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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 01

An Interview with Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia

By Vincent Chiarello

REMNANT COLUMNIST

It is cherry blossom time, and tourists from around the country and the world are walking the streets of the District of Columbia in large and small groups, winding their way through the crowded streets. Others, especially those on school trips, arrive in buses that seem to be as tall as two-story buildings. It is a busy time in the nation’s capital, but an eerie silence greets you when you enter the area that houses the chambers of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Scalia’s secretary greets you with a warm smile, asking about your trip. The outer office is cavernous with large bay windows providing a great deal of light, and the carpet muffling any delinquent sounds that might arise in the corridor. There are paintings of former Justices on the wall, and law books that line the shelves.

She asks you to wait, but returns shortly and escorts you through a narrow foyer that leads into the Justice’s inner sanctum, this, too, with large bay windows, the omnipresent shelved legal texts, and an addition: a fireplace. Beyond it are various citations and awards; family photos are noticeable around the room.

Seated behind a large desk with papers protruding from law books piled one on the other, the Justice comes around to greet you. His welcome is equally warm and has a ring of sincerity about it; he has a smile that puts the visitor at ease.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

All of your senses confirm that you have met a personable and pleasant man, a man who just happens to be a Supreme Court Justice.

"...the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution...It may be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment..." Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #78 In my interview, conducted in his chambers, that broached a wide range of subjects, the Senior Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, offered his views on topics as varied as his role as a member of the Court that is the final arbiter of political rights under the U.S. Constitution, and his thoughts of entering the clergy as a young man. Justice Scalia – the nine members of the U.S. Supreme

~ See Scalia/ Page 5

An Interview with Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia

V. Chiarello/ Continued from Page 1

Court are referred to as Justices, not judges – was appointed by President Reagan and began serving on the High Court in 1986 after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate 98-0. Asked if he were nominated today would he have unanimous support in being confirmed, the Justice responded that one senator, among several others, who later "regretted" his vote to confirm him is the current Vice-President, Joe Biden.

In the intervening years, Justice Scalia has demonstrated an uncanny ability to write colorful and trenchant legal opinions, including some memorable dissents (Kevin Ring compiled them: Scalia Dissents 2004) acknowledged by even those who disagree with him, often strongly, about his view of the limits imposed on a Supreme Court Justice’s interpretation the U.S.

Constitution. Today many would question Hamilton’s view that within the trifecta of U.S. government the judiciary is "the least dangerous" because of the Court’s "legislating from the bench," and perhaps Hamilton, if he were alive today, would concur.

Is there more, however, to Justice Scalia than his recognized ability to give talks that amuse spectators, or his repeatedly demonstrated talent in asking questions and making comments that cause the audience in the Court, many of whom are lawyers, to laugh aloud?

A recent article by the The Washington Post reporter who covers the Supreme Court claimed that if the nine Justices were graded on a laugh meter which sought to rank who had, by virtue of his comments, provoked the most laughter, Justice Scalia would rank #1.

None of the other eight came close. After sitting through dozens of oral arguments, I can personally testify to the validity of that result.

Although a lot is known about the legal life of Justice Scalia, what can be said about the personal side of this man outside the halls of the Court or away from the lecture circuit? In short, what kind of man is he? We know that he shaves each morning, and puts on his trousers one leg at a time, but beyond that.

For example, given that he is an only child, how influential were his parents in his religious development? Or, as a parent, what is Justice Scalia’s religious influence on his 9 children (no typo) and 34, "and two on the way" grandchildren? The answers to those questions along with others I believe the readers of The Remnant are most interested in is what I sought to explore during our meeting.

It is not widely known that the Justice’s father, not his grandfather, was born in Sicily, and when Salvatore Eugenio Scalia arrived in the U.S., like most immigrants of the time from southern Europe, he spoke little English.

In time, however, he would master the language and after "Gene" Scalia received a doctorate from Colombia University, he was offered a position to teach Romance Languages at Brooklyn College in NYC, which caused the Scalia family to move from Trenton, New Jersey to New York. (N.B.: I know one of his former students, although I never met Professor Scalia while I was a student at the college.) Scalia’s mother, Catherine (nee) Panaro, the daughter of immigrants, became a school teacher.

There was, then, an intellectual ambience growing up in the Scalia household, something the Justice emphasizes: "My father was the true intellectual of the family, for he was never without a book – in Italian, Spanish or French – in front of his face." It was he who, according to the Justice, "...was a man of the mind," and "who lifted the family fortunes."

Yet despite this emphasis on the intellect, Scalia’s father, this "wonderful scholar," also imbued his son with the belief that intelligence was not the only thing that mattered: "Son, brains are like muscles, you can hire them by the hour, but the only thing that is not for sale is character."

As a young boy, Scalia’s mother was the devout Catholic parent in the family; his father did not attend Mass, not an uncommon trait amongst Sicilian men of that era, but as he aged, Gene Scalia became increasingly devout and conservative, a rarity amongst the professoriate at Brooklyn College to be sure.

It was at Xavier, a Jesuit high school in New York City, that the young Antonin Scalia became "a serious Catholic," very much influenced by the "thoroughly religious atmosphere of the school" and the many young Jesuit priests who taught him. Attendance at the school’s retreat held at the end of the school year deepened his Catholic convictions to the point that Scalia, who was to graduate as class valedictorian, thought seriously about entering the priesthood. However, the recognition that he was an only child with no cousins on his father’s side meant the disappearance of the family name, something that the future Justice recognized would deeply upset his parents, and which led him to consider another profession.

That decision would be made at Georgetown University: the law.

"Georgetown University is not Catholic anymore," the Justice said, but in the 1950s, "they rolled you out of bed to attend Mass. Not anymore."

The Justice’s evaluation of the oldest Catholic university in America is shared by another alumnus, William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, who has undertaken at his own expense in canonical court a legal effort to force Georgetown U. to remove the word "Catholic" from its masthead and in its advertising. The case has gone to Rome for final adjudication.

One little vignette still fondly remembered by the Justice harks back to what Georgetown was.

At his final oral exam prior to receiving his degree (History), Scalia was breezing along when Dr. Wilkinson, the chairman of the department who presided over the three professor panel, asked this question: What was the most important event in the history of the world?

The confident candidate thought, "I have done very well up to here and there is no wrong answer to this one," but as he responded Prof. Wilkinson continued to shake his head signaling that the student had it all wrong. Was it the Battle of Waterloo, or the Greek valor at Thermopylae? The panel member remained unimpressed with the candidate’s answers.

Finally, Dr. Wilkinson replied: "Mr.

Scalia it was the Incarnation, when Christ became a man that is the correct answer." One seriously doubts that Dr.

Wilkinson’s question is ever asked at Georgetown examinations today, and if it were, clearly his response would no longer be considered correct. Despite his answer, Antonin Scalia graduated from Georgetown U. summa cum laude, no mean feat in those days in which grades were not "curved," and no one had ever heard of "grade inflation."

At Harvard Law School, Scalia became Note Editor of Law Review. While attending Harvard, he met his future wife Maureen (nee McCarthy), who attended Radcliffe College, on a blind date set up by a Jewish friend. They were married in 1960.

Upon his graduation, he worked as an attorney, but was offered a position in the Ford Administration, where his work was noticed.

President Reagan appointed Scalia to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, often a stepping stone to the Supreme Court, and in 1986 he was nominated to the High Court.

When I asked how he was notified about his nomination, he smiled and said: "Ed Meese, the Attorney-General, called on a Friday afternoon and said that President Reagan wanted to see me on Monday.

I didn’t think he wanted to talk to me about the budget." The rest, as they say, is history.

Since his first year, Justice Scalia has sought to influence the Court’s direction toward an "Originalist" interpretation of the Constitution. When I referred to him as the "Apostle" of Originalism, the Justice corrected me: "I’m the Evangelist of Originalism," showing that he had not forgotten his earlier Jesuit training.

A summary of an Originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution would be that the document must be interpreted in light of the time it was written; otherwise, to describe it as "a living Constitution" assures that the document will become a popularity contest and subject to the whims of an incoming administration or congress.

Changes can be brought about through the amending process, and Scalia gave an example of such a proposed change: the death penalty.

Those favoring a more "modern" interpretation of the founding document often refer to "evolving standards of decency," and conclude that the death penalty today violates the 8th Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments." The Justice responds by saying that when the 8th Amendment was ratified, every state had a death penalty; although today 18 states and the District of Columbia forbid it.

In a mantra that he would often repeat, it is not up to a judge or Justice to outlaw something that been in existence since the nation’s beginning, for that can and must only be done by the will of the people. Here is the essence of the Justice Scalia’s judicial credo: it is up to the people through their representatives to bring about changes in the Constitution, not to "nine lawyers."

But as a devout Catholic, what about the issue of abortion? At a conference

Continued Next Page

Justice Antonin Scalia & Remnant columnist Vincent Chiarello

Justice Scalia Interview

Continued from Page 5

several years ago, Scalia said this: I try mightily to prevent my religious views or my political views or my philosophical views from affecting my interpretation of the law. Then added: I don’t think any of my religious views have anything to do with how I do my job as a judge." When he dons his robe as a Justice of the US Supreme Court, the basis of his decisions must be what the Constitution requires, and if abortion or the death penalty is permitted by the state under its law, then despite his Catholic belief it is the vox populi who are sovereign in these matters.

Those Catholic beliefs, which are deeply ingrained in this man, can sometimes create interesting scenarios amongst non-believers. Late last year, in an interview with New York Magazine’s Jennifer Senior, Scalia intentionally brought up the fact that he "believes in the Devil." Senior was stunned, saying, "Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?" The Justice then went about to explain why the awareness of the presence of the Devil, or Satan, or Belial is part of Christian belief, and has been since the days of Christ. He added: "You (Senior) travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil for all of history." Then with that twinkle in his eye, he told me: " Eighty percent of the people believe in the Devil, but they don’t live in New York."

Regarding the current state of the Church and, to quote Roberto de Mattei, "the profound crisis that engulfs it," Scalia, whose son is an ordained priest in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, believes the Church in the US is not in a similar condition to that of Europe, which is, he claims, "post-Christian." Further, although no fan of Vatican II, the Justice appeared to be unconvinced that a great many of the problems facing the Church are a direct result of the Council’s impact, an oftrepeated theme of de Mattei, as well as other observers of the Church today.

The Justice was, however, unequivocal in stating his belief that a major reason his nine children are devout today is that he and his wife made a conscious effort to travel long distances to attend "a reverent Mass, not a guitar Mass." The vernacular Mass in many churches has no sense of reverence, and was similar to "going to a club."

The chambers of Senior Associate Justice Antonin Scalia are decorated with, amongst other paintings and statues, the famous Holbein portrait of St. Thomas More. There is also a bust of the saint the Church calls "the patron saint of lawyers," and who subsequently became "the patron saint of politicians," to which Scalia quipped: That wasn’t a promotion.

More was martyred for the Faith in 1535 and not canonized until 1935.

The Justice believes that "one can wait a while" in these matters, reinforcing the conviction of many that Justice Antonin Scalia is a man of impeccable judgment.■

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 01

Stand Fast and Hold to Tradition

By Michael J. Matt

Pax

We know from Holy Scripture that God will allow the world to be deceived by lying wonders and false miracles, in punishment for men rejecting Him and the Truths of His Church.

Today we are in the midst of a universal revolt against Truth, Almighty God and the Traditions of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The nations are in revolt. The Church is in revolt.

Therefore, nothing we see from now on should surprise us or shake our resolve to stand fast and hold to Tradition. It has all been predicted, that even the elect could be deceived.

There is little this writer or anyone else can say that will somehow unravel the Mystery of Iniquity that is at hand. To me, a mere layman, it seems obvious that the Church in her human element is being perverted and thus prepared for the rise of an even greater abomination.

This, it seems to me, is precisely what the destruction of the human element of the Church—her liturgy, her priesthood, her papacy and traditions—has been all about, all along... preparing the way for that diabolical entity which will "show himself as if he were God."

It is for this reason that serious traditional Catholics have long resented the claim that our cause is merely about securing access to our "liturgical preferences". Nothing could be further

~

See

Stand Fast/

Page 2

Stand Fast and Hold to Tradition

Continued from Page 1

Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and

hold the

traditions

According

from the truth. It is what we oppose that defines us, and that is the new order which has as its goal the total eradication of the old Church.

In order for the new order to advance the Catholic Church as she always was must appear to have been destroyed, leaving nothing to block the advance of the Son of Perdition.

Is that what is happening right now? No one can say with certitude because it is a mystery; but certainly the abomination of desolation we see before us in the Church today is at the very least a precursor of all things evil to come.

What do we do in the meantime?

Resolve to accept that greatest of all challenges—to keep the old Faith despite the abomination of desolation standing before us now in the temple of God.

Christ Himself challenged us to do just that when He asked: "When the Son of Man returns will He find faith?"

Well, will He?

If we are to keep the faith we must resolve now not to be "easily moved from your sense, nor be terrified" and to "let no man deceive us by any means", for when the "wicked one shall be revealed" it will be the "Lord Jesus" that "shall kill [him] with the spirit of his mouth; and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, him, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders."

In the meantime, St. Paul tells us what to do in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians (Chapter 2 vs. 11-16)— we must watch, wait and hold fast to Tradition:

which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle. Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God and our Father, who hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation, and good hope in grace, Exhort your hearts, and confirm you in every good work and word.

Meantime, the Diabolical Disorientation Continues

to La Stampa, Pope Paul VI has reportedly been pencilled in for beatification this coming fall at the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.

Yes, that’s right—Paul VI! Remember him? That vague, sort of nondescript pontiff who made up for negligible personal magnetism with an almost fanatical penchant for novelty.

There is no particular cult associated with his cause, of course, other than among a few aging ecclesiastical hippies inside the Vatican who are evidently bound and determined to nominate their pal Paul for a Halo Award, come hell or high water.

Something of a tragic figure, Papa Montini was sometimes called the Lady Macbeth of the Vatican because by pontificate end he was reportedly reduced to walking the papal apartments at night, racked with self-doubt, weeping over the mess he and his friends had made of the Roman Rite.

By his own admission, he was haunted by the ‘smoke of Satan’, which he said had entered the sanctuary of the Catholic Church. He was widely criticized both by traditionalists and liberals alike for being lukewarm and indecisive, and he was not in possession of sufficient charisma to win over either side.

By 1972, Pope Paul began to realize that things had gone terribly wrong in the Church. "There was the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church" he noted on June 29, 1972. "Instead, it is the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty."

For Paul VI that "day of clouds" also included pesky accusations of moral misconduct which never quite went away and, in fact, stopped his beatification in its tracks when the Vatican tried to trot this pony out back in the early 1980s. Paul VI became the first pope in history, in fact, to issue a statement regarding his own sexuality when in 1968 and in front of 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square he felt the need to defend himself against the charge of having had a homosexual relationship.

Controversy notwithstanding, it’s Montini’s turn to be Raised to the Tables—the man famous for wrecking the Mass and the last pope to wear the papal tiara, having given his to the United States in a dramatic gesture symbolizing democracy’s triumph over the old "triumphalist" Catholic Church.

Pope Paul literally uncrowned himself after some 800 years of Roman pontiffs wearing theirs in kingly service of Christ’s bride.

After Paul, never again. Because he was a humble man and, by implication, all of his 261 predecessors evidently were not, he stepped off the papal throne at the end of the second session of the Second Vatican Council in 1963 and dramatically set his crown on his altar in St. Peter’s, thus renouncing papal kingship in deference to the aggiornamento of the Second Vatican Council.

The Church has obviously never recovered from that ill-advised papal surrender to the spirit of the age—a massive blunder even Humanae Vitae (Pope Paul’s great encyclical in defense of human life) could not overcome.

Without the tiara—the symbol of his AUTHORITY—and all that that implied, Paul VI’s words against contraception fell largely on deaf ears throughout the whole of the Catholic world. In the minds of millions of "reformed" Catholics, Peter had become just another politician with an opinion to be ignored at will.

Long forgotten, Pope Paul’s tiara is still on display in the National Shrine in DC where modern, self-loathing Catholics once used it to delude themselves into thinking the Church was much better off in 1970 than back in those "dark ages" of faith when Christ was King, as were His vicars on earth.

After Vatican II, Holy Mother Church had been democratized! All glory, laud and honor to thee, O Great Architect of the Universe!

Paul’s legacy is crowned by the novel spectacle of uncrowned Roman pontiffs sitting in Peter’s chair ever since. His was the last papal coronation—a breach with Tradition dating back at least to the reign of Pope Nicholas I in 858. After Paul, no pope would be crowned again, and Peter’s successors would be elected and inaugurated into office much like a president or prime minister—a rank novelty which Americanized Catholics still praise as "totally awesome, dude".

So come October next, the members of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (which should be renamed the "Congregation for the Causes of Famous Dead People) will meet to confirm the "miracle" attributed to Paul’s intercession. And soon thereafter Francis will sign the Decree of Beatification.

Next up? Canonization, of course! And the revolution? What revolution.

It should be abundantly obvious to everyone who is not a total neo-Catholic that the modern Beatification Awards ceremony has moved well past silliness and gone straight on into the depths of ecclesiastical narcissism. Anyone who believes the Holy Ghost is involved with such obvious fundraising and political opportunism is surely drinking deeply from the Kool-Aid vat.

But perhaps this clear and present abomination—the rank politicization of the beatification process—will prove too much even for our neo-Catholic brothers and sisters. Maybe this will be the straw that will finally break the neo-Catholics’ stubborn resolve to defend the indefensible. Let’s hope so, as this destructive agenda, engineered by modernist elements inside the Vatican, simply must be radically opposed by all sincere Catholics before it sacrifices on the altar of progressivism what little is left of the Church’s credibility.

It is difficult to argue with those who insist that the Vatican is spinning out of control. With a few outstanding exceptions duly noted, it’s undeniable that the Vatican today is crawling with politicians, rank modernists, and even significant representation from the socalled "Lavender Mafia"—powerful forces that have infiltrated our Church and are using the Bride of Christ like a cheap whore to satisfy their own perverse agenda.

One wonders what it will take for Catholic men worldwide to finally realize they’ve been had and to stand up and object to this scourging of Holy Mother Church. As far as this writer is concerned, the gloves are off and the façade is now entirely exposed.

We hold fast to the Traditions and wait for God to kill the spirit of Vatican II with His mouth. ■

Pope Paul VI, Cover of Time Magazine, November 27, 1968.

The banner across the top reads, 'Rebellion in the Catholic Church'

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What Exactly Is A Traditionalist?

■ The neo-Catholic establishment continues its confident march past the point of no return, explaining away all evidence of disaster while patronizing traditionalists as diehard connoisseurs of nostalgia

By Christopher A. Ferrara

That

today there are Catholics denominated "traditionalist" is a development unexampled in the entire previous history of the Catholic Church. Even at the height of the Arian crisis— the closest analogue to our situation— the Church was not divided between traditionalists and non-traditionalists, but rather between those who had not embraced the heresy of Arius and those who had.

But what exactly is a traditionalist? A look back at the way things once were might convey the meaning of the term more effectively than the usual attempts at a formal definition:

• Once there was no rite of Mass rendered into the vulgar tongues of the world. There was only the universal liturgical language of a timeless Church as seen in the immemorial Roman Rite, whose organic development had proceeded almost imperceptibly since the 5th century, or in the venerable Eastern rites, almost as ancient, which have largely escaped the furious liturgical vandalism that has ravaged the Church’s principal liturgy.

• Once there were no Lutheranstyle altar tables in our churches, but only high altars oriented to God, whose very appearance aroused one’s sense of awe and reverence.

~ See What's a Traditionalist/ Page 7

What Exactly Is A Traditionalist?

C. Ferrara/ Continued from Page 1

• Once there were no lay lectors, lay "ministers of the Eucharist" or girls in the sanctuary, but only priests, deacons on the way to the priesthood, and the male altar servers who were a primary source of generation after generation of priestly vocations, filling the seminaries.

• Once there was no profane music during Mass, but only Gregorian chant or polyphony, arousing the soul to contemplation of the divine rather than foot-tapping, hand-clapping or mere boredom.

• Once there were no widespread liturgical abuses. At worst, there were priests who celebrated the traditional Mass diffidently but within a rubrical, textual and musical framework that nonetheless protected its central mystery from any possibility of profanation and maintained the supreme dignity of divine worship against human weakness.

• Once there was no "gay Mafia" in the seminaries, the chanceries and the Vatican itself, or clerical predators molesting boys all over the globe, because Church authorities enforced the rule that "religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty…"

1

• Once there were no empty seminaries, empty convents, abandoned parishes and shuttered Catholic schools. There were only seminaries, convents, parishes and schools filled with faithful Catholics from large families.

• Once there was no "ecumenism." There was only the conviction that the Catholic Church is the one true Church outside of which no one is saved. Catholics followed the Church’s teaching that "[i] t is not lawful for the faithful in any way to assist actively at or to take part in the worship of non Catholics," 2 and they understood, if only implicitly, what Pope Pius XI insisted upon: "Venerable Brethren, it is clear why this Apostolic See has never allowed its subjects to take part in the assemblies of non-Catholics: for the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain, according to the will of

its Author, exactly the same as He instituted it."

3

• Once there was no "dialogue." There was only evangelization by clergy and lay apologists with the aim of making converts to the true religion. And converts there were, entering the Church in numbers so great that it seemed even the United States was becoming a Catholic nation, as 30 million Americans tuned in to Bishop Sheen every Sunday.

• Once there were no mass defections from the priesthood, the religious orders, and the lay faithful, leading to "silent apostasy" in Europe and throughout the West. There was, rather, what a Father of Second Vatican Council described at the Council’s commencement: "the Church, notwithstanding the calamities that plague the world,

is experiencing a glorious era, if you consider the Christian life of the clergy and of the faithful, the propagation of the faith, and the salutary universal influence possessed by the Church in the world today."

4

• Once there were no "Catholic Charismatics," "neo Catecheumenals," or other "ecclesial movements" promoting strange new modes of worship invented by their founders. There were only Catholics, worshipping in the same way as their forebears with unbroken continuity down the centuries.

• Once there were no traditionalists, because there was no need to describe any Catholic by that term. All Catholics accepted instinctively what a series of Popes had prescribed as part of the very profession of our faith: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church."

5

That was the way it once was. And when was this bygone era of which I write? Not centuries ago, or even one century ago, or even a single lifetime ago, but a mere fifty years ago, within the living memory of many millions of Catholics today.

What, then, is a traditionalist? He is nothing more or less than a Catholic who has continued to practice the faith precisely as he learned it in his childhood, or who has received the same unreconstructed faith from his parents and will in turn pass it on to his own children. A traditionalist, in other words, is a Catholic who lives the faith as if the ecclesial calamities of the post-Vatican II epoch had never happened—indeed, as if Vatican II itself had never happened. And the astonishing truth about the traditionalist is that no doctrine or disciplinary rule of the Church whatsoever forbids him to believe and to worship God in just that way, even though the great preponderance of Catholics no longer does.

That Catholics who have simply gone on believing and worshiping as Catholics always did before the Council have come to be called traditionalists—quite suddenly in historical terms—that the very word tradition now distinguishes these relative few Catholics from the vast majority of the Church’s members, is the undeniable sign of a crisis like no other the Church has ever witnessed. Those who deny this would have to explain why it is only within that transformed vast majority, rightly described as neo-Catholic, that the faith has been steadily losing its grip on the people, with many falling away completely into the "silent apostasy" John Paul II lately lamented after hailing for so many years a "conciliar renewal" that was actually a massive collapse of faith and discipline.

In particular, they would have to explain why it is only within this vast majority of "Vatican II Catholics" that we find—

• more than a quarter of all marriages ending in divorce,

6 with tens of millions of divorced and "remarried" Catholics worldwide whose continuing adultery Cardinal Kasper wishes to accommodate, with the seeming encouragement of the currently reigning Pope;

• births, baptisms, sacramental marriages, conversions, and Mass attendance declining relentlessly since the Council;

7

• a widespread rejection of the Church’s infallible teaching on fundamental matters of faith and morals;

8

• a sudden and dramatic loss of priestly vocations, leaving the Catholic priesthood slightly smaller today than it was in 1970, and a drastic decline in the number of religious since then, despite a doubling of the world’s population.

9

They would also have to explain why it is only among the tiny minority of Catholics now denominated traditionalists that not one of these signs of ecclesial decay is evident.

In recent days the ecclesial crisis that has been with us now for more than half a century appears to be reaching a depth from which there can be no rescue without a miraculous divine intervention. The world is singing hosannas to the new Pope, urging him on to a final completion, per impossibile, of the process of ecclesial auto-demolition Paul VI spent his last years decrying although he himself had unleashed it. Yet the neo-Catholic establishment continues its confident march past the point of no return, explaining away all evidence of disaster while patronizing traditionalists as diehard connoisseurs of nostalgia whose "sensibilities" might be accommodated even if they no longer matter for the future of the Church. But in truth traditionalists are the future of the Church, as the history of our time will record when it is written.

What exactly is a traditionalist? He is what every Catholic once was, and will be again when the crisis is over. ■

Endnotes

1 "Instruction on the Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders" [1961]) 2 Can. 1251, §1, CIC (1917),

3 Mortalium animos (1928), n. 10.

4 Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, p. 113 (quoting the Armenian Patriarch of Cilicia).

5 Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi (1907), n. 42 (quoting and affirming the continuing validity of a profession of faith prescribed by Pius IV and Blessed Pius IX). 6 Cf. Georgetown University statistical analysis by Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot. ca/2013/09/ divorce-still-less-likely-among.html.

7 Cf. CARA statistical trends analysis, http:// nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2010/08/therewill- likely-be-fewer-catholic.html 8 Cf. Pew Research Poll, March 18, 2013, http:// www.pewforum.org/2013/03/18/us-catholicshappy- with-selection-of-pope-francis/.

9 Cf. CARA statistical table, http://cara.georgetown. edu/caraservices/requestedchurchstats. html.

Traditional Catholics attending a Traditional Latin Mass during WWII? No, just Catholics attending THE Mass during WWII

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 02

The Remnant

Est. in 1967

A Catholic Fortnightly

Published 22 times per year

Editor/Publisher

Michael J. Matt

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 03

The Remnant Speaks

Letters to the Editor: The Remnant Speaks P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025, Editor@RemnantNewspaper.com Suspending Ratio Editor, The Remnant: With humility and submission to the mysteries of our Faith and teaching authority of the Church I never thought I would have to give up my reason to remain a Catholic.

My reason tells me that the process and procedures that brought us these canonizations violated all prerequisites that the Church in her experience, wisdom and prudence has applied before declaring someone a saint. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I will never pray for their intercession and I can’t imagine their "cult" lasting more than a generation. This pope may have begun the demolition of the cult of the saints as the world witnessed the "politics" and arbitrary violation of the spirit and letter of the Church’s law and tradition again.

A Longtime Subscriber

Is Canonization Infallible?

Editor, The Remnant: With all the angst regarding the papal canonizations, I wonder if anyone has considered the convenient theological minority position of holding that canonizations are not infallible? The old Catholic Encyclopedia: "Is the pope infallible in issuing a decree of canonization? Most theologians answer in the affirmative."

This means that some answer in the negative, and, to my knowledge, they’ve never been censured, excommunicated or anathematized for having done so.

Furthermore, as pointed out quite rightly by Roberto de Mattei, Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, the most distinguished living scholar of the "Roman School," has expressed numerous doubts about the infallibility of canonizations mainly because they do not fulfill the requirements laid down at Vatican I. De Mattei also noted, too, that the matter of infallibility of canonization is neither covered in the 1917 or 1983 Codes of Canon Law nor in Catechisms. While canonizations are serious business indeed, it seems we need not go apoplectic about them as there is liberty of opinion on the matter.

Anthony Gaddini Indiana On Surviving the Canonizations

Editor, The Remnant: So the first official act of consequence by Jorge Bergoglio is to attempt to cement Vatican II in stone by obliquely exercising the dogma of infallibility through the canonizations of Giuseppe Roncalli and Karol Wojtyla, both Vatican II celebrities. The problem this poses for the traditional Catholic is that this is not just another assault on the notion of the continuity of the Faith by attempts to peripherally mitigate its traditional elements through "pastoral" considerations, no this hits right to the core. This maneuver has outflanked traditionalists and has shown that Bergoglio isn’t just a bumbling loose Canon but a formidable modernistic strategist.

The infallible notion, that by declaring Roncalli and Wojtyla saints the faithful are assured of these Pope’s attainment of heaven, establishes the metaphysical validation of Vatican II in the neo-Catholic paradigm ipso facto. This could be the unveiling of the Bergoglio Plan as part of a new modernist kriegstrategie, pastoral praxis validated through canonizations. The canonizations could precede the praxis.

Noting his previous assertion, that the "sensus fidelium must not be confused with the sociological reality of majority opinion", Bergoglio has cleared the path of "progress" from the obstructions of consensus. By selectively declaring some divorced Catholics saints he could claim he’s merely reflexively following God’s will by acknowledging the validity of the Kasperisms that would further muddy the Tiber with the Rhine.

But what of this notion of the infallibility of canonizations? According to Professor Roberto de Mattei "Infallibility of canonizations is not a dogma of the faith, it is the opinion of a majority of theologians." He notes that many eminent theologians, even of the "Roman School", harbor serious doubts about this notion and point out that they do not fulfill the conditional guarantees of Vatican I concerning infallibility. Some saints are considered as such without having been canonized while others have been canonized possessing characters and faith of noted ill-repute. There must be a vigorous intellectual counter attack along these lines as opposed to puerile justifications and ameliorations of suspect pontifical actions regardless of any agency of buttress. If this counter argument gains traction then look for a stern reaction from the Bergogliomites.

The problem with "Advice on Surviving the Canonizations" is that this notion of implied infallibility is accepted implicitly and then an attempt to rationalize the process is undertaken.

We have no idea what Giuseppe Roncalli or Karol Wojtyla "must have" done or not done at the end of their time.

In order to attempt to validate this perceived infallibility the author forces assumptions of will and action upon these two men. This amounts to being a corollary of the sin of presumption defined by the Catholic Encyclopedia: "... the condition of a soul that, because of a badly regulated reliance on God’s mercy and power, hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon of his sins without repenting of them." This is one aspect that speaks against the concept of infallibility in canonizations.

Are we to believe that modernists actually come to believe that they were wrong on their death beds having spent a life of revolutionary action against the Church based on the assumption that they were properly reforming it? Is not the damage caused by these modernists worse than the damage wrought by Francois-Marie Arouet as it was self-inflicted? Would the death bed realization and conversion of these three men really differ in any substantial way as the ends and the means are identical?

As to the harm inflicted on the Church by these three men there is little doubt but as to their immortal destination or status-who are we to judge, measure or presume?

John D. Antesberger II University of Virginia Author’s Response: Thank you, Mr.

Antesberger. If you re-read my article (See Page 4), you will find the following passage which must not be overlooked: "First, let’s take a step back to see this entire event in perspective. Although there have been some interesting arguments made for at least doubting the validity of these canonizations, let’s assume for the sake of argument that they are valid. If so, what are we, as Catholics, required to believe about them?"

Thus, I recognize that there are arguments in favor of canonizations not being infallible. Furthermore, I agree with you that we, as Traditionalists, should research, develop, and present any arguments against infallibility which are persuasive and credible. My article was, in no way, attempting to argue that the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II were infallible acts. My article was meant to ask the following question: "If these canonizations are infallible acts of the Church (for sake of argument) what would we, as Catholics, be bound to believe about them?" Thus my article serves as a sound fallback position for Traditionalists in addition to, not in place of, arguments against the infallibility of canonizations. I think this helps strengthen rather than weaken our overall position. As for the eternal destiny of John XXIII and John Paul II, again, my analysis only makes sense if we start by assuming that these men were indeed canonized and that canonizations are infallible. With this as our starting point, Catholic theology and logic lead to the conclusion that we must accept these men are in Heaven.

And if these men are in Heaven, they must have repented from all culpable mortal sin before death and have paid for the temporal punishment on earth or in purgatory. Also, if they are in Heaven it is Catholic teaching that their intellects are enlightened and their wills are perfect. Thus they would now be more Traditional and Catholic than anyone on earth and would be eager to intercede for the restoration of the Church.

I in no way meant to prove these men are in Heaven by giving the factual examples I did of the end of these popes’ lives. I only meant to show that it is

Continued Next Page

Letters to the Editor

Continued from Page 3

possible that they did repent at the end of their lives. Therefore, assuming again that canonizations are infallible, it would not be impossible or ridiculous for a Traditionalist to accept what they would be required to accept: that these men are in Heaven. As you say yourself, "who are we to judge, measure or presume?"

That said, even if the canonizations were infallible, we, as Traditionalists would not have to infallibly accept that either man showed heroic virtue on earth or that either man’s pontificate was worthy of emulation. Even John Paul II’s postulator, Cardinal Amato admitted as much when he said John Paul II was not being canonized for his pontificate. The judgment of heroic virtue is a prudential one and is dependent on the human judgment of the pope which is fallible.

On this we can both agree. Chris Jackson

SNAP the Canonizations

Editor, The Remnant: "For Pope Francis and Catholic officials to honor JPII with this exalted title is extraordinarily heartless and unwise. It rubs salt into the already deep wounds of tens of thousands of still-suffering clergy sex abuse victims and their loved ones across the globe," said Nicky Davis of Sydney, who heads the SNAP Australia chapter.

"St. John Chrysostom says that scandal is so abominable in the eyes of God, that though he overlooks very grievous sins, he cannot allow the sin of scandal to pass without condign punishment." The Sermons of St. Alphonsus Liguori (p.

178 4th Edition TAN books 1982) We live in an age of intemperance. We live in a time of instant gratification. As quoted by John Vennari in his recent essay, "The Secret of Pope John Paul II’s Success," the Venerable Bishop Fulton J. Sheen stated: "We are governed by feelings." Regrettably, all the evidence points to these influences in the recent canonization of Pope John Paul II. There has been no shortage of exuberance or urgency in the process.

The point here is not to belabor the reality of the canonization or to revisit the particulars of the process. The issue at hand is that of orientation, that of the mindset that has propelled this process amidst unprecedented alacrity to its fruition in less than one decade’s time. Is this mindset consistent with that associated with previous canonization processes? Is there some take-away that might explain the nearly uniform euphoria among the majority of Catholics?

The words of SNAP’s Nicky Davis have for the most part gained little traction among the Church leadership and laity before this momentous occasion.

Nonetheless, they are poignant.

Michael Matt’s recent Remnant TV post questioning the urgency of this canonization is dead on. http:// remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/ component/k2/item/583-episode-14-eveof- canonization-secular-media-lock-load Particularly in this information age it is important to get things right, to do the right things for the right reasons. "The servant is not greater than his master."

But today it appears that the cult of personality rules; hagiography has preempted history. The pontificate of Pope John Paul II is not yet historical in the grand scheme of things. Yet there is a verdict.

It is difficult to consider events leading to the canonization of Pope John Paul II without coming away with a certain sense of unease. Perhaps docility demands that this sense of unease be suppressed and dismissed by loyal Catholics. But despite the ascetic appeal involved with doing so, it presupposes a dangerous suppression of the intellect and the will in subordination to human sentiment. Some might suggest it is doing violence to reason. In a nutshell this is non va bene.

We have two new saints. So be it.

But time moves on, and the images of Assisi will endure. The pictures of the victims, like those on the SNAP website homepage, will continue to bear witness. The as yet unborn of future generations of Catholics and non-Catholics alike will one day look back and wonder. The history books will provide commentary.

The icons of the canonized will be venerated in the churches.

Will it be as easy for future generations to "feel the love"? It’s difficult to say. We can only "move on" as the popular expression goes, prayerfully and in humility. We have been baptized into the Mystical Body of Christ. We have been redeemed by an eternal and infinitely loving God. Our reward is great if we can simply keep the faith, and if we can participate in God’s undying love for us while doing all in our power to share this love with others. Pax et bonum.

Jim Grumblatt Virginia

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On Surviving the Canonizations

By Chris Jackson

no doubt, will be a very tough

This,

weekend for many Traditional Catholics to have to endure. The party atmosphere alone will be enough to make us wince. But on top of this, we will have to watch and/or encounter thousands of faithful who will be blissfully unaware that they are witnessing one of the most grievous prudential errors in the history of the Church. Instead they will be laughing, singing, shouting, and cavorting, much like the atmosphere at a World Youth Day.

Even though the promoter of John Paul II’s cause himself said the late pontiff was not being canonized for his pontificate, we will no doubt, have to hear George Weigel and others disregard this unprecedented qualification and praise John Paul II’s pontificate anyway.

Since we will have to experience this surreal celebration of the last 50 years of post-conciliar destruction and witness masses of "Santo Subito" Catholics celebrating pontificates that brought about mass confusion and disorder in the Church, what are we to think? Is there any hope of making sense of this that does not end in despair?

What Does the Infallibility of a Canonization Mean?

First, let’s take a step back to see this entire event in perspective. Although there have been some interesting arguments made for at least doubting the validity of these canonizations, let’s assume for the sake of argument that they are valid. If so, what are we, as Catholics, required to believe about them? The Catholic Encyclopaedia tells us. It asks:

What is the object of this infallible judgment of the pope? Does he define that the person canonized is in heaven or only that he has practiced Christian virtues in an heroic degree? I have never seen this question discussed; my own opinion is that nothing else is defined than that the person canonized is in heaven. The formula used in the act of canonization has nothing more than this: "In honour of . . . we decree and define that Blessed N. is a Saint, and we inscribe his name in the catalogue of saints, and order that his memory by devoutly and piously celebrated yearly on the . . . day of . . . his feast." There is no question of heroic virtue in this formula; on the other hand, sanctity does not necessarily imply the exercise of heroic virtue, since one who had not hitherto practised heroic virtue would, by the one transient heroic act in which he yielded up his life for Christ, have justly deserved to be considered a saint…

From this I think we can deduce something important. In a canonization there are two judgments made by the Church. One judgment is that the canonized person is in Heaven. The other is that the canonized person practiced heroic virtue and is to be held up as an example and role model of holiness for the faithful.

The first judgment is, as the Catholic Encyclopedia points out, infallible. For the indefectibility of the Church requires that She not command all of the faithful to recognize someone as a Saint who is in Hell.

The second judgment, however, is a prudential one. It is one that the Church has to make through human means, i.e. investigating historical facts and evidence of the candidate’s life. It is this judgment, which will determine whether the candidate exercised the heroic virtue necessary to hold him or her up as an example to the universal Church. It is for this reason that the Church used to hold to a very rigorous process of vetting all potential candidates for sainthood.

The traditional canonization process involved lengthy and thorough investigations of a candidate’s life, holiness, sanctity, and virtue. It assigned a devil’s advocate to bring to light all of the reasons why the candidate should not be considered a saint. In addition, it required a lengthy number of years after the candidate’s death before a decision was made. This allowed time for anything hidden about the candidate’s life to come to light. It also allowed for a more sober historical judgment once the heat of the moment had passed.

Since 1983, when John Paul II replaced the Traditional process, the devil’s advocate has been eliminated, the waiting period for canonization after a candidate’s death has been drastically reduced, and, in the case of John XXIII one of the required miracles was even waived. In addition, an entirely new concept of "virtue" has appeared in Conciliar circles that isn’t necessarily equated with the Traditional concept of virtue. For instance, ecumenism is now apparently treated as a virtue!

Continued on Page 13

On Surviving the Canonizations

Continued from Page 4

In any case, due to the meticulous detail and high standards of the previous canonization process, Catholics used to be able to rely on the lives of canonized saints to be models of inspiration.

Because of this track record, I believe many Catholics came to believe that the pope’s judgment of heroic virtue and good example may be infallible as well.

Instead, however, the accuracy of this second judgment is based on the prudence and care of the pope and the human element of the Church at any given time.

Implications of Heaven

As stated previously, we must believe a canonized saint is in Heaven. So what do we know about Heaven? Well, in order to get to Heaven, one must die in a state of grace. For a baptized Catholic, this means one must have repented and been forgiven of all mortal sins one has committed in one’s life before death. Now, we all know the most serious and troublesome actions of both John XXIII and John Paul II’s pontificates. They caused much scandal and suffering for the Church. Thus, if either pontiff were morally culpable for any of these acts, they would need to repent of these before death and ask forgiveness in order to die in the state of grace. In this regard, it is interesting that both popes began to see the harm being done to the Church in the last stages of their lives. In the case of John XXIII, a reader wrote in to EWTN back in 2002 asking if a certain report he read about John XXIII was true. The report stated, in relevant part:

…the Second Vatican Council was apparently a great disappointment to the pope. According to Anne Muggeridge, the daughter-in-law of the famous British Catholic convert and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge), in The Desolate City, John Cardinal Heenan of Westminster reported that when, during the rebellious first session of the Council, the pope realized that the papacy had lost control of the process, he attempted to organize a group of bishops to try to force it to an end. Malcolm Muggeridge, who reported from Rome on the Second Vatican Council for the British Broadcasting Corporation, considered Pope John "politically naive and unduly influenced by the handful of ‘liberal’ clerics with whom he is in close contact." In a 1985 interview, he gave his assessment of the pope thus: Really Pope John -- who was built up as a saintly and perfect pope, the good man of our time -- whether consciously or unconsciously, did more damage to the Church than possibly any other individual man had ever done in the whole of its history.... It seemed almost as though Pope John was operating on behalf of the devil without being in any way conscious of it. Whatever Pope John’s disposition was, however, before the second session of the council could open, he died. His last words on his deathbed, as reported by Jean Guitton, the only Catholic layman to serve as a peritus at the Council, were: "Stop the Council; stop the Council."

The EWTN expert’s response included the following surprising answer, "I have heard that report and it is probably true."

As for John Paul II, less than two years before his death, in his final apostolic exhortation, he lamented the loss of Faith in Europe:

At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of man apart from God and apart from Christ.

This sort of thinking has led to man being considered as "the absolute centre of reality, a view which makes him occupy – falsely – the place of God and which forgets that it is not man who creates God, but rather God who creates man. Forgetfulness of God led to the abandonment of man".

It is therefore "no wonder that in this context a vast field has opened for the unrestrained development of nihilism in philosophy, of relativism in values and morality, and of pragmatism – and even a cynical hedonism – in daily life".

European culture gives the impression of "silent apostasy" on the part of people who have all that they need and who live as if God does not exist.

We also know that John Paul II died on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, shortly after a Mass said in his apartment for that particular devotion. The source of the devotion, the diary of St. Faustina, includes stories of sinners saved on their deathbed. Thus it is not hard to imagine the late pontiff saying a Chaplet of Divine Mercy or having one said for him that night. As a devout follower of the devotion he was no doubt familiar with the following words of St. Faustina:

When I entered my solitude, I heard these words: At the hour of their death, I defend as My own glory every soul that will say this chaplet; or when others say it for a dying person, the indulgence is the same.

When this chaplet is said by the bedside of a dying person, God’s anger is placated, unfathomable mercy envelops the soul, and the very depths of My tender mercy are moved for the sake of the sorrowful Passion of My Son.

Regardless, the point is that both John XXIII and John Paul II must have both repented for any bad actions of their papacies and paid for any temporal punishment for sin in purgatory before either man could enter Heaven. Once in Heaven, the souls of both men will have been completely transformed into a perfect state including perfect knowledge of the Truth. As the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us:

To enable it to see God, the intellect of the blessed is supernaturally perfected by the light of glory (lumen gloriae).

This was defined by the Council of Vienne in 1311 (Denz., n. 475; old, n. 403); and it is also evident from the supernatural character of the beatific vision. For the beatific vision transcends the natural powers of the intellect; therefore, to see God the intellect stands in need of some supernatural strength, not merely transient, but permanent as the vision itself. This permanent invigoration is called the "light of glory", because it enables the souls in glory to see God with their intellect, just as material light enables our bodily eyes to see corporeal objects.

As for the will of those in Heaven:

The blessed are confirmed in good; they can no longer commit even the slightest venial sin; every wish of their heart is inspired by the purest love of God. That is, beyond doubt, Catholic doctrine. Moreover this impossibility of sinning is physical. The blessed have no longer the power of choosing to do evil actions; they cannot but love God; they are merely free to show that love by one good action in preference to another.

Therefore, as saints, both John XXIII and John Paul II will not only have repented of any evil done in their pontificates, but their intellects will have perfect knowledge of the Truth and their wills can will nothing but the will of God.

New Saints for Tradition?

As Catholics we know that the perfect truth they will attain includes perfect truth regarding Catholic doctrine. This doctrine of course includes Church doctrine on such subjects as religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, and the objective superiority of the Traditional Latin Mass as a Catholic Rite over the Novus Ordo.

In other words, these two pontiffs will be truly Catholic in their thinking. But more than that, having been shown the errors of their pontificates and having already repented deeply for them, either in this life or in purgatory, they, even more than us will, with renewed vigor, and the zeal of the newly converted, wish to see the final restoration of the Church. Indeed their wills will be one with God, who, as we know, desires the conversion of His Church. Put another way, they will have finally become what many of us so often prayed they would become on earth: Traditionalists.

Thus, it is truly fitting, as John Paul II’s own postulator remarked, that he is not being canonized for his papacy. Nor would he want to be. And when you see all of the people at the canonizations, and when you hear the commentators praising the papacies these men have repented of, know this. These former pontiffs are now changed men. They do not wish praise of their pontificates. They only wish for the restoration, and as soon as possible.

Because of this, these popes, soon to be St. John XXIII and St. John Paul II could ironically be great intercessors on behalf of the Traditional cause. For, far from trying to call Vatican III in Heaven, John XXIII must now regret he called it.

Far from trying to assemble Assisi IV in Heaven, John Paul II must now regret assembling the two that he did. For the saints in Heaven do not celebrate Vatican II or its fruits, but lament them.

Some Precedent for Lack of Exemplary Life of Saints As for the lamentable lack of very much good example in their pontificates for us to follow, we can remember that there are at least some cases of a past saints that can put this in perspective. One is St. Dismas, the good thief. St. Dismas is infallibly a saint. We know from Christ’s own words, he is in Heaven. However, as far as we know, St. Dismas’ entire life was spent in thievery and sin. It was not until the last minutes of his life that he made an act of trust and Faith in Christ.

Thus St. Dismas stands as an example of a saint who is in Heaven and yet his life, minus his dying conversion, doesn’t serve as a very good example to us.

Similarly, there is St. Hippolytus of Rome. St. Hippolytus has the unique distinction of being a saint and an antipope. After a time as a theologian and bishop, Hippolytus became an antipope and remained one for almost twenty years through the reigns of three popes. The Roman Emporer then banished him to the island of Sardinia (a death sentence) along with the true pope at the time, Pontian. Pontian resigned his pontificate shortly thereafter. St. Hippolytus then finally reconciled with the Church before his death in Sardinia.

This means that Hippolytus had a 20-year reign as anti-pope before reconciling with the Church soon before his death.

Yet he is still a Catholic Saint, primarily because of his theological writings before he became an anti-pope together with the fact he was martyred for his faith.

Therefore one thing this episode can teach us is that if even a 20-year antipope can be a saint, we can understand if two legitimate, yet deeply flawed popes can become ones.

In any case, to end my guide in the spirit of the canonizations, I’ve composed a traditional Catholic prayer for the occasion. May it provide at least some consolation to you during the festivities: Saints John XXIII and John Paul II, being now deeply regretful of the aftermath of Vatican II, the errors of religious liberty, collegiality and ecumenism and the persecution of the Traditional Mass, please act as our ablest intercessors to Our Heavenly Father in calling for the swift restoration of Tradition to Holy Mother Church. Sainted popes, please pray for the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass to all of our Churches. Please pray for the restoration of the rights of Jesus Christ Our King over society.

Please pray that all men may recognize the One True Church of Christ and convert. Please pray that our current pope and all future popes reclaim the true rights of the papacy over the entire Church. Please pray for an eradication of every form of Modernism in our time, and finally please pray that our Catholic priests, bishops, Pope come to see clearly and swiftly that one perfect Catholic Truth you both now finally enjoy in Heaven. Amen.

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 06

Resurrexit! Sicut Dixit! Alleluia!

Paschaltide is a blessing

by Brian Mershon

South Carolina

Eastertide

is a special blessing for traditional Catholics who have the opportunity to attend daily Traditional Latin Mass, as well as for those who regularly read the Mass for the day in their 1962 (and prior) missals.

Easter Saturday’s Epistle, 1 Peter 2, 1-10, continues the celebration and joy from the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the fulfillment of the old covenant’s prophecies, the Savior of the Jews and all mankind. The lesson for the day is an encouragement for the neophyte Catholics who were baptized on Easter Sunday and have entered into the ark of salvation, outside of which neither holiness nor salvation can be found. St. Peter, the first Supreme Pontiff of the new covenant’s militant Church, exhorts the "newborn babes" who "desire the rational milk without guile" that they may "grow unto salvation."

How splendid are the ceremonies of the Easter vigil begun outside with a new fire sparked by a flint awaiting those who will soon be entering the true Church of God through the laver of baptism. Easter week’s readings and Gospels show Christ appearing to the Apostles, Mary Magdalene and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Now, nearly a week after their baptisms, the neophytes are encouraged by the first Pope’s inspired words from his first epistle.

"You have tasted that the Lord is sweet.

Unto whom coming as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men but chosen and made honorable by God: be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."

This call by Pope St. Peter to the neophytes resounds through the ages to Catholics of all generations: cradle Catholics, converts and reverts. Despite the increasing "diabolical disorientation" as Sister Lucia of Fatima called the current state of the Church, we should be fearless Christians witnessing to our neighbors the efficacy of the sacraments and the wisdom and beauty of the Catholic Faith. "You have tasted that the Lord is sweet." Indeed!

How many of us, even those who frequent daily Mass, truly and completely and adequately understand the tremendous graces our Lord and Savior offers us in the Holy Eucharist?

"You have tasted that the Lord is sweet," and how do we go home to our work, to our children’s and grandchildren’s activities and live out this joyful sweetness?

Is today’s life in the average city, town or village in the "land of the free and home of the brave" difficult for practicing Catholics, especially those dedicated to practicing the Faith whole and entire as handed on by Jesus Christ, the Supreme High Priest, and His Apostles? Of course it is, but we have the Holy Eucharist, our Lord Himself who is sweet. We have the truth—accepted or rejected by the mainstream media and society. Do we share this joy and truth with others who are seeking? They ARE seeking. They may not know what they seek, but many people are seeking something better than the vagaries and the grind of pagan existence in America. Are we offering them the Good News that is the Gospel of the Messiah, the Savior of the world?

As St. Peter explains, Jesus Christ, crucified by the religious authorities of His day, but ironically dubbed "King of the Jews" by the political leader who was too weak to perform justice for Him, "rejected indeed by men but chosen and made honorable by God." The more we truly and faithfully live out the precepts of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, we too will be persecuted in some manner by our neighbors, our friends, our family, our bosses and coworkers, political leaders of both parties, and unfortunately, sometimes by our current Church leaders—priests, bishops, cardinals and Pope. This is a blessing as our Faith teaches us through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

To continue the hopeful and joyful theme within the first week of Easter, St. Peter exhorts all Christians: "Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."

In other words, we must faithfully and obediently perform the duties of our state in life whatever they may be. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandfathers, grandmothers, students, workers, teachers—we all need to be faithful. We must do our duty in our state in life. We must strive to lead our family, friends, coworkers and others to God through the only ark of salvation—the one, true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which there is no salvation.

"But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare His virtues who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."

Let us persevere toward this light, provided for us in Confirmation through the Gift of Fortitude, during this magnificent liturgical Eastertide to build God’s kingdom where we live with our eyes fixed on Our Lord, offering up "spiritual sacrifices" as St. Peter extols us to do in reparation for own sins "and those of the whole world." ■

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 08

The Catholic Arts

By Timothy J Cullen

What

is "art"? More often than not, "art" in the English-speaking world is colloquially considered to be synonymous with visual art, painting and sculpture in particular. Upon further consideration, however, one realizes that this is far too restrictive a definition. There are in fact many "definitions" of the word, but one this writer finds to be both expressive and encompassing is the following: "Art is created when an artist creates a beautiful object, or produces a stimulating experience that is considered by his audience to have artistic merit."

1

Curiously enough, the work from which this definition is drawn focuses on the visual arts, but elaborates its definition of art by stating: "Art is a global activity which encompasses a host of disciplines, as evidenced by the range of words and phrases which have been invented to describe its various forms. Examples of such phraseology include: Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Visual Arts, Decorative Arts, Applied Arts, Design, Crafts, Performing Arts, and so on."

2

If one peruses the web for a possible compendium of the "Catholic arts," one will be disappointed, because this writer’s admittedly cursory research came up with nothing remotely resembling what he might have expected to find. The emphasis is upon the visual arts and to a lesser extent literature. One must dig deeper, separate the arts out individually to begin to craft a working outline for defining the "Catholic arts" and developing some sort of schema to inculcate a working definition of some sort of consensus as to just what exactly we mean by "Catholic culture".

This writer proposes a series of essays treating of a series of the "arts" that are the heritage of Catholicism in the West along with speculations about how these arts are to be continued going forward, this latter admittedly being no easy task, because Catholicism in general and traditional Catholicism in particular is now highly marginalized in the popular imagination and dayto- day reality in the cultural sphere, thanks in large measure to the nowlargely- accepted norms of the "Frankfurt School" of social and cultural values, a set of values utterly inimical to "Catholic culture".

Catholic culture prevailed during medieval times and civilized Europe: period. Prior to conversion to Catholicism, those of us of European (particularly northern) ancestry must recognize that our forebears were barbarians of a fairly savage nature.

Our "culture", such as it was, exhibited great variation, but in all cases was one in which it would not be unfair to say had its foundation in violence, rapine and oppression of the weak. It would be no exaggeration to state that the

1 "A Working Definition of Art," Irish Art Encyclopedia, http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/ index.htm.

2 Ibid.

West seems to be returning to barbarism with respect to its treatment of those whose cultures are "alien" to that of the West and to the internal manifestations of "civilizations" and "cultures" that have abandoned all that was best in the civilizing and acculturating mission of the Church outside of her metaphysical mission of evangelization. One need only look around at what could be called "pop culture" and the barbarity of "civilizations" hell-bent upon imposing secular "values" upon those who cling to more traditional ways based upon their religious and societal norms, however they may vary from one’s own. Conversion is accomplished by persuasion, not through imposition by violence.

That said, let us begin to analyze what, exactly, constitutes Catholic culture in the arts.

Let us begin with the visual arts of drawing and painting, both of which begin as "creativity" and are executed by way of "craft".

Draftsmanship is essential in the visual arts: the "splatter platter" school of art as practiced by, say, Jackson Pollack, cannot be included in what the Catholic qualifies as "art", regardless of the affirmations of the lovers of the "abstract" have determined qualifies as "art": Catholic "art" when referring to the visual arts is representational, technique notwithstanding.

The mastery of perspective in drawing and painting in the West is generally acknowledged to have had its true beginnings in the fifteenth century, A.D.

3, well after the medieval age.

Nevertheless, representational art, albeit flawed, has a far longer history and the works of earlier times most certainly form part of what this writer would consider to be "Catholic culture" in the

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Perspective_%28graphical%29

West. It behooves those who wish to impart a sense of Catholic culture to themselves and their posterity to make the effort to learn just what they are presuming to profess, a task that requires no little effort.

This essay is intended to motivate those who wish to acquire the requisite knowledge and proceed therefrom to instruct others. If traditional Catholics are unwilling to undertake this task, they will find themselves ever-moremarginalized by their secular opponents who do not hesitate to do so in a manner completely hostile to Catholic culture, but which has had a far greater effect on the general population than Catholic culture has had in more than a century: Vatican II was destructive, but to try and cast all blame upon it is ingenuous at best, petty at worst; sadly, genuine scholarship is no longer a hallmark of the traditional Catholic.

How’s about we change that?

If we’re to offer a genuine vision of what Catholic culture contributed to creating Western civilization and its colonial derivatives, we’d best know just what whereof we speak: no? Nose to the grindstone, folks: there’s a lot to learn.

"Pop culture" in large measure equates to "slob culture": right? It equates to neo-paganism, the "culture" of the unlettered, the ignorant, those who cannot see beyond the satisfaction of their most base appetites. No? Why else would graphic and utterly crude pornography have gained so much favor? Why else would "music" have become so primitive and vulgar?

Why else would dance be reduced to "twerking", a presentation of female pudenda that equates to that which is practiced by less-than-human simians in their presentation of their sexual attributes to the male of the species with the intent of mating and reproducing, a biological imperative now rejected by a degenerated humankind?

These questions must be answered before one can hope for a revival, a restoration of what was once a culture of a more transcendental nature.

Gaze upon the visual arts of yesteryear: Gaze upon centuries of marvels of portraiture, of mosaic, of representation of the sacred and divine. Look upon the work of your forebears in the Faith. Show all this to the young and explain to them of what their heritage truly consists. Set aside for a moment the didactic dogma of your "penny catechism" and instead expose your young to all the Catholic glories that are the cultural foundation of Western civilization! A "Catholic cultural" renaissance will not now come forth from a catechism but rather from teachings to the young (and perhaps some of the less-cultured old) of the once-great secular glories propagated by the Faith. The name of the game is

acculturation! All the rest—the most important—will follow in its stead.

The days of "Sister said" are no more; even "Father preached" falls upon deaf ears except for the least curious.

The young, however, are curious, and with access to the world-wide-web, their curiosity will be satisfied in ways that you would perhaps wish to prevent but save through coercion will be unable to effect: the fallen world and its flaws are at the fingertips of your children.

Be assured that they will be sought out, unless you create an impenetrable cocoon that in the final accounting will only stunt their growth. Guide the ingenuous, demonstrate by example an understanding of what "art" truly is.

Let "Mom showed me" and "Dad told me" (or any variation thereof) be the watchwords for the young who will be given a truly Catholic formation with respect to art.

"Catholic culture" begins in large measure with the visual arts, closely followed by music. A family without a thorough formation in the visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpture) may be Catholic by Faith, but not by culture.

Any traditional Catholic who neglects cultural formation is not by default condemned to damnation in the afterlife, but most assuredly is condemned to live out the earthly pilgrimage as an ignoramus: period. Such a person almost certainly also condemns his/her/their posterity to the same status.

The Catholic heritage in the visual arts is well-nigh inexhaustible in its breadth and depth. Ignorance of its history is inexcusable given the readily available resources of the internet. Those who refuse to learn how to use this resource are Luddites or "intellectually impaired" (let’s be politically correct!) and that’s a fact, Jack. Unless one has a very extensive library of books in print, failure to take advantage of the resources available on the web is inexcusable.

This writer has found a wellnigh inexhaustible quantity of easily discovered resources that provide the user with a wealth of photographic

Continued Next Page

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Cullen Continued. . .

Irish Art Encyclopedia

imagery and literary commentary on the visual arts from a Catholic perspective, a treasure-trove to which he constantly refers in spite of having as well a very large library of printed works. One need say no more than suggest that the reader have a look at the

cited above to glean a simply marvelous overview of what "art" was when Catholic Christendom was the West, never mind the treasures of the Orthodox and other branches ("heresies" if you prefer) of Catholicism.

Catholic visual art can be said to have begun its recorded history no later than the beginnings of the second century of the Christian Era, during a period in which Catholicism was still a persecuted sect rather than the religion that was to encompass much of Europe in later days, the "glory days" of Catholic visual art.

It is not the purpose of this essay to provide a primer for those unacquainted with their illustrious artistic heritage: rather it is an attempt to inspire the reader to enrich his/her knowledge of this timeless treasure that must be passed on to the young. One accepts the sad reality that the acquisition of printed reproductions of Catholic art has become prohibitively expensive for many, but judicious use of the internet obviates the need to own the printed works and provides the opportunity to present them to those unfamiliar with them.

Ignorance of the Catholic artistic heritage is inexcusable in this fourteenth year of the twenty first century of the Christian Era. Deliberate neglect of the Catholic cultural heritage is not sinful, but it is certainly shameful.

The Faith is not dependent in any way upon the arts. The Faith stands. The duty of the Catholic is first and foremost to ensure that his/her children are well grounded in the Faith and its teachings, in the Liturgy that is the True Mass, in the moral and ethical codes taught by the Church from time immemorial, in the customs learned and practiced by Catholics over the millennia, but to neglect the culture that arose from the Faith is to deprive posterity of a "pearl beyond price" and a heritage from which growth as a human being beholding to God is a grace in and of itself.

The creative force from which "art" springs is a gift of God. If this force springs within one, then glory be to God; if not, then it becomes incumbent upon the Catholic to teach and share with peers and posterity what God’s glory has graced those in whom the gift has given fruit.

Present-day "pop culture" including nearly all of "popular" and even "sophisticated" visual art is incompatible with Catholicism. "Kitschy" Catholic art is vulgar and uninspiring, but not to be condemned for said reasons; it is simply not representative of the high culture that Catholicism brought to the West, and for that reason is unworthy of study. Educate yourself and your peers and posterity in your true artistic heritage, the heritage that when all is said and done defined the culture and civilization which you should hope to perpetuate. ■

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What Must Catholics Believe?

An Open Letter to Pope Francis

Your

Holiness, I am using the columns of this esteemed Catholic newspaper to reach you rather than risk a letter being lost in the labyrinth of Vatican bureaucracy, and I am encouraged in this belief by the fact that since you ascended the Papal Throne you have shown yourself to be decidedly ‘media friendly’. Even to the extent, it is said, on one occasion of phoning up a journalist and commenting on his article. I cannot expect this unsolicited correspondence to receive the same treatment, but an indication that you have seen the article would be very gratifying. Of course an ‘open letter’ is not simply a one-to-one correspondence but reflects the concerns of many—in this case I believe of millions. Its purpose is to find out from you, the Vicar of Christ, the Supreme Teacher and Guardian of the Deposit of the Faith left to us by Our Blessed Lord, exactly what Catholics must believe in this time of terrible crisis—a crisis which in the aftermath of Vatican II your immediate predecessors have spelt out in no uncertain terms. You will recall that Pope Paul V1 in a sermon on the 29th of June 1972 said the following:

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

Well Pope Paul VI’s concerns were not unfounded. In the forty-two years since that sermon Satan has been wreaking havoc with the Church. To borrow a Latin phrase from another context, loosely translated, ‘Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.’ (‘If it is a testament you seek, look around you’) This testament includes empty churches, a serious decline in vocations, sexual scandals, atheism destroying the faith and loss of hope.

That is where we are at the moment, Your Holiness. In his Papal Letter, Ecclesia Europa, Pope John Paul II whom you have recently canonised, wrote:

At the root of this loss of hope is an attempt to promote a vision of man without God and apart from Christ...

European culture gives the impression of ‘silent apostasy’ on the part of people who have all they need and live as if God does not exist.’

In the light of this would you, as the world’s leading Jesuit, now instruct your brothers in the Society, which was once regarded as the leading intellectual force in the defence of Roman Catholicism, to speedily establish and disseminate a clear and unequivocal apostolate against atheism? This, you may recall, was a clear instruction to the Society of Jesus from Pope Paul VI, which was never taken up.

Since then the skilful and energetic atheist propagandists have wrought havoc with the Faith. Why should the God haters have all the best tunes?

The apostolate which I hope you would endorse would of course have to spell out, clearly without equivocation, that the Triune God, is the one true God and that the Catholic Church is the one true church; that all other religions are false and that salvation rests with Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, and as the Athanasian Creed puts it so beautifully, "..The Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the Glory equal, the majesty co-eternal."

Of course this would create devastation for Ecumenism as presently constituted.

Followers of other faiths and none believe that the Catholic Church has abandoned its mission to ‘teach the whole world’ as instructed by Christ and that conversion to Catholicism is no longer necessary.

Indeed some of the Princes of the Church closest to you have said as much, and, although it pains me to say so, you, Holy Father, in reports attributed to you, have given the same impression.

Some years ago a well-publicised but highly controversial Catholic theologian, whose blushes I will spare by not naming him, was questioned in a radio studio about Christ and His Holy Mother. He was asked if Christ was True God and True Man. His response was, "In one way yes, in another way no." Pressed as to whether Our Lady was /is the Mother of God, he replied, "That is an outdated 4th century concept." As host, I conducted the interview.

On your accession to the Papacy this same theologian has recently been fulsome in his praise for you. Please assure us that you do not endorse his stated views.

Holy Father, I do not think I am a lone voice here. Difficult as it may be for reasons of diplomacy and other earthly stumbling blocks, can you not proclaim the truths of the Faith as I have tried to set out here? Imagine, if when you are invited to address the UN General Assembly, as you surely will be, after blessing the representatives of the world’s governments you used the platform to proclaim the sovereignty of Christ the King. Imagine that! Prior to that and more immediately, if you would carry out the instructions of Our Lady at Fatima and consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in concert with all the Bishops of the world the result would be truly earth shaking and you would be remembered as one of the great Popes of not only this century but of all time.

Just think by your obedience to Our Lady. Acting through the power vested in her by her Divine Son, the Church will be saved and Peace will reign.

Your Holiness, I remain yours most sincerely.

In Christ, John Bishop London, England

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The Wrath to Come

■ There is a curtain over the past. Few draw it back to see behind it, but once there was a Catholic Way of Life. It was the bedrock of the Church Militant.

By Susan Claire Potts

Iturn on my computer, read the headlines, and shudder. There is so much turmoil, so much ugliness. What has happened? What is going on?

Chill out, girl, people tell me. Don’t get bent out of shape.

They pause and lean closer, their voices a mere whisper. You better be careful.

You sound like an extremist. Besides,

they assert, it’s always been this way.

No, it hasn’t. Only a fool would say that, a fool blinded by the power of technology, beguiled by the glitter of electronic devices and the comfort of Facebook. Earth wasn’t Heaven, but there was more goodness in the world fifty years ago. That was before the pope refused to reveal the Third Secret of Fatima, before he defied the Mother of God. Who can say what she wanted us to know? Maybe we would have been spared the debacle to come when the Revolutionaries trampled Tradition and hid the Light of Faith under a bushel.

Disaster was inevitable. As the Church goes, so goes the world.

America the Beautiful has been debased.

The downward spiral, the destruction of our culture speeds on unchecked. I remember seeing the pagans in the old Bible movies when I was a girl and finding it hard to believe that people could have been like that, that they could have been so weird. Schooled in the principles of the progressive perfectibility of man and the forward march of history, I thought, too, that such debauchery was something in the distant past, something that could never happen again.

I was wrong. We’re there.

Revolted, I turn off the Net. Why do I even turn it on? Why do I bother?

Do I think I’m going to miss some earthshaking news?

Yes, I do. Something is going to happen.

It has to. God will not be mocked. A nation which has cast off all decency, order, and morality—to say nothing of the True Faith—cannot expect to be blessed. Can we even hope to be spared in the Chastisement to come?

Who will stand for God? Who will stand for His Law? Have you read the various prophecies about these times? I’m not talking about the band of Protestant writers, clutching their defective Bibles and blessing Israel. Nor am I referring to the flood of books and articles about the Rapture and pre-Trib and post-Trib eschatology. That body of work, while it might be well-intentioned, has it wrong.

The writers are like ill-trained physicians who have a general idea of the patient’s disease, but no idea where it came from or how to treat it. The error of private interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures darkens their understanding.

No, I’m talking about Catholic prophecy. Mostly, I’m talking about the warnings of the saints. There are so many. The centuries pass, and their words stand firm, coherent and impeccable. It’s as if they had gathered together to speak with one voice. I am thinking of the warnings of St. Hildegard, Monk Hilarion, and St.

John of the Cleft Rock in the fifteenth century, all quoted in the little book by Yves DuPont, Catholic Prophecy.

Nicholas of Fluh wrote of the days when "…The Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become so perverted."

1

How can we expect to escape the Wrath to come? Didn’t Pope St. Pius V warn us in Quo Primum that if anyone dared to change the perennial Mass as codified by him, they would incur the wrath of Almighty God and of Saints Peter and Paul?

Why didn’t they listen? Who can deny that the jettisoning of the Sacred Mass has brought punishment upon us? But for the moderns, words mean what they want them to mean. They are ever changeable, fluid; they hold no concrete reality, no actual reference to the Word of God. Besides, they say, God doesn’t punish. He is All-Merciful.

So now we’ve got what we’ve got. The world is coming unglued. Nations have gone nuts. We’ve been plunged into darkness. There is danger everywhere— moral, physical, spiritual. Evil stalks unheeded. Terror lies in ambush.

Most people don’t even see it. Who cares? They’ve got a quiver full of apps. Who needs arrows? Who needs light?

The computer screen is backlit and the TV works. The colors are great. But, oh, dear God, what we have lost. Who will weep for our country?

And what about our Church? What about us? Where is our sense of sorrow? Where is our deep and soul-cleansing repentance? Where is our horror of sin?

1 DuPont, Yves, Catholic Prophecy, Tan Books, Rockford, IL, 1970.

Sometimes at Mass when the smell of incense wafts Heavenward and the measured tones of Gregorian chant fill the ears and reach the heart, I can almost imagine everything is all right— that there hasn’t been a Revolution so catastrophic, so far-reaching that people born before 1970 have no idea what the world was like. And they don’t know what it was to be Catholic in it.

Do they think it was always mush?

Do they think there was never any distinction between the Church and the World? Do they think people were always accepting of every cultural aberration that rose up and smacked them in the face? Who am I to judge?

says the Bishop of Rome. He says mindless things and like good little macaws, people parrot his words. But wait! I answer. Doesn’t he know his job? Didn’t anyone give him a position description with his new white suit?

The little parrots are aghast. He’s the pope. Follow the pope.

What about right and wrong?

What? They screech as if I’d gone deaf.

It’s up to the individual, they say. What’s right for one is wrong for another. You can’t impose your morality on everybody else! Everybody has to follow their conscience!

And then they look at me with the disdain once reserved for heretics. But there are laws that govern these things,

I insist, ignoring the contemptuous curl of their lips. Catholic teaching forms the conscience. One must choose good and reject evil.

That’s hate speech! they cry. You’re not supposed to hate. But I must hate sin and love virtue.

The cacophony reaches a crescendo.

Hate is divisive. You’re divisive!

I am silent. If I reminded them of our Lord’s words about His bringing a sword, I think they would go ballistic.

There’s no stopping them. They have the power now. No one stands in the breach. They raise their banners. The world responds.

Bravo to the Sodomites who flaunt their sin! Bravo to the men and women who scorn their vows to God and destroy their marriages. Bravo to the girl who lives with her boyfriend, bears his baby, but does not marry.

Bravo to mockery! Bravo to perversion!

Look at them. Look at the homosexuals, transvestites, and transgendered who splash their revolting lives all over the front pages. Look at the lawyers, publicists, and writers who promote their cause. Look at the whores of the entertainment world who destroy every shred of decency left as they prance across the sixty-inch plasma screens.

Look at the abortionists who butcher the unborn and call it healthcare. Look at compromised judges and corrupt politicians. Look at the soul-dead scientists playing God with the human genome.

Who is their King? Who is their Lord? For shame! All of them! Their grandmothers would be appalled.

This is the horror of our times. Worse than bombs, worse than plague, this is the true terror. And people swallow their garbage. Little by little, without a clue as to what has happened to them, they become what they’ve eaten. They’re blind now, but who will restore their vision? They’re paralyzed, but who will help them walk? If up is down and down is up, how in the world are they supposed to know what to do? Who will teach them?

Has everybody with any sense lost their voice? Or are they afraid? I’m not surprised. The deconstructing utopians govern by force. Their word goes unchallenged. To them belong the press, the government, academia, and the professions. They brook no challenge.

They write their books, give their lectures, and hold their courts. They rule by fiat. No deviation allowed.

If that’s not horrid enough, now this strange new world has its neostyle saints. Saints with dubious acts and even more dubious writing. Saints with no devil’s advocate arguing against the cause of their canonization. Saints who allowed corruption without correction.

No real heroics and no glorious miracles. Saints canonized because they looked holy when they prayed. Newly minted saints who rejected what we loved, who formed a new Church, a new society.

They divided us. Are they really in Heaven? Must we pay them the worship of dulia?

How can this be possible?

There is a curtain over the past. Few draw it back to see behind it, but once there was a Catholic Way of Life.

It was the bedrock of the Church Militant. This was the life that happened outside of church on Sunday, the life people lived every day in their homes, neighborhoods, and towns. It was an ordered society, carrying with it a commonality of experience. That society was built on doctrine and discipline— immutable doctrine that gave structure and solidity to life in the world, untouched by the vagaries of change. Its

Continued. Next Page

'There will be very few Christians left in the old acceptation of the word. The Faith will be preserved in only a few cottages.'

The Wrath to Come

Continued from Page 10...

foundation was the same across nations and centuries.

Now only the old ones have it in their blood. Only the aged can look back and remember… No meat on Friday. Large families.

Sodalities and guilds and Holy Name Societies. The Legion of Decency.

Catholic schools with teaching nuns in full habit. Catholic hospitals with nursing nuns in white. Standards of modesty. Virginity extolled. Ember Days, Rogation Days, Mother of Perpetual Help on Tuesday and Holy Face on Thursday. Geographical parishes and people living in real neighborhoods.

A pastor knowing his people, being a father to them. A bishop ruling his diocese who wasn’t just one of the guys.

There are bits and pieces of that Catholic life now. They haven’t all disappeared.

But what is gone is their cohesiveness.

They’re unconnected. An old custom here, a quaint practice there. It’s not of a piece. The fabric has been torn. Ragged edges don’t sew together very well.

What younger people don’t know and older people didn’t notice is that the customs that united and strengthened us were destroyed from above. The change in Catholic culture were not the result of the normal adjustments to times and places. Or the development of peoples.

Or progress. The changes weren’t the gentle nudging toward perfection, the tweaking of imperfection. Not at all. Catholic culture was smashed by edict. The hedge was cut down; the boundaries, destroyed. We were required to be like everyone else. Our identity was shattered.

I remember reading something Catherine Emmerich said nearly two hundred years ago referring to what can only be our time: There will be very few Christians left in the old acceptation of the word.

She also said that the Faith would be preserved in only a few cottages.

2

So here we are. How did this happen?

It was the middle of the 1960s. The liturgical revolution had not yet erupted.

The bishops were still in Rome, finishing up the Vatican Council. A few changes were appearing in church. There was more English. We had to hear the Epistle and Gospel twice, because it was determined people weren’t able to read along in English while the priest read the Latin. The hymns were different. A table altar was brought in, and then the guitars.

Some resisted. Most did not.

Why not? Something stopped the resistance. But what? It could only be the Mystery of Iniquity. But why then?

Why now? What is that paralyzing Thing that spreads over society like a giant squid spewing its inky venom? What is the root of the corruption? How’d the people get hooked?

It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t accidental.

From a psychologist’s point of view, here’s what happened.

To be continued…

2 Ibid.

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Catholics Fighting Back…

Defenders of Non-negotiable Christian Principles

By Alberto Carosa

Rome Correspondent ROME – In a famous speech to the participants of a European People’s Party symposium on March 30, 2006, Benedict XVI called upon Christians to safeguard what he termed "non-negotiable principles", as part of the protection and promotion of human dignity in the public square: the protection of life from conception to natural death, recognition and promotion of the natural family as based on the marriage between one man and a woman, protection of the parents’ rights as primary educators of their children.

Among those who have already largely made the above agenda their own, we can certainly include the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal advocacy association that gradually extended its sphere of action to encompass also religious liberty, besides life, marriage and family. In 1994 more than 30 prominent Christian leaders launched what was initially called Alliance Defense Fund, recognizing the need for a strong, coordinated legal defense against growing attacks on religious freedom and the sanctity of life, marriage and family. On July 9, 2012, the Alliance Defense Fund changed its name to Alliance Defending Freedom. The name change was a strategic initiative designed to reflect the organization’s shift in focus from funding allied attorneys to litigating cases.

In a bid to widen the scope of their activities, they recently held two events in Rome: a March 24-27 symposium catering to Catholic media and an April 25 conference, "Building a Global Culture of Life: The Legacy of St. John Paul the Great at the UN". The former, essentially consisting of presentations from lawyers, politicians and Church leaders, assembled almost a hundred journalists to be engaged and educated about the legal issues that are threatening the above-mentioned principle, including human dignity. The latter, which was held in conjunction with C-FAM and the Washington-based Human Rights Institute, focused on the pro-life legacy of John Paul II and the challenges faced by the Holy See and her allies in defending the unborn child from those who seek an international right to abortion.

These events may also be seen as a further fine-tuning of the ADF strategy, as hinted at by Alan Sears, who has served as its president, CEO, and general counsel since 1994. "Because, as we have learned, and as those who oppose us know all too well, relationships matter", he said. "Especially those relationships built on accurate information; built on trust and on real human interaction, not just e-mails, press releases, and Twitter feeds". But most importantly, ADF is an international organization and NGO at international institutions such as the UN, OAS, OSCE etc., and its work in various regions is accomplished by citizens at the request of those who live there. For example, the Vienna-based team are all citizens of and professionals licensed in EU nations, and working in the E.U.

Alan Sears was so kind as to accept our request for an interview.

Q. Can you explain what are the motivations underlying the establishment and action of the Alliance Defending Freedom?

A. To put it bluntly, a number of most basic human rights are under attack in the legal systems on this Continent and throughout the West, as a result of direct efforts at every level to stifle and limit human dignity – to limit the free exercise of faith and religion, to obscure the exercise of rights of conscience, to suppress the natural family, and to interfere with the educational choices of parents. In this regard I would like to point out what the late US President Ronald Reagan, in whose administration I had the honor to serve, said to one of our state’s legislatures. "To those who cite the First Amendment [of the United States Constitution] as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and every-day life, may I just say: The First Amendment … was not written to protect the people … from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny".

The same could be said for those who misquote the European Convention of Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These documents were written to protect the rights and freedom of citizens from governments and states, not to protect states from the conscience and religion of their citizens.

For example, the Convention includes Article 9, which states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right

Continued Next Page

Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor in the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom

An Interview with Alan Spears

Continued from Page 11

includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice, and observance". For its part, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights entrenches the following principles: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State" (in Article 16) and "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children" (in Article 26).

Since ours is fundamentally a legal battle, our primary aim is to recruit, if we may say so, and train attorneys prepared to fight in the courtrooms for people of faith around the world, fully upholding and protecting the above rights, which they are entitled to as God-given rights.

Obviously, we’re not here to play games or put in time – we are here to win, seeing a day when our legal systems and our cultures, now in so many ways so set against the Truth of God, are transformed to protect the sacredness of life, marriage, family, and religious liberty.

Q. Can you briefly recount some of your most outstanding legal cases?

A. Some of our most significant cases concern clergy charged with various socalled crimes of "hate expression" for communicating the non-negotiable basic values and teachings of their faith, in Latin America, Europe, and Canada.

In Spain, a prosecutor this year agreed to investigate Cardinal Fernando Sebastian Aguilar after an advocacy group promoting homosexual behavior launched a legal action against him accusing him of "hate speech" for affirming the Catechism of the Catholic Church on human sexuality. Our attorneys are standing by to defend the Cardinal and the church if a case is launched against him.

Two more examples. Canadian Pastor Stephen Boissoin, an Allied Attorney client – was "barred for life" by the Alberta Human Rights Commission from any public or private speech about homosexual behavior – after his letter about such behavior appeared in a newspaper – until our allied attorneys won an appeal.

In Sweden, our client, Pastor Ake Green was sentenced to prison for sharing the Gospel and his church’s teaching on sexual behavior in his own pulpit and in his own church. When he was put on the stand before the Swedish Supreme Court, the prosecutor told him to "get a new Bible" that doesn’t condemn homosexual behavior.

And back in the United States, a high ranking government official says even private beliefs should not be tolerated and that pockets of resistance based on faith must be eliminated.

This brings us to another facet of the fight: in addition to the growing threat of international judicial activism against the above principles, we are now also facing growing efforts to punish those who dare disagree.

Q. And how would you explain this worrying escalation?

A. Well, this was already explained by John Paul II when he said in Centesimus Annus: " ... history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism". Throughout history, "utopians" have sought to re-order society by forging draconian new laws and forcing new behaviors on others.

Often these dictatorial decrees are done in the name of "equality," which really means the subjugation of individuals, families and society to the State and its currently fashionable schemes such utopians seek to set and control. More often than not, throughout history, these utopians have seen their "revolutions" turn to violence and destruction ... with punishment imposed on all who oppose the fabrication of their "new world orders". Usually, this is because the "new rights" and the "new order" pressed for by the agitators are NOT about human rights or liberty at all ... but about the utopians wanting to defy the beliefs or conscience of – or plunder the goods, the possessions – of others. And the end result, sadly, is less freedom for you, for them, for everyone.

Q. As shown for example by the increasing attacks on conscience objection… A. Exactly. For example here in Europe, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys are advocating for the protection of the right of conscience for medical professionals and midwives being ordered by their governments to participate in abortions. We must, in the words of U.S.

Professor Hadley Arkes, "recover the understanding running back to Aristotle about the moral ground for the law: When the law overrides claims of personal freedom, the law bears the burden of showing that it is acting upon a principle of justice or rightness that would hold for anyone who comes within the reach of the law". When a law is unjust, it is unjust for all, and the burden should not be on the oppressed to show why they should not be oppressed, but the government to show why what is unjust has any authority over anyone.

Q. You claim to have an 80 percent success rate of all cases litigated. Can you give us a few examples of these successful cases?

A. Our attorneys and allies won a significant victory, with God’s grace, at the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of a British Airways employee who had been barred from wearing a simple Christian cross around her neck, even though other employees were allowed to wear symbols of their religions.

On another front, crucifixes will remain in Italy’s classrooms after our attorneys and allies successfully argued on behalf of 33 members of the European Parliament from 11 nations that Italy was within its rights under the European Convention on Human Rights to display the crucifix in its school classrooms. An "offended" parent had demanded that the crucifixes come down, but the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights firmly said "NO." As a result of this decision, Christian symbols can remain publicly displayed throughout Europe – the "cleansing" of the public square many sought will not occur.

And, with God’s grace, along with the advocacy of our attorneys and many like-minded organizations, the Grand Chamber also upheld Ireland’s law barring abortion – stating that the European Convention on Human Rights does not contain a "right" to unlimited abortion. Our attorneys helped defend Ireland’s law – which if overturned by the Grand Chamber – could have had huge implications on pro-life legislation and national sovereignty of other countries within the Council of Europe.

With regard to parental rights, an issue addressed a few months ago by the Holy See at the United Nations General Assembly and that Pope Benedict had earlier termed as one of four "nonnegotiable" principles for the Church, our Vienna team has litigated several related cases in particular to defend the right of parents to determine the best educational option for their children. Our team is presently advocating for more than 300 Spanish parents seeking to opt their children out of mandatory radical "sexual education" classes. These classes – oddly called "Education in Citizenship" – feature explicit sexual content, cartoons ridiculing Jesus, and openly mocking the Roman Catholic Church. Parents and pro-family organizations filed more than 2,200 lawsuits against the government, stating these mandatory classes violated their right of conscience and religious convictions. Our attorneys have assisted in taking the matter before the European Court of Human Rights where it is still pending. In the meantime, the Spanish government has agreed to replace the compulsory course with different curriculum.

It is stories such as these that explain why Alliance Defending Freedom has engaged in Europe and across the globe – and why we must advocate tirelessly for your religious freedom.

Q. Judging from the fact that the daily Mass was part of the media symposium schedule, it would seem that you are attaching much importance also to the actual practice of the faith, aren’t you?

A. The Alliance Defending Freedom is a servant ministry whose theme verse is from the Gospel of John, 15:5, and we acknowledge that in all things, that, "Without Christ we can do nothing" as we also recognize that with Christ we can accomplish those things He calls and equips us to do. Therefore, the efforts of Alliance Defending Freedom – its wins, its losses, its successes, its reputation, and its objectives – all are on loan to us from God. We should also recall what St Paul says in his letter to the Philippians (3:4): "I can do all things through Him Who strengthens me". And we need to be duly strengthened, for the simple reason that we are here to win. In fact, we’re not here to play games or put in time – but we are here to win. ■

Our attorneys and allies won a significant victory, with God’s grace, at the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of a British Airways employee who had been barred from wearing a simple Christian cross around her neck

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 14

A View From Rocco’s…

Who are We to Judge?

By John Rao, Ph.D.

Aneighborhood regular and long-time friend took exception to something I said in my last article. Reading it over my shoulder as I wrote it, she objected to my attack on the local public library.

I assured her (as I am now assuring my readers) that I was not condemning the value of quiet individual study and meditation as a whole. All that I was doing was using my own perhaps quirky sense of atomistic isolation in the library as a springboard for attacking the atomistic isolation that our society enshrines as its foundation principle for the good life as a whole—with anything but merely quirky consequences for the Catholic vision in consequence.

"Don’t tread on me" as an individual and national slogan is a declaration of independence from all serious impact of the corrective and transformative message of Christ and Christ’s Church, which has always been dependent upon the regular intervention in life of both social and supra-national authorities. It is a defiant assertion of a man or a society’s ability to "do it all on his own". That spirit of defiance cannot help but create a playground for Original Sin, dominated by whoever the strongest sinners may be in the particular playground provided by one’s own time and place.

It is because of this truth that the question "who am I to judge?" can never be an honest Catholic question. It is not we who judge; it is the Church who does the judging, and it is with respect to principles, guidelines, and notorious public violation of the law of God and nature that her thundering judgment is required and contested. Claiming that the Church’s involvement in judgment is primarily directed towards Tom, Dick, and Harry, where proper correction demands the understanding and nuance of spiritual directors, is nothing other than a fraudulent, though highly useful, anti-Catholic propaganda tool.

The Church judged what she had to judge among the Greeks, the Romans, and the German barbarians, and her mission as judge did not end after her encounter with these peoples, who proved, in the long run, to be docile to Revelation and Grace. Her mission continues in our own arrogant times among its more recalcitrant peoples.

She has to judge secularized Europe, Israel, Islam, Third World countries, and even, horror of horrors, exceptional America. She is obliged to judge all of the supposed "special insights" and "unique needs" of that terribly puffed up creature called "modern man", lest she concede the principle that the free play of Original Sin allows for construction of the best of all possible worlds, thereby giving her blessing to the victory of the strongest in the war of all against all.

What we are doing in this series of articles is using the history of the Society of Jesus as a showcase for the perennial problems faced by all those Catholics who do not waste their time asking the misleading question "who am I to judge?", but zealously go about the business of seeking to correct and transform the world in Christ instead. We saw in the last issue of The Remnant that Jesuit zeal ran headlong into the "don’t tread on me" attitude of the Spain of Philip II. But such "exceptionalism" was probably the least dangerous that could be found, and was offset by Spain’s many fervent Catholic achievements. Black Legends and the Light of the World indicates that Venetian exceptionalism was much more dangerous in its intellectual formulations and implications for the future.

Who were the spokesmen for this unacceptable Venetian spirit? One cannot aspire here to a complete listing of every name of significance. Let it suffice to say that the main figures of importance were men appreciated by or directly connected in one way or another with a political faction called the Giovani-- the "Young Turks" we would say--which managed to gain control of the Venetian Republic in 1582. The Giovani were men with deep intellectual roots, highly conscious of the distinct historical position of Venice in the life of the West, and very eager for their city to overcome her commercial, agricultural, and strategic problems and survive.

Reference should be made specifically to the names of Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), author of Political Discourses and a work On the Perfection of the Political Life; Enrico Davila (1576-1631), known for his History of the Civil Wars in France; Leonardo Donà (1536-1612), Doge from 1606 onwards, for whom service to the State was an act of religious commitment evoking from him a vow of celibacy; Giovanni Marsilio (d. 1612), ex-Jesuit and bridge between the realms of politics and theology; and Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570-1654), a Franciscan who served as spiritual consultant to the Republic after the death of the most famous of all those involved in the battle: Paolo Sarpi (1553-1623).

Sarpi, a Servite friar who came to epitomize the revolt in the eyes of Rome, and was excommunicated along with Marsilio and Micanzio, was counselor to the government from 1606 onwards.

His Treatise on Benefices, History of the Interdict, History of the Council of Trent

and Thoughts cannot be overlooked by the student either of the Venetian Interdict or of the development of modern secular culture as a whole. This is witnessed by no less an enemy of Christianity than Edward Gibbon (17371794), who considered Sarpi, along with Davila, Machiavelli, and Francesco Guicciardini as bright lights in the recent development of historiography.

A full treatment of the arguments of the Venetian spokesmen can be found (and presented, I might add, in a more favorable light than I will do in this article) in William Bouwsma’s work on Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (California, 1968).

Briefly stated, without untangling the specific positions of each of the different thinkers mentioned above, what one finds therein is a high-minded appeal to spiritual principles and the State’s role in defending them. This is combined together both with a view of the universe as the realm of irrationality, sin, and lust for power, as well as a haughty indifference to the contradictions and consequences of a confusion of ideas all too reminiscent of our own zeitgeist. The entire vision is seasoned with an equally familiar disdain for everything Roman.

Let us explore this vision and its dangers beginning with the anti-Roman bias.

Venice had had a different history from much of the rest of Latin Europe.

Proving the extent of this distinction was one of the main stimuli to Venetian historiography in the first place. History had indeed kept the Republic out of the Carolingian-Western Roman imperial sphere of influence. Its historians fantasized that Venice surely must have remained somewhat separate from the original Imperium as well.

Nothing Roman, the Giovani felt, should therefore be allowed to exercise an "unhistorical" control over Venice. This included the Roman Church, many of whose medieval demands had, in fact, effectively been kept at bay over the course of the past five hundred years.

Here is where the problem lay. Since the time of the Council of Trent, the Roman Church had been awakened from her dogmatic slumber and had dedicated herself to a reform that deeply threatened the unique historical position of the Venetian Republic. Rome, the Giovani believed, wanted to drag Venice into an ecclesiastical Imperium that broke with her whole tradition, and claimed to be acting in the name of God in doing so.

The Society of Jesus was Rome’s chief imperialist agent. This was an aggression that offended them for three reasons.

For one thing, the Giovani were convinced that the State was the sole instrument created by God to act in the secular realm in the name of things spiritual. It ruled by Divine Right.

Rome, by emphasizing the rights of the supernatural order in the natural sphere was sacrilegiously invading the space of God’s State. In reality, Rome was merely reiterating what had been stressed since the days of Pope Gregory VII (10731085), and Gregory argued at that time that he himself was only reviving the ancient canonical tradition that had been suppressed by bad political customs over the course of what we call Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Hence, the Giovani had not only a pre-Tridentine, but a pre-Gregorian understanding of the State’s spiritual role in the life of Christendom. Constantine might have understood their practical desires, though not necessarily their deeper explanation of their position, which involved a more contemporary development of an admittedly age-old intellectual battle.

This brings me to the second objection of the Giovani and their supporters, a twist on the ancient complaint of the rhetoricians against philosophy. The earthly realm, they insisted, is the sphere of constant flux and change, the sort of condition described by history (the discipline held to be most suited to demonstrating Venice’s unique position in the West).

God wants His spiritual agent, the State, to examine the changing reality around it, different for different societies, and use all the tools necessary to move people to do what is required to survive in its midst. The Deity is with the State in all that it demands.

Now, however, the Giovani protested, the Church, descending from its proper field of action into another, unsuitable one, was claiming that the realm of flux had to be guided by theological and metaphysical constructs (ideological principles, we would say, if we wished to indicate the same negative judgment). For example, she wanted individual states’ foreign policies to be conducted with an eye to the overall interest of Christianity and Christendom, a demand that could embroil Venice in wars against the Turks. For Venice, however, a foreign policy that aimed strictly at practical issues concerning her survival and growth might lead to commerce with the Moslems rather than crusades. Moreover, the Church wanted such practical economic interests to be guided by broad Catholic moral aims, rather than the laws of agricultural and industrial advantage alone.

This was a mistake. Great truths were beyond human definition and application to the natural world, the Giovani concluded, and any institution that sought to intervene in the secular realm in their name was acting absurdly.

For Sarpi, this critique even extended to the dogmatic activity of the Church, since such activity required the use of natural, human language, itself inappropriate for expressing divine truths accurately. It is difficult to see how Christianity could be anything for him in the long run but the observable spiritual life of distinct, changeable local "churches", incapable of any serious advancement down the path of doctrinal formulation. Indeed, it is hard to see how anyone could be permitted by Sarpi’s view and that of some other Giovani even to use history as a model for their action, since to do so would be to turn an historical argument into an intellectual guideline attempting to explain and shape pure "flux". The State, the agent of God, must merely act, commanded by nothing rational or architectonic.

Discrete moments of life and reaction to them are the stuff of its existence. On the other hand, consistent obedience to State decisions is the will of God.

Thirdly, Rome—and her Jesuit tool—offended the Giovani by acting as though the earth could be transformed

ad majorem Dei gloriam. Such a transformation was, for them, an utter impossibility. The world was the realm of sin, with the lust for power being the specific sin that lay behind all human endeavors. Lust for power was the special distinguishing mark of Rome throughout her history, the Popes devoting themselves to the continuation of the old imperial aggression. In fact, the whole Tridentine reform effort, the entire enterprise of transformation of the world in Christ, the thrust of the growing interest in dogma and its application to daily life, and the work of the Society of Jesus, was one enormous mask for building Roman power, the Giovani claimed. It was therefore the duty of the intelligent man to uncover the lust for power behind every action, to "deconstruct" these seemingly principled moves to reveal the omnipresence of sin. It is this that Sarpi did particularly cleverly in his History of the Council of Trent.

Of course such an idea means that the State, serving as lion-tamer in a jungle of irrational conflict which may change form but never end, must then itself logically exhibit that same sinful, mindless lust for power that it is supposed to identify and manage in its subjects. Still, if the State insists upon

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 15

The Last Word…

Noah Way, Dude!

A View from Rocco's

Rao Continued . . .

its Divine Right to obedience, cuts off all discussion of higher principles, and relies on the kind of terror that Sarpi has no qualms about encouraging to enforce its will, it can easily prevent "deconstruction" of its own role as God’s agent in the world.

This brings us to a final underlying contradiction. According to the Giovani, no universal ideas were to be allowed a role in shaping the life of states with their different histories and varying problems. Politics was to be the realm of the "pragmatic". But it is clear that the pragmatically minded Giovani were religiously devoted to their political conclusions. Many of them spoke of their Republic as though she had sprung fully formed out of the almost supernatural wisdom of her Founding Fathers, with universally applicable practical lessons for a world desperately in need of enlightenment. Hence, they were teaching pragmatism as dogma. A contradiction, indeed, but it should be clear by this time that we have entered an era in which consistency is dismissed as the "hobgoblin of little minds".

Rome waged war on the Giovani in 1606-1607, when Pope Paul V placed Venice as a whole under an Interdict.

This was a strategy that most of the supporters of Tridentine reform actually did not approve, given their fear that the political issues involved in such papal-local battles generally obscured the real issues at stake, especially now, in the case of the Giovani. Most of the Venetian clergy obeyed the State rather than the Pope and continued to offer all the sacraments to the population. The Jesuits, the chief representatives of the spirit of correction and transformation in Christ (and whose most important writer, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, was himself unhappy with the Interdict) followed the instructions of the Holy See. As a result, the Society was expelled from Venice, and remained outside the Republic until 1655.

Memory of the Giovani assault on the whole raison d’être of the Incarnation and the work of its Jesuit servants has faded from Catholic minds, along with their call for Truth to bend to the specific needs of time and place. But the Giovani spirit is as alive as alive can be in our own day. Aspects of its central themes are found in the arguments of Personalists, supporters of Third World Theology, and all those who---quite understandably---pick up on statements chastising Catholic "judgment" of the world around us to promote a general intellectual, spiritual, and moral anarchy. The Giovani spirit is also all too much reflected in the insistence of American exceptionalists on the Divine Right of our Republic to do what it chooses to do based upon the will of its own "unique" Founders---regardless of the demands of Reason and Christ’s Church.

Still, I get far ahead of my story at this point. For the long, dramatic story of the Society of Jesus, the Kingdom of France, and the battle of Catholic universalism versus Gallican and Jansenist reductionism remain to be told. And one of the local irritants is approaching my table here at Rocco’s, promising a skirmish of my own that may delay my cocktail hour and dinner.

But that, once again, is what life is all about. Prohibition of discussions of religion may be the mantra of Pluralism, but the Will of the Founders means nothing to me in this regard. ■ world with their "Global Change" message, the rest of us are expected to pedal bikes and drive electric cars.

The next memorable incident supporting the ecological theme involves a wild dog which is dying from an arrow shot by "men" who are hungry and hunting for meat. Whenever the word "men" is uttered in the movie it is said with obvious contempt. Men are portrayed as filthy rotten meat eaters who ravage the soil and murder innocent animals for food. Noah removes the arrow from the stricken animal and then murders the three hunters—PETA justice! At this point in the movie I began to gnaw away on a thick chunk of beef jerky, while the vegans in the theater munched down on buttered popcorn.

But the flower and dog incident are just the warm-up for the big ecological push.

Noah learns through some psycho-dream that he is to build a huge ark, the purpose of which is to save all the innocents on the planet. The "innocents" include all living creatures EXCEPT for mankind.

Even pesky insects are worthy of preserving, but not man. For the terrible sin of "men" is their treatment of nature, for which reason they must be destroyed in their entirety as a race. Noah and his family alone are preserved from the flood for the sole purpose of building the ark and caring for the animals on board. Once the waters recede and the animals are restored to dry land, Noah and his family are intended to die off, without any offspring. Never mind what the lesson of Friday Mass of Easter week reads: that the eight souls saved in the Ark prefigure baptism.

So committed is Noah to the extinction of the human race and the end of his own family line that he takes murderous measures to insure it. Unlike the biblical narrative, the sons of Noah have no wives in this movie fiction. One woman is allowed onboard the ark but only because she has a stab wound in her womb, which has seemingly rendered her barren. Noah isolates his sons from opportunities to find mates and when one of his sons is racing toward the ark with a woman partner in tow, Noah leaves her behind to die, her ankle fittingly locked in the jaws of an animal trap set by "men." When it becomes known that the womb-wounded woman on board has, in fact, conceived by his son, Noah is resolved to murder his grandchild at the instant of its birth, should it happen to be a girl. Turns out she has twins: two girls. Oh boy—oh girls!

Typical of a certain genre of modern productions, this movie flirts with many gnostic-like elements. Rather than any references to God, Noah frequently makes reference to "the Creator," which is more likely some sort of demiurge than the one true God.

In one flashback scene to the Garden of Eden, the first human beings appear as luminous bodies without skin, until such time that they partake of the forbidden fruit. It appears that their sin was the violence of plucking the fruit as an act against nature, and their punishment was to become encased in mortal flesh. There is a cameo of the serpent, which sheds its skin in the garden. That snake skin resurfaces throughout the movie, passed from one generation to the next, as a sort of talisman for magic and blessings.

Equally bizarre are "the Watchers," which are rock encrusted fallen angels, cast from heaven for helping mankind after the fall but redeemed in the end for helping Noah construct the ark.

The sad consequence of this picture is that many movie watchers who are ignorant of biblical history will assume that this entertaining fiction is the real deal. It will reinforce in them the doctrine of radical ecologists: nature is good, men are evil. In a similar way, modernists have misled uneducated Catholics, who are ignorant of tradition: new order is good, ancient tradition is evil. But the pseudo ark constructed by these modernists is taking on water and listing badly. We can only pray that many more sincere souls will see their peril and climb aboard the traditional ark of the Church, while time remains. ■

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Wed, 30 Apr 2014 | Cover | Page 15

By Father Celatus

What

■ Noah removes the arrow from the stricken animal and then murders the three hunters—PETA justice!

At this point in the movie I began to gnaw away on a thick chunk of beef jerky, while the vegans in the theater munched down on buttered popcorn.

do the actor Russell Crowe and the president Barack Obama have in common? They both sought private audiences with the Bishop of Rome for promotion of themselves and their personal agenda. Crowe wanted a photo op to bump up the numbers at the box office and Obama wanted a photo op to bump up the numbers at the ballot box.

If forced to choose I would have taken Crowe over Obama but who am I to judge?

So the president got his promo and also a rosary, which he promptly ditched to apostate Pelosi, who was denied a photo op with a pope during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. Dare we wonder if that regifted rosary is the very one that the Bishop of Rome tore from the cold fingers of his dead confessor?

But enough of politics and on to the cinema! Have you seen or heard of the newly released movie, Noah, starring Russell Crowe?

By the way, do you know the name of the wife of Noah? If you responded "Joan of Arc" then you are among millions of biblically illiterate Americans who think that this is the case.

As ridiculous as this may seem, so much more ridiculous is the new movie that bears the title Noah. Yes, there is an ark and a flood, but similarities to the biblical account end there. No surprise, given that the director intended "the least biblical film ever made." Mission accomplished!

Noah is a religious movie but it has nothing to do with true religion. It espouses the religion of Radical Ecology with elements of New Age nonsense woven in. One of the first hints of the ecological theme occurs early in the movie, when Noah criticizes his son for picking a small flower. (Sorry Joan, no roses for Mother’s Day!) Never mind the fact that later, Noah will strip an entire forest bare of its timber for the sake of building the ark, which is just fine. It smacks of the modern incongruity that while ecological "experts" burn fuel and punch carbon holes in the atmosphere by jet-setting around the

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