician and loved to travel and ski. Left to cherish his memory are his wife of 66 years, Emma Lee Forrest; sons, Robert M. Forrest III and wife Deborah, Richard L. Forrest and wife Louise, Gary S. Forrest and wife Katie, D. Keith Forrest and Paul G. Forrest; daughter, Joyce A. Strain and husband Douglas; 13 grandchildren and 12 great- grandchildren. A Requiem Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in St. Benedict's Chapel followed by entombment at Rosewood Memorial Park. A rosary service will begin at 6:30 p.m. today in Smith & Williams Funeral Home, Kempsville Chapel, with a visitation following until 9 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations be made to the American Parkinson Disease Association or the St. Benedict's building fund. You may pay condolences to the family at www.mem.com.
Link

Support the Holy Father!

2009-02-03T14:47:00.001-05:00

GO HERE NOW AND SIGN THIS LETTER FOR THE POPE!

Appeal from plain Catholic faithful.

This letter gathers different Catholic faithful, from different tendencies, who wish to support the pope in his brave gesture. The authors of this site assure you of the complete confidentiality guaranteed to the names of the signatories, the list of which will be transmitted only to the Holy See.

On January, 21st, You decided, Holy Father, to put an end to the excommunication which pressed on the bishops of the The Society of Saint Pius X. By this brave gesture, You acted as the minister of the herd entrusted to You by God.

We are men and women invested in the life of our city, we are fathers and mothers with a family or unmarried and, after stormy times, when « the boat seemed to take the water everywhere », we wish to build with You the Church of tomorrow with its Tradition for base. This project includes inevitably the transmission of the Faith to the future generations, by the love of the Catholic Liturgy and by the defence of the human life.

By this letter, we wish above all to express You our deep gratitude. If this historic gesture can provoque on You the denial from certain hostile media making confused mixtures, it arouses in us a tremendous joy and fills us with Hope. We prayed for Your intentions, according to the demand which You formulated at the beginning of Your Pontificate: « Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.(1)»

We want, by affixing our signature to this letter, to communicate to You our age and the number of our children to say to You that with You, we want to build the Christendom for the generations which will follow us, hoping wholeheartedly that this Christianity will be self-confident and will proclaim to all World the Credo.

So, it is in a spirit of filial respect that we bring You our support and our daily prayers for the pursuit of Your Pontificate, so that God's Church will emerge increased by it.

(1) Benedict XVI, April 25th, 2005

"Nothing emboldens more the audacity of the naughty ones than the weakness of kind people"

Leon XIII, encyclical Sapientæ Christianæ, January 10th, 1890

A Great Deal the Supports a Great Cause

2009-01-05T21:53:00.002-05:00

Mount Saint Mary's Seminary Vespers Schola has recorded a great CD to support a good cause and at a great price. Proceeds from the sale of the CD will go towards the restoration of Immaculate Conception Chapel and the restoration of the organ in St. Bernard's Chapel.

How to order:

Release date: December 15, 2008.
Cost: $15/CD
Shipping/handling: $4 (first CD), $1.50 for each additional CD

Email: scholacd@msmary.edu

Phone: 301-447-5295

Fax: 301-447-5895 (attn: Schola CD)

Mail: Send check or money order (payable to "Mount St. Mary's Seminary") to:
Attn: Schola CD
Mount St. Mary's Seminary
16300 Old Emmitsburg Rd.
Emmitsburg MD 21727

Credit Cards: Unfortunately, we are not set up for online ordering at this time. Credit card orders, however can be received over the phone, email or via fax. Please make sure to include the CVV no. (the 3-digit no. after your credit card number on the reverse of your card.)

Coming soon: The album should be available on iTunes, Amazon, Napster and other online sites!

Kneeling for Communion

2008-12-15T16:41:00.004-05:00

From the new Prefect of Divine Worship in a recent interview. Translation and find courtesy of Rorate Cæli.

La Razón: Nevertheless, Benedict XVI has reiterated in some instances the propriety of receiving communion kneeling and in the mouth. Is it something important, or is it a mere matter of form?

Cardinal Cañizares Llovera: No, it is not just a matter of form. What does it mean to receive communion in the mouth? What does it mean to kneel before the Most Holy Sacrament? What dies it mean to kneel during the consecration at Mass? It means adoration, it means recognizing the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; it means respect and an attitude of faith of a man who prostrates before God because he knows that everything comes from Him, and we feel speechless, dumbfounded, before the wondrousness, his goodness, and his mercy. That is why it is not the same to place the hand, and to receive communion in any fashion, than doing it in a respectful way; it is not the same to receive communion kneeling or standing up, because all these signs indicate a profound meaning. What we have to grasp is that profound attitude of the man who prostrates himself before God, and that is what the Pope wants.

Holiness Attracts! - Sacred Music Colloquium

2008-12-07T13:57:00.001-05:00

More good news.
---------------

The Conversion of Dr. David A. White

2008-12-03T20:21:00.004-05:00

Dr. White converted to the Catholic Faith in 1979. He has won some 35 converts at the U.S. Naval Academy to the Catholic Faith (Some now serving here in the Norfolk area).
----------------------------
Since I am a professor of Literature I'll tell a story.

I converted to the Catholic Church at the age of thirty-one, some years ago. I was raised liberal Protestant. That adjective is extremely important because there are Protestants who know their Bible, who know something of Christian doctrine. They're the fundamentalists-hard-core conservative ones.

I was raised liberal Protestant which means I had an upbringing in terms of church-going, of church suppers, and there were some lovely people. I was lucky to be raised in a very good home with good parents but I never received any real religious training. I memorized a few scripture verses. Occasionally I would go and sit through a Sunday morning worship ceremony in the bare church, not pay attention to the sermon, sing a few hymns and then go home. That was about it. This means that when I was seventeen and was free and went off to university, I just gave the whole thing up.

I say in sorrow, by the way, that this is what I now see my Catholic students doing. Very often, when the young people leave home, as soon as they get away, they stop going to Church. I know that. That's what I did. It is a mark of Protestantism, because there is nothing there to hold on to and they know it. As a result they leave.

So I went into the university, a modern university, where they taught me the three things that I think you get at a modern university: hate your family, hate your country, hate God (Who "doesn't exist," but hate Him anyway). That's what my head was filled with. So that when I graduated and went on to graduate school, my head was filled with absolute nonsense. I still knew nothing about religion, although I would talk about it at length, mainly to try to debunk it. As far as I was concerned, there was only nature. Nature was all we needed. Everything was material. There was really only one "Commandment", that was, "We should be nice to each other even though life has no meaning" - which is a very peculiar thought.

When I began teaching, that's the sort of nonsense I was teaching. Absolute nonsense, because I knew nothing. I had no business being in front of a class teaching anything because I didn't know anything. But I was a modern teacher with a head full of feathers and sawdust that I spewed out around the room. Then one day, when I was teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia, I had a student in the back of the class, who raised his hand and challenged me. He began debating me in the classroom. In no time at all, I became aware of a situation that most teachers live in terror of: I had a student in my class who knew a hundred times more than what I knew. I was an absolute ignoramus and this student was really smart.

Now the only thing I can say to my credit is that I began coming into class - I am not making this up, this is not an exaggeration - I would come into class with a note book, stand at the podium, ask the young man a question and then take notes of the answers he gave.

This is one of many illustrations that the modern world, in every detail, is a place of inversion. The symbol of the devil is a man turned upside down. If you look at anything in the modern world, it's inverted. My classroom was inverted. I was being paid to teach and I was standing at the podium taking notes from a student who knew something. Now fortunately, I was lucky enough to get a quick education. The rest of the students really didn't care. Most of them slept through it, which is what they'd been doing during most of my lectures anyway. Well the long and the short of it was, we debated, we talked for hours, for days, for weeks. And he won every debate, every single debate. God be praised that I had a logical head so that I could follow an argument and know when I'd lost one. I lost every debate we had.

Now if you pursue questions of truth; that is, is there truth, how can we know it? If there is truth, what do we do about it? Where do we find it? You're going to end up at Christ. It's going to happen. So at that point, I realized that Christ and His message is not only important and serious, but it is true. Having realized this, it was clear that I had to get involved with some church.

There were two choices: the fundamentalist Protestants, because they seem to know their Bible, and they do believe in something; or the Catholic Church.

As a student of literature and as a professor of literature, I knew something about the past. Now, the great writer Evelyn Waugh, who converted to Catholicism, said of the Catholic Church that "in considering it, any man has to know that it is true because it presents a coherent philosophical system that makes intransigent historical claims." If you look at the philosophy of the Catholic Church, it is air tight, it is reasonable and complete. If you look at the history of the Church over two thousand years, it has given us everything that is good. Hence, how could it not be true? Therefore when the time came I chose the Catholic Church.

Now my student who had challenged me in class had converted about six months before I did. He had not been a Catholic either; he was simply an honest mind seeking the truth. He had walked into a Catholic Church and said to the priest, "I want to become a Catholic." It wasn't long before this young man was battling with the priest who was supposed to be giving instruction, because the priest was presenting a whole series of new ideas in a new way. This brilliant young man was rightly challenging these new ideas, saying to the priest, "No, Father, the Church teaches this...".

So you now had a convert instructing the priest in the Faith. My friend did not want me to go through that experience. He went all around the Philadelphia area until he found an elderly Irish Monsignor, out in one of the suburbs, who had the Faith. So once a week, I would take the train to go out there and receive real instruction from a priest who had the Catholic Faith. It was a great blessing. I would also go out to his Mass, the Novus Ordo, which he said very reverently.

So at the beginning of my conversion, I wasn't quite aware of what had happened regarding the liturgy. But after I was received into the Church, I decided to attend Mass in center city Philadelphia, where I was living at the time. Suddenly, I walked into something that looked just like the empty Protestant service I had left when I was seventeen. I'd been there, I'd seen it, I knew it. I thought, what is this? This can't be what I've joined, this can't be what it's about. Two thousand years can't have come to this! I've already rejected this. Nonetheless, I still went to this new Mass for a while. Then I began doing the same thing again; I would sleep in on Sunday mornings because there didn't seem to be a reason to go.

Then one summer I was home visiting in Wisconsin where I am originally from. I decided to fulfill my duty and go to Mass. I got in the car to drive to Church "A". It was my intention to drive to Church "A", St. Patrick's. I knew where it was. I backed out of the driveway, I headed for St. Patrick's and somehow, I arrived at Church "B", on the other side of town. It was one of those oddities. I was thinking about other things, I was not paying attention. I wound up not just at the wrong church, but at a church miles away from the one I intended to go to. I was at Sacred Heart Parish and I didn't know how I got there.

I looked in. They had a Mass starting. I was just baffled. What am I doing here? But I thought, I don't have time to get over to St. Patrick's. I'll go to Mass here. I walked inside and heard "Introibo ad altare Dei", and my goodness, there it was. I heard this strange language. There was the priest with his back to us. I had no idea what was happening. I then realized that this was that "Old Mass" I'd heard about. About half way through it, I said to myself, this is Catholic! And I was home at a place that I had never known before.

The old Mass, for me, at that moment, was entirely new. It was not "old". It was home! At that instant I knew that this is what the Catholic Faith is all about. I knew that this is how I would worship God in the future. I mentioned earlier that all good things have come out of that Old Latin Mass, the Mass of all time. I'll give you examples.

I teach literature; I have a special love for music and for art. It is the Mass that gave us western music. The oldest western music we have written is Gregorian Chant. If you take a music history course, you'll begin with Chant, continue through Church music, and you won't find music secularized until much later. But even when music becomes secularized, you're still going to have Mozart writing Masses and Haydn writing Masses. You'll even have someone like Beethoven who wrestled with God his whole life, still writing the great "Missa solemnis" and seeing the priest on his death bed. That is the traditional music.

If you go to Western art, it is Catholic. It grows out of the Church. That's where it comes from. Western art as we know it comes from the Church. Go to an art gallery. Go back to the beginning of art and, (aside from Greece and Rome - still the beginning of art as we know it) the great Renaissance works - their subject matter is Catholic.

Go to literature, and you have Dante, you have Shakespeare. The writers have been Catholic. All of that came out the Mass.

The Novus Ordo Mass, in the thirty years its been around, has given us lousy music, lousy literature, putrid liturgical dancing. In fact, it has only given us one thing that has actually caught on and become culturally significant. And when I heard this, I nearly fell off my chair, but it's true. The New Mass gave us one thing that the culture knows, and that is Beavis and Butthead - that ghastly, ghastly cartoon series that all your children know from MTV. I heard the creator of it speaking on television. He was asked how he came up with the idea. He answered, "Well I was sitting at Mass in my Catholic high school, and I wasn't really paying attention, and the priest said 'this is the body of Christ' and this guy behind me went 'heh heh heh heh heh heh heh,' and suddenly I got the whole thing in my mind and started drawing Beavis and Butthead."

There you have the one cultural fruit of the Novus Ordo Mass. If you expect anything other than that from that ceremony, I would say, you're not going to get it. The best you can hope for is the kind of barrenness that Protestant worship has given to the world. Protestant worship has not produced great art, great music. It's given us a few good hymns, but it has produced very little and now it's fading away. There is nothing more to produce. The same will be true with the new Mass.

It's time for those in the Church to come home to the true Mass. The Mass is our heritage, even for those of us who were not born into it. It is our heritage. I thank God every day that I found it. When I get up on Sunday mornings and make the hour drive to the Tridentine Mass, it's nothing compared to the great glory and beauty of the majestic Sacrifice that awaits me there on the altar when I arrive.

New Location for the Extraordinary Form in the Richmond Diocese!

2008-11-28T08:27:00.005-05:00

Now being offered every Sunday at 7:00 am at Saint Peter and Paul Church in Palmyra.

Address: 4309 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy
Palmyra, VA 22963
Phone: 434-589-5201
E-mail: office@saintspeterpaul.org

Modesty

2008-11-23T20:47:00.003-05:00

Father Neil Nichols, FSSP provides a powerful message on the virtue of modesty in dress. Thank you father for providing such an important message with charity of heart and concern for our souls.

Modesty in Dress

Going the Distance for Life

2008-11-21T14:57:00.000-05:00

Still Needed Today (Perhaps Now More Than Ever)

2008-10-04T15:38:00.002-04:00

RERUM NOVARUM

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON CAPITAL AND LABOR

To Our Venerable Brethren the Patriarchs,
Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other ordinaries
of places having Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See.

Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor

That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvellous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self reliance and closer mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busied with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.

2. Therefore, venerable brethren, as on former occasions when it seemed opportune to refute false teaching, We have addressed you in the interests of the Church and of the common weal, and have issued letters bearing on political power, human liberty, the Christian constitution of the State, and like matters, so have We thought it expedient now to speak on the condition of the working classes.(1) It is a subject on which We have already touched more than once, incidentally. But in the present letter, the responsibility of the apostolic office urges Us to treat the question of set purpose and in detail, in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men's judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.

3. In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

4. To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.

5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.

6. What is of far greater moment, however, is the fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation, for the brute has no power of self direction, but is governed by two main instincts, which keep his powers on the alert, impel him to develop them in a fitting manner, and stimulate and determine him to action without any power of choice. One of these instincts is self preservation, the other the propagation of the species. Both can attain their purpose by means of things which lie within range; beyond their verge the brute creation cannot go, for they are moved to action by their senses only, and in the special direction which these suggest. But with man it is wholly different. He possesses, on the one hand, the full perfection of the animal being, and hence enjoys at least as much as the rest of the animal kind, the fruition of things material. But animal nature, however perfect, is far from representing the human being in its completeness, and is in truth but humanity's humble handmaid, made to serve and to obey. It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially from the brute. And on this very account - that man alone among the animal creation is endowed with reason - it must be within his right to possess things not merely for temporary and momentary use, as other living things do, but to have and to hold them in stable and permanent possession; he must have not only things that perish in the use, but those also which, though they have been reduced into use, continue for further use in after time.

7. This becomes still more clearly evident if man's nature be considered a little more deeply. For man, fathoming by his faculty of reason matters without number, linking the future with the present, and being master of his own acts, guides his ways under the eternal law and the power of God, whose providence governs all things. Wherefore, it is in his power to exercise his choice not only as to matters that regard his present welfare, but also about those which he deems may be for his advantage in time yet to come. Hence, man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, inasmuch as from the produce of the earth he has to lay by provision for the future. Man's needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to man a source that is stable and remaining always with him, from which he might look to draw continual supplies. And this stable condition of things he finds solely in the earth and its fruits. There is no need to bring in the State. Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body.

8. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry, and by the laws of individual races. Moreover, the earth, even though apportioned among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, inasmuch as there is not one who does not sustain life from what the land produces. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; hence, it may truly be said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or from some toil, some calling, which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself, or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth.

9. Here, again, we have further proof that private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature. Truly, that which is required for the preservation of life, and for life's well-being, is produced in great abundance from the soil, but not until man has brought it into cultivation and expended upon it his solicitude and skill. Now, when man thus turns the activity of his mind and the strength of his body toward procuring the fruits of nature, by such act he makes his own that portion of nature's field which he cultivates - that portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress of his personality; and it cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as his very own, and have a right to hold it without any one being justified in violating that right.

10. So strong and convincing are these arguments that it seems amazing that some should now be setting up anew certain obsolete opinions in opposition to what is here laid down. They assert that it is right for private persons to have the use of the soil and its various fruits, but that it is unjust for any one to possess outright either the land on which he has built or the estate which he has brought under cultivation. But those who deny these rights do not perceive that they are defrauding man of what his own labor has produced. For the soil which is tilled and cultivated with toil and skill utterly changes its condition; it was wild before, now it is fruitful; was barren, but now brings forth in abundance. That which has thus altered and improved the land becomes so truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable from it. Is it just that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labor should be possessed and enjoyed by any one else? As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labor should belong to those who have bestowed their labor.

11. With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquillity of human existence. The same principle is confirmed and enforced by the civil laws-laws which, so long as they are just, derive from the law of nature their binding force. The authority of the divine law adds its sanction, forbidding us in severest terms even to covet that which is another's: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife; nor his house, nor his field, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his."(2)

12. The rights here spoken of, belonging to each individual man, are seen in much stronger light when considered in relation to man's social and domestic obligations. In choosing a state of life, it is indisputable that all are at full liberty to follow the counsel of Jesus Christ as to observing virginity, or to bind themselves by the marriage tie. No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God's authority from the beginning: "Increase and multiply."(3) Hence we have the family, the "society" of a man's house - a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.

13. That right to property, therefore, which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family; nay, that right is all the stronger in proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group. It is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten; and, similarly, it is natural that he should wish that his children, who carry on, so to speak, and continue his personality, should be by him provided with all that is needful to enable them to keep themselves decently from want and misery amid the uncertainties of this mortal life. Now, in no other way can a father effect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance. A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, "at least equal rights"; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.

14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the precincts of the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, public authority should intervene to force each party to yield to the other its proper due; for this is not to deprive citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the commonwealth must go no further; here, nature bids them stop. Paternal authority can be neither abolished nor absorbed by the State; for it has the same source as human life itself. "The child belongs to the father," and is, as it were, the continuation of the father's personality; and speaking strictly, the child takes its place in civil society, not of its own right, but in its quality as member of the family in which it is born. And for the very reason that "the child belongs to the father" it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents."(4) The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the structure of the home.

15. And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found.

16. We approach the subject with confidence, and in the exercise of the rights which manifestly appertain to Us, for no practical solution of this question will be found apart from the intervention of religion and of the Church. It is We who are the chief guardian of religion and the chief dispenser of what pertains to the Church; and by keeping silence we would seem to neglect the duty incumbent on us. Doubtless, this most serious question demands the attention and the efforts of others besides ourselves - to wit, of the rulers of States, of employers of labor, of the wealthy, aye, of the working classes themselves, for whom We are pleading. But We affirm without hesitation that all the striving of men will be vain if they leave out the Church. It is the Church that insists, on the authority of the Gospel, upon those teachings whereby the conflict can be brought to an end, or rendered, at least, far less bitter; the Church uses her efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by her precepts the life and conduct of each and all; the Church improves and betters the condition of the working man by means of numerous organizations; does her best to enlist the services of all classes in discussing and endeavoring to further in the most practical way, the interests of the working classes; and considers that for this purpose recourse should be had, in due measure and degree, to the intervention of the law and of State authority.

17. It must be first of all recognized that the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may in that intent do their utmost, but all striving against nature is in vain. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition. Such unequality is far from being disadvantageous either to individuals or to the community. Social and public life can only be maintained by means of various kinds of capacity for business and the playing of many parts; and each man, as a rule, chooses the part which suits his own peculiar domestic condition. As regards bodily labor, even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. "Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labor thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life."(5)

18. In like manner, the other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently - who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment - they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.

19. The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital. Mutual agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces confusion and savage barbarity. Now, in preventing such strife as this, and in uprooting it, the efficacy of Christian institutions is marvellous and manifold. First of all, there is no intermediary more powerful than religion (whereof the Church is the interpreter and guardian) in drawing the rich and the working class together, by reminding each of its duties to the other, and especially of the obligations of justice.

20. Of these duties, the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss. The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers - that is truly shameful and inhuman. Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages axe fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this - that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one's profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. "Behold, the hire of the laborers... which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."(6) Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen's earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?

21. But the Church, with Jesus Christ as her Master and Guide, aims higher still. She lays down precepts yet more perfect, and tries to bind class to class in friendliness and good feeling. The things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death. Exclude the idea of futurity, and forthwith the very notion of what is good and right would perish; nay, the whole scheme of the universe would become a dark and unfathomable mystery. The great truth which we learn from nature herself is also the grand Christian dogma on which religion rests as on its foundation - that, when we have given up this present life, then shall we really begin to live. God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting; He has given us this world as a place of exile, and not as our abiding place. As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them-so far as eternal happiness is concerned - it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright. Jesus Christ, when He redeemed us with plentiful redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which in such large proportion are woven together in the web of our mortal life. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his Saviour. "If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him."(7) Christ's labors and sufferings, accepted of His own free will, have marvellously sweetened all suffering and all labor. And not only by His example, but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief more easy to endure; "for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."(8)

22. Therefore, those whom fortune favors are warned that riches do not bring freedom from sorrow and are of no avail for eternal happiness, but rather are obstacles;(9) that the rich should tremble at the threatenings of Jesus Christ - threatenings so unwonted in the mouth of our Lord(10) - and that a most strict account must be given to the Supreme Judge for all we possess. The chief and most excellent rule for the right use of money is one the heathen philosophers hinted at, but which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not only made known to men's minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have a right to use money as one wills. Private ownership, as we have seen, is the natural right of man, and to exercise that right, especially as members of society, is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary. "It is lawful," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "for a man to hold private property; and it is also necessary for the carrying on of human existence."" But if the question be asked: How must one's possessions be used? - the Church replies without hesitation in the words of the same holy Doctor: "Man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. Whence the Apostle with, ‘Command the rich of this world... to offer with no stint, to apportion largely.’"(12) True, no one is commanded to distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up becomingly his condition in life, "for no one ought to live other than becomingly."(13) But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. "Of that which remaineth, give alms."(14) It is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity - a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield place to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on His followers the practice of almsgiving - ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive";(15) and who will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself - "As long as you did it to one of My least brethren you did it to Me."(16) To sum up, then, what has been said: Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others. "He that hath a talent," said St. Gregory the Great, "let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility hereof with his neighbor."(17)

23. As for those who possess not the gifts of fortune, they are taught by the Church that in God's sight poverty is no disgrace, and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in earning their bread by labor. This is enforced by what we see in Christ Himself, who, "whereas He was rich, for our sakes became poor";(18) and who, being the Son of God, and God Himself, chose to seem and to be considered the son of a carpenter - nay, did not disdain to spend a great part of His life as a carpenter Himself. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?"(19)

24. From contemplation of this divine Model, it is more easy to understand that the true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness. Nay, God Himself seems to incline rather to those who suffer misfortune; for Jesus Christ calls the poor "blessed";(20) He lovingly invites those in labor and grief to come to Him for solace;(21) and He displays the tenderest charity toward the lowly and the oppressed. These reflections cannot fail to keep down the pride of the well-to-do, and to give heart to the unfortunate; to move the former to be generous and the latter to be moderate in their desires. Thus, the separation which pride would set up tends to disappear, nor will it be difficult to make rich and poor join hands in friendly concord.

25. But, if Christian precepts prevail, the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love. For they will understand and feel that all men are children of the same common Father, who is God; that all have alike the same last end, which is God Himself, who alone can make either men or angels absolutely and perfectly happy; that each and all are redeemed and made sons of God, by Jesus Christ, "the first-born among many brethren"; that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong to the whole human race in common, and that from none except the unworthy is withheld the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven. "If sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and co-heirs with Christ."(22) Such is the scheme of duties and of rights which is shown forth to the world by the Gospel. Would it not seem that, were society penetrated with ideas like these, strife must quickly cease?

26. But the Church, not content with pointing out the remedy, also applies it. For the Church does her utmost to teach and to train men, and to educate them and by the intermediary of her bishops and clergy diffuses her salutary teachings far and wide. She strives to influence the mind and the heart so that all may willingly yield themselves to be formed and guided by the commandments of God. It is precisely in this fundamental and momentous matter, on which everything depends that the Church possesses a power peculiarly her own. The instruments which she employs are given to her by Jesus Christ Himself for the very purpose of reaching the hearts of men, and drive their efficiency from God. They alone can reach the innermost heart and conscience, and bring men to act from a motive of duty, to control their passions and appetites, to love God and their fellow men with a love that is outstanding and of the highest degree and to break down courageously every barrier which blocks the way to virtue.

27. On this subject we need but recall for one moment the examples recorded in history. Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. Of this beneficent transformation Jesus Christ was at once the first cause and the final end; as from Him all came, so to Him was all to be brought back. For, when the human race, by the light of the Gospel message, came to know the grand mystery of the Incarnation of the Word and the redemption of man, at once the life of Jesus Christ, God and Man, pervaded every race and nation, and interpenetrated them with His faith, His precepts, and His laws. And if human society is to be healed now, in no other way can it be healed save by a return to Christian life and Christian institutions. When a society is perishing, the wholesome advice to give to those who would restore it is to call it to the principles from which it sprang; for the purpose and perfection of an association is to aim at and to attain that for which it is formed, and its efforts should be put in motion and inspired by the end and object which originally gave it being. Hence, to fall away from its primal constitution implies disease; to go back to it, recovery. And this may be asserted with utmost truth both of the whole body of the commonwealth and of that class of its citizens-by far the great majority - who get their living by their labor.

28. Neither must it be supposed that the solicitude of the Church is so preoccupied with the spiritual concerns of her children as to neglect their temporal and earthly interests. Her desire is that the poor, for example, should rise above poverty and wretchedness, and better their condition in life; and for this she makes a strong endeavor. By the fact that she calls men to virtue and forms them to its practice she promotes this in no slight degree. Christian morality, when adequately and completely practiced, leads of itself to temporal prosperity, for it merits the blessing of that God who is the source of all blessings; it powerfully restrains the greed of possession and the thirst for pleasure-twin plagues, which too often make a man who is void of self-restraint miserable in the midst of abundance;(23) it makes men supply for the lack of means through economy, teaching them to be content with frugal living, and further, keeping them out of the reach of those vices which devour not small incomes merely, but large fortunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance.

29. The Church, moreover, intervenes directly in behalf of the poor, by setting on foot and maintaining many associations which she knows to be efficient for the relief of poverty. Herein, again, she has always succeeded so well as to have even extorted the praise of her enemies. Such was the ardor of brotherly love among the earliest Christians that numbers of those who were in better circumstances despoiled themselves of their possessions in order to relieve their brethren; whence "neither was there any one needy among them."(24) To the order of deacons, instituted in that very intent, was committed by the Apostles the charge of the daily doles; and the Apostle Paul, though burdened with the solicitude of all the churches, hesitated not to undertake laborious journeys in order to carry the alms of the faithful to the poorer Christians. Tertullian calls these contributions, given voluntarily by Christians in their assemblies, deposits of piety, because, to cite his own words, they were employed "in feeding the needy, in burying them, in support of youths and maidens destitute of means and deprived of their parents, in the care of the aged, and the relief of the shipwrecked."(25)

30. Thus, by degrees, came into existence the patrimony which the Church has guarded with religious care as the inheritance of the poor. Nay, in order to spare them the shame of begging, the Church has provided aid for the needy. The common Mother of rich and poor has aroused everywhere the heroism of charity, and has established congregations of religious and many other useful institutions for help and mercy, so that hardly any kind of suffering could exist which was not afforded relief. At the present day many there are who, like the heathen of old, seek to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity. They would substitute in its stead a system of relief organized by the State. But no human expedients will ever make up for the devotedness and self sacrifice of Christian charity. Charity, as a virtue, pertains to the Church; for virtue it is not, unless it be drawn from the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ; and whosoever turns his back on the Church cannot be near to Christ.

31. It cannot, however, be doubted that to attain the purpose we are treating of, not only the Church, but all human agencies, must concur. All who are concerned in the matter should be of one mind and according to their ability act together. It is with this, as with providence that governs the world; the results of causes do not usually take place save where all the causes cooperate. It is sufficient, therefore, to inquire what part the State should play in the work of remedy and relief.

32. By the State we here understand, not the particular form of government prevailing in this or that nation, but the State as rightly apprehended; that is to say, any government conformable in its institutions to right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the divine wisdom which we have expounded in the encyclical On the Christian Constitution of the State.(26) The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. This is the proper scope of wise statesmanship and is the work of the rulers. Now a State chiefly prospers and thrives through moral rule, well-regulated family life, respect for religion and justice, the moderation and fair imposing of public taxes, the progress of the arts and of trade, the abundant yield of the land-through everything, in fact, which makes the citizens better and happier. Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference - since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them.

33. There is another and deeper consideration which must not be lost sight of. As regards the State, the interests of all, whether high or low, are equal. The members of the working classes are citizens by nature and by the same right as the rich; they are real parts, living the life which makes up, through the family, the body of the commonwealth; and it need hardly be said that they are in every city very largely in the majority. It would be irrational to neglect one portion of the citizens and favor another, and therefore the public administration must duly and solicitously provide for the welfare and the comfort of the working classes; otherwise, that law of justice will be violated which ordains that each man shall have his due. To cite the wise words of St. Thomas Aquinas: "As the part and the whole are in a certain sense identical, so that which belongs to the whole in a sense belongs to the part."(27) Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice - with that justice which is called distributive - toward each and every class alike.

34. But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so advantageously to themselves, yet it should not be supposed that all can contribute in the like way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may occur in forms of government, there will ever be differences and inequalities of condition in the State. Society cannot exist or be conceived of without them. Some there must be who devote themselves to the work of the commonwealth, who make the laws or administer justice, or whose advice and authority govern the nation in times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be held in highest estimation, for their work concerns most nearly and effectively the general interests of the community. Those who labor at a trade or calling do not promote the general welfare in such measure as this, but they benefit the nation, if less directly, in a most important manner. We have insisted, it is true, that, since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue. Nevertheless, it is the business of a well-constituted body politic to see to the provision of those material and external helps "the use of which is necessary to virtuous action."(28) Now, for the provision of such commodities, the labor of the working class - the exercise of their skill, and the employment of their strength, in the cultivation of the land, and in the workshops of trade - is especially responsible and quite indispensable. Indeed, their co-operation is in this respect so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labor of working men that States grow rich. Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create-that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs.

35. We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammelled action so far as is consistent with the common good and the interest of others. Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members; the community, because the conservation thereof is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a government's whole reason of existence; and the members, because both philosophy and the Gospel concur in laying down that the object of the government of the State should be, not the advantage of the ruler, but the benefit of those over whom he is placed. As the power to rule comes from God, and is, as it were, a participation in His, the highest of all sovereignties, it should be exercised as the power of God is exercised - with a fatherly solicitude which not only guides the whole, but reaches also individuals.

36. Whenever the general interest or any particular class suffers, or is threatened with harm, which can in no other way be met or prevented, the public authority must step in to deal with it. Now, it is to the interest of the community, as well as of the individual, that peace and good order should be maintained; that all things should be carried on in accordance with God's laws and those of nature; that the discipline of family life should be observed and that religion should be obeyed; that a high standard of morality should prevail, both in public and private life; that justice should be held sacred and that no one should injure another with impunity; that the members of the commonwealth should grow up to man's estate strong and robust, and capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their country. If by a strike of workers or concerted interruption of work there should be imminent danger of disturbance to the public peace; or if circumstances were such as that among the working class the ties of family life were relaxed; if religion were found to suffer through the workers not having time and opportunity afforded them to practice its duties; if in workshops and factories there were danger to morals through the mixing of the sexes or from other harmful occasions of evil; or if employers laid burdens upon their workmen which were unjust, or degraded them with conditions repugnant to their dignity as human beings; finally, if health were endangered by excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex or age - in such cases, there can be no question but that, within certain limits, it would be right to invoke the aid and authority of the law. The limits must be determined by the nature of the occasion which calls for the law's interference - the principle being that the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief.

37. Rights must be religiously respected wherever they exist, and it is the duty of the public authority to prevent and to punish injury, and to protect every one in the possession of his own. Still, when there is question of defending the rights of individuals, the poor and badly off have a claim to especial consideration. The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government.

38. Here, however, it is expedient to bring under special notice certain matters of moment. First of all, there is the duty of safeguarding private property by legal enactment and protection. Most of all it is essential, where the passion of greed is so strong, to keep the populace within the line of duty; for, if all may justly strive to better their condition, neither justice nor the common good allows any individual to seize upon that which belongs to another, or, under the futile and shallow pretext of equality, to lay violent hands on other people's possessions. Most true it is that by far the larger part of the workers prefer to better themselves by honest labor rather than by doing any wrong to others. But there are not a few who are imbued with evil principles and eager for revolutionary change, whose main purpose is to stir up disorder and incite their fellows to acts of violence. The authority of the law should intervene to put restraint upon such firebrands, to save the working classes from being led astray by their maneuvers, and to protect lawful owners from spoliation.

39. When work people have recourse to a strike and become voluntarily idle, it is frequently because the hours of labor are too long, or the work too hard, or because they consider their wages insufficient. The grave inconvenience of this not uncommon occurrence should be obviated by public remedial measures; for such paralysing of labor not only affects the masters and their work people alike, but is extremely injurious to trade and to the general interests of the public; moreover, on such occasions, violence and disorder are generally not far distant, and thus it frequently happens that the public peace is imperiled. The laws should forestall and prevent such troubles from arising; they should lend their influence and authority to the removal in good time of the causes which lead to conflicts between employers and employed.

40. The working man, too, has interests in which he should be protected by the State; and first of all, there are the interests of his soul. Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists. It is the soul which is made after the image and likeness of God; it is in the soul that the sovereignty resides in virtue whereof man is commanded to rule the creatures below him and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage. "Fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth."(29) In this respect all men are equal; there is here no difference between rich and poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, "for the same is Lord over all."(30) No man may with impunity outrage that human dignity which God Himself treats with great reverence, nor stand in the way of that higher life which is the preparation of the eternal life of heaven. Nay, more; no man has in this matter power over himself. To consent to any treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and purpose of his being is beyond his right; he cannot give up his soul to servitude, for it is not man's own rights which are here in question, but the rights of God, the most sacred and inviolable of rights.

41. From this follows the obligation of the cessation from work and labor on Sundays and certain holy days. The rest from labor is not to be understood as mere giving way to idleness; much less must it be an occasion for spending money and for vicious indulgence, as many would have it to be; but it should be rest from labor, hallowed by religion. Rest (combined with religious observances) disposes man to forget for a while the business of his everyday life, to turn his thoughts to things heavenly, and to the worship which he so strictly owes to the eternal Godhead. It is this, above all, which is the reason arid motive of Sunday rest; a rest sanctioned by God's great law of the Ancient Covenant-"Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day,"(31) and taught to the world by His own mysterious "rest" after the creation of man: "He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done."(32)

42. If we turn not to things external and material, the first thing of all to secure is to save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies. Man's powers, like his general nature, are limited, and beyond these limits he cannot go. His strength is developed and increased by use and exercise, but only on condition of due intermission and proper rest. Daily labor, therefore, should be so regulated as not to be protracted over longer hours than strength admits. How many and how long the intervals of rest should be must depend on the nature of the work, on circumstances of time and place, and on the health and strength of the workman. Those who work in mines and quarries, and extract coal, stone and metals from the bowels of the earth, should have shorter hours in proportion as their labor is more severe and trying to health. Then, again, the season of the year should be taken into account; for not unfrequently a kind of labor is easy at one time which at another is intolerable or exceedingly difficult. Finally, work which is quite suitable for a strong man cannot rightly be required from a woman or a child. And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed. For, just as very rough weather destroys the buds of spring, so does too early an experience of life's hard toil blight the young promise of a child's faculties, and render any true education impossible. Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well-being of the family. As a general principle it may be laid down that a workman ought to have leisure and rest proportionate to the wear and tear of his strength, for waste of strength must be repaired by cessation from hard work.

In all agreements between masters and work people there is always the condition expressed or understood that there should be allowed proper rest for soul and body. To agree in any other sense would be against what is right and just; for it can never be just or right to require on the one side, or to promise on the other, the giving up of those duties which a man owes to his God and to himself.

43. We now approach a subject of great importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right notions are absolutely necessary. Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances.

44. To this kind of argument a fair-minded man will not easily or entirely assent; it is not complete, for there are important considerations which it leaves out of account altogether. To labor is to exert oneself for the sake of procuring what is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for self preservation. "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread."(33) Hence, a man's labor necessarily bears two notes or characters. First of all, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and, further, was given to him for his advantage. Secondly, man's labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey. Now, were we to consider labor merely in so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so is he free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very different if, together with the personal element in a man's work, we consider the fact that work is also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought, but not in reality. The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work.

45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection.

46. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.

47. Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For, the result of civil change and revolution has been to divide cities into two classes separated by a wide chasm. On the one side there is the party which holds power because it holds wealth; which has in its grasp the whole of labor and trade; which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is not without influence even in the administration of the commonwealth. On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sick and sore in spirit and ever ready for disturbance. If working people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective classes will be brought nearer to one another. A further consequence will result in the great abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. That such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self evident. And a third advantage would spring from this: men would cling to the country in which they were born, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life. These three important benefits, however, can be reckoned on only provided that a man's means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair.

48. In the last place, employers and workmen may of themselves effect much, in the matter We are treating, by means of such associations and organizations as afford opportune aid to those who are in distress, and which draw the two classes more closely together. Among these may be enumerated societies for mutual help; various benevolent foundations established by private persons to provide for the workman, and for his widow or his orphans, in case of sudden calamity, in sickness, and in the event of death; and institutions for the welfare of boys and girls, young people, and those more advanced in years.

49. The most important of all are workingmen's unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests what excellent results were brought about by the artificers' guilds of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness. Such unions should be suited to the requirements of this our age - an age of wider education, of different habits, and of far more numerous requirements in daily life. It is gratifying to know that there are actually in existence not a few associations of this nature, consisting either of workmen alone, or of workmen and employers together, but it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient. We have spoken of them more than once, yet it will be well to explain here how notably they are needed, to show that they exist of their own right, and what should be their organization and their mode of action.

50. The consciousness of his own weakness urges man to call in aid from without. We read in the pages of holy Writ: "It is better that two should be together than one; for they have the advantage of their society. If one fall he shall be supported by the other. Woe to him that is alone, for when he falleth he hath none to lift him up."(34) And further: "A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city."(35) It is this natural impulse which binds men together in civil society; and it is likewise this which leads them to join together in associations which are, it is true, lesser and not independent societies, but, nevertheless, real societies.

51. These lesser societies and the larger society differ in many respects, because their immediate purpose and aim are different. Civil society exists for the common good, and hence is concerned with the interests of all in general, albeit with individual interests also in their due place and degree. It is therefore called a public society, because by its agency, as St. Thomas of Aquinas says, "Men establish relations in common with one another in the setting up of a commonwealth."(36) But societies which are formed in the bosom of the commonwealth are styled private, and rightly so, since their immediate purpose is the private advantage of the associates. "Now, a private society," says St. Thomas again, "is one which is formed for the purpose of carrying out private objects; as when two or three enter into partnership with the view of trading in common."(37) Private societies, then, although they exist within the body politic, and are severally part of the commonwealth, cannot nevertheless be absolutely, and as such, prohibited by public authority. For, to enter into a "society" of this kind is the natural right of man; and the State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them; and, if it forbid its citizens to form associations, it contradicts the very principle of its own existence, for both they and it exist in virtue of the like principle, namely, the natural tendency of man to dwell in society.

52. There are occasions, doubtless, when it is fitting that the law should intervene to prevent certain associations, as when men join together for purposes which are evidently bad, unlawful, or dangerous to the State. In such cases, public authority may justly forbid the formation of such associations, and may dissolve them if they already exist. But every precaution should be taken not to violate the rights of individuals and not to impose unreasonable regulations under pretense of public benefit. For laws only bind when they are in accordance with right reason, and, hence, with the eternal law of God.(38)

53. And here we are reminded of the confraternities, societies, and religious orders which have arisen by the Church's authority and the piety of Christian men. The annals of every nation down to our own days bear witness to what they have accomplished for the human race. It is indisputable that on grounds of reason alone such associations, being perfectly blameless in their objects, possess the sanction of the law of nature. In their religious aspect they claim rightly to be responsible to the Church alone. The rulers of the State accordingly have no rights over them, nor can they claim any share in their control; on the contrary, it is the duty of the State to respect and cherish them, and, if need be, to defend them from attack. It is notorious that a very different course has been followed, more especially in our own times. In many places the State authorities have laid violent hands on these communities, and committed manifold injustice against them; it has placed them under control of the civil law, taken away their rights as corporate bodies, and despoiled them of their property, in such property the Church had her rights, each member of the body had his or her rights, and there were also the rights of those who had founded or endowed these communities for a definite purpose, and, furthermore, of those for whose benefit and assistance they had their being. Therefore We cannot refrain from complaining of such spoliation as unjust and fraught with evil results; and with all the more reason do We complain because, at the very time when the law proclaims that association is free to all, We see that Catholic societies, however peaceful and useful, are hampered in every way, whereas the utmost liberty is conceded to individuals whose purposes are at once hurtful to religion and dangerous to the commonwealth.

54. Associations of every kind, and especially those of working men, are now far more common than heretofore. As regards many of these there is no need at present to inquire whence they spring, what are their objects, or what the means they imply. Now, there is a good deal of evidence in favor of the opinion that many of these societies are in the hands of secret leaders, and are managed on principles ill - according with Christianity and the public well-being; and that they do their utmost to get within their grasp the whole field of labor, and force working men either to join them or to starve. Under these circumstances Christian working men must do one of two things: either join associations in which their religion will be exposed to peril, or form associations among themselves and unite their forces so as to shake off courageously the yoke of so unrighteous and intolerable an oppression. No one who does not wish to expose man's chief good to extreme risk will for a moment hesitate to say that the second alternative should by all means be adopted.

55. Those Catholics are worthy of all praise-and they are not a few-who, understanding what the times require, have striven, by various undertakings and endeavors, to better the condition of the working class by rightful means. They have taken up the cause of the working man, and have spared no efforts to better the condition both of families and individuals; to infuse a spirit of equity into the mutual relations of employers and employed; to keep before the eyes of both classes the precepts of duty and the laws of the Gospel - that Gospel which, by inculcating self restraint, keeps men within the bounds of moderation, and tends to establish harmony among the divergent interests and the various classes which compose the body politic. It is with such ends in view that we see men of eminence, meeting together for discussion, for the promotion of concerted action, and for practical work. Others, again, strive to unite working men of various grades into associations, help them with their advice and means, and enable them to obtain fitting and profitable employment. The bishops, on their part, bestow their ready good will and support; and with their approval and guidance many members of the clergy, both secular and regular, labor assiduously in behalf of the spiritual interest of the members of such associations. And there are not wanting Catholics blessed with affluence, who have, as it were, cast in their lot with the wage-earners, and who have spent large sums in founding and widely spreading benefit and insurance societies, by means of which the working man may without difficulty acquire through his labor not only many present advantages, but also the certainty of honorable support in days to come. How greatly such manifold and earnest activity has benefited the community at large is too well known to require Us to dwell upon it. We find therein grounds for most cheering hope in the future, provided always that the associations We have described continue to grow and spread, and are well and wisely administered. The State should watch over these societies of citizens banded together in accordance with their rights, but it should not thrust itself into their peculiar concerns and their organization, for things move and live by the spirit inspiring them, and may be killed by the rough grasp of a hand from without.

56. In order that an association may be carried on with unity of purpose and harmony of action, its administration and government should be firm and wise. All such societies, being free to exist, have the further right to adopt such rules and organization as may best conduce to the attainment of their respective objects. We do not judge it possible to enter into minute particulars touching the subject of organization; this must depend on national character, on practice and experience, on the nature and aim of the work to be done, on the scope of the various trades and employments, and on other circumstances of fact and of time - all of which should be carefully considered.

57. To sum up, then, We may lay it down as a general and lasting law that working men's associations should be so organized and governed as to furnish the best and most suitable means for attaining what is aimed at, that is to say, for helping each individual member to better his condition to the utmost in body, soul, and property. It is clear that they must pay special and chief attention to the duties of religion and morality, and that social betterment should have this chiefly in view; otherwise they would lose wholly their special character, and end by becoming little better than those societies which take no account whatever of religion. What advantage can it be to a working man to obtain by means of a society material well-being, if he endangers his soul for lack of spiritual food? "What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?"(39)This, as our Lord teaches, is the mark or character that distinguishes the Christian from the heathen. "After all these things do the heathen seek . . . Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice: and all these things shall be added unto you."(40)Let our associations, then, look first and before all things to God; let religious instruction have therein the foremost place, each one being carefully taught what is his duty to God, what he has to believe, what to hope for, and how he is to work out his salvation; and let all be warned and strengthened with special care against wrong principles and false teaching. Let the working man be urged and led to the worship of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, to the keeping holy of Sundays and holy days. Let him learn to reverence and love holy Church, the common Mother of us all; and hence to obey the precepts of the Church, and to frequent the sacraments, since they are the means ordained by God for obtaining forgiveness of sin and fox leading a holy life.

58. The foundations of the organization being thus laid in religion, We next proceed to make clear the relations of the members one to another, in order that they may live together in concord and go forward prosperously and with good results. The offices and charges of the society should be apportioned for the good of the society itself, and in such mode that difference in degree or standing should not interfere with unanimity and good-will. It is most important that office bearers be appointed with due prudence and discretion, and each one's charge carefully mapped out, in order that no members may suffer harm. The common funds must be administered with strict honesty, in such a way that a member may receive assistance in proportion to his necessities. The rights and duties of the employers, as compared with the rights and duties of the employed, ought to be the subject of careful consideration. Should it happen that either a master or a workman believes himself injured, nothing would be more desirable than that a committee should be appointed, composed of reliable and capable members of the association, whose duty would be, conformably with the rules of the association, to settle the dispute. Among the several purposes of a society, one should be to try to arrange for a continuous supply of work at all times and seasons; as well as to create a fund out of which the members may be effectually helped in their needs, not only in the cases of accident, but also in sickness, old age, and distress.

59. Such rules and regulations, if willingly obeyed by all, will sufficiently ensure the well being of the less well-to-do; whilst such mutual associations among Catholics are certain to be productive in no small degree of prosperity to the State. Is it not rash to conjecture the future from the past. Age gives way to age, but the events of one century are wonderfully like those of another, for they are directed by the providence of God, who overrules the course of history in accordance with His purposes in creating the race of man. We are told that it was cast as a reproach on the Christians in the early ages of the Church that the greater number among them had to live by begging or by labor. Yet, destitute though they were of wealth and influence, they ended by winning over to their side the favor of the rich and the good-will of the powerful. They showed themselves industrious, hard-working, assiduous, and peaceful, ruled by justice, and, above all, bound together in brotherly love. In presence of such mode of life and such example, prejudice gave way, the tongue of malevolence was silenced, and the lying legends of ancient superstition little by little yielded to Christian truth.

60. At the time being, the condition of the working classes is the pressing question of the hour, and nothing can be of higher interest to all classes of the State than that it should be rightly and reasonably settled. But it will be easy for Christian working men to solve it aright if they will form associations, choose wise guides, and follow on the path which with so much advantage to themselves and the common weal was trodden by their fathers before them. Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, and so is the greed of money; but if the sense of what is just and rightful be not deliberately stifled, their fellow citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly feeling towards men whom they see to be in earnest as regards their work and who prefer so unmistakably right dealing to mere lucre, and the sacredness of duty to every other consideration.

61. And further great advantage would result from the state of things We are describing; there would exist so much more ground for hope, and likelihood, even, of recalling to a sense of their duty those working men who have either given up their faith altogether, or whose lives are at variance with its precepts. Such men feel in most cases that they have been fooled by empty promises and deceived by false pretexts. They cannot but perceive that their grasping employers too often treat them with great inhumanity and hardly care for them outside the profit their labor brings; and if they belong to any union, it is probably one in which there exists, instead of charity and love, that intestine strife which ever accompanies poverty when unresigned and unsustained by religion. Broken in spirit and worn down in body, how many of them would gladly free themselves from such galling bondage! But human respect, or the dread of starvation, makes them tremble to take the step. To such as these Catholic associations are of incalculable service, by helping them out of their difficulties, inviting them to companionship and receiving the returning wanderers to a haven where they may securely find repose.

62. We have now laid before you, venerable brethren, both who are the persons and what are the means whereby this most arduous question must be solved. Every one should put his hand to the work which falls to his share, and that at once and straightway, lest the evil which is already so great become through delay absolutely beyond remedy. Those who rule the commonwealths should avail themselves of the laws and institutions of the country; masters and wealthy owners must be mindful of their duty; the working class, whose interests are at stake, should make every lawful and proper effort; and since religion alone, as We said at the beginning, can avail to destroy the evil at its root, all men should rest persuaded that main thing needful is to re-establish Christian morals, apart from which all the plans and devices of the wisest will prove of little avail.

63. In regard to the Church, her cooperation will never be found lacking, be the time or the occasion what it may; and she will intervene with all the greater effect in proportion as her liberty of action is the more unfettered. Let this be carefully taken to heart by those whose office it is to safeguard the public welfare. Every minister of holy religion must bring to the struggle the full energy of his mind and all his power of endurance. Moved by your authority, venerable brethren, and quickened by your example, they should never cease to urge upon men of every class, upon the high-placed as well as the lowly, the Gospel doctrines of Christian life; by every means in their power they must strive to secure the good of the people; and above all must earnestly cherish in themselves, and try to arouse in others, charity, the mistress and the queen of virtues. For, the happy results we all long for must be chiefly brought about by the plenteous outpouring of charity; of that true Christian charity which is the fulfilling of the whole Gospel law, which is always ready to sacrifice itself for others' sake, and is man's surest antidote against worldly pride and immoderate love of self; that charity whose office is described and whose Godlike features are outlined by the Apostle St. Paul in these words: "Charity is patient, is kind, . . . seeketh not her own, . . . suffereth all things, . . . endureth all things."(41)

64. On each of you, venerable brethren, and on your clergy and people, as an earnest of God's mercy and a mark of Our affection, we lovingly in the Lord bestow the apostolic benediction.

Given at St. Peter's in Rome, the fifteenth day of May, 1891, the fourteenth year of Our pontificate.

LEO XIII

REFERENCES:

1). The title sometimes given to this encyclical, On the Condiction of the Working Classes, is therefore perfectly justified. A few lines after this sentence, the Pope gives a more comprehensive definition of the subject of Rerum novarum. We are using it as a title.

2). Deut. 5:21.

3). Gen. 1:28.

4). Summa theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. x, art. 12, Answer.

5). Gen. 3:17.

6). James 5:4.

7). 2 Tim. 2:12.

8). 2 Cor. 4:17.

9). Matt. 19:23-24.

10). Luke 6:24-Z5.

11). Summa theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. lxvi, art. 2, Answer.

12). Ibid.

13). Ibid., q. xxxii, a. 6, Answer.

14). Luke 11:41.

15). Acts 20:35.

16). Matt.25:40.

17). Hom. in Evang., 9, n. 7 (PL 76, 1109B).

18). 2 Cor. 8:9.

19). Mark 6:3.

20). Matt.5:3.

21). Matt. 11:28.

22). Rom. 8:17.

23). 1 Tim. 6:10.

24). Acts 4:34.

25). Apologia secunda, 39, (Apologeticus, cap. 39; PL1, 533A).

26). See above, pp. 161-184.

27). Summa theologiae, IIa-Ilae, q. lxi, are. l, ad 2m.

28). Thomas Aquinas, On the Governance of Rulers, 1, 15 (Opera omnia, ed. Vives, Vol. 27, p. 356).

29). Gen.1:28.

30). Rom. 10:12.

31). Exod.20:8.

32). Gen. 2:2.

33). Gen. 3:19.

34). Eccle.4:9-10.

35). Prov.18:19.

36). Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, Part 2, ch. 8 (Opera omnia, ed. Vives, Vol. 29, p. 16).

37). Ibid.

38). "Human law is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence." Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia-Ilae, q. xciii, art. 3, ad 2m.

39). Matt. 16:26.

40). Matt. 6:32-33.

41). I Cor. 13:4-7.

Another Good Article on the Return to Traditional Catholicism

2008-10-02T16:09:00.002-04:00

Rediscovering Traditionalism

One year after re-introducing the Tridentine Mass and two years after the Regensburg address, Benedict XVI's popular new traditionalism has re-ignited the Catholic culture wars.

By John Casey for openDemocracy.net

On 14th June this year about 1,500 people filled Westminster Cathedral. Every seat was taken; people stood in the aisles and spilled out on to the piazza outside. The occasion was a mass, but not an ordinary mass. It was indeed a mass in what is now officially called the ``extraordinary form'' of the Roman rite, i.e. the mass as it had existed before the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It was celebrated by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, and was the first mass in the traditional form to be celebrated in the Cathedral by a cardinal in thirty nine years.

Before the mass, Cardinal Castrillon had addressed the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, a group which had striven for forty years to preserve the ancient liturgy. He told them to `take heart' because the new Pope sympathised with them, and he spoke of the `sacrifices' of those members of the Society `who have not lived to be here today.'

To outsiders, all this emotion, this talk of sacrifices made by dead Catholics for the liturgy might well be unintelligible. What are the great issues at stake? Why should people throng Westminster Cathedral and spill out onto the street, including many too young to remember the old ways, just to experience a service in Latin conducted by a prelate with his back to the people?

In July the Pope was in Australia for World Youth Day. About four hundred thousand of the young, who had travelled from all parts of the globe, acclaimed him at a vast open-air mass in Sydney. But the mass had some new-old features Latin (Gregorian) chant, an altar adorned in the old style with crucifix and seven candles, and an attempt at solemn reverence that is not usually seen at these mass liturgical events. Something is in the air.

The truth is that the Roman Catholic Church has been in crisis ever since the Second Vatican Council, a crisis not only of falling numbers attending mass, a reduction of vocations, the virtual extinction of some religious orders, but a crisis of identity of the Church itself. The confident, tightly centralised "triumphalist'' Catholicism that followed the sixteenth century Council of Trent and regained many of the lands that had been lost to Protestantism, the Church that claimed to be "the one ark of salvation for all," has been replaced by the "pilgrim Church," tentatively stretching out to other faiths, often apologetic about the past, sometimes ready to play down its most distinctive doctrines.

There is a deeper issue. Hilaire Belloc had said "Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe." Although Catholicism is a world-wide religion, and an Abrahamic faith, its European inheritance has been central, its philosophical theology deriving from Greece, its language and structures of authority from Rome. It was not for nothing that Hobbes described the papacy as "the ghost of the dead Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." Enthusiasts for Vatican II thought they had changed all that. Rituals, language, even theology were to reflect the diverse cultures of the faithful, and even the subjective convictions of the individual.

The attempt since the Counter-reformation of the sixteenth century to resist some of the most important developments in modern culture, with an index of books forbidden to Catholics to read that included most of the greatest philosophers and imaginative writers of the modern world, was to be seen as a sort of auto-immune disorder - an inability to cope with foreign bodies. In the light of this, an attachment to tradition seemed like a rejection of intelligence, and a scarcely defensible surrender to clerical dictatorship. The Church had raised the drawbridge against the modern world, and Vatican II would confidently lower it again. Central to that was the rejection of the traditional Latin mass. It was there that the battle lines were most obviously drawn.

The culture wars

Nearly 25 years ago, a Pole was dining in my college in Cambridge. He told us that he had been an altar boy in Poland, and had often served the masses of the Archbishop of Cracow. A year or two after that prelate, Karol Woytila, had been installed in the See of Rome, he decided to visit him, for John Paul II never became too grand for his old Polish friends. The Pope (so he told the story) strode up to him, punched him lightly in the chest, and began: Introibo ad ad altare dei ... to which our guest responded: Ad deum qui laetificat iuventutum meum. ("I will go unto the altar of God'' "To God who giveth joy to my youth.'') This was the opening exchange between priest and server of the old "Tridentine'' Latin mass, abolished in the early1970s, and the two continued it right down to the Confiteor. Then the Pope shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, that's no use to us anymore." His old altar boy replied: "No, Holy Father, and that's why I no longer go to church." To which the Pope (he said) instantly rejoined: "Don't blame me. Blame that maniac John XXIII!"

Last September, a motu proprio (legislation of his own volition) of Pope Benedict XVI, liberating the old mass, and obliging parishes to provide it for those of the faithful who want it, came into effect. It was clearly an attempt to console those who were still attached to the old rite, including the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, who rejected the new mass and many of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (summoned by "that maniac, John XXIII.") "Liberal'' Catholics grimly suspect that the Pope himself has long been disillusioned with the Council, and is bent on restoration of the old order. One Italian bishop said that he actually wept when he read the motu proprio, because he saw one of the greatest achievements of the modernists, a new style of liturgy, dissolving before his eyes. He was right to be alarmed. Benedict's undoubted love of the old liturgy is also a love of the European culture which produced it.

On the other side, traditionalist Catholics, who were so joyously in evidence at Westminster cathedral, rejoiced mightily. Benedict XVI is on the way to becoming a hero as dear to them as Cyrus the Great was to the ancient Jews, because he freed them from the Babylonian captivity. When the motu proprio was issued, their websites triumphed in the imminent defeat of the philistines and were filled with accounts of celebratory champagne parties and suggestions that everyone should send flowers to the Pope in sign of gratitude.

Not just talking to God in Latin

But what is the fuss all about? Is this just a matter of some people preferring to talk to God in Latin? Or is it the re-igniting of a subterraneous culture war that has troubled the peace of the faithful over the past forty years?

First of all: it is not just a question of Latin. The "Tridentine'' mass and the Latin mass are not one and the same thing. True, the Tridentine mass must be said in Latin in the Roman church. But decades ago you could attend Tridentine masses in High Anglican churches in Cornwall celebrated entirely in English. The new order of mass, promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, was originally meant to be usually in Latin, but is nearly always said in the vernacular. But whatever the language, it is different from the old mass, in feel, liturgical gesture and some would even say in theology. The liturgy has always embodied both prayer and doctrine: it is both lex orandi and lex credendi. The ultras would argue that the changes in the mass were part of a stealthy attempt to alter doctrine. The great Council of Trent (1546-63) marked the final separation between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism with ferocious clarity. Catholic doctrines such as the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, reaffirmed by Trent, are liturgically enforced in the Tridentine mass with no possible ambiguity.

The ultras have a point. A pious Catholic who had fallen asleep in 1960 and woken up forty years later would be puzzled indeed at a modern mass (unless he had been allowed to slumber all those years in Brompton Oratory or a few other traditionalist redoubts.) He would find the modern Church culturally and psychologically so altered that he might be tempted to see it as a new religion masquerading under the old name. He might, like my Polish acquaintance, decide not to bother any more.

The first time I was taken to mass as a child, my mother told me to watch the altar attentively, because an angel might fly across it. My hope in seeing the angel faded quite soon, well before my faith did, but the feeling that the celebration of mass marked a mystery in which Godhead was truly present on the altar, body, blood, soul and divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine was astonishingly powerful. The form of the old mass enforced it. There was an overwhelming emphasis on the mass as an actual sacrifice, a mysterious re-enactment of Christ's sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The priest began at the foot of the altar, with prayers that he might be worthy to ascend the steps: Introibo ad altare dei. In mounting the altar steps the priest was being brought "unto thy holy mount, and into thy tabernacles.'' These are the words of psalms from the Hebrew Bible, and they go with an extraordinary insistence on using the language of ancient Jewish sacrifice - "a holy victim, a pure and unblemished sacrifice." (A Jewish friend of mine, attending a Tridentine mass for the first time, said that this language, and the elaborate cleansing of the sacred vessels, took his mind back to Temple Judaism.) The ritual proceeded with the inevitability of a piece of intricate and beautiful mechanism, as the priest mounted the steps, read the epistle and gospel and came to the canon of the mass. The climax, the obvious focal point of the exercise, was the consecration. The Latin words of this were uttered in a very audible stage whisper, and were followed by genuflection, elevation, genuflection, accompanied by the ringing of bells.

Every gesture by the priest, the signs of the cross, the genuflections, the many kissings of the altar, were strictly controlled by the rubrics. There was no place for "creativity'' or the expression of personality. The authority of liturgy has always been its immemorial antiquity, and this strange, intensely focussed ritual certainly took you back to the remote past. This was sometimes a cause of scandal. The Good Friday liturgy (which was not actually a mass, Good Friday being the only day in the year when mass was not said) notoriously had a prayer for the "unbelieving Jews" (perfidis Judaeis) that God would remove their "blindness'' and lead them to Christ. Even worse, this was the one prayer during which the congregation did not have to kneel. (John XXIII removed the offensive words in 1962.) There were also curiosities of an innocent sort. A missal published in 1935 contains a Good Friday prayer that God will "look favorably on the Roman empire" and "render all barbarous nations" subject to the Emperor.

The curious thing about the old mass was that it did not much matter if it was performed badly. It often was. Some priests spoke the Latin intelligently and well. Others gabbled it. We altar boys fought to serve the Low Mass of a certain Franciscan priest because he got through it, by means of remarkable elisions, in 12 minutes flat.

The priest was a craftsman, bringing Christ to the altar, and distributing Him to the faithful in communion. In many ways, it was the priest's mass, to which the congregation were onlookers, or listeners in. Much of it was in silence, with the priest raising his voice at certain moments to indicate what point the mass had reached. In northern Europe and the United States most of the congregation followed in their missals, which were in Latin and English. But in earlier times people would instead read "prayers during mass,'' rather than follow the actual words. Illiterates would simply tell their beads. Perhaps they looked for angels to fly across, or at the stained-glass windows. Yet there is overwhelming evidence that they, too, were moved, for they participated in a ritual that signified visually and in terms of movement as well as in words.

Participation theology

Vatican II decreed that the people should "actively participate" in the mass. To the older idea that active participation could take place largely in silence and stillness was opposed the feeling that the congregation should always be doing things, saying prayers aloud, reading passages of scripture, presenting the bread and wine for the mass. The priest became less one who offered an awe-inspiring sacrifice, and more like one who presides over a community meal. Altars were turned round, so that the priest faced the people, rather than praying on their behalf to the East, as had been done from ancient times. (Critics of the new order often suggest - rightly - that this leads to a cult of the priestly personality.) The first part of the liturgy is now given over to scripture readings, somewhat in Protestant style, so that when the priest goes to the altar to say the actual canon of the mass, this can seem like an afterthought, rather than the focal point of the whole proceedings. The priest''s genuflections and other ritual signs of assent to the real presence, which in the old mass enacted an idea of worship and transcendence, seemed to have been cut to a minimum. For many, the remarkable beauty of the Latin text itself, set by so many great composers over the centuries, and a profound influence on the authors of the Book of Common Prayer, had helped create a sense of the sacred which had now all but vanished.

How did this happen? There had been a liturgical movement, strong in northern Europe, going back to the nineteenth century. It emphasised the intelligent participation of the laity, the use of missals, and a partial return to what were believed to be pre-mediaeval liturgical practices. This led to the half-conscious assumption that there was some golden age before the "accretions'' that led to the elaborate liturgy of modern times. This was rather like the Protestant idea of the "primitive'' Church before Roman "corruptions.''

There was another line of thought. This was that the Council of Trent had been a tragedy just in that it had sealed the division between Catholic and Protestant in the sixteenth century. Trent had re-affirmed the hierarchical structure of the Church, the role of the priest, and the mass as the continual re-enactment of Christ''s death on the cross. The Anglican Thirty nine Articles say that the `one oblation of Christ is finished on the cross .Wherefore the sacrifice of Masses were dangerous fables and blasphemous deceits.' The underlying purpose of the new rite was reconciliation with Protestantism. Its chief inventor, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, actually said: "We must strip from our Catholic prayers everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."

Traditionalists oppose Papal power

To undo the Council of Trent would be no mean endeavour, although to anyone with a sense of the religious history of Europe during the last four hundred and fifty years it must seem a madly ambitious one. But what really ignited the Catholic culture wars was the way it was done: by an unprecedented exercise of papal power. Hardly anything of what happened was prescribed by the Second Vatican Council, not the turning around of the altars, not the almost universal use of the vernacular, not the scaling down of the sense of transcendence and sacrifice, not the discouraging of the faithful from kneeling when receiving holy communion, not the receiving of communion in the hand rather than on the tongue. Traditionalists point out that the Council had decreed that the Latin language was to be preserved. (And the "maniac" John XXIII had been totally opposed to the vernacular in the mass.) It had all been done by Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Bugnini and a close circle of liturgical experts. It was never even passed by a synod of bishops.

The paradoxical conclusion might have been forseen: it was the most pious Catholics, most devoted to the papacy and its prerogatives who were most outraged, but who felt most bound by loyalty and obedience. Their anguish when they were presented in 1971 with the abolition of the old rite can be imagined. (The most popular English Catholic newspaper, The Universe, informed its readers on 26th November that year that `as from this Sunday it is forbidden to offer Mass in the Tridentine rite anywhere in the world.')

Only in France was there open rebellion. Led by Archbishop Marcel Lefevbvre, a thousand or so traditionalists occupied the Church of St. Nicholas in Paris, resisted all attempts to evict them, reintroduced all the old ceremonies, and have been there ever since. The Lefebvrists decreed that with Vatican II Rome had departed from Tradition, and had as good as apostatised.

The bitterness (even despair) of traditional Catholics ran deep. The enthusiasts for Vatican II hailed it as inaugurating an epoch of religious liberty. Yet the abolition of the old mass actually depended upon a Vatican diktat. The Anglican Church has introduced new forms of service, often distressingly banal. But it is impossible to imagine the Anglicans wishing, let alone being able, suddenly to forbid the Book of Common Prayer in all churches of the Anglican Communion. I remember in the 1970s attending out of curiosity a Tridentine mass "illegally''celebrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in the Great Western Hotel at Paddington. The atmosphere was extraordinary, like that of some improbably enormous catacomb where a clandestine ceremony was going on. Catholics had come from all over England, and many were in tears as they participated in a rite that had suddenly been forbidden them. It was tempting to see this as religious persecution.

Iconoclasm and novelty

The changes were accompanied by an astonishing outbreak of what one can only call iconoclasm, for that is what it literally was. In the University Catholic chaplaincy in Cambridge, the furniture of the chapel, including a charming little baldachino, was largely destroyed at the instigation of the Chaplain. The parish priest of the main Catholic church in Cambridge proposed replacing all the pews with raked cinema-style seats, removing the stained glass, and dismantling their own noble baldachino. (He was frustrated by his congregation, which had been infiltrated by dons.) In my own old parish church, the Franciscans smashed to pieces the whole Byzantine-style sanctuary. Such scenes were replicated all over the country.

There was also liturgical vandalism, especially in America, including priests with red-nose masks celebrating "clown-masses,'' Halloween masses, dancing-girls and various New Age fooleries. In England, Catholic practice plummeted, and churches were shut.

English Catholics had a special reason for attachment to the old mass. In penal times, several hundred English priests had been executed for saying it. At the place of execution they would often kiss the scaffold, as the priest kisses the altar in the Tridentine mass (much more rarely in the new rite.). The English, more docile than the French, did not rebel. Instead they organised a letter signed by cultural luminaries, many of them non-Catholic, politely asking the Pope for an "indult'' - permission to celebrate the old mass on special occasions, with the permission of bishops. But their letter did not conceal their feelings of horror: "If some senseless decree were to order the partial or total destruction of basilicas or cathedrals, then obviously it would be the educated, whatever their personal beliefs, who would rise up in horror '' The old mass "in its magnificent Latin text, has inspired a host of priceless achievements by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians.''

The Agatha Christie exception

How could the Pope fail to respond to such a letter, signed as it was by (amongst many others) Vladimir Ashkenazy, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, FR Leavis, Cecil Day-Lewis, Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Yehudi Menuin, Malcolm Muggeridge, Joan Sutherland and the Anglican Bishops of Exeter and Rippon? The story goes that Paul VI was quietly reading through the list of signatories and then suddenly said: "Ah, Agatha Christie!'' and signed his approval. Ever since, this permission has been known in traditionalist circles as the Agatha Christie Indult.

But although this indult had been granted, many bishops were unwilling actually to give permission. The traditionalists, including the Latin Mass Society, were often treated as trouble-makers and rebels.

The authority to change

I once interviewed the Patriarch of Antioch, in Damascus. I asked His Beatitude whether he, like the Bishop of Rome, believed he had power radically to alter the liturgy. "Oh yes, we have authority in liturgical matters. And in 1,500 years we did once alter a prayer."

Clearly the idea of virtually inventing a new rite had never entered the Patriarch's head. (The so-called "Tridentine'' rite was not invented by the Council of Trent, but was a codification of the Roman rite which dated back many centuries.) The question all along was whether pope and bishops really do have such authority. One distinguished Catholic thinker judged that there was no such sweeping power, that liturgy had its own authority based on immemorial tradition, and that the pope's authority in liturgy "is at the service of Sacred Tradition." The same thinker even dared to describe the new mass as "no re-animation but devastation... fabricated liturgy... banal-on-the-spot product." The man who wrote those words is now Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinals elected Ratzinger knowing that these were his convictions. It cannot have been done in a fit of absence of mind.

Mass and Invariance

The Catholic Church has often enforced unity with ferocity. Yet in the present culture war (officially denied, of course) real unity seems far away. As the Pope's intentions become clear (Cardinal Castrillon said that the Pope wants to make the old rite available "in all the parishes" of England and Wales) the English bishops have fallen into a curious silence. The parish priest of a famous Jesuit church, politely asked whether he would make some traditional masses available, responded with unconcealed rage. (This church advertises a children's liturgy, Japanese masses, services for Brazilians and Filipinos, but apparently drew the line at the ancient Roman liturgy).

The dispute about liturgy is part of a wider battle. Those who want to align the Church with modernity, which inevitably means drawing on current liberal values, became influential following Vatican II. But if they hoped that the Church would change its stance on liberation theology, divorce, homosexuality, the ordination of women, they found their nemesis in John Paul II . Woytila's reassertion of tradition in all these areas was less flamboyant than Pio Nono's famous denial that "the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to come to terms with progress, liberalism and the modern world," but it came to much the same thing.

Pope Ratzinger is even more profoundly traditional than his predecessor, and he believes that disputes about liturgy are disputes about the very nature of the Church. He prizes a mass that develops according to its own laws throughout the ages. He is also attracted by the Eastern Orthodox conception of a liturgy "whose light illumines our changing times with its unchanging beauty and greatness." Those who altered the mass after Vatican II thought it possible to create a form of worship that was illumined, indeed determined by the changing times. These are two wholly incompatible visions. As Benedict puts it in a letter to the bishops that accompanied his motu proprio: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."

Tradition re-discovered in every age

Something unexpected seems now to be happening in the Catholic Church. Far from attachment to the old forms dying away, a generation of younger priests and lay Catholics is coming into view that is enthusiastically attached to the Tridentine mass, and to Catholic orthodoxy. In France, one in five of all priests currently being ordained is devoted to the old mass. And this is a committed, determined minority growing up in a virtual wasteland for the French Church. Only five per cent of French Catholics attend mass regularly. In one diocese, the Cathedral attracts seventy worshippers on Sunday, while the chapel of semi-schismatic Society of St Pius X (of Archbishop Lefebvre) attracts seven hundred to a traditional mass. Indeed, it is suggested that an actual majority of church goers on a Sunday in France attend Lefebvrist services.

Pope Benedict himself is a philosophical traditionalist of a sort that is barely understood in the modern world. In a lecture to the University in Regensberg he enraged some Muslims because he quoted a Byzantine Emperor who suggested that Mohammed countenanced violent religious conversion. But what he was talking about was the relation between religion and reason. Ratzinger suggested that the God of certain Muslim theologians - like that of some late mediaeval philosophers, as well as Luther and Calvin - so transcends our categories, even of rationality, that all that is left for us is his sovereign will. If God so commanded, we would have to practice idolatry, or violence. The Pope argued that the Christian understanding of God has to be rooted in rationality: God is reason, the logos, so any attempt to convert by violence is contrary to the nature of God. This may seem an arcane dispute in theology, but what it comes to is that Christianity is inevitably tied up with Greek philosophy, is, indeed, a marrying of Judaic religion with Greek thought. Add the Roman heritage, and we can say (in Ratzinger's remarkable words at Regensberg) that "Christianity created Europe."

In other words, Christianity is a culture as well as a set of beliefs. Equally, Europe should remember its Christian roots. (Cardinal Ratzinger once said that if Turkey were ever allowed to join the EU this would represent "the triumph of economics over culture.'') Catholic liturgies have to keep their Roman and European heritage, and cannot simply be adapted to local conditions, tongues and cultures. The mass in China should not be celebrated with rice and rice wine; and in America it should not express folksy inclusiveness. For Ratzinger, this special blend of Judaism, Greek philosophy and Romanitas is essential to the Church, an idea that Luther scorned. So it is almost literally unthinkable that a genuine liturgy could be fabricated, rather than grow out of immemorial tradition.

Admirers of Ratzinger insist that his traditionalism is no blinkered love of the past, no theological auto-immune disorder. As TS Eliot put it, tradition cannot be blindly inherited, but has to be re-discovered in every age, an enterprise that requires great labor. No one who reads Ratzinger can deny that he brings a very lively intelligence into his attempt to rediscover tradition. It is his critics of the ageing Vatican II generation who begin to look intellectually lazy.

In Benedict XVI, Catholic modernists meet a formidable antagonist indeed. His gentle manner and readiness to persuade rather than bludgeon conceals (from those that have not eyes to see) a philosophy of tradition that challenges not only liturgical philistines, but all those Catholics for whom history began with the Second Vatican Council. He is the immediate cause of all those joyful traditionalist Catholics congregating in Westminster cathedral and overflowing onto the pavement. The authority of a pope of Rome is not to be underestimated. When the Pope''s motu proprio became known to Catholic traditionalists, not a few of them wept for joy. At the moment his election was announced in St Peter''s square in 2005, several priests of modernist sympathies were also seen to weep - but with chagrin. Provided his health holds, then (to misquote Henry James) those tears are not the last they are destined to shed.

John Casey is lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He writes and reviews frequently in newspapers and journals. Among his books are Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics (Clarendon Press, 1990).

Confessions of a Traditional Catholic

2008-08-20T21:25:00.003-04:00

Great read from InsideCatholic.com. The author, Mr. Steve Skojec also has his own blog. BE SURE TO CHECK BOTH OUT.
--------------------------------------------------

Confessions of a Traditional Catholic
by Steve Skojec
8/19/08

"Hello. My name is Steve, and I'm a 'traditional' Catholic."

So begins my admission of membership in a disparate group that, as you've already read, is far too well known for its bitterness, anger, and lack of evangelical spirit. I don't like being typecast in this way. Just because I have a profound love and respect for -- and even a belief in the superiority of -- older liturgical and sacramental forms does not mean that I am an unreasonable malcontent oozing acid from every pore. I am first and foremost a Catholic, and I detest even needing to wear a label to distinguish myself. Unfortunately, I must, for it is still an uncommon thing among Catholics to venerate many of the traditions that I hold dear.

I'll be honest: There was a time when I was an "angry trad," when I lashed out at others as I clawed for a spiritual inheritance I felt was stolen from me. While this is probably a natural reaction, I now know it gained me nothing. There is no value in promoting the beauty of something when one's conduct in so doing is itself repulsive.

So why, then, are traditional Catholics so angry?

In his homily on October 21, 2007, the first time his parish would celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form following the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum, Rev. Franklyn McAfee, pastor of St. John the Beloved in McClean, Virginia, offered an insight:

What flowed from the promised renewal of the Mass in the late 60s was something entirely new. The American Theologian Avery Cardinal Dulles has pointed out that the new rite of the Mass violated every norm for liturgical renewal prescribed by Vatican II. He said it was the only Mass in history that was put together by a committee. As a result . . . many people stopped going to Mass. Some even left the Church. My parents were shaken but they did not abandon the Church. But my older sister did. In the 50s, more than 80 percent of parishioners attended Mass in their parish church. Today it is far less than 30 percent.

It is not my purpose here to prove causality, but the fact that the change in the liturgy of the Roman Rite and the exodus of Catholics from the Church coincide is hard to dispute. People were hurt, immensely, by the drastic nature of the change. The liturgy on which they had been nourished their entire lives became something unrecognizable -- a Mass as alien to them as my first experiences with the old form were to me. Some, like Sts. Padre Pio and JosemaríaEscrivá, asked and obtained permission from Rome to continue saying the older form of the Mass. And a group of intellectuals, artists, writers, and actors from England petitioned Rome not to change the Mass at all. Throughout the Catholic world, there was controversy and upheaval over the changing shape of the liturgy.

Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani asked during the first session of the Second Vatican Council if the gathered fathers wanted to "stir up wonder, or perhaps scandal among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so venerable a rite, that has been approved by so many centuries and is now so familiar?" Following the Council, in his famous Intervention, the good cardinal, along with "a group of theologians, liturgists and pastors of souls," urged Pope Paul VI not to replace the venerable Mass of the Church with the new creation that was the Novus Ordo Missae. Their study showed quite clearly in spite of its brevity that if we consider the innovations implied or taken for granted which may of course be evaluated in different ways, the Novus Ordo represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent (emphasis added).

Despite all of the objections, exceptions, and petitions, Rome moved ahead with the new rite. The old liturgy was effectively suppressed, leaving innumerable Catholics shanghaied in a new Mass that adopted a different form, different postures, a different language, and a different theological focus than that to which they had been accustomed their entire lives. They felt alienated and forgotten.

When Pope John Paul II issued the apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei in 1988, in which he discussed the schismatic action of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, he also commented that respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.

But it fell on deaf ears. At a conference I attended several years ago, a priest reported the response of one of the American bishops when contacted by a cardinal with whom John Paul II had entrusted the mission of spreading the indult allowing the old Mass: "I am the bishop of my diocese," the bishop said, "Not the Holy Father."

An anecdote from yet another priest concerned a bishop who locked the parishioners of a diocesan-approved traditional parish out of their church during the Easter Triduum, following an edict that no Good Friday services were to be allowed in Latin. The church was locked from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday morning to enforce the edict.

If these are extraordinary examples, it has been a common experience for the average traditional Catholic to have to drive long distances to get to a Mass at an inconvenient time -- often the only such Mass available in the diocese. Nothing was done to facilitate their devotion, while every other Catholic special interest group imaginable was happily accommodated.

This repression suffered for four decades by those attached to the older form has lead -- it is true -- to great bitterness. Not every traditional Catholic is afflicted with it, and among those who are there are many good and faithful people who want nothing more than to be fully a part of the life of the Church. Nevertheless, it would be false to deny that there is an angry, malignant, ugly streak running through the heart of traditionalism that threatens to rot the group to its core. It has grown necrotic in the years spent without sympathetic leadership, without cause for hope, living constantly with the knowledge that something was horribly awry in the life of the Church.

Then came Summorum Pontificum. In his introductory letter, Pope Benedict XVI said, "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful." Further, in the text of the motu proprio itself, the Holy Father instructed that, "It is, therefore, permissible to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass following the typical edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by Bl. John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated . . ." (emphasis added).

Never abrogated. The traditionalists who spent decades arguing that the Mass could not be abrogated -- that any priest had the right to say it, that it was as much a part of the Church as it had ever been -- had finally been exonerated. The Mass that they loved so dearly and fought for so valiantly was finally free, in no small part because of their defense of its status as a Mass immemorial.

However justified it may be, traditional angst has always been counterproductive. If we desire to help build a better Church, one that honors its traditions and pays them the reverence they are due, we must conduct ourselves in a constructive fashion.

Do I believe that the older form of Mass is an objectively better expression of Catholic worship than the newer form? Absolutely -- if I didn't, this would be hardly worth the effort. But I want to argue that position on its merits, and not be dismissed because I'm perceived as a member of a rancorous and unpleasant sub-group of Catholics. Those of us seeking to restore what we believe has been lost have some reputation-building to do if we want to avoid being painted with the broad brush strokes some of our peers have earned for us.

In his wisdom, the Holy Father has reconciled the two Roman liturgies within the unity of one rite. It's time those of us attached to them started working together, too.

Steve Skojec is a columnist and blogger for InsideCatholic.com. He writes from Northern Virginia. Visit his blog at www.steveskojec.com.