Pope Michael is lawfully pope

Or so says St Robert Bellarmine:

There are therefore in each realm two kings: one who is visible, a man; another who is invisible, an angel.  And in each church there are two bishops: one who is visible, a man; another who is invisible, an angel.  And in the universal Catholic Church, there are two supreme pontiffs established under Christ: one who is visible, a man; another who is invisible, an angel.  We believe that this angel is St Michael. For as once the synagogue of the Jews venerated him as their patron, so now does the Church of Christians (‘The Ladder of Ascent to God’, 9th step.)

 

On the hidden receptacles

I’ve often wondered why there isn’t more commerce between the living and the dead. Not that I’m advocating necromancy, you understand; just wondering why it is that our Lord in His wisdom does not command or allow the souls living in what St Augustine calls the hidden receptacles to manifest themselves more often to mortal men.  The bishop of Hippo himself used to ponder the same question.  There is a touching passage in one of his earlier works in which he argues that departed souls must be ignorant of what passes on earth, for otherwise why did not his mother come to comfort him when he was feeling downcast, as she had always done while she lived?  But later he changed his mind.

It might seem that such transactions would be highly beneficial for us on earth.  Would we not be comforted and inspired if a blessed soul were to appear? Would we not be fitly chastened to see a soul come up from some purgatorial chamber, dim or twilight? And what more effective way to terrify unto salvation those still in deadly sin than the apparition of a soul from hell?

Yet we know that all these things are rare.  Not unheard of, true: we have only to read the Dialogues of St Gregory to find examples, or, if you prefer something more modern, you could turn to Aardweg’s Hungry Souls. Yet, they are rare. Why is this?

Miracles, of course, must be infrequent, since otherwise they would not be recognisable as miracles.  But such apparitions are perhaps not miraculous.  For a spirit to move to some new location and clothe itself briefly with a small portion of visible matter as with a garment does not obviously exceed its natural powers.  And even if it be a miracle, its usefulness to mortals would not depend on this, but would come from its being a reminder or revelation of great truths.  So why does not God will such apparitions to be frequent, as He wills that sermons about these same truths should be often preached by His ministers, who have not experienced that of which they speak?

I think that visions of this kind would not be as useful as we suppose.  Quidquid recipitur, after all, ad modum recipientis recipitur.  Suppose someone were scared out of mortal sin by seeing a lost soul.  That would do him no good, but just the opposite, unless he persevered in his new way of life.  Then is he to be helped to do this by a constant series of such grim visitations?  In that case, he would live in a constant state of horror, hardly propitious for growing in spiritual liberty and love.  But perhaps he could be given just one such fright to start him off?  But it is better for his conversion to be effected by human preaching, since that is meritorious for the preacher.  And if the man is so hard-hearted that he can be converted only by such a visitation – or, to speak more exactly, if among all created means, only such a visitation would tend to produce in him those serious thoughts and desires which God normally wills to be a precondition for conversion – how likely is he to persevere when once the initial shock has worn off?  Would he not be more likely (again, without prejudice to the freedom of divine grace – I do not want Aelianus to tax me with Molinism) to write the whole thing off as an hallucination, or as a strange experience best forgotten? Our Lord implies that this would be the case for the rich man’s five brothers. 

But it would console us, at least, if someone whom we loved, and about whose salvation we were fearful, were to come to us from purgatory, to reassure us, and it would be good for both of us if that soul should move us to prayer.  Yet, if that were the rule, and not the exception, what if the soul did not appear to us?  Would we not have to conclude that that soul was lost?  How could we bear such knowledge?  If it is hard for us wayfarers to think of the eternal loss of souls in general, and to unite in our minds this part of revelation and the divine love, how would it be if we learned of the loss of some soul whom we had known and loved?  Would not such knowledge be an obstacle for the spiritual progress of all but those already perfect?

But if a blessed soul were to appear – surely that would be only encouragement for the beholder, and no obstacle?  But again, what are his dispositions?  If he is an incorrigible scoffer, he has now one more thing to scoff about.  If he lacks faith rather from thoughtlessness than from scorn, such a visitation would perhaps make an impression, but need it lead him to conversion?  It might lead him to pride as easily as to humility; or, if he is the sort that would tend to be humbled by it, then he could be humbled also by a good sermon.  But at least if he were already in the right path, would not the apparition be helpful?  Yet we have St John of the Cross, doctor of the Church, to contradict this.  Any such extraordinary manifestation, he insists, is liable to lead the beholder away from the purely spiritual path of faith, hope and charity, and to alloy his motives thenceforth with curiosity and the prospect of sensuous delight.

Yet we know that such manifestations do occur, and so they must be sometimes useful.  There are some souls whom God wishes to help who are, so to speak, not likely to be helped in other ways; and for the human race as a whole, or at least for the elect as a whole, it is useful that such things happen sometimes and be recorded.  But it is also good that they be rare.

Yet perhaps many people have some lesser experiences: not apparitions, but, as it were, something imperfect and rudimentary within the same genus.  Often those who have been bereaved speak of an awareness of the presence of the departed soul, and we need not suppose that these things are usually just imagination.

I once knew an old man, very simple, cheerful, and pious.  He had never learned to read and write, having hardly been schooled.  His father, I think, must have been mad: at any rate, when the old man was a boy, his father had once branded him with a red-hot poker.  He served in the War as a conscript, and the example of some Catholic led him to convert. He had never married, and lived alone.  His conversation was often hard to follow, and yet he was the sort of person whom it raised your spirits to hear speak.  Then I went to live in a foreign land and forgot him.  One morning in that foreign land, between sleep and waking, I had a sort of sense of that old man’s soul ascending and that he greeted me as he went, disburdened of all the troubles of his long life. 

That very day a message came from my own country to say that he had died.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is going on?

I find these statistics very mysterious. Ignoring Bosnia which is a special case from which few inferences can be drawn, all 50%+ countries are non-Slav Eastern-Rite, all 25-50% countries are Slav Byzantine and all 25%- countries are Latin. What is the explanation? It can’t just be Vatican II because that doesn’t explain the inferior performance of the Slav Byzantines compared to the Non-Slav Easterners .

 

Shall we see elves?

Aelianus once suggested to me that the principal difference between the elves and the men in Tolkien is not their nature but their end: the elves are directed by God to a merely natural end, whereas the men are directed to a supernatural end. This is why the elves are destined to remain in Arda, that is, on earth, since they can find there all that is necessary for them to achieve their goal, whereas men by ‘the gift of Iluvatar’, that is, by death, go elsewhere, the elves know not whither.

Savonarola suggested – though Bellarmine didn’t like it – that the inhabitants of Limbo would after the resurrection have dealings with the saints, sharing at least some of the same space and speaking to them.

Since those in Limbo have the same nature as the saints, but only attain a natural end, they would be after the resurrection rather similar to Tolkien’s elves. It is true that those in Limbo had a supernatural end insofar as they are members of the human race, but they were never personally proportioned to the beatific vision by receiving any actual grace, and so they would not experience any longing for it, or have any sense that their natural fulfilment was insufficient for them.

(Garrigou-Lagrange claims in various places that those in Limbo have a will that is averted from God as their supernatural end, and that by this fact that their will is also averted from God as their natural end. If this were true then their lot would seem to be very unpleasant, but I don’t know why he says it. Original sin implies an absence of charity in the will, but not a state of ‘having turned away from God’ in it.)

We can be tempted to imagine the inhabitants of Limbo after the resurrection as being like over-grown children, or like the adults on earth who have Down’s syndrome. But this would be quite wrong. Their intellects would function excellently, and their wills would love God with a natural love, and each other with noble friendship, and their emotions would be in complete harmony with reason. God might even give them certain natural gifts that the saints would not possess, such as the gift of writing beautiful poetry or singing beautiful songs in honour of creation. Or even if the saints could do the same, their would surely be a style of speech and song unique to those who live by nature alone, in a natural purity of heart, yet without desire of friendship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; just as the saints  have no desire, for example, to be higher in glory than they are, or to have been the redeemer of the world.

If we put, then, Aelianus’s and Savonarola’s suggestion together, we come up with the question of this post: shall we see elves?

 

Address from St Cecilia’s Abbey

Resurrectio et Vita Solemn Profession of Sr Mechtilde Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, 2018 We choose a motto and an emblem at final Profession, and Sister Mechtilde’s was “Resurrectio et Vita” as a motto and the sun as emblem. In her conference, Mother has explored these in terms of the spiritual journey and the monastic life. “As a light upon a lampstand He was extinguished on the Cross and like the sun He rose from the tomb … the day darkened when Christ was crucified and at His resurrection night shone like the day” (Asterius of Amasenus). This text from Easter Tuesday Vigils tells us that something totally new happened on Easter morning.  The invisible world broke in upon the visible; a man conquered death; light dawned in darkness and shone brilliantly, toto solo clarior.  We subscribe, however, not to an idea but to a Person, Jesus Christ, who is forever alive at the right hand of His Father, but who lives also with us and in us through His Holy Spirit.  He is this sun of righteousness, with “healing in his wings” (Mal 4:2), transcendent, yet infusing his life and joy and warmth into our hearts.  By water and the word, by the Bread of life, we become sharers in His substance.  We lay aside the old and become conformed to Him in newness of life.  By the gift of our self, the doing of which is itself gift, we hope with confidence to become one with the prayer Christ makes to His Father in the Spirit. Newness is a source of wonder, even amazement.  “Fear and great joy” seized the women, who ran from the tomb on Easter morning, only to meet Jesus on the way and to fall at His feet and worship Him (Mt 28:8).  The disciples in Luke (24:41) “disbelieved for joy and wondered.”  We can think that even Jesus was astonished at His Resurrection and had to adapt to joy.  The Resurrection appearances, however, are quiet, mysterious events, often taking place at the break of day.  The Gospels place the encounter of Mary Magdalene with Jesus just before or at sunrise: Matthew (28:1), “toward the dawn”, Luke, “at early dawn” (24:1), John, “while it was still dark”, (20:1) and Mark (16:2), “very early on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.”  The Magdalen is recognised before she recognises.  His recognition brings her knowledge of her own identity, that she is, in fact, alive after numbing grief.  All her powers of love come to life and focus on Him whom she knows with the heart to be the Risen Lord. Although the fact of the Resurrection made no sense to the disciples at first, there was no denying it.  The Risen Christ was overwhelmingly present to them, palpable and warm, their friend and still desirous of their friendship.  Under His guidance, they sought fresh insight from Scripture and began to understand.  They grasped that a new covenant had been inaugurated.  Luke, writing in Acts (1:3-4) speaks of the Risen Lord “eating salt” with His followers after the Resurrection.  In the Old Testament, explains Pope Benedict, eating salt served to establish lasting covenants.  He writes: “The eating of salt by Jesus after the Resurrection, which we encounter as a sign of new and everlasting life, points to the Risen Lord’s banquet with His followers.  It is a covenant event … eating salt expresses an inner bond between the meal on the eve of Jesus’ Passion and the Risen Lord’s new table fellowship: He gives Himself to His followers as food and this makes them sharers in His life, in Life itself.”  Salt also purifies, preserves and adds spice to food.  “So the different meanings come together here: covenant renewal, the gift of life and the purification of one’s being for self-offering for God.” Such things, such a new relationship with Christ, imply a new direction which is first of all interior.  Closeness to God in Christ is no longer an inaccessible reality.  “If I go away”, He promised, “I will come to you” (Jn 14:28).  And He does.  He has not gone into outer space or to some material place, but into the mystery of God; and that communion with the living God has become open to all humanity, of all times and all places (cf Pope Benedict: Jesus of Nazareth, vol 2).  His continuing presence is available and mediated to us, primarily in the Sacraments, whereby He still touches us and enters into the centre of our being.  From another perspective, He draws us into the centre of His Heart.  Cor Jesu, rex et centrum omnium cordium, as we sing in the Litany of the Sacred Heart.  He is the love which attracts us. New direction interiorly, but always given outward expression.  Renewed moral vision certainly, exteriorised perhaps only in simple ways: a new charity, a new renunciation, but also a testimony.  For the early disciples, this often meant proclamation of the new event, a witness to the point of death.  Peter received his commission by the Sea of Tiberias after a night of toil and failure, as the sun was coming up: “just as the day was breaking” (Jn 21:4).  “Follow me” (v 22). It is possible to see Profession, that is, not only the blessed day of public commitment but the whole monastic conversatio, in the light of the Resurrection event.  The monk, the nun lives the paschal mystery.  St Bernard writes: “By this holy intention, which is a second regeneration, we pass from the darkness of all our actual sins into the light of the virtues and we renew in ourselves the words of the Apostle: The night is advanced, the day is at hand” (On Precept and Dispensation, Ch 17). The grain of self-love is sown in the dark.  The dying takes a lifetime, so that the nun must know how to remain, in stability of intent, waiting for the slow transformation into the One who called her.  She trusts her expectations, with a holy instinct; her eyes are trained on the dawning light.  Even if, as in the psalm, the sun in full vigour will stride across the sky from rising to setting (Ps 18), its origins are small.  Although the Woman of the Apocalypse is clothed splendidly with the sun, Our Lord at the Incarnation comes silently sicut sol et descendet in uterum Virginis sicut imber super gramen, “like the sun and descends into the Virgin’s womb, like rain upon the grass.” He came in response to Mary’s fiat.  In pronouncing her own fiat on her profession day, the nun is recognised and accepted by Christ, the Church and the community.  A new dimension to existence comes into being, in which she finds deeper interior silence and a further call to praise and worship. Worship belongs to sacrifice.  The nun lays her chart on the altar.  Since He gives her very being to her, she returns it to Him, as her rational service.  She chooses life, gives a life for Life, has thankfulness in her heart for the beloved people who brought her to life.  The sacrifice is thus given with joy, seems like nothing at all, so great is the prize.  The covenant is renewed, the self given, the purification embraced. She renews her pledge of obedience, ready for whatever it may ask of her.  Already obedient in purpose, there is a fresh impulse at Profession, just as a new obedience was asked even of the Son to the Father at the moment of Resurrection.  Christ has a different attitude to her from now on.  He no longer needs to pay suit for her obedience; He knows that she sees it as a bonum.  He understands our sensibilities and does not ask what we cannot as yet give, but it is true to say that, at our Profession, He allows Himself a new freedom in using us.  We are henceforth disponible, trusting in the Person who commands. As a result, a new relationship, a new nearness emerges with the divine Spouse of the Profession ceremony.  The gift she makes of herself is opened, so to speak, in front of her eyes.  The sacrifice, the fruit of her choice, is accepted and will bear further fruit in fidelity.  Other noble loves are not diminished by this central love but are ordered in charity.  There arises the possibility of a friendship with Christ, since we have sought to follow the commandment of love, not only in a single, generous gesture, but in the sanctum propositumof a daily service.  Since, in the case of Christ, we cannot aspire to the usual equality between friends, we believe in His desire to cross the infinite distance to exercise His right of friendship over us.  We, for our part, understand the need for complete donation of the will, the merging of our poor, human love with His perfect love for us.  He rejoices at this friendship.  “His heart,” writes Augustine Roberts, “is the first to overflow with the inexpressible sweetness of love” (Centred on Christ).  Through this shared friendship, we come to resemble Him.  Our desire to become spiritually and morally beautiful is being fulfilled day by day, so that we can claim for ourselves the astonishing text from 2Cor 3:18, used as a lectio brevis at Vigils for monks and nuns: “And we all, with unveiled face, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”  A claritate in claritatem.  It is not our own beauty, but His.  We know that, when we contemplate our faults, but we may rejoice even in them.  St Mechtilde ascribes these words to the Lord: “Even if thou were perfectly faithful to me, thou shouldst infinitely prefer that my love should repair thy negligences rather than that thou shouldst do it, so that my love may have all the honour.” The Risen Christ is being formed in us, we are being conformed to Him.  He begins to live His own life more completely in us, which is the life of the Blessed Trinity.  Put differently we embody, in our own life in the Risen Christ, the nature of Trinitarian love (cf Roberts op cit).  It is already here and now, though the awareness of the reality is often obscured.  We are forever being recalled from reverie to ready charity and constant prayer, to embrace dura et aspera with a “quiet consciousness”, tacite conscientia (RB 7).  In other words, we have to give effect to what has happened in our resurrected life.  Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, nonetheless, we begin to see with the eyes of the Beloved and to understand with His mind.  Our prayer to Him and in Him is increasingly drawn into the movement of the Holy Spirit towards the Father.  Thus, the nun who is “brought over” into the substance of the Risen Lord, reflects Him more and more.  This is her joy and her mission on earth, yet her goal is heaven, where the reflection becomes the fullness of reality.  Cardinal Journet writes: “It is in heaven, in the world beyond time, that our Saviour’s prayer … will be fully heard.  Having been completely conformed to the Christ of glory, interiorly and ontologically transformed by the light of glory … the blessed will see reflected in themselves, as in a pure and living mirror, the infinite and limitless unity that the Father, Son and Spirit together eternally form.  They will be one, not only by the transformation of grace and glory, but still more … because they will see reflected in the most hidden depths of their being, completely in each one of them and completely in the entire ensemble – as the sun is completely reflected in a mirror and completely in each of its fragments – the inexpressible adorable super-unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Jesus says again, ‘The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may become perfectly one’ (Jn 17:22-23)” (Theology of the Church).

 

Which past event would you choose to have seen?

As we wait for Spring, here’s a game to while away the wintry evenings. Which event from the past would you most like to have witnessed? It can be something public or domestic, famous or homely (I except the events of our Lord’s earthly life, as being too sacred to set into the balance with others.)

Someone, I suppose, might choose the founding of the city of Rome, or else, going maybe further back, desire to have heard Homer sing the Odyssey or the Iliad to his lyre. We might have heard great Homer in his hall, begins one of Belloc’s ballades. Or would you choose to have seen Joseph discover himself to his brethren; or further back by far, our common father when he came forth from his mighty ship and saw a whole world made new?

Or to return to a more recent antiquity, what about watching the 300 take up their places at Thermopylae, and hearing one of the Spartans say to General Leonidas (trying to keep the fear from his voice), ‘The Persians are so many that their arrows will blot out the sun!’, and hearing Leonidas answer, ‘So much the better – we shall get to fight them in the shade’?

It would have been fine, too, to have heard Socrates and the others at the world’s most famous dinner-party discussing the nature of love; or to have been at the Academy on the day when a promising young student from Stagira ventured to put up his hand and ask Professor Plato whether there weren’t some difficulties involved in the theory of the forms.

What would one not give to have been in Rome on the Christmas morning of 800, when like the lightning that come out of the East and passes even to the West, the Pope translated the empire to the brows of Charlemagne, and then, as if awed by the boldness of his own deed, threw himself to the ground before the monarch of the world?

Or perhaps one would choose to have been present three centuries later when another pope preached the first Crusade in the heart of France; or when the French knights whose faith and imaginations he had kindled scaled the walls of Jerusalem? Or on into the very heart of the middle ages, dining at the same table with St Louis and St Thomas Aquinas, seeing the friar bring down his fist upon the table with a bang, and the king, amused, called for pen and paper to be brought him?

What a scene, too, in Augsburg, when Cajetan met Luther! Will there ever again be so perfect an encounter of reason and anti-reason? Some good Protestant who plays the game might like to have been a spectator when Friar Martin nailed his theses to the castle door. Alas, it seems it never happened. Or again, some bold republican might wish to have been in Paris on an August night in ’92 to hear the tocsin sound and watch Danton set to work; or even to have shivered by the guillotine a few months later when a blameless king knelt beneath the blade, and an Irish priest murmured holy words into his ear: Fils de Saint Louis, montez au Ciel!

Turning back to peaceful England, how I should like to have sat in a church in Oxford in the 1830’s and listened to the silvery voice reading the sermon from the pulpit of St Mary’s, as the shadows began to lengthen down the High; but even more to have heard Newman himself afterward talking with Keble and Pusey and Ward and Froude, late into the night; yes, and to have joined in too.

Yet if I must make my choice, I think I must settle upon the Council of Nicaea. To have been there when the 318 came in, so many of them noble and saintly confessors; brethren of the martyrs; men who had come through the Great Persecution and washed their robes therein. To have seen Constantine the Great enter, and kiss their scarred and mutilated limbs, expiating thus the crimes of his forebears, and refusing to sit until they had first sat down. Then to have heard the debates, as bishop after bishop bore witness to the truth handed down from the apostles, of the true divinity of the Son. To have seen St Alexander of Alexandria, or St Nicholas of Myra, and, combining the freshness of youth with the gravity of age, the deacon Athanasius. And the men sent from the west, from the throne of Peter, presiding over the discussions by undisputed right.

To have beheld the Eusebii, also; seen faithless Nicomedia confuted, and ambiguous Caesarea disconcerted. And the poor Novatian bishop silenced by the emperor’s wisdom:

For aiming at ecclesiastical harmony, he summoned to the council Acesius also, a bishop of the sect of Novatians. Now, when the declaration of faith had been written out and subscribed by the Synod, the emperor asked Acesius whether he would also agree to this creed to the settlement of the day on which Easter should be observed. He replied, ‘The Synod has determined nothing new, my prince: for thus heretofore, even from the beginning, from the times of the apostles, I traditionally received the definition of the faith, and the time of the celebration of Easter.’ When, therefore, the emperor further asked him, ‘For what reason then do you separate yourself from communion with the rest of the Church?’, he related what had taken place during the persecution under Decius; and referred to the rigidness of that austere canon which declares, that it is not right persons who after  baptism have committed a sin, which the sacred Scriptures denominate ‘a sin unto death’ to be considered worthy of participation in the sacraments: that they should indeed be exhorted to repentance, but were not to expect remission from the priest, but from God, who is able and has authority to forgive sins. When Acesius had thus spoken, the emperor said to him, ‘Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb alone into heaven.’

Then to have heard the great Symbol recited by all save a wretched few, and to have watched as they processed into the basilica, to sing some liturgy even more ancient than those of St Basil or St Chrysostom; for these men were not yet born. Yes, I should be glad to have seen those things.

 

 

It’s not the liturgy, stupid!

Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labour, on the rights of the labouring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV. There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.

– Pius XI

Hamish Fraser once observed that the universal restoration of the traditional liturgy would not solve the crisis in the church. The traditional liturgy was, after all, universally observed before the crisis arose and it did not prevent it. That which was not upheld and which would have prevented the crisis, the absence of which led to the crisis and the restoration of which alone will solve it, is the preaching of the Social Kingship of Christ. However, as Hilary White has recently and eloquently observed the Kingship of Christ exists exclusively for the salvation of souls. When His disciples could not find Him in Capharnaum they found the Lord alone in the hills praying. He said to them “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” As I once heard a very holy monk observe, the word here translated as ‘came out’ is ἐξῆλθον the same word as Our Lord uses in John 8:42 to describe His eternal generation. He went out into the hills to prepare to preach to the people. He came out from the Father in eternity that He might breathe forth the Spirit. He came into the world to save mankind, but that salvation consists in going out from the perishing city as He went out from Capharnaum to share in the eternal processions of the Divine Persons through prayer – the one thing necessary. Only in this light are any temporal benefits (such as the people of Caphernum sought) even benefits. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

St Benedict says “To you, therefore, my words are now addressed, whoever you may be, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King, and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.” But he is not addressing would-be statesmen or even the fathers of families, he is addressing would-be monks. The Social Kingship of Christ consists in the reordering and subordination of temporal realities to the supernatural end. Its foundation lies in the recognition of the utterly surpassing nature of that end. Its foundation is in the monastery and the monastery’s foundation is in heaven. Without this all temporal Christian struggle is worthless. The path of restoration proceeds from the monastery through the liturgy to the capitol and back again, but cut off  from its source and destination it will nought avail.

I have had the opportunity over the years four times to celebrate the feast of Christ the King on its traditional date in the United States of America according to the traditional rite. On one of those occasions the Mass was arranged by a lay ‘Latin Mass Community’ who ensured that it was celebrated with gusto. A High Mass with full choir, Blessed Sacrament procession and the solemn intoning of the Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the other occasions the Mass was offered by the FSSP. Now the FSSP are splendid fellows but the liturgy was not at all celebrated with the vigour and pomp one might expect for the Feast instituted to combat social and political modernism, the consecration was recited in a frankly perfunctory manner (and one occasion omitted entirely), there was no procession and the Blessed Sacrament was not exposed. Most seriously of all there was absolutely no mention made in the sermon of the Social Kingship of Christ on any of these occasions.

Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in order to compel the clergy to preach this doctrine.

[A]lthough in all the feasts of our Lord the material object of worship is Christ, nevertheless their formal object is something quite distinct from his royal title and dignity. We have commanded its observance on a Sunday in order that not only the clergy may perform their duty by saying Mass and reciting the Office, but that the laity too, free from their daily tasks, may in a spirit of holy joy give ample testimony of their obedience and subjection to Christ. The last Sunday of October seemed the most convenient of all for this purpose, because it is at the end of the liturgical year, and thus the feast of the Kingship of Christ sets the crowning glory upon the mysteries of the life of Christ already commemorated during the year, and, before celebrating the triumph of all the Saints, we proclaim and extol the glory of him who triumphs in all the Saints and in all the Elect. Make it your duty and your task, Venerable Brethren, to see that sermons are preached to the people in every parish to teach them the meaning and the importance of this feast, that they may so order their lives as to be worthy of faithful and obedient subjects of the Divine King.

Hamish Fraser famously described the American Catholic as “a Protestant who goes to Mass”. There is, alas, all too much truth in this ungenerous observation. One is often struck by the way in which American Catholics will say “I’m Catholic” rather than “I am a Catholic” as if ‘Catholic’ were one among a number of flavours of Christian. They will even talk about ‘Catholics and Christians’ as if there were some other sort of Christian or as if Catholics were not Christians or as if there were some kind of generic ‘mere Christianity’ approximating mildly conservative Protestantism upon which Marian devotion and five sacraments and the Real Presence are (hopefully) harmless baroque accretions.

Fr Brian Harrison observes:

[R]ejecting papal authority in favour of one’s own individual judgment was a perfect recipe for religious anarchy. And in medieval Christendom it was much easier to see that fact – and also to see that such anarchy is thoroughly undesirable – than it is in modern Western society. Desensitised after several centuries spent under a socio-political umbrella that shelters multiple coexistent Christian denominations, we have now, as a society, baptised this chaotic anarchy with the bland name of “religious pluralism”, and have come to see it as an instance of normal and healthy progress, rather than of pathological decline from the revealed norm of a Catholic polity that recognises the kingship of Christ. (After all, isn’t such ‘pluralism’ a cornerstone of democracy and a guarantee of individual liberty?) Those of us who are converts to the faith can testify from experience that for modern Protestants right across the liberal-evangelical-fundamentalist spectrum, the co-existence of many Christian denominations or “churches”, while theoretically acknowledged as falling short of the biblical ideal of Christian unity, is for practical purposes taken for granted as something normal, natural and inevitable – pretty much like the co-existence of many different countries, languages, styles of music, or ice cream flavours. From that perspective it is precisely “Rome” that appears as the renegade – the black sheep in the Christian fold – by virtue of her “arrogant” claim to be the one and only true Church. And let us recall the full radicality of this Protestant critique. It is not that the Southern Baptists (let us say) object to the aforesaid claim simply because they consider their own denomination, rather than “Rome”, to be the one true Church. That would basically be the same kind of objection that many claimants to this or that national throne have made over the centuries against rival claimants: “It is not you, but I, who am the rightful king!” No, the Protestant position cuts much deeper. It is like objecting to someone’s claim to the throne of England on the grounds that no such throne exists! It’s like protesting that anyone at all who claims to be England’s rightful ruler is ipso facto an impostor and potential tyrant whose pretensions must be firmly resisted! For the common position now shared by Protestants is precisely that no single Christian denomination may claim to be the Church founded by Christ, and, therefore, that no leader of any one denomination may dare claim the authority to make doctrinal or governing decisions that bind all Christians. Rather, it is said, each denomination should respectfully recognise many (or even all) of the others as being true, that is, real, “churches”, and so limit itself to making the modest claim of being preferable to the others in one way or another – for instance, by virtue of possessing what it believes is a better understanding of Scripture. In other words, the different organised “churches”, according to this ecclesiology, are seen as being in this respect pretty much like banks, schools, cars, brands of toothpaste, or any other sorts of commodities and services. It is considered legitimate to promote one or other as being of better quality than the rest; but just as it would be outrageous and beyond the pale for Wells Fargo to claim seriously that none of its competitors is truly a bank, or for General Motors to claim that nobody else makes real automobiles, or for Colgate ads to proclaim that what you’ll get in tubes of other brands is not just inferior toothpaste but fake toothpaste – so Protestants right across the liberal-conservative spectrum consider it theologically outrageous and beyond the pale for any single Christian denomination (read: Roman Catholicism) to claim that it is the one and only real Church.

The analogy of a disputed throne versus ideological republicanism is quite apt. The nonsense that legitimate governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” goes hand in hand with nominalist contractualist ecclesiology. It is this Protestant vision and only this vision that could make sense of an intended adherence to the Gospel and a simultaneous acceptance of the ‘separation of Church and State’ as desirable for its own sake. The superstitious awe in which the citizens of the USA are expected to hold the Freemasons and Deists who composed their constitution and Declaration of Independence forbids the very idea of taking an axe to the First Amendment. American Catholics are expected to fly the flag of the US in the very sanctuaries of their Churches. This is extremely rare to non-existent even in countries that are or were formally Catholic, but this is the flag of the first western polity since the Edict of Theodosius in 380 to withhold recognition from Christ and which substituted the five pointed star for the Cross on its flag. This secularised banner is often, even in churches, hoisted on a staff surmounted by a golden eagle, the very symbol the Labarum supplanted and which was employed to desecrate the Holy of Holies in 70 AD.

Between the World Wars liberal economics and politics seemed tired. The world was torn between totalitarian ideologies that demanded the whole person. The Church thrived in this context with an integral vision of God and man that answered all the aspirations of the human person in freedom and ranged her against “the modern world in arms”. The Leonine formula of indifference to the form of regime but implacable insistence on the conformity of the civil order to the Divine and Natural Laws made vast strides against Modernity. In the wake of the Second World War the USA was left as the hegemonic power and the ideology of its founders has eaten away at the Church. The ‘Boston Heresy Case‘ was a disaster as the quasi-condemnation of Feeney’s garbled version of explicitism seemingly justified the complete surrender of the American church to the spirit of Thomas Jefferson. The United Kingdom, born of the revolution of 1688, has this paradoxical advantage: the sovereign is subjected to a religious test. The Jacobites, like the colony of Maryland, became entangled in the dubious cause of religious liberty. The rectification of the British constitution, upon the conversion of the Monarch and the people, requires only a single Act of Parliament.

Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux!

 

The Splendour of Truth

 A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. ‘If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth’ (John XV., 6). ‘He that believeth not shall be condemned’ (Mark XVI., 16).

–  Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus 11

It would be a very serious error to conclude that the Church’s teaching is essentially only an ‘ideal’ which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man, according to a ‘balancing of the goods in question’. But what are the ‘concrete possibilities of man’? And of which man are we speaking? Of man dominated by lust or of man redeemed by Christ? This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ’s redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means that he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ’s redemptive act, but to man’s will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God’s command is of course proportioned to man’s capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit

– St John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor 103

 

The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

 

Oh Camellia sinensis!

Each time the kettle starts to hiss,

Oh praise Him! Alleluia!

Dihydrogen monoxide too,

Infuse their leaves the whole way through!

Oh praise Him! Oh praise Him!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

The Triumph of Orthodoxy

“For those who reject the grace of redemption preached by the Gospel as the only means of our justification before God, Anathema!”