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The failure of the pro-life movement

It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and power of Capitalism. It is Capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes; that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favor of the influence of the employer; that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs; that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families; and, above all, that has encouraged for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers. It is not the Bolshevist but the Boss, the publicity man, the salesman and the commercial advertiser who have, like a rush and riot of barbarians, thrown down and trampled under foot the ancient Roman statue of Verecundia.

-G.K. Chesterton

Three Foes of the family

Since Obama won his second term, conservatives, religious conservatives in particular have had to lick their wounds. Some reactions go to the extreme, such as the pregnant woman who ran over her husband for not voting, as if his vote really mattered and he is the reason why Obama won when he lives in a state that went for Romney any way. Others blame Catholics who voted for Obama, while others bemoan those who voted for a 3rd party or could not bring themselves to vote for “Mittens”. All of these and the countless string or reactions and “if only we had gotten out the vote” etc. indicate amongst religious conservatives and pro-lifers an underlying problem, why aren’t we winning? The answer is that the movement has failed.

Is the pro-life movement really successful?

In one sense certainly. No other organization has consistently brought several hundred thousand people to the capital every year for over 40 years, not that I’ve ever heard of anyway. Moreover, the Pro-life movement in particular offers real solutions for women, through crisis pregnancy centers, post-abortive counseling, gifts, donations, adoption etc. In my estimation these are the real successes. I should also add before I criticize the movement that I am 100% pro-life, but I am dismayed by where the movement comes up short.

The successes, alas, sadly don’t overshadow the striking failures of the movement politically, and these are due to two factors: 1) A faulty grasp on the real nature of the problem and 2) absolute dependence on the Republican party which does not care. Thus we can say that the pro-life movement is successful socially with all of the good it is able to do for women in need, but not politically.

In the first place, we must correctly realize why abortion in this country (let alone in Europe) came into being. It did not come in with the legalization of contraception 6 years earlier, nor did it come in because of Margaret Sanger, who was a socialist and a Nazi supporter. It did not even come from Eugenics. These are all secondary causes; they are all involved, however, they flow from a primary cause.

Abortion came from Capitalism’s betrayal of the family. The assault of liberalism always realizes itself as economic before it does as political. Until the pro-life movement comes to the realization that abortion is wedded to our economic system, it will fail each and every time. Moreover, as long as it is beholden to the Republican party, which by and large is a party wedded to free market capitalism (the source for abortion) then the movement to end abortion will never be realized.

How Capitalism Causes Abortion

Why is this? Firstly, let us consider the assault on the family resulting from Capitalism. Most are aware of the 18th and 19th century realities, families forced into a small room which is all they can afford, children working and losing limbs in factories, etc. Since the 20th century most of the horrid conditions had been extirpated, at least for the time being. Thus many say we’ve cleaned up our act economically, so how does Capitalism cause the break-up of the family?

In the first place, we operate from a novel notion of “family”. In the past, the family is not only the husband, wife and children, but the extended family as well as those close friends and servants who are considered like “family”. We are all familiar with Hillary Clinton touting: “It takes a village to raise a child”, and Rick Santorum’s response with: “It takes a family to raise a child.” The truth however is both, but in their proper sense. When Clinton uses that African proverb, she means by “village”, something the Africans do not mean with the saying. She means it takes the government to assist parents financially and materially. In the case of the latter, Santorum means to defend the western, particularly American status quo of the nuclear family which should be able to work and provide for all of its needs on its own. This is of course the family created by American Capitalism. The problem lies in that it is not enough.

The term “familia” is an ancient Roman legal derived from the word “famulus” which means, well a slave or a servant. In Roman legal terms, the familia is the unit of the Erus, or Dominus, his wife, his children who are denoted as liberi, (the same word as the adjective “free”) namely the free offspring, and the famuli who vary from slaves who work in the fields, the house, their children, or scholarly foreigners in his retinue. Its name in Latin implies a group of people who are not the blood relation of the father, mother and their offspring. This composition of the family was similar in the Greek world, and in the Germanic cultures which ultimately took over the Roman Empire in the west. This particular conception of family only changed with the outlawing of slavery from slaves to servants, domestic servants attached to the family either by duty or for pay, and until the advent of capitalism this changed very little. Jane Austen for example, refers in one of her works to a family so poor they could only afford one servant. (Today due to taxes and bureaucracy, even a well to do family could scarcely afford to pay one, even well). Why did people have servants? As fathers of large families can affirm, having children, tending to a house and the normal course of female biology take their toll on women. A woman who works in the home often works much harder than a woman in the workplace. In short, women needed (and still need) help that the husband cannot provide while he is earning a living, irrespective of whether this was on the land or at his own business, or working elsewhere for a wage. All of these occupations in the past were sufficient to provide an income to employ a servant or two, until work in the city, the factory, the shop became paramount and because of the centralization of ownership, wages could no longer support a servant.

Who were the types of people employed as servants? They were not all like Jeeves of Wodehouse’s famous novels. Rather, they were widows, poor women, poor landless men, etc. Namely, people who today are on welfare. What could they receive for that? Some pay, no doubt, but also room and board which is no small cost either. They wouldn’t have lived like kings, but they also didn’t suffer a hand to mouth existence dependent upon the government handouts of Hilary Clinton’s “village”. With the ruin of the middle class culturally and economically in the 18th and 19th century, servants became the domain of the rich (enter Jeeves!). Today there is a finishing school in England where women spend a lot of money to be trained to be domestic servants and are thereupon hired by the wealthy. The old virtues had specific etiquette for how to treat servants, how long they might be expected to work, etc. Today these have been lost, so one frequently reads about foreigners recruited to be servants in Europe then treated like slaves. None of this is thought of when speaking of the older virtues of servants. They were not employees, they were family from nannies to those helping with dishes. The point is all these factors added to peace in the home, for the most part, by helping mothers during difficult periods. As I myself have experienced, while women have maternity leave men often do not have paternity leave. Who is going to cook and clean while the mother is recovering? It is a necessary thing for women to be able to relax after having a baby. Birth is a difficult thing, it is a wonderful thing but very painful and trying on a woman’s body. Older children still need to be cared for, fed, etc. Houses still need to be cleaned, as any parent of a large family knows, dirt builds up! True, older children can do quite a bit of work, but what if you are a mother of toddlers? There are people who do hire nannies and domestic servants, but to afford it both parents must work unless the husband is in a high paying job, which today is not most people.

Yet this is only one facet of the problem. The other is the fierce individualistic spirit of capitalism which yields so many bad effects in society. Since capitalism focuses on individual material happiness, grandparents become a drain on modern notions of privacy, not only for children who don’t want irritating elders around, but even for grandparents who want to maintain independence themselves! Thus nursing homes came into being, a place for people to stick their unwanted elderly, and on the other side elderly who don’t want to give up their independence and prefer to go to a nursing home. There is a good bit of both. Another factor is that elderly must work later into life. This is not just because of corporate CEOs raiding their retirement accounts, or social security not paying until later, but the obscene cost of health care and the inability of retirement or social security to pay the rising bills thanks to the effects of inflation. In 2010, the biggest single cause of bankruptcy was individuals with health insurance who could not pay medical bills. Thus grandparents are increasingly unable to help young families manage. Other relatives must make ends meet themselves and the assistance which in the past was there is not now.

The Political Failure of the Pro-life movement

The Pro-life movement politically speaking is similar in its nature and its conduct to the Populist movement of William Jennings Bryan. The Populist movement brought together many people of different backgrounds and opinions, who had one basic premise: take the power from big banks by freeing us from dependence on gold for currency. In this they were right of course and many Americans at the time agreed, but in the end they failed politically. The reason for this is that they were not able to get an effective grass roots movement going and their third party presidential candidates failed. Why did they fail to get an effective grass roots movement? There are several reasons for this, but primarily they didn’t have enough grasp on the plurality of issues effecting government. The left for instance always talks about a one issue voter and how this is bad. There is a sense however in which the charge is correct, they are simply applying it wrong. The left uses the “one issue voter” slogan to say abortion is not a big issue. That is false, it is. Yet they are right in that it is not the only issue and to have a coherent platform one needs to be able to address a plurality of issues. The populists had no grasp of this locally or statewide, and they got eaten up between loyalty to the established parties.

The exact same thing is true for the pro-life movement. The movement itself has almost nothing to say about economic policy, the environment (in its proper sense), healthcare, the war on terror etc. As a whole the movement is shortsighted politically, and it is generally owned and run by the Republican party. Abortion is the biggest gift to the Republicans, because never could a more incompetent party manage to stay alive in modern politics without a major issue to keep people voting for them. For this reason, among many others, the Republicans will never end abortion, nay more, they have, continue to and will in the future continue to run pro-abortion candidates. We even saw the specter of pro-life Rick Santorum defending a pro-abort candidate from a pro-life candidate to maintain the “party interest”.

They will talk, they will stir people up, or offer their token resistance and there are even sincere Republican politicians who want to end abortion, however, in the end the party will never end it. We should not forget that an allegedly “good, christian, pro-life” conservative Republican, George H.W. Bush, while Nixon’s ambassador to the UN helped the Chinese craft the One Child Policy. As a congressman in 1968, George H.W. Bush used every opportunity to praise Planned Parenthood, and offered amendments with fellow Republican Herman Schneebeli to give “Family Planning Services” priority. During the hearings for these amendments, Allen Guttmacher, the successor to Margaret Sanger and equally a protegee in her support of NAZI eugenics and racism appeared as a witness in favor of the amendments. After discussing the problems that Planned Parenthood faces due to its inherent goal of wiping out blacks through contraception and abortion, George H.W. Bush said: “I appreciate that. For the record, I would like to say I am 1,000 percent in accord with the goals of your organization. I think perhaps more than any other type of organization you can do more in the field of poverty and mental health and everything else than any other group that I can think of. I commend you.” In the 70’s, Republican President Richard Nixon’s state department, with the aid of Henry Kissinger, drafted National Security Memorandum 200, a document which decried the rise of African birth rates, because as Africans developed their resources, America would be less able to steal them. (!) In the 90s, as a senator for Pennsylvania Rick Santorum supported Title X funding which went to Planned Parenthood in order to bolster other legislation. John McCain, who so many told us we should support in 2008, has met with Al Qaeda leaders in Syria who have kidnapped and killed little children on youtube to bolster support for his Syria policy. Pro-life over here, not in the middle east apparently, if we could even say he is pro-life at all. No Republican leader has been any different. They will talk but they will not do. The democrats of course have no interest in ending it either, and religious conservatives who make up the pro-life movement are just a political group to be wooed for votes by parties who do not share their interests. The pro-life movement makes no attempt to address the economic and social antecedents of abortion except in the area of personal morality. No one stops to ask the question, why was birth control attractive to modern women?

In the 19th century early feminists like Susan B. Anthony advocated laws against birth control and abortion because these were seen as being used by men to control and use women, thus the laws came on the books which became an issue in the 20th century. Why was Margaret Sanger able to appeal to modern women to use birth control and have recourse to abortion? It wasn’t her NAZI sympathies, it wasn’t her stated goal to get rid of the “morons” and “black babies” that inspired them, no it was the exigencies of modern life. Birth and raising children is difficult, oh here is a way to keep me from being pregnant, why is that illegal? Providing said services is also big business. If you convince the population it needs little rubber sheaths and it needs pills, or doctors trained to murder babies in the womb, there are a lot of people who will buy them, and given our modern culture, quite repeatedly. Capitalism is on the side of abortion. Entrepreneurs want to convince people to buy their products, why should government interfere? Is there force? no. Is there fraud? no. Therefore what’s the problem? Arguing against it on the basis of morality, or even psychologically and sociologically is to import a foreign philosophy to the individualistic spirit of capitalism. As we have seen, pornography, in spite of study after study showing its bad effects, is still legal (See my article of several years ago the Market and the Moral Man). The failure of the pro-life movement to effectively deal with the moral problems of capitalism and how it has transformed the family will always leave it handicapped when dealing with abortion.

Furthermore, let us look to two significant failures of the Pro-Life movement politically, the Partial Birth Abortion ban and Obamacare.

With respect to the Partial Birth Abortion ban, many in the Pro-life movement hailed it as a great victory, or the first chip at Roe vs. Wade. This however, apart from being shortsighted politically, this view is also incorrect legally. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, stated that the ban was constitutional, because it upheld the principles in Planned Parenthood v Casey. That is to say, because the 2007 partial birth abortion ban upheld abortion law in general (adding further precedent to its constitutionality) it was fine. This is not a victory, it is a defeat. The high court essentially said this law is good because it continues the support of abortion on demand. It is not a victory either because it got rid of partial birth abortion, since if you kill a baby by sucking is brain’s out with a vacuum, or do so by dismembering it or boiling it in saline, what is the difference? An innocent child is still dead. Then there is Obamacare. Conservative democrats hailed the Stupak amendment and Bart Stupak’s party of eight resisting Obamacare, and many said this was a victory. Yet in the end when Nancy Pelosi demanded, Stupak accepted the promise that the president would not force abortion to be funded by taxpayers, which is completely ludicrous not only because Obama is not trustworthy, but how can he simply say this bill funds healthcare, and deny funding to something the Supreme Court calls healthcare? Then comes the HHS mandate, the complete support of the Obama regime for Planned Parenthood, and the fact the US Catholic Bishops were compromised while trying to argue against it. Pro-lifers, and Catholics in particular, had virtually no counter health care plan. They only came up with a free market argument in the face of Obama trying to provide a corporatist plan that in reality is nothing more than a bail-out for insurance companies. Where were they all this time prior on health care? It doesn’t matter if now we say abortion is not healthcare, the upholding of the partial birth abortion ban was done under the understanding that it is, it is law. Was everyone blind to this?

Hope for the future?

There are only three ways in which the Pro-life movement could be successful. Firstly, the issue of Capitalism and abortion needs to be addressed. Leaving it out is nothing more than ignoring the elephant in the room. The fact is, abortion clinics are simply made of of entrepreneurial individuals responding to a market demand, and a value free, market based economics such as that of the Austrian School has no means of stopping this, since the claim is that the government exists only to stop theft or fraud. Abortion clinics offer a service, people want to pay for said service, what more is there? (Or at least, someone wants to pay for it, since many times women are pressured or even forced to undergo the procedure). Once the positive law outlawing abortion was struck down, there were plenty of entrepreneur’s responding to market demand. Moreover, it expanded with universities and medical companies paying for the finished product (i.e. a dead baby) to pursue research. How can the Austrian school stop that? It can’t. Furthermore, capitalism in general supports the whole mindset which goes into abortion, from using sex to sell products, to increasingly cheapen human life itself and the destruction of the family which results.

Second, start a 3rd party that does not run for president for a period of at least 5 years. This party would necessarily have to be holistic, though while abortion would be the chief of all issues on the platform, there would also be a well thought out policy addressing a range of issues. It is necessary to participate in government in meaningful ways, that means at the local and state level. Running presidential candidates is a waste of time. It does not engender serious attention to issues no one talks about, it does not advance a message, it just wastes money and gets ignored by the media. I would turn the phrase attributed to Nathan Rothschild on its head, namely “give me control of the currency and I care not who makes the laws.” I would say instead: Give the people control of local and state government, and I care not what Wall Street goon runs a regime in the White house. But this is a longshot, since, if the voting system is not positively rigged, then at least most people do not care. There are higher voter turnouts in under-developed countries in Africa than there is in the “beacon of freedom”. My general opinion is that voting actually doesn’t solve anything anyway.

The other matter is to to attack the root causes of the abortion culture socially and domestically, not only contraception, for that too has antecedents, but the pornography culture and the “me” generation. The pro-life movement would be more politically effective if we worked on the restoration of the family; this is not achieved by merely working for abstinence education and educating about marriage, but to work for families owning sufficient material wealth to survive, support for mothers both from family and community, which is to say it needs to adopt authentic Catholic social principles. This requires, in our current situation, the de-funding of public schools and the strengthening of local communities, businesses and family life at a communal level. Failing a third party this is the only option to tackle abortion. Neither political party wants it to end, nor is committed to it ending. Thus the voter is placed between the Scylla and Charybdis of democrats who want National Socialism, and republicans who want Corporatism, and alternatives from libertarians like Ron Paul who would give us Plutocracy and genocidal austerity. On the one hand the former says abortion is not as important as healthcare, while the other says the market will take care of abortion, when in reality neither is true. In the case of the latter it is actually the opposite, abortion is a market driven demand requiring a market solution, namely the service [of murder]. Working within the framework of the Republican party will never end abortion because at the end of the day it is the same world that creates the demand for abortion. Only by returning to the basic concept of what government, law, society and culture are for, preeminently what the family is, and what the end of it is can we possibly broach an end to abortion. Thus it is not enough to oppose capitalism, or to found a third party, we must work to make Catholic Social teaching happen, restore the family, restore people working and owning capital (not stocks), restore the concept of procreation and education of children, and then, not later, those pro-life goals have a chance of being realized. Until the pro-life movement figures these things out, it will continue to fail politically, in spite of its social achievements.

Unecumenical Saints: St. Peter Canisius

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St. Peter Canisius is perhaps one of the more neglected doctors of the Church. Amongst the names of the great saints in his era, of Borromeo, Ignatius, Philip Neri, Francis Xavier, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, St. Pius V, etc., his name tends to get lost. In Germany and Switzerland, however, his name was once synonymous with Catholic orthodoxy. St. Peter Canisius is almost unparallelled in his output, and even Protestant theologians praised and admired him for his holiness and learning.

One of the things Canisius could not brook was heresy. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote which is quoted in “A Champion of the Church: The Life of St. Peter Canisius”, which is going to be reprinted by next week, by Mediatrix press, so watch for that. In this letter, he is writing on the miserable state of Catholic universities.

“The masters of good and solid doctrine are few in number here and are not anxious to make their students better. Most of the professors have little standing from the point of view of science. In their teaching they are less concerned with the truths of the Gospel than with doctrines favoring the passions. Among them are secret or open heretics, who spread, more or less openly, the poison of error in the minds of their students. Left to themselves and without guidance, young men have no love for study and no desire to advance in science. False doctrine and immorality have been spread among the people. The faithful are no longer Catholics except in name; they live without giving a thought to their souls and a future life; they despise the authority of their pastors and of the Church. I write this in order to arouse your charity to pray that grace may abound more where sin has already abounded.”
Peter Canisius and his companions undertook this work of reforming morals and thought which was to be the great endeavor of his life. Not content with giving his lectures in theology, he endeavored by special lessons to make good the lack of preparation of many of his students. He was especially concerned with their souls, and succeeded in leading many back to the practice of piety. Having been appointed Rector of the University, he displayed great zeal in introducing necessary reforms. Thus he forbade the sale of works which were dangerous for faith or morals. The position of Vice-Chancellor was offered to him after his tenure of the office of Rector. He accepted it only for a specified time and on condition of not benefitting by the emoluments attached to the same.”

champion_of_the_church Today, he would be said to be too rigorist, which is not very merciful.

Shameless plug moment: The book from which this quote is taken from, A Champion of the Church, has just come back into print, courtesy of Mediatrix press (which I run). Consider buying a copy.

The Growth and Decline of the Roman Economy

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Originally Published on the Distributist Review, 7 March 2011

Ancient_Roman_market_place_and_Serapis_temple_-_Pozzuoli_-_Campania_-_Italy_-_July_11th_2013_-_02 When one harkens back to Rome he is usually met with consistent comparisons to political ideals, military glory, or the decadence and immorality of the upper classes in the late republican and imperial periods. Very rarely however, is the economy that made the wealth of the Roman Republic possible in the third century B.C.

Rome is traditionally said to have been founded approximately in 753 B.C. by Romulus, its first king. It was essentially a collection of farmers who had consolidated their lands and resources around the Tiber river, and defended it with fortified hills called an arx.[1] The entire basis of the city (which was little more than a backwater at this time) was its agricultural output. As the city grew it found a major benefit in being by the Tiber allowed it to trade by river with Magna Graecia to the south, and the Etruscan and Gallic tribes to the north. Trade by roads was scarcely possible over long distances even when the roads themselves were built in the later period. Trade by boat was much easier. Yet the wealth which enabled trade in various goods came not from military conquest or a city of shopkeepers, but rather a city of farmers whose lands gave them goods worth trading.

The importance of agriculture to the foundation of the Roman state is seen also in their mythology and calendar. In Roman mythology Saturn was the god who ruled heaven, until his son Jupiter displaced him. Saturn was cast onto the earth where he found uncultured nomads living in Italy, and taught them how to farm and was thus the god of all farmers and fields. The Roman calendar with its timetable of festivals, was originally a marker of agricultural seasons and agricultural gods. Juno was the goddess of the moon, by which the Roman calendar before Julius Caesar was based. In fact, most of the festivals of Mars fall within March, which the Romans counted as the first month of the year because it prepared for spring and the agricultural cycle. The Calendar being denoted not by sequential days but rather by the Kalendae, nonae and idus, were based on the phases of the moon by which the field was regulated. As Stuart Perowne notes “The calendar thus shows the agenda, as it were, of a state still founded on agriculture, but already developing into a community which has legal and political business to transact and wars to wage.”[2]

Sometime in the early period of the Republic, after the expulsion of the last King Tarquin the proud, the Romans adopted a Greek style Hoplite army, the name coming from the shield they carried: the o`plon. In Greece this consisted of tenant farmers, who tilled their fields and when they were called to battle would take up whatever arms their wealth allowed them to afford to fight for the city state. Rome would adopt this same model and maintain it even to the end of the conflict with Carthage in spite of the change face of its military design. These farmers who grew crops for themselves and sold them to the cities were also the milita which would defend the state, so that, as their forerunners in the Greek city-state, they had a vested interest in victory in order to preserve their families and lands.

As Rome fought numerous conflicts in Italy with various Italian tribes, their cities were absorbed into a network of alliances, whose population continued to till its fields and then would take up arms for the Republic when called. This militia army had been able to overcome a far superior modern Hellenistic army lead by Pyrrhus from Epirus in the early third century B.C. Again they returned to their fields. The victory was won not even so much by particular tactics, but by the overwhelming manpower which Rome had. Pyrrhus was supposed to have said: “With soldiers such as these, in a short time I could have conquered the whole world.”[3] This would later be true, but not under his leadership.

Nevertheless, the first strain on this agricultural system came during the Punic wars. The three separate Punic wars fought more or less from 261 B.C. until 147 B.C. and were the bloodiest and longest lasting conflicts in the ancient world. The first war, caused when the city of Messina in Sicily called for aid from both Rome and Carthage, lasted over 20 years. This was a new kind of war for Rome, not only because it had to copy Carthage’s naval technology to challenge it at sea, but because it meant soldiers campaigning outside of Italy, something which the legions had never done before. As a result of this, the citizens of Rome and her allies were away from their fields for a very long time. Yet, most of the casualties were at sea, of which the Romans only lost one major battle in spite of Carthage’s long standing naval dominance, and on land it only had two significant defeats, one in Sicily and one in North Africa. The overall casualties were among rowers in the fleets, not so much among the citizen class, so the effects of lengthy campaigning were not felt on the agrarian economy. This changed dramatically during the Second Punic war. In this conflict, Hannibal, who had consolidated his father’s victories in Spain and formed one of the best armies of the day, decided the only way to defeat Rome was to do it on her own soil. He resolved to break up the network of alliances which made up the Roman Republic. The best way to do this was to burn the fields. Apart from foraging, which was necessary to feed his army, Hannibal burnt a massive portion of northern and central Italy, to the point, as the Romans watched almost helplessly. Hannibal campaigned in Italy from 218-202 B.C., undefeated on Italian soil, and at last was recalled to Carthage where he was defeated at the battle of Zama. Interestingly, Hannibal would later be elected the suffete (king, or in Punic, a judge) of Carthage and focused on rebuilding the city’s agricultural foundations in order to provide the money and prosperity to pay the war debt imposed by the Romans.

After nearly twenty years of constant skirmishing, raids and battles, Italy’s agricultural economy was in shambles. It would not be rebuilt. Instead Rome continued to levy more troops and fight abroad, getting involved with Greek politics, fighting in Macedonia as revenge for their alliance with Hannibal, even in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) with the Hellenistic kingdoms of the east which employed Hannibal as a mercenary. Also in Spain, where significant territory had been taken from Carthage, Rome now went to war with the Spanish Celts to attain more territory. The result furthered the damage done by Hannibal’s campaign. Farms fell to disrepair, woman and children could not manage farms with the fathers away at constant war, so to manage the dearth of farmers, the upper crust of Roman society bought up the land. The conquests abroad between North Africa, Greece and Spain had flooded the market with slaves, and they could be bought for nearly nothing. With more and more land becoming available, large farming estates could be set up, called latifundia, the agribusiness of its day. Marcus Porcius Cato, who pushed for Carthage’s destruction and uttered the famous phrase “Delenda est Cathago,” wrote several books which summarize the attitude of the new owners of the fields: “Sell worn out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, old tools, and old slaves, sickly slaves and whatever else is superfluous.”

The continuing consolidation of estates lead to decreasing opportunities for Roman citizens fighting for the Republic, who fled to the cities and found no work. This is the first major appearance of a proletariat in Rome, which could not provide anything other than their proles (children) to the state. According to Plutarch, the reformer Tiberius Gracchus noticed the level of change in the countryside on his way to Spain with an army, noting that barbarian slave and beast has a place to lay its head, but not a Roman citizen. When Gracchus returned from Spain, a treaty he made with a local people, the Numantines, was shamefully broken by the Senate. The economic situation was hitting a boiling point with the average Roman citizen who had no means of attaining land, especially with such massive estates to compete against, and land not being available. Gracchus proposed to run as a tribune well below his class and in contempt of the Senate, drawing much support from the families of the 20,000 citizens in his army he saved in Spain. He pushed for a new law to open up opportunities for Roman citizens to own land, the lex sempronia. Falsely characterized as Communism, the lex sempronia called for enforcement of an ancient law limiting the amount of land any one person could possess. The state would then provide land, which technically belonged to it anyway by tradition. Far from socialist legislation, the proposal of Tiberius Gracchus was meant to open the way for enfranchising the large proletariat which flooded the cities and especially Rome. The Senate however, filled with upper and lesser nobility who had benefited largely from the land grab, paid one of the tribunes to oppose the legislation. Gracchus was eventually successful in passing it by removing the tribune and forcing the law passed. The story of Gracchus and his brother Gaius is a fascinating one, but takes us too far afield. Tiberius Gracchus’ reforms were necessary, but he tried to enact them by breaking not the letter, but the spirit and tradition of the Roman constitution. He was eventually killed, as his brother who also took up the same reform. At this point Rome divided itself into two factions, the optimates (great ones) and the populares. The optimates annulled the lex sempronia, leading the two factions to entrench themselves over the issues of agricultural reform and finally they fought each other at different periods through different politicians, who used them for their own ends. Thus began the civil wars which culminated in the victory of Augustus over Mark Antony in 31 B.C. and the beginning of the Principate, otherwise known as the Imperial period. The Principate would last until Diocletian set up the Tetrarchy in 293 A.D.

In the series of wars and reforms leading up to Julius and later Augustus Caesar, there was a reform of the Roman army which helped alleviate employment problems. Gaius Marius, a famous general in the early first century B.C., reformed the army eliminating the property requirement, and forcing the state to supply weapons and armor to the legions. The troops would also be paid regular wages for their service. This meant that the army changed from a militia army to a paid professional army. This had significant consequences for the later empire with respect to loyalty, but that is for another place. In the long run what Marius’ reform of the army did accomplish was the crystallizing of the latifundia, the massive landed agricultural estate worked by slaves as the norm. These were not only in Italy, but established likewise by coloni in North Africa, and later Egypt. By the time of Augustus, North Africa and Egypt were supplying most of the grain that the empire consumed, with farms in Italy selling only a marginal amount. In other words, instead of a fertile citizen population tilling the fields and sustaining the state locally, the Romans outsourced their agricultural production to feed their cities across the Mediterranean. Agriculture was truly the center of the Roman economy in this period as it was in the early Republic, but now it depended not on its citizens, but on trade ships constantly sailing through the Mediterranean with crops harvested from slaves and sometimes tenants of rich estate holders. It is important to understand that production in this period of the empire was not a mark of private enterprise, but was largely a state affair. Currency, which in reality is only a symbol of wealth, was dependent upon the most important things it represented: food, clothing, and raw materials. Agriculture provided not only food but also the cloth used to make the garments, the olives for oil and the vineyards for the wine which was such a highly consumed commodity. At least three quarters of all of the goods of Roman trade had something to do with agricultural output. Yet a good portion of the city of Rome could not afford to feed itself, which is why a dole of grain (possibly equivalent to today’s food stamps) was provided by the state.

The consequences for the later empire could not be any more grave. The personality of the emperor was what held the empire together, but after Marcus Aurelius in 180A.D., this began to wane. Soldiers were now more loyal to their commanders than to the state or the emperor. Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, and the next emperor Pertinax were murdered. After Septemius Severus not a single emperor would die again of natural causes until Diocletian. Severus made the famous plea to his sons Caracalla and Geta “Live in harmony, enrich the soldiers, and despise everyone else.”[4] The constant civil war which afflicted the empire did not affect the agricultural seen very much, but it did strain the resources available as well as the increased costs of paying soldiers to keep them loyal.

What did this do for the agricultural state? Apart from putting strain on the system it did not do much. The life of cities began to break down. With more troops drawn away for civil wars, raids of tribes across the Rhine increased deep into Gaul and occasionally to Italy, so that cities which were once sprawling and without walls were now contracted and made defensible. The civic life started to evaporate, as governors and prefects were no longer wealthy enough to endow a city with entertainment, games, civic works and the like. The cities became a hole for starving masses, disease and death as early as the 3rd century. In fact, we have this glowing image of everyone living in stone marble apartments, with mosaic tiles, but that was only the social elite. In reality, even in the golden age of Augustus, most people lived in stinking hovels with no plumbing that could easily fall apart and were prone to fire. This was little different in the 3rd century. Thus the wealthy permanently retired to their villas, paying their own troops to protect them from raids, with walls, and depending upon the mass of slaves to work in their fields. By commanding troops, many of these lords would take the military title of dux.[5] Thus early in the breakdown of the empire the origins of medieval feudalism were already being laid, since many of these arrangements would be taken up and honored by the Goths and Franks when they would come into possession of large swaths of the former empire. Yet so long as Rome and Constantinople would maintain control of the shipping from Carthage and Egypt, they could still remain fed. This changed after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410 A.D. Though he died a few years later, the Vandals would continue moving to North Africa, and eventually took over Carthage, ending the supply of grain being shipped to Rome. This meant functionally that the city could scarcely feed itself, and it began emptying out. The same became true for much of Italy. Grain would be requisitioned from the Latifundia, which began producing more since the prices went up, yet again it was insufficient. People still had few occupations or ownership over the means of production. Technologies that the medievals would develop to great affect such as water power and horsepower were known in the Roman world but not used because the large number of slaves meant there was no market for the technology.

In the end, the thing that hastened the fall of the Western Empire was the loss of its outsourced grain production in Carthage. It was already dying a slow death from increasing bureaucracies, inflation from the devaluation of the currency, mutual distrust in government, civil war, the Goths, Persians and Huns, as well as declining birth rates. Yet the empire had survived this for some time because it had not come to the end of its resources. The loss of its supply of food is the very thing that brought the western empire to the end of its resources. The Eastern Empire by contrast, with its capitol in Constantinople received its grain from Egypt which was by and large still safe, and by the time of the Arab conquest, the land in Greece and Asia Minor had become populated with farming communities which could now support the agricultural needs, something that did not take place in the Western Empire. This enabled it to last for nearly another thousand years.

In the classical world, agriculture was indeed the center of all economy, it was the source of wealth since, no matter what, people need to eat. It also produced rents and income from tenants, it produced commodity and luxury goods. When these things were more widely diffused and held more commonly, it was at that point that the Roman Republic had the population of hardy citizens which defeated the professional armies of the greatest general of the age (Hannibal) and the greatest empires of the age (Macedon and the Seleukeis). It was the army of farmers that won what would become the Roman Empire, it was the professional troops loyal to their generals and not the state who eventually lead to its disintegration. The loss of the land and the greater concentration into cities lead to a decline in the births of Roman citizens, while the slave class and foreign tenants continued to grow. The Roman Empire in the 3rd century could never have survived a defeat the scale of which Hannibal inflicted at Cannae, where he surrounded a superior force with an inferior force and annihilated 70,000 Romans. Yet the Romans of the 3^rd century had a vast supply of men to draw on for their armies, as farming families tend to produce more children by greater health and greater need for helping hands. What we see in this is that culture, society and civilization are necessarily tied not merely to the land, but the stability of the land. The stability of the land is achieved when numerous people till it, somewhere between 35% and 45% of the population. In that way there is more security against a dearth of crops, but there are also smaller individual family units that not only provide for the state, but also for themselves. This ensures the stability of a polity which has direct control over its food supply. Disastrous examples as the loss of Carthage to the Vandals should be a reminder to a nation which today depends on food traveling on trucks for thousands of miles before hitting a store shelf.

[1] arx, arcis (f) essentially means “box”, and hence our term in English for such things as Noah’s “ark” and the “ark” of the covenant.

[2] Perowne, Roman Mythology, pg. 39.

[3] “Ego, talibus militibus brevi orbem terrarum subigere potuissem.” –Liber de Viris Illustribus Urbis Romae.

[4] Dio, 77. 15. 2-4; quoted in A. Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell, pg. 68.

[5] Dux, ducis (m), a leader, or a commander of troops, hence the word “Duke” in medieval parlance.

Dissecting the Instrumentum Laboris for the October 2014 Synod

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The Instrumentum Laboris, or working document (in Latin literally, the device of the work) was issued last month, and it foretells essentially more of the same.

The Document is riddled with programs, programs, and more programs! More this and more that! Change! Yet the only things useful for a constructive discussion on how to meet the challenges to the Family in the modern world are not surprisingly absent from the working document.

There is, as in most documents since the Council, a good deal of wishy-washy niceties, but not a lot of real content. We must bear in mind, however, that it is a document compiling the reactions of various Episcopal conferences to the issues raised as problems. It is not designed to lay down a clear teaching or instruction. What it should be doing, if it were to be effective, is to lay out the directions all discussions will go toward in order to attain a more practical solution. Instead, it just puts together what everyone is saying and says yeah, this is what’s going on, and this is what our top-guys say will fix it. That of course is what the Bishops’ conferences have said, which themselves utilized committees of talking heads to look at the problems, who themselves talked to committees of “experts” to explain the problem.

As always, not everything expressed here is bad, but is put together with a lot of things that are, and then looks to make a unity out of it, like good Hegelian dialectic which draws together the synthesis from placing together the Thesis, and the Antithesis, and boom! We have the solution.

Unfortunately, reality doesn’t work in the same way. Let’s have a look at some key passages.

The People of God’s knowledge of conciliar and post-conciliar documents on the Magisterium of the family seems to be rather wanting, though a certain knowledge of them is clearly evident in those working in the field of theology. The documents, however, do not seem to have taken a foothold in the faithful’s mentality. Some responses clearly state that the faithful have no knowledge of these documents, while others mention that they are viewed, especially by lay people with no prior preparation, as rather “exclusive” or “limited to a few” and require some effort to take them up and study them. Oftentimes, people without due preparation find difficulty reading these documents. Nevertheless, the responses see a need to show the essential character of the truth affirmed in these documents.(Instrumentum Laboris [hereafter IS], #11)

One might reckon, the difficulty in reading the documents is they are simply not clear! They introduce with tons of flowery language, they say some poorly worded propositions, often using traditional theological terms to mean something totally different, and leave one bewildered as to what is actually being taught. That is not the only problem here. The real problem is that not everyone can be a Theologian, and not everyone should. Not merely before the Council, but even in the preceding generations of thousands of years, the faithful did not by and large know the bulk of Church teachings, and they could scarcely name an encyclical. Yet, they did not have a crisis in the family as we do today. In past generations people knew what was right and wrong, even if they acted contrary to it, they still knew it was wrong. It didn’t take a pastoral program or a new encyclical for people to know in the 18th century that abortion was wrong, or that contraceptive potions and techniques, such as they were, are contrary to the Church. Why is this a problem when most Catholics are more educated in general than they were in the 18th century? The answer is you had a culture and society that itself embodied Catholic values, even Protestant societies, and had the support needed for families to survive. You do not have that today.

Moreover, there is a difference between religion and theology. Every Catholic needs to have an understanding of religion to get to heaven, but not every Catholic needs to understand theology. Religio is a Latin word, it comes from the same word as legio, as in Roman Legion. It actually means the “yoke”, like the yoke that tied oxen together. Soldiers in the legion were “yoked” by the bond of discipline, legionary laws, far more harsh than the laws of civil society, and the structure of obedience. In Latin, the prefix re- either means again, back, or it strengthens the meaning of the word. In the case of religio, it strengthens the meaning of the word. Thus religio refers to the common bond of teachings, practices and laws that every Catholic is under, high or low, great and small, clerical or Lay. By contrast, Theology, which comes from the Greek Θεός (Theos=God) and λογία (logia=saying), although some dogmatic theologians, notably Tanquery, traces the root to λόγος (logos= word), means more or less the Study of God. It is the study of revealed truths, and the truths which follow from them logically and are connected with them (i.e. the secondary object of infallibility, whereas revealed truths are the primary object). This is a fully developed science, employing a scientific language that is carried out (until recently) with precision. It has a wide breadth of subjects, disciplines, and areas of study. Theology also includes detailed study of the documents of the magisterium, the truths they contain and the consequences that affect other disciplines. Documents of the magisterium in the field of religion, on the other hand, only pertain to those issues which the faithful need to be aware of. Thus, theology informs and confirms religion, as the Church has always held, in as much as the work of theologians becomes the basis for future decisions of the Extraordinary Magisterium and the Ordinary Magisterium. The constructing and informing of their consciences takes place in the overall formation of Christian life, as we shall develop more fully.

Some episcopal conferences argue that the reason for much resistance to the Church’s teaching on moral issues related to the family is a want of an authentic Christian experience, namely, an encounter with Christ on a personal and communal level, for which no doctrinal presentation, no matter how accurate, can substitute. In this regard, some responses point to the insufficiency of pastoral activity which is concerned only with dispensing the sacraments without a truly engaging Christian experience. Moreover, a vast majority of responses highlight the growing conflict between the values on marriage and the family as proposed by the Church and the globally diversified social and cultural situations. The responses are also in agreement on the underlying reasons for the difficulty in accepting Church teaching, namely, the pervasive and invasive new technologies; the influence of the mass media; the hedonistic culture; relativism; materialism; individualism; the growing secularism; the prevalence of ideas that lead to an excessive, selfish liberalization of morals; the fragility of interpersonal relationships; a culture which rejects making permanent choices, because it is conditioned by uncertainty and transiency, a veritable “liquid society” and one with a “throw away” mentality and one seeking “immediate gratification”; and, finally, values reinforced by the so-called “culture of waste” and a “culture of the moment,” as frequently noted by Pope Francis. (IS #15)

Now, on the one hand, the faults of secular society do contribute to less religiosity, on the other we cannot lay all the fault at secular society. The strange thing here, is that the Vatican for 50 years has praised these same “secular societies” as a source of new riches, as a wonderful fruit of the French Revolution, as a realization of Vatican II, as… need I go on? And now they are complaining of the direction it is going! They can’t have it both ways. They want the modern conception of separation of Church and State, they want the secularized society, then it complains when a secularized society does what it is naturally going to do!

There is another fundamental disconnect here. Look at my emphasis. What are the Sacraments, except a direct personal encounter with Jesus Christ and his grace, preeminently in the Eucharist? What are the sacraments? Certificates? Status symbols? The person who wrote this point seems to think so. What kind of personal encounter can you have with Christ that is more powerful than the frequent exercise of the Sacraments? Is Penance not an encounter with Jesus Christ, where the priest in Christ’s very person and power forgives your sins, provided you have true contrition? Is not receiving his very body and blood an encounter? People need words to encounter them? The sacraments, and living the life of faith, exercising the virtue of faith with true charity, are connected. Moreover, so is the liturgy. Is the Liturgy a place where people have a true encounter with Christ? Or is it a place where people have a silly ceremony with absurd hymns, poor symbols and bad ritual to celebrate themselves? For most Catholics it is clearly the latter, in spite of the number of times that there have been “documents to end all abuses”, the “abuses” continue to exist. The reason of course is that the new liturgy is a man centered liturgy. There is in this whole document almost no mention of liturgy, which is a telling factor. Liturgical reform is nowhere on the radar of the Francis pontificate, let alone for the Bishops. The only reform for them is eliminating the Traditional Mass and restoring the primacy of the 1970’s liturgy, which is dying, and they can’t understand why. Hence the attack on the FI’s.

This “lived experience with Christ” is presented as a sort of dualism, as if this is something that happens independent of a man’s existence in Church and society. Proper doctrinal formation is a means, beautiful liturgy which hastens the senses to God is a means, Catholic society and families are a means, the will of the individual aided by grace and utilizing these means effects it. This document seems to think another army of pastoral lay workers will somehow bring this about!

We’ll close today with the following issue of Natural Law:

In light of what the Church has maintained over the centuries, an examination of the relation of the Gospel of the Family to the experience common to every person can now consider the many problems highlighted in the responses concerning the question of the natural law. In a vast majority of responses and observations, the concept of natural law today turns out to be, in different cultural contexts, highly problematic, if not completely incomprehensible. The expression is understood in a variety of ways, or simply not understood at all. Many bishops’ conferences, in many different places, say that, although the spousal aspect of the relationship between man and woman might be generally accepted as an experiential reality, this idea is not interpreted according to a universally given law. Very few responses and observations demonstrated an adequate, popular understanding of the natural law. (IS #21)

A lot of people have decried this section, and for good reason, nevertheless I think the working document is actually getting at something that is quite true and important, they are just drawing the wrong conclusions. Now, Natural Law in the Catholic Tradition is largely Aristotelian and Thomistic in its conception. In fact, St. Thomas says on this subject:

Sicut supra dictum est, ad legem naturae pertinent ea ad quae homo naturaliter inclinatur; inter quae homini proprium est ut inclinetur ad agendum secundum rationem. Ad rationem autem pertinet ex communibus ad propria procedere, ut patet ex I Physic. Aliter tamen circa hoc se habet ratio speculativa, et aliter ratio practica. Quia enim ratio speculativa praecipue negotiatur circa necessaria, quae impossibile est aliter se habere, absque aliquo defectu invenitur veritas in conclusionibus propriis, sicut et in principiis communibus. Sed ratio practica negotiatur circa contingentia, in quibus sunt operationes humanae, et ideo, etsi in communibus sit aliqua necessitas, quanto magis ad propria descenditur, tanto magis invenitur defectus. Sic igitur in speculativis est eadem veritas apud omnes tam in principiis quam in conclusionibus, licet veritas non apud omnes cognoscatur in conclusionibus, sed solum in principiis, quae dicuntur communes conceptiones. In operativis autem non est eadem veritas vel rectitudo practica apud omnes quantum ad propria, sed solum quantum ad communia, et apud illos apud quos est eadem rectitudo in propriis, non est aequaliter omnibus nota. Sic igitur patet quod, quantum ad communia principia rationis sive speculativae sive practicae, est eadem veritas seu rectitudo apud omnes, et aequaliter nota. (I-II, Q 94 A4, resp.)

As stated above (2,3), those things pertain to the natural law which a man is inclined naturally: and among these what is proper for man that he might be inclined to act according to reason. Now it pertains to reason to proceed from the common to the proper, as stated in Phys. i. The speculative reason, however, is considered one way in this matter, and the practical reason another. For, since the speculative reason is busied chiefly with the necessary things, which cannot be otherwise than they are, its proper conclusions, like the universal principles, contain the truth without fail. The practical reason, on the other hand, is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects. Accordingly then in speculative matters truth is the same in all men, both as to principles and as to conclusions: although the truth is not known to all as regards the conclusions, but only as regards the principles which are called common notions. But in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles: and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all. It is therefore evident that, as regards the general principles whether of speculative or of practical reason, truth or rectitude is the same for all, and is equally known by all.

What this means, is that while the natural law is written on our hearts, or, as St. Thomas says in a different question of the same article, “The rational creature’s participation with the eternal law”, it is the same always and everywhere, but how it is applied and deduced in individual matters will differ according to culture. For example almost all cultures have the sense that pre-marital sex and adultery are wrong, but how that is realized differed for many classical cultures. The principle is still true, but men can act contrary to their reason; additionally the passions move people to act contrary to reason.

Now, all references to the natural law, even by John Paul II, who was not a Thomist, refer to the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition in Natural Law. Now, the modern western world, on the other hand, works on a mostly empiricist view of natural law. What this means is that what is natural is not based on utility, or reason, but what we objectively feel about it. So, people go out for wine and cheese tastings. The object, it would appear, is the delight in company and the pleasure gained from drinking good wine and eating good cheese. I could just as well satisfy my belly with bread and water, but I don’t get pleasure. Therefore food is not about nourishment but pleasure. Likewise with sex, it is pleasurable, but children don’t actually result all the time, and can be prevented, therefore sex is about pleasure rather than procreation. Add to this the evolutionary frame work, the idea that we have “evolved” beyond an instinct for self preservation, therefore we have evolved sex to be about the individuals. In such a framework, what could be against nature in same-sex coitus, since it is about pleasure with respect to the individuals?

Obviously such reasoning is fallacious, because food is pleasurable, or sex is pleasurable, it doesn’t follow that its only end is pleasure. Yet this is a problem of first principles with respect to natural law. Modern society is based on the Empiricist viewpoint, modified by evolutionary philosophy, whereas the Catholic explication of teachings with reference to Natural Law are based on the Thomistic. The Instrumentum Laboris correctly identifies at least some element of this, when it says:

The responses and observations also show that the adjective “natural” often is understood by people as meaning “spontaneous” or “what comes naturally.” Today, people tend to place a high value on personal feelings and emotions, aspects which appear “genuine” and “fundamental” and, therefore, to be followed “simply according to one’s nature.” The underlying anthropological concepts, on the one hand, look to an autonomy in human freedom which is not necessarily tied to an objective order in the nature of things, and, on the other hand, every human being’s aspiration to happiness, which is simply understood as the realization of personal desires. Consequently, the natural law is perceived as an outdated legacy. (IS #22)

Therefore the solution would be to engage the modern dialectic as concerns Natural Law, right? Not according to this document. The reason is the modern Vatican has completely surrendered the fight on false ideologies like Evolution, and even at times the very notion of man which is its consequent, and therefore can’t, without contradicting 50 years of mis-steps, attempt to engage that fight. Instead it proposes another surrender, which, as noted in my last post, I first saw on Rorate Caeli:

The language traditionally used in explaining the term “natural law” should be improved so that the values of the Gospel can be communicated to people today in a more intelligible manner. In particular, the vast majority of responses and an even greater part of the observations request that more emphasis be placed on the role of the Word of God as a privileged instrument in the conception of married life and the family, and recommend greater reference to the Bible, its language and narratives. In this regard, respondents propose bringing the issue to public discussion and developing the idea of biblical inspiration and the “order in creation,” which could permit a re-reading of the concept of the natural law in a more meaningful manner in today’s world. (IS #30)

It is one thing to use Divine Revelation (e.g. Scripture) to assist with and illuminate the concept of natural law, however, the problem is that natural law as such is something discernible to reason, that does not need the aid of divine revelation. What this statement says, if one reads between the lines, is to eviscerate the concept and tradition of Natural Law, and reduce everything to Scripture, which the modernists have worked so hard to neuter by rendering it all allegorical, and thus to be interpreted in any way possible. Thus the closing statement of that paragraph. Re-read therefore, means surrender.

We will have more on this document to come in the future.

The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and the Instrumentum Laboris

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Caravaggio-The_Conversion_on_the_Way_to_Damascus

The Conversion of St. Paul -Caravaggio

The Crucifixion of St. Peter -Caravaggio

We, just yesterday, had the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, which is a holy day of obligation in most of the world, but for some reason not here in the USofA. Not sure why, apart from the general trend to not disturb people’s comfortable lives by the spectre of going to Mass on a weekday. This year of course that was not a problem.

One of the things I find fascinating is that the very same feast is celebrated in all the Eastern Rites of the Church as well, according to their own liturgical customs and traditions, which is to say they did not copy it from the Roman Rite, the same feast developed organically in their own traditions. Thus, the feast of St. Peter and Paul is also a feast for the unity of the whole Church with its head, which is why it is a holy day of obligation (again, except here).

There is another reason why the Church specifically honors these two saints together in one feast day. In the Neronian persecution they in fact died separately, but nevertheless, together sanctified Rome by their blood. Rome was a great persecutor, and would continue to lay up many martyrs to the faith. Yet, the blood of the two Apostles firmly established the Church in Rome, and provided strength to it while under siege for the next 250 years. The bones of St. Peter and St. Paul were cherished by Christians, and moved into the catacombs to protect them from desecration.

The two paintings above, hang in the Church of Santa Maria del Populo, in Rome, right as pilgrims would traditionally enter the city from the north. They are in a side chapel which has an interesting history. The paintings there were part of a challenge between Caravaggio and a rival artist, Caracci, who painted in what is called the “Mannerist” style, generally loathed by art historians, though it in fact has many good points, especially for faith. Caravaggio was temperamental (to say the least), and annoyed that Caracci got the altar piece, decided to show his displeasure by painting the horse so that its rear end would be facing Carraci’s painting. Nevertheless, he provides a great image, the blinding light. Paul is off of his horse and his eyes are blinded, as the light shines upon him. A light that is too pure to be perceived without an interior light, namely the light of faith.

Now, St. Thomas makes the observation, that a single heresy is sufficient to corrupt the virtue of faith, when he says:

…qui discredit unum articulum fidei non habet habitum fidei neque formatae neque informis.

…one who disbelieves [even] one article of faith does not have the habitus of faith, either formed or unformed.

-Summa Theologiae II-II Q.5 a.3

Now St. Paul, who preached the faith everywhere, was martyred at a place which is now called Tre Fontane, or the Three Fountains. When his head rolled down the hill, three fountains sprang up in the places where it had rolled. Now, I was just in Rome in February, and the fountains were not flowing. You could see clearly that at one time they were because of the moisture in the rock in that part of the Church where the fountains are preserved. I asked a priest who was knowledgeable of it, what happened to the fountains? He said that he was told they stopped flowing in [surprise] 1965.

If true, this is significant because Paul represents the age of the gentiles, but the apostasy of the end times both in the book of the Apocalypse and in private revelation is that the gentiles will give up the faith. Thus we come to the Instrumentum Laboris for yet another synod of bishops. The many issues being discussed center around some pretty serious moral issues, which constitute part of the great upheaval of Western culture, namely divorce and remarriage, or, put another way, using your spouses like used cars, trying to trade them in for a better deal. There are many who would like to see a change in the Church’s praxis to allow for the sanctioning of divorce and remarriage by saying that people who have done this, without a judgment of the Church with respect to the validity of their first marriage, may come to communion. Notably Cardnal Kasper, who demonstrated yet again he hasn’t the faintest idea of what the Orthodox actually teach. This provoked a reaction, even in the curia, with many clarifying what the issue actually is. Nevertheless, going into this synod we have an Instrumentum Laboris, which proposes to give place to those advocating these very things. I haven’t finished the whole document, but certain things stand out as particularly troubling. This first I read yesterday:

Finally, the observations insist that catechesis on marriage and family, in these times, cannot be limited exclusively to the preparation of couples for marriage. Instead, a dynamic catechetical programme is needed — experiential in character — which, through personal testimony, shows the beauty of the family as transmitted by the Gospel and the documents of the Magisterium of the Church. Long before they present themselves for marriage, young people need assistance in coming to know what the Church teaches and why she teaches it. Many responses emphasize the role of parents in the catechesis on the family. As afar as the Gospel of the Family is concerned, they have an irreplaceable role to play in the Christian formation of their children. This task calls for a thorough understanding of their vocation in passing on the Church’s teaching. Their witness in married life is already a living catechesis in not only the Church but society as well. (Instrumentum Laboris, n.19)

There is a big problem here. What is proposed is “more catechesis!” This is ultimately like throwing more money at a problem. The crisis of family is not just a question of shifting values, and false ideologies. The problem of families in the modern western world is that world was built by atheistic capitalism, which has no notion of the common good and scoffs at the traditional resources large families had to support mothers. It overlooks entirely the crisis of fatherhood. It overlooks the fact that authentic Church life requires an authentically Catholic society to function. The atheistic societies that the Vatican has been praising for 50 years cannot support the family, but only tear them down. It doesn’t address that many people actively reject what the Church teaches, and as such don’t have the virtue of faith. What is needed, is more prayer and sacrifice, a liturgy that renews people’s lives, and building holy people to merit grace for the errant. This however will not be found in the document.

The most troubling thing, however, is what I saw quoted on Rorate Caeli, directly from the document:

The difficulties that arise in relation to natural law can be overcome through more attentive reference to the biblical world, to its language and narrative forms, and to “propose bringing the issue to public discussion and developing the idea of biblical inspiration and the ‘order in creation,’ which could permit a re-reading of the concept of the natural law in a more meaningful manner in today’s world.” [Instrumentum laboris, 30]

In other words, the natural law, written on man’s heart, is going to be re-read. This is the type of progressive language that is typical of modernism. Re-read, rediscover, so that something contrary to what came before is now a “harmonious development”, a new fruit of “spiritual riches” to contemplate. In other words, this is more of the same.

The blinding light Caravaggio so powerfully paints cannot be seen by those who are spiritually blind. Yet it seems those are the ones writing these documents!

New Pentecost?

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Often one will hear the phrase “Vatican II is a new Pentecost in the Church today”, or there is a new springtime that “will bring a new Pentecost”, and some other such thing. Here, I wish to differentiate between those attempting to draw a comparison to an outpouring of grace. Even at that, the comparison is inept, but at least those making it are not proposing the absurd.

No, what I mean to address is the tendency, since Vatican II, to continually talk about a “new Pentecost”. Not only do we find this to describe Vatican II, but we continually find dioceses praying for a New Pentecost, as we see the Archdiocese of Detroit even this year. Firstly, when we hear anyone say that anything is a new Pentecost, whoever the author is, that book ought to be burned, the website turned off and never revisited, or the radio turned off. Why? The reason is because it is blasphemous, plain and simple. To compare a non-infallible pastoral council, or a modern movement, or the confessions of a sex therapist and amateur catechist to the event which founded the Church and established the reign of grace on earth is sheer blasphemy worthy of condemnation from all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. The fruits are nothing like it.

Pentecost was a one time only event in the Church, it is not something that can be repeated. Even if the Traditional Mass were restored in every Church of the Latin rite throughout the world, and traditional Catholics all acted like real Catholics and practiced faith, hope and charity, praying and being a model of every good work, even then we should consider it quite the blasphemy to compare a grace filled event later with the foundation of the Church.

The gifts of Pentecost are not repeatable, and were gifts specifically intended for the founding of the Church. Msgr. George Agius, in his book on Tradition in 1928, declared:

“The power and authority of their successors must not be confused with the prerogatives and gifts which the Apostles had received through God’s special intervention. Such were the gifts of tongues and of new revelations, of infallibility, and the prerogative to have authority over the Universal Church, which they received on the Great Day of Pentecost. For there was only one such Pentecost. The Great day was the birth of the Church, the birth of the first spiritual Fathers who were to have a long generation of spiritual children until the End of Time.” (pg. 48)

Our Lord had already made the Apostles priests and bishops at the Last Supper, and given them jurisdiction (Receive ye the Holy Ghost), the gifts at Pentecost were something different, something specific to the Apostles, and something which ended with them. Prior to the coming of the Apostles, they were in confusion, even after being given the sacrament of Order by Our Lord. Pentecost ended that error, by giving the Apostles a perfect understanding of revelation, which was necessary since if they were going to explain the deposit of faith they had to know it. On the contrary, today we have confusion, and we today find Bishops teaching contradictory things, and things contradictory to the tradition, even the Popes have said things or appeared to have taught things which are in some way contrary to the faith. Unlike Pentecost, Vatican II has decreased the number of practicing Catholics in the Church. This is one of the reasons that the comparison is blasphemous, for it is comparing clarity to confusion and disorder, and claiming parity between the two.

The 1994 Catechism, speaking of the day of Pentecost teaches:

On that day, the Holy Trinity is fully revealed. Since that day, the Kingdom announced by Christ has been open to those who believe in him: in the humility of the flesh and in faith, they already share in the communion of the Holy Trinity. By his coming, which never ceases, the Holy Spirit causes the world to enter into the “last days,” the time of the Church, the Kingdom already inherited though not yet consummated. (CCC 732)

If it does not cease, how can we have a new one, unless the old one ceased? Moreover, if there is a new one this suggests that it is somehow better than the first. Now even taken strictly as an event Vatican II has done grave harm to the visible Church by confusing the faithful about the nature of hierarchy, let alone the ambiguity in its documents. There has been endless disunity caused by the event of the council, regardless of the question of whether the liberals hijacked it or the good intentions of those prelates. It is blasphemous to suggest that this is somehow better than the founding event of the Church.

More importantly, the fallacy at work in the concept of a “new Pentecost” is that the actual event imparted gifts and powers to us, or to empower a group of “believers”. It is not the case, rather the event was chiefly for the Apostles only, both extraordinary powers (which ended with their deaths), and ordinary powers which passed to all the Bishops of the world. Thus the idea that we are living in some kind of new Pentecost is a surrealistic dream world at best, and a blasphemous denial of the continued support of the Holy Ghost within the Church, since to suggest we have a new Pentecost is to suggest the one and only Pentecost of the Church ceased somehow.

This great feast of the Church completes the revelation of Jesus Christ, and the worship of the Holy Trinity, which is why the Church celebrates the feast of the Trinity one Sunday from Pentecost, because now that revelation is completed true worship can take place before God as He truly is.

So when people start suggesting they have special gifts, or their ministry is a “new Pentecost for the Church”, or this council and this liturgy is a new Pentecost, we need not engage them any further. This type of thinking is to make oneself in particular, and modern man in general the standard of judgment for the whole Church, of every age and for every spirituality, or for teaching the faith. By saying “we have a new Pentecost” people are attempting to remake the Church and God in their own image. Some claim “tongues”, “prophecy” and “discernment of spirits” which is dubious at best, and demonic at worst, and result in a search for “consolations” and “spiritual delights” which leave the soul seeking its own good and not God’s, and cause one to not attempt the arduous way of moral and spiritual perfection. This is by and large because of the collapse of the moral life in the Church. Most people think they are doing okay if they stay out of mortal sin. Spiritual writers tell us that the end of sin is the beginning of the way to sainthood, not the end.

This is another reason the term “new Pentecost” is used. It allows one to cast out the spiritual and moral patrimony of the Church with the label of “outdated Ecclesiology” while people’s particular interpretation of the faith can be aired on radio and tv, in books and on the Internet. That is the real work behind the “New Pentecost” nonsense, which does nothing more than pollute the imperishable deposit of Church teaching with human thought. It is a way to package novelty and replace monumental and apostolic tradition, and then tell Catholics that this is traditional. The grace of the only and true Pentecost is always in the Church, and always moving the faithful who seek the truth, as well as protecting the magisterium from teaching error ex cathedra. New movements, lay or otherwise can scarcely be compared to the event which empowered the Apostles.

We do not need a new Pentecost in the Church, we need authentic worship and faithfulness to the true Pentecost of 33 A.D. on the part of the Church militant, that is the hierarchy, the priests and the laity. St. Robert Bellarmine draws this point, noting that the effect that abides with us from Pentecost is Charity, yet, he says:

But perfect charity casts fear out of doors. How often do you go to the sacraments of penance and Eucharist? Oh, once or twice a year. And how often do you eat? Three or four times a day. And your soul will not eat, except twice a year? What if you were to go to the Lord’s Mass on the eighth day? O, lest I be called a hypocrite by men, I pass it by. Alas, poor wretch! Perfect charity casts fear out of doors. How often do you go to concerts, or games, to dinner parties where there are drunkards, and the indulgent companions of drunkenness reign, where you know for certain, whatever it might be, you will gravely sin against your God. How often, I say, being invited to these you have not gone, and with fortitude refused gifts of this sort? I know the answer, never. Why is that so? Les I offend my friends. Alas, O blind man! Therefore you fear more to offend man than God? But perfect charity casts fear out of doors. Did you not go to visit the sick, needy, or afflicted and console them? Hardly. Why? ‘O I am ashamed to treat with men of this sort.'” (De Controversiis, 5b, Conciones, de Die Pentecostes).

Indeed, that was the situation in the 1600s, when we tend to think everything was great because the ’60s hadn’t happened yet, how much more true is it today? I think it doesn’t take much soul searching to realize it is worse if anything. Interestingly, Bellarmine doesn’t begin with asking if you have visited the sick, he asks if you have gone to confession and to Mass. This is because they are the source of all true charity. What is needed is a renewal of liturgical life, out of the dead self-centered culture of the 1960s, back to the immemorial tradition of the Church. For what we need are not new things but in fact old things, even as old as 33 A.D. The Holy Ghost has never left the Church, and He has never needed renewing. The graces which flow today, which flowed prior to the council, which flowed at the time of the Counter-Reformation or at Nicaea all flow from the one event of Pentecost.

The Glory of Small “t” Tradition

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One of the most disturbing things to me is the belittling of “t” Tradition by virtually every neo-conservative apologist. There is a current which runs in the neo-conservative mainstream to downplay the importance of the little traditions. This is done primarily when they incorrectly define them. One will say “Big ‘T’ Tradition stays the same always, and is of the utmost importance, but small ‘t’ Tradition is here today and gone tomorrow. It is not important and we shouldn’t get wrapped up in it.”

This is basically the position of the so-called mainstream of defenders of the New Rite, separated from historical Catholicism by the modernism pervading the Church since the Council. In a minute I will define what I mean by historical Catholicism.

Now, let us take a proposition, such as I have continually advanced, and will advance until I am put to death, that the Novus Ordo is inferior to the Traditional Rite. As soon as I say such a thing the aforementioned will claim that I am propagating a heresy. They will say that you can not say one Mass is better than another, Tridentine, novus ordo, Divine Liturgy are all fine and good and all equally pleasing to God. It doesn’t matter how we wrap the essentials, etc. etc. etc, blah blah blah. Boo hiss!

First of all, this is something which I would consider contrary to Catholic liturgical theology, namely minimalism. It is purely the minimalist approach to liturgy, and this is where the denial of small “t” Tradition flirts openly with heresy. It is the small “t” which protects, defends, reinforces and teaches the large “T” tradition. While it is technically true that you can eliminate the small “t” tradition and maintain the integrity of the faith, when you do eliminate it the faith begins to disappear. This is because man is not a pure spirit, he is a body soul unity, how the faith is presented to man determines the manner in which he receives it. We all accept that bad preaching, bad style, bad demeanor of the presenter can present a barrier to how one receives the grace of the Gospel. Almost any neo-con will accept that. However, be that as it may, when it comes to the liturgy they suddenly reject it. It suddenly doesn’t matter that a hideous neo-teric chalice is used in place of a beautiful Gothic chalice collecting dust in the sacristy, or crappy polyester vestments are worn with rainbows and/or hideous art on them. The apologists will tell us well, it isn’t the best, but it is still Jesus.

I just want to take them by the neck and say get a hold of yourself man with a thick Scottish brogue! What does a cheap polyester vestment say about the faith? How does it cheapen the faith? How does a glass wine claret used for sacred Communion weaken belief in the real presence?

Secondly, the main objection, that all liturgy is the same, fails to distinguish between the intrinsic nature of a thing, and its extrinsic nature. If we are speaking Intrinsically, then of course any valid Mass, that is a Mass which gives adoration to God the Father by making represent the one sacrifice of Calvary in an unbloody manner at the hands of the priest, is in fact the same. You can not have a valid Mass which is intrinsically evil, since the main object of the Mass, to offer adoration to God, is impossible. Yet the intrinsic is an inadequate dimension by which to judge liturgy in its totality, and to reduce it to such is minimalism which would be detestable to every age of Catholics until 1965. We must also consider liturgy offered in an extrinsic manner. What is the extrinsic? If the intrinsic refers to the liturgy in itself and what it accomplishes ipso facto, then the extrinsic is the manner in which it is accomplished.

A Tridentine Mass is offered, but rubrics are intentionally broken, portions of the liturgy are skipped wholesale, etc. Intrinsically, if you had a valid consecration, you had a valid Mass which accomplished its aim. Extrinsically, it is not as good and does not communicate as much grace as the same liturgy where the ceremonies are said correctly. Let us take another example: a liturgy said by heretics and schismatics with valid orders. Such a liturgy is said outside of communion with the Church and technically wrong. That impedes grace. Let us even take a Novus Ordo celebrated with obscene abuses. There is no shortage of idiots who will insist that there is no difference between that and a “reverent” novus ordo (which as far as I’m concerned is an oxymoron), because if done validly “Jesus is there”. Even if that is true, the grace which He imparts through the sacrament is impeded, it is not as powerful as one celebrated in union with the Church’s intention. Now there is yet another consideration to make, whether the rites in the Traditional Liturgy are more dignified and coming from apostolic tradition, better impart the faith than a liturgy created by a committee of left leaning priests and bishops in the late 60’s completely from scratch? I’ve never seen anyone try to claim that the new liturgy imparts more ritual than the old. Even if they were, a simple reading of text and rubric would smash such an argument.

Lastly, there is also more scripture found in the ordinary of the Mass in the Traditional Liturgy, the propers contain more scriptural usage all with their own chants, and essential teachings on sin, repentance and hell are not optional. Rituals call to mind the Jewish offerings of sacrificial animals, bringing sacrifice to the forefront, they represent Christ burdened with the sin of the world, and unmistakably condemn modern theology. The rites and the meaning they embody are superior to the Novus Ordo in every way, and consequently it is a better Mass in terms of the grace it imparts.

Some people will still say, “I like the Novus Ordo better”. Well there is nothing I can say about that, because what people like is subjective and not governed by objective principles of beauty and meaning. Some people like modern art, some people like rap music. To me it is all basically the same thing. If you look at the normal person at the Novus Ordo, not the exceptional case, you find people whose liturgy tells them nothing about the doctrine of Catholicism, but is tailored to make them feel good. Even in the Latin, if you have someone who understands Latin. If you look at the normal person at a Traditional Mass, not the exceptional case, you will find someone who at the very least understands what the Church teaches on major issues concerning his salvation, on his responsibilities toward his neighbor, and on the presence of his God at his liturgy. Every liturgical sign points to it, the kneeling, the adoration, the incense, the multiple signs of the cross, the reverence and beauty of everything required for each celebration. Small “t” tradition protects so-called big “T” tradition, and wherever the former is protected, the latter is upheld. Look at the eastern Catholic Church in our midst. The same cultural problems affect them which affect us, the same secularism, the same throw away culture, but not the same loss of doctrine and reverence for the Eucharist. Why? Because they have small “t” Tradition protecting their Apostolic Tradition.

This all brings me back to the original point of this post, namely what is that historical Catholicism which modern apologists seem disconnected from? It is characterized by a universal expression of “t” Tradition which had guarded and protected the true faith for over a thousand years. Very few real traditions had actually changed in that time, and for good reason, they protected the faith. People in every country were familiar with the universal “t” Tradition, whether French, or German, or Polish or Italian, or English, or Spanish, there was a universal “t” Tradition that was common to them all. The same was true of the Eastern Churches, and a Latin Rite observer could have seen the same traditions in the Eastern rite, even if they had a different form from the West.

I have read people claim they are not part of a “bloggersterium”, that they follow the Pope. I wonder if they would acknowledge the danger from the “apologeticsterium”? Let us look seriously. Who lives or dies by what someone writes on a blog? If anyone does he is an idiot. But there are people who conform their worldview to what this or that apologist writes. Consider those who remained completely in favor of the Iraq war, just as the mainstream of neo-conservative apologists were, when their hero, John Paul “superstar” condemned it? You get a situation where I, one of the late Pope’s critics, agree with him, and your ever faithful apologists opposed him! Yet no claims of disobedience arose, and when confronted with it they will ignore you or say they just cut the Pope some slack by not criticizing him. Seriously, is that not private judgment? To decide that the Pope’s consistent and impassioned pleas against the war have no merit because we trust our elected leaders? The same ones who enabled abortion contrary to the late Pope’s message of a gospel of life?

On the whole, I am perfectly willing and happy to acknowledge where apologists have done good, or even great work. Yet the ministry of lay apologetics is precarious at best. They are filling a void which our Bishops and Priests ought to be filling in terms of real and true teaching, but which the latter are happy to let someone else do. The problem and the danger, not unlike what everyone is always whining about with blogs, is when they get looked upon as a counter magisterium. Mind you, not when they try and usurp that for themselves If I’m wrong on a medium which requires patience and thought (while sighting sources), I can be corrected or refuted. What do you do about thousands of Catholics who don’t know any better and follow this disconnect from historical Catholicism that the self professed “mainstream” propounds? This is to me something highly problematic, even where the thinker is technically a good Catholic.

Unecumenical Saints: St. Benedict of Nursia

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Much has been said by Traditional Catholics such as myself about the novelty and emptiness of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue. Yet we have few better proofs of this than the saints themselves in their dealings with non-Catholics.

Today we have the example of St. Benedict:

The fortified town of Cassino lies at the foot of a towering mountain that shelters it within its slope and stretches upward over a distance of nearly three miles. On its summit stood a very old temple, in which the ignorant country people still worshiped Apollo as their pagan ancestors had done, and went on offering superstitious and idolatrous sacrifices in groves dedicated to various demons.
When the man of God [St Benedict] arrived at this spot, he destroyed the idol [he did not show it respect at an inter-religious prayer service for world peace, twice, or dialogue with the people], overturned the altar and cut down the trees in the sacred groves. Then he turned the temple of Apollo into a chapel dedicated to St. Martin [of Tours], and where Apollo’s altar had stood he built a chapel in honor of St. John the Baptist. Gradually the people of the countryside were won over to the true faith by his zealous preaching. (Emphasis mine)

-St. Gregory the Great
The Dialogue, Book II

Objections to the Traditional Latin Mass answered: The Lectionary

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In commentary after commentary of defenders of the Novus Ordo, from liberals to so-called “conservatives” (who are preserving the liberal revolution), they always point to the supposed superiority of the lectionary of the Novus Ordo to that of the Traditional Latin Mass.

The argument goes “Since the majority of the bible is read in the course of 3 years, Catholics are exposed to more scripture now than in the Traditional Liturgy with its narrow selection of readings”.

We’ve heard this for years, and I’ve refuted it for years, but it won’t go away. To be fair, I’m not concerned with issues of translation. The best arguments against the Novus Ordo are against the Latin Novus Ordo, not the ICEL translation. Defenders of the new rite can always appeal to a bad translation to explain away the endless problems with the fabricated liturgy of Bugnini’s Concilium. They might also refer to Bishops changing the banal and doctrinally questionable translations in favor of traditional ones. It is simple enough to go back to the source. Forget the ICEL monster. This I do here, and have consistently done when criticizing the new rite.

The argument is essentially flawed because it relies upon numbers and the mere quantity of something as the sufficiency necessary for correct evaluation. Thus, to put it another way it seeks to implement the liturgical reform the way governments try to reform things, by throwing more of something indiscriminately. In this case it is scripture. Just as truly as government throws money at education, or defense in the desperate hope that things will get better, so the new lectionary throws as much of the bible at the layman as possible, indiscriminately, in the hope that he will leave the Church knowing something about the bible. However, the Traditional Lectionary’s effect is qualitative, focusing not so much on how much of the Bible the man in the pew hears, but rather what the man in the pew hears.
In the Traditional Liturgy the lectionary was tailored to match the breviary and lead the faithful to a certain idea through its collects, antiphons and other propers, the lectionary of the Novus Ordo often makes use of antiphons and propers that do not match any liturgical objective, that are given just for the sake of it.

The next problem with the argument is that there are many texts of scripture, which are present in the Traditional Rite of Mass but are omitted or made optional in the new lectionary (which, if all the endless options and alternative texts were gathered into one book the thing would plummet to the center of the earth). The text of the great apostasy predicted in 2nd Thessalonians is present on the ember Saturday of Advent in the Traditional Rite, but absent in the new lectionary. Another example was pointed out by Cardinal Stickler speaking on the text of I Corinthians XI:27-29:

Apart from the pastoral difficulties for parishioners’ understanding of texts demanding special exegesis, it turned out also as an opportunity-which was seized-to manipulate the retained texts in order to introduce new truths in place of the old. Pastorally unpopular passages-often of fundamental theological and moral significance-were simply eliminated. A classic example is the text from 1 Cor. 11:27-29: here, in the narrative of the institution of the Eucharist, the serious concluding exhortation about the grave consequences of unworthy reception has been consistently left out, even on the Feast of Corpus Christi. The pastoral necessity of that text in the face of today’s mass reception without confession and without reverence is obvious. (Online source)

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a writer for Latin Mass magazine, had this to say in an October article on the New Lectionary:

There is the basic human problem of having more than one year’s worth of readings. A single year is a natural period of time; it is healthy, pedagogically superior, and deeply consoling to come back, year after year, to the same readings for a given Sunday or weekday. This has been my experience. You get to know the Sunday readings especially; they become bone of your bone. You start to think of Sundays in terms of their readings, chants, and prayers, which stick in the mind all the more firmly because they are both spoken or chanted and read in the missal you are holding (more senses engaged). In this way the traditional Western liturgy shows its affinity to the Eastern liturgies, which go so far as to name Sundays after their Gospels or after some particular dogma emphasized. In the old days, the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost had a distinctive identity: Protector noster was the introit, you knew its melody, and the whole Mass grew to be familiar, like a much-loved garden or a trail through the woods. Nowadays, who knows what the “tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time” is about! It’s anyone’s guess. Online source

The New Lectionary has a cold and meaningless feel about it. First of all, let us suppose a Latin Novus Ordo where the propers were used, and not replaced by this or that hymn, something which is rubrically incorrect even in the NO. There is no theme, no attempt to unite the psalms sung with the readings. Sometimes they are consistently repeated throughout Sundays of the Year. Second, while the Sunday readings are on a “3 year cycle”, the weekday readings are on a “2 year cycle”, which is completely nonsensical. If they match up at all to what is read on Sunday it is a pure accident occurring around the time when the planets align. And, who can remember all of these readings? I have known priests who say the Novus Ordo who haven’t a clue of the general order or pace of the readings beyond the Sunday they are in, and one back as well as one forward. It becomes a dead letter and we move onto the next one. And if we consider Lent and Holy Week, in some instances the readings match up and follow a progression, but there is no overall theme matched by the Mass propers or the Divine Office. In Holy week you only hear two passion accounts, on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, where as in the Traditional Liturgy you hear all four, Matthew on Palm Sunday, Mark on Tuesday and Luke’s on Wednesday, while Monday contains a prophecy of our Lord’s death and resurrection.

The whole of the lectionary for the Traditional Mass is contained in the same book as the Missal, and it comprises a modest size book. As I said above, if one was to take the entire Novus Ordo with all of its options, extra prayers, and the lectionary with its endless options and substitutions, it would fall through the altar and wind up in the center of the earth (a good place for it if you ask me, and good riddance!)

Another problem is the fact that the lectionary was arranged by exegetes with sociological leanings (which could just as easily be written socialist), while the ancient Roman lectionary was arranged by St. Jerome one of the greatest of ancient doctors apart from Chysostom and Augustine, and apart from changes and modifications for the saints or new feasts, the propers for the year are unchanged. If we lined up the Traditional Lectionary with the calendar of the Eastern Church (or even that of the Orthodox), one will find striking similarities. Only one epistle reading, not two as in the Novus Ordo. A one year cycle, is unique to both calendars, and to liturgical tradition. The concept of a three, or two year lectionary is a novelty east and west and not even suggested by Vatican II. Sundays after Easter are called “Sundays after Pentecost” by both calendars, and the propers which must always be sung in a Divine Liturgy match up to the epistle and Gospel reading. Lastly, the readings must be sung in the Divine Liturgy, just as they must at a Tridentine High Mass. The Traditional lectionary is linked with and grew out of the common heritage of liturgical development which in spite of different cultures, locations and circumstances, share characteristics coming form ancient practice.

Therefore, for both practical and liturgical reasons, the New Lectionary is a complete and useless novelty, inferior to Catholic tradition, just like everything else in the Novus Ordo. Yet one may ask, how could one reform the Traditional lectionary? There are several Masses for different types of saints, and when there is no regular reading for the saints, the regular readings from the Mass Os Justi, or some such Mass will be used over and over again, sometimes within the same week. So texts could be found which would match the life of the saint, while this is often not done in the Novus Ordo, and as Dr. Kwasniewski notes in the article I linked, the readings for St. Therese in the Traditional Mass make sense, whereas the ones in the new rite follow the baneful 2 year cycle and have nothing to do with her.

There is but one more consideration. At the average Traditional Mass, one will hear more scripture than at the Novus Ordo if one is to take the whole of the liturgy into account. The Mass begins with Psalm 42, many of the responses are actually quotes from the Psalms (Adjutorium nostrum…Psalm 69, etc.), a good portion of the offertory prayers are from scripture directly, including all of Psalm 25, many parts of the canon and the priests communion come directly from scripture, not to mention the Last Gospel (John 1:1-18) and the fact that the propers are never skipped, while in the Novus Ordo encoutnered by 99% of Catholics in the world they are generally skipped, and or are repeats from a series of options while in the Traditional Liturgy they are different every Sunday and saints day.

Like all things, the simple fruits of tradition are better than the ugly creations of modernity.

Garrigou Lagrange, O.P, on the argument of for all vs. for many

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This is redundant now, given the change in the Novus Ordo liturgy from “for all” to “for many”, nevertheless it is good to have for archival purposes.

De Eucharistia

REGINALDUS GARRIGOU – LAGRANGE O. P

ART. III. – UTRUM HAEC SIT CONVENIENS FORMA CONSECRATIONIS VINI : « HIC EST CALIX SANGUINIS MEI ETC. »

3- Whether this is the fitting form of the consecration of the wine “This is the chalice of my blood, etc.”

State of the question: It is asked whether these words alone: “this is the chalice of my blood,” without other words adjoined are of the substance of this very form. So reckoned Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and Peter of Tarentasia.

St. Thomas however with many others responds: the following words as well are of the substance of the form, as pertaining to it’s integrity, up to, exclusively, “As many times as you do these things…”

The reason is that the last words are determinations of the predicate, namely, the blood of Christ, that is, “they pertain to the integrity of the same locution,” and in the same rite and manner are brought forth, while the priest holds the chalice in his hands.

For so is designated the power of the blood poured forth, by saying “This is the chalice of my blood, of the new and eternal testament: the mystery of faith, which for you and for many will be shed unto the remission of sins.”

That is the pouring out of the blood of Christ: 1. to attain eternal life; so is said “of the new and eternal testament”; 2. for the justice of grace which is through faith, so is said the mystery of faith ; 3. for the remission of sins.

With regards to the accidental variations in diverse orthodox liturgies, cf. Corbelet, Histoire du Sacrement de l’Eucharistie,t. I, p. 263 sq.

Question: With regards to the body of this very article, as Cajetan notes (in article 1^umof this very question) there is a difficulty, namely, Whether St. Thomas wished to say that these words alone “This is the chalice of my blood,” do not suffice for validity?

It is disputed also amongst Thomists, for in the body of the article, St. Thomas says indeed, rejecting the prior opinion, that the following words are of the substance of the form; but a little later he says, they pertain to the integrity (but integrity is distinguished from essence).[1] And in article 1 in the body and to the 4^th he says simply: “These words ‘This is the chalice of my blood,” are the form of the sacrament.”

According to Billuart and many others, more probably, only the words, this is the chalice of my blood, or this is my blood, suffice for validity.

It is proved in the first place from the Fathers especially St. Justin, Apolog. 2,[i] and Damascene bk. 4, Concerning the Orthodox Faith, c. 14,[ii] who say that the consecration is brought about in these words: this is my body and this is my blood.

Likewise the author Concerning the Lords Supper in St. Cyprian, and Innocent III in bk. 4 de Missa, c. 6.

Secondly, it is proved from the liturgies of the Greeks. The Greeks preserve the essential form, for they validly consecrate, as all confess. But they do not mention the words: of the new and eternal testament, etc.

Thirdly, it is proved by theological reason: Those words alone are essential which signify the real presence of the blood of Christ. But the aforesaid words independently from those following signify this real presence, no less than “this is my body,” in dependently from the following, that is handed over for you. Therefore the last words of the consecration of the wine are not for it’s essence, but for it’s integrity.

Gonet responds: this would suffice indeed for the Eucharist as sacrament but not as sacrifice, in which the pouring out of blood ought to be signified. But this does not seem certain, for from the very fact that the second consecration produces, by the power of the words the presence of the blood only, so that the body of Christ is not there save concomitantly, the sacramental pouring out of blood is already expressed, because the mass is sacramental and unbloody sacrifice.

Lastly, St. Thomas himself, in our question, a. 1 c. et ad 4 says, “if the priest would mention only the aforesaid words (this is my body and this is my blood, with the intention of confecting the sacrament, this sacrament would be accomplished.”

Indeed, in our article 3, St. Thomas says “through the first words ‘this is the chalice of my blood’ the very conversion into blood is signified. But through the words following, the power of the blood poured out in the passion is designated.” Therefore through the last words the very conversion is not signified, which was already effected by the prior words which signify it.

Moreover, as we have noted, a little while before, St. Thomas said: these words following pertain to the integrity of the form, and he generally distinguishes the integrity of a thing from its essence; e.g. the foot and hand pertain to the integrity of man, not to his essence.

Therefore probably St. Thomas would not deny, especially if he would have considered the liturgies of the Greeks, the position which is now considered more probable. Nevertheless, he holds that the subsequent words are not merely accidental, but pertain to the integrity of the formula.

Objection: St. Pius V commanded that the dissertation in which Cajetan said, “Even if the intention of St. Thomas would be contrary, it does not matter” to be taken out of the Commetaries on the Summa of St. Thomas.

It is responded: The Supreme Pontiff commanded this dissertation to be expunged not as false in this part, but because Cajetan, did not speak reverently enough concerning St. Thomas. Cf. other things concerning this affair in Billuart in the same place.

Against the 8^th: Why is for you and for many said? For you, namely the Jews, and for many others, namely for the gentiles.

It signifies likewise: “for you eating, and for the many for whom it is offered.”

For the many, also signifies, for all sufficiently, as is explained in the treatise concerning the one God, where there is treated concerning the universal salvific will, c.f. 1a q. 19, a. 6 ad 1,[2] c.f. 1 Tim. 11:5: “Christ gave himself a ransom for all.” That is, for all sufficiently, for many efficaciously as St. Thomas explains in the Commentary on the Epistle to Timothy in the same place. Likewise St. Paul 2. Cor. 5:15, “Christdied for all;” Romans 5:18 “As by the sin of one it is all men unto condemnation, so also through the justice of one is is to all men unto justification of life.”

Against the 9^th, It is said that the words “mystery of faith” are had from the oral tradition of the Lord, but it is not necessary that Christ himself pronounced these words.

[1] It is indeed true that some integral part is necessary, as the head and the trunk of one’s body in man.

[2] We treated of this at length in the book the One God, Paris, Desclee, 1938, p. 415-434.