Ave Dei Patris Filia- Thomas Thallis
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Doctrinal Treatise on the Assumption
Originally Published 15 August, 2010
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a dogma of the Catholic faith, solemnly declared as a dogma ex cathedra by Pope Pius XII in the document Munificentissimus Deus on 1 November 1950. This Dogma teaches formally that Mary, was assumed, body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life and that her body did not suffer corruption.
This dogma is among what are called the “negative prerogatives” of the Blessed Virgin, because they are lacking a certain defect. As the Immaculate Conception lacks original sin, so the Assumption lacks bodily corruption. We see also a strong connection between this doctrine and the Immaculate Conception which was also solemnly declared ex cathedra by the Pope, whereas the other Marian dogmas were confirmed by early councils. Pope Pius XII taught in his solemn definition:
“And, although the Church has always recognized this supreme generosity and the perfect harmony of graces and has daily studied them more and more throughout the course of the centuries, still it is in our own age that the privilege of the bodily Assumption into heaven of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, has certainly shone forth more clearly.
That privilege has shone forth in new radiance since our predecessor of immortal memory, Pius IX, solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the loving Mother of God’s Immaculate Conception. These two privileges are most closely bound to one another. Christ overcame sin and death by his own death, and one who through Baptism has been born again in a supernatural way has conquered sin and death through the same Christ. Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul.
Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”[1]
Moreover, the Fathers at the First Vatican Council, beseeched Bl. Pius IX for a solemn definition by drawing the same theological link with the Immaculate Conception in the Protoevangelium (which is Genesis):
“According to the Apostolic teaching [recorded in Rom. V,8; I Cor. XV, 24, 26, 54, 57, Heb. II, 14, 15 and other texts] when Jesus triumphed over the Ancient Serpent (Satan) He gained a threefold victory over sin and its effects, i..e concupiscence and death. Since the Mother of God is associated in a singular manner in this triumph with her Son, (Gen. III:15), which is also the unanimous opinion of the Fathers: we do not doubt that in the aforementioned [Scriptural] passage this same Blessed Virgin is pre-signified as illustrious by that threefold victory: over sin by her immaculate conception, over concupiscence by her virginal motherhood, and in like manner over hostile death by a triumphant resurrection similar to that of her son.”[2] In fact, had it not been so, as the theologian Joseph Pohle makes the observation that death would in fact have triumphed over Mary had she suffered bodily corruption.[3] Mary triumphs rather with her Divine Son and through His redemptive work over death completely.
The Death of the Blessed Virgin
While the dogmatic definition of Pius XII teaches that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven, it does not teach explicitly on the manner by which Mary died. So the discussion about the death of the Blessed Virgin is not subject to the dogmatic definition per se. Based on this there are certain theologians who run around today saying that because Pius XII did not specifically address the manner of Mary’s death, that there is no proof that Mary died and thus claim she is immortal. At the time of the definition there were likewise some who pointed to it as proof of there position. The first one known to have suggested Mary’s immortality is St. Epiphianus, yet he does not deny it either and as Cardinal Baronius suggests, he was merely defending Mary’s virginity against impious heretics by saying Scripture does not even say if she died. There were some 4th century traditions holding to Mary’s immortality, and more recently the theologians Roschini and Gallus (pre-Vat.2) advocated this position. Roschini maintained, that since Munificentissimus Deus makes no mention of the death of the Blessed Virgin, the number of those holding to Mary’s immortality will increase.[4]
This is not the case however, as the common opinion of the Church provides a moral unanimity that Mary in fact died, and that those who claim otherwise actually deny the teaching authority of Tradition. The reason is, as Alastruey notes is that “[it] is immediately connected with the revealed truths concerning original sin and the general economy of the redemption of the human race. Therefore the question of the Virgin’s death is not a matter of opinion nor a pious belief which can be disputed freely; it is a firm and consistent teaching which should be venerated for its antiquity.”[5]
Moreover St. Ephrem (doctor of the Church) states explicitly that Mary was a virgin all her life and died a virgin. St. John Damascene points out that as her son did not refuse to die, neither did she. St. Andrew of Crete “She who made heavenly the dust of the earth laid aside the dust of the earth; she put aside the covering which she received through generation and returned to the earth what is of the earth.” St. John of Thessalonica says that the all-glorious Virgin Mother of God, after spending some time with the apostles until they by command of the Holy Ghost, had spread throughout the world to preach the gospel, left the earth by a natural death. St. Modestus of Jerusalem gave his first sermon on the death of the Blessed Virgin.[6] The Greek word used to describe the Assumption is κοίμησις, which means literally “falling asleep” and when used with reference to the end of someone’s life, as in English (eternal rest) it means death. This word not only appears in the Greek liturgy but is used by all the Greek Fathers to speak of the Assumption.
Furthermore, most theologians teach that Mary did in fact die. Merklbach calls it a certain teaching, lest the mother should be seen as greater than the son.[7] The Theologians Billuart and Novato treat the death of the Virgin as certissima.[8] Most other theologians, particularly Roman Theologians who treat the subject concur.
Moreover, Mary’s death is affirmed by the ancient liturgy of the Assumption in the Roman missal, which reads: This festival of the day, O Lord, being venerable to us, on which the holy Mother of God suffered temporal death, but still could not be kept down by the bonds of death who has begotten Thy Son our Lord incarnate from herself.”[9] An 8th century chant from the Chaldean Church likewise affirms: “Admirable in her mortal life, marvellous in her life-giving death, living she was dead to the world, dying she raised the dead to life. The apostles hasten to her from distant lands, the angels descend from on high to pay her honour due.”[10]
Yet, if Mary did in fact die, does this not mean that she was subject to original sin in some manner? No it does not in two ways. Firstly, Mary did not suffer corruption, so that if there was a temporary separation of body and soul, (the matter of death) her body did not rot in the grave, but as Our Lord’s remained inviolate so that when her soul reunited with it she was assumed straight to heaven. Secondly, though it was not necessary for Mary to die at all, since not being conceived with original sin, she was not subject to its affects, it was fitting.
Merklbach teaches further in his work on Mariology that: “Christ voluntarily subjected himself to the law of God commanding death, and also by his suffering and death redeemed the human race from sin, Mary also, having cooperated in the work of redemption, ought to, as Christ, suffer and die and also subject herself to the command of death.”[11] St. Albert the Great taught that Mary died from a longing of love so powerful that she could not bear separation from her Son and Saviour. While the exact manner of the death is unkown to us, it is clear that Mary did in fact die, and this death was completely fitting since it modeled the path our Lord took also.
The Dogma in Tradition
Sometimes Catholics who have no grasping of the Tradition will assert, as it is sometimes done for the Immaculate Conception, that there was no doctrine of the Assumption or no Mass for it and that the Pope just declared it ex cathedra. I once met a priest who argued that we could create new masses, after all there wasn’t a Mass for the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption prior to the dogmatic definitions. This however could not be further from the truth. In fact, some object to the dogma (including Protestants) claiming that since it was only declared in 1950 it can’t really be of tradition.
This dogma is not only very old liturgically, it is of ancient origin. Though good theological arguments can be presented in favor of this doctrine, it is primarily in Ecclesiastical Tradition that we have the most verification of the truth of this doctrine outside of the Solemn Definition of Pius XII.
East and West Fathers and Doctors of the Church supported it, from the 5th century on to the present. In the beginning there were several apocryphal stories, one which is most famous being that of Pseudo-Dionysius who claimed that all the apostles had gathered for Mary’s death, and the Church denied the authenticity or even condemned some of these over time. Yet, the continual faith in the Assumption has continued east and west in unbroken succession since the 5th century, which helps to prove that the sensus fidelium was not based on the apocryphal legends since it persisted when their authenticity was called into doubt. In the 6th century the Eastern Emperor Maurice had ordered the feast of the κοίμησις to be celebrated each August 15th in Constantinople, and just as so many Eastern Fathers (most notably St. Andrew of Crete and St. John Damascene) have preached in favor of the Assumption, so the Eastern Church even out of communion with Rome has maintained this feast. In 1672 at Jerusalem the Orthodox Churches confessed in a council “Though the immaculate body of Mary was locked in the tomb, yet like Christ, she was assumed and migrated to Heaven on the third day.”[12] St. Gregory of Tours had taught “The Lord commanded the Holy Body of the Blessed Virgin to be borne on a cloud to Paradise, where, reunited to its soul, and exulting with the Elect, it enjoys the never ending bliss of eternity.”[13] The writings in the East of St. Sophronius, St. Andrew of Crete, St. Fermanus and most preeminently St. John Damascene serve as foundational witnesses in the East, while this doctrine flowered in the West through the Latin Fathers and theologians, decoratively adorned in all the Western Liturgies, and wonderfully attested to in Pius XII’s document examining the Tradition on Our Lady’s Assumption. This is a sign for us that even when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, he is not making new doctrine, neither does he recklessly declare the opinion of the day, but prudently and eruditely examines all the factors, histories, traditions etc, and Pius XII shows us this in Munificentissimus Deus where does not cite only the theological arguments such as that presented at Vatican I, no matter how good it is, he carefully went over the whole tradition, because we are not a Church of the theological opinions in sway today, but a Church of tradition which believes what has always and everywhere been believed by those professing divine and Catholic faith.
[1] Munificentissimus Deus, nos 3-5
[2] Quum iuxta apostolicam doctrinam {Rom. V, 8; I Cor. XV, 24, 26, 54, 57; Heb. II, 14, 15) aliisque locis traditam triplici victoria de peccato et de peccati fructibus: concupiscentia et morte veluti ex partibus integrantibus constituatur ille triumphus, quem de satana, antiquo serpente, Christus retulit, quumque Gen. III, 15 Deipara exhibeatur singulariter associata Filio suo in hoc triumpho accedente unanimi SS. Patrum suffragio: non dubitamus quin in praefato oraculo eadem B. Virgo triplici illa victoria praesignificetur illustris adeoque non secus ac de peccato per immaculatam conceptionem et concupiscentia per virginalem maternitatem, sic etiam de inimica morte singularem triumphum relatura per acceleratam ad similitudinem Filii sui resurrectionem ibidem praenuntiata fuit. (Collec. Lacensis, vol. VII, pg. 869)
[3] Pohle-Preuss, Mariology, pg. 114)
[4] Roschini, Il Problema della morte di Maria SS. Dopo la constituzione dogmatica Munificentissimus Deus
[5] Alastruey, The Blessed Virgin Mary, vol. 1, pg. 253
[6] Encomium in B.V; PG, LXXXVI, 3280
[7] … “B. Virgo fuierit morti subjecta, ut Filio suo conformaretur, nec Matris potior quam Filii conditio videretur.” Merklbach, Mariologia, pg. 266
[8] Novato, De eminentia Deip. Virg. Mariae, II, c.8; Billuart, De myst. Christi, diss. 14, art1-2
[9] Veneranda nobis, Domine, hujus est diei festivitas in qua sancta Dei genitrix mortem subiit temporalem, nec tamen mortis nexibus deprimi potuit, quae Filium tuum Dominum nostrum de se genuit incarnatum.” (Migne, P.L., LXXVIII, 133)
[10] Gureranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. 13, pg. 388
[11] Christus voluntarie debebat se subiicere legi Dei mortem statuenti, atque passione sua et morte genus humanum a peccato redimere, Maria quoque, in opere redemptionis consociata, sicut Christus debebat pati et mori, atque mandato mortis se subiicere. Quod fecit consentiendo in hoc quod esset mater Dei-Redemptoris, Merklbach, Mariologia, pg. 267-268
[12] Pohle, Mariology pg. 116
[13] Dominus susceptum corpus sanctum in nube deferri jussit in paradisum, ubi nunc resumpta anima cum electis ejus exsultans aeternitatis bonis nullo occasuris fine perfruitur. Migne, P.L., LXXI, 708)
Aude Sapere Podcast 002 -The War on Terror and Iraq
Today we are talking about the War on Terror around the world with specific mention of the consequences in Iraq. Why are Iraqi Christians suffering now? Why are other Muslims, and smaller religious groups like Yazhidis suffering and being pushed out from their homes? Two words, American Policy. Join us.
Episode Notes:
From the Intro: The Principle (Trailer)
CIA funded Osama Bin Laden
US government links to Bin Laden
Government document showing Osama was classified as agent “Tim Osman”
100,000 dead civilians in Afghanistan (NB: I made a mistake in the podcast, I looked at the Korean war numbers when I read it)
CBS News: Osama in Pakistani military hospital September 10
Chevron buys oil futures in Northern Iraq
Dan Rather reports Obama was in a military hospital September 10
Condaleeza Rice’s relationship with Chevron (Again, the article referenced VP Dick Cheney, and VP stuck in my head when I spoke. Man I need to get better at this!)
The Moriartys reveal the truth about the Libyan War
9-11 a conspiracy theory (a video montage of why the government’s story is logically nonsense)
A light that shall fill a great space…
Today is the Feast of St. Clare on the Traditional Calendar. The following, is an excerpt from Candide Chalippe’s “The Life of St. Francis.”
His [St. Francis’] discourses, backed by his example, and his prayers and exhortations, animated by an ardent zeal, were so efficacious, that in the town and county of Assisi a very great number of persons was converted, and the fire of divine love was kindled in every heart. “Then,” says St. Bonaventura, using the words of the Holy Scriptures, “the vine of the Lord spread its branches1 and bore flowers of a most agreeable odor, and produced fruits of glory in abundance.” There were many young girls who made vows of perpetual virginity; amongst whom, says the same holy doctor, the Blessed Clare appeared as the most beautiful plant in the garden of the celestial Spouse, and as a star more brilliant than all the others.
This illustrious maiden was the daughter of a rich and noble family of Assisi.2 The Cavaliere Favorine, or Favarone, her father, was descended from the ancient and powerful houses of Scifi and Fiumi. Her mother, of equal high birth and exalted piety, was called Hortulana. She had the talent of joining the care of her household to the practice of good works, and to regulate her time so well, that she found enough in which to visit, with the consent of her husband, many holy places: she even made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. If this practice is no longer usual in these days, particularly as regards distant countries, it arises from the circumstances of the times being very different, and from there having been a great change in manners. But Christian piety does not permit us altogether to condemn (independently of abuses) voyages or journeys of devotion, since they are sanctioned by the examples of the Saints, have been approved by the Fathers of the Church, and since at one time they were directed as sacramental penances for certain sinners.3
Hortulana had three daughters, Clare, Agnes, Beatrix. Being about to be confined for the first, and praying to God before a crucifix in a church for a safe delivery, she heard a voice, which said to her: “Woman, fear not, thou wilt bring forth, without danger, a light which will illuminate a vast space.” This was the reason she gave the name of Clare4 to the daughter to whom she gave birth, in the hopes of seeing the accomplishment of what it might signify.
Indeed, from her earliest years, her virtue shone as an Aurora, the prognostication of a fine day. She received with docility the instructions of her mother, and her whole conduct was the fruit thereof; the exercise of prayer became familiar to her; she every day recited the Lord’s Prayer a number of times, which she marked with small stones,5 in order to be exact in the daily number she had assigned for herself. In that she resembled the solitary of the desert of Scethé,6 who kept an account of the number of his prayers, offering them to God three hundred times each day. Naturally tender and compassionate to the poor, she aided them voluntarily, and the opulence of her family enabled her to assist them abundantly. But, in order to render her charities more agreeable to God, she sent to the poor, by confidential persons, the nicest eatables which were served to herself. The love of God, with which these holy practices inflamed her heart, inspired her with a hatred of her own body, and showed her the vanity of all the things of this world. Under her own costly dresses, which her situation in society obliged her to wear, she constantly had a hair-shirt; and she cleverly refused a proposal of marriage which her parents wished her to accept, recommending to God her virginity, which she intended to preserve in entire purity. Although she was at that time confined in the bosom of her family, and solely intent on sanctifying herself in secret before the eyes of God, her virtue became the subject of admiration, without her being conscious of it, and drew down upon her the esteem and praise of the whole town.
The great celebrity which the sanctity of Francis gained in the world, could not be unknown to the young Clare. Aware that this wonderful man renewed a perfection in the earth which was almost forgotten, she wished much to see him and to have conversation with him. Francis also, having heard the reputation of Clare’s virtues, had an equal desire to communicate with her, that he might tear her from the world and present her to Jesus Christ. They saw and visited each other several times. Clare went to St. Mary of the Angels with a virtuous lady, a relation of hers, whose name was Bona Guelfuccii; Francis also came to see her, but always taking the necessary precautions to have the pious secret kept. She placed herself entirely under his guidance, and he soon persuaded her to consecrate herself to God. An interior view of eternal happiness inspired her with such contempt for the vanities of the world, and filled her heart with such divine love, that she had a complete loathing for finery, which it was not as yet permitted her to throw aside; and from that time she entered into engagements to live in a state of perpetual virginity.
The holy director did not choose that so pure a soul should continue longer exposed to the contagion of the world. She had herself come to him some days before Palm Sunday to hasten the execution of her intention; he told her to assist at the ceremony of the delivery of palms dressed in her usual ornaments, to leave Assisi the following night, as our Blessed Saviour had left Jerusalem to suffer on Mount Calvary, and to come to the church of St. Mary of the Angels, where she would exchange her worldly ornaments for a penitential habit, and the vain joys of the world for holy lamentations over the Passion of Jesus Christ.
On the 18th of March, being Palm Sunday, Clare, magnificently dressed, went with other ladies to the cathedral church, and as she remained in her place out of bashfulness while the others crowded forward to receive the palms, the bishop came down from the altar, and carried a palm branch to her, as a symbol of the victory she was about to gain over the world.
The following night, accompanied as propriety required, she arranged her flight as her spiritual Father had directed, and according to the earnest wish of her soul. Not being able to get out by the front door of which she had not the key, she had the courage and strength to break open a small door which had been blocked up with stones and wood, and she repaired to the church, where Francis and his brethren, who were saying their matins, received her with great solemnity, bearing lighted tapers in their hands. They cut off her hair before the altar, and after she had taken off her ornaments with the help of the females who accompanied her, she received the penitential habit, consecrating her virginity to Jesus Christ, under the protection of the Queen of virgins, while the religious chanted hymns and canticles.
It was a touching scene to see a young noble lady, only eighteen years of age, in solitude in the middle of the night, renounce all the advantages and allurements of the world, put on sackcloth and a cord, and devote herself to a rigorous system of penitential exercises, solely for the love of God. Similar sacrifices can only be made by a supernatural virtue; they prove that the religion which inspires them is divine; and justly does St. Ambrose consider them to be far above the most heroical pagan virtues.7
It must be remarked, moreover, that the church of St. Mary of the Angels, which was the cradle of the Order of the poor evangelical brethren which Francis had just established, was also the place where Clare made profession of the same poverty, that she subsequently prescribed to the Order of women, which she instituted together with the holy Patriarch. This gives to the two Orders the pleasing consolation of knowing that they belong to the Mother of God from their origin, and that she is specially their mother.
As soon as the ceremony was over, Francis, who was always guided by the spirit of wisdom, took the new bride of Jesus Christ, followed by her companions, to the monastery of Benedictines of St. Paul, there to remain until divine Providence should provide a dwelling for her.
When morning dawned, and her parents learnt what had occurred during the night, they were overwhelmed with grief. They equally disapproved of what Clare had done, and of the manner in which she had carried her intention into execution; and they went in great numbers to the monastery of St. Paul, to compel her to leave it. At first they spoke to her in mild and friendly terms; they represented to her that she was choosing a vile and contemptible state of life, which was disgraceful to her family, and that there was no precedent in the whole country of such an occurrence. After which they attempted by violence to force her from the monastery; which they might easily have done, because in those times the religious females did not keep strict enclosure, besides which her relations were all military men, accustomed to acts of violence.
Clare uncovered her head to show them that she was shorn; and she protested, clinging to the altar, that nothing in the world should tear her from Jesus Christ. Either because they had too much respect for religion to venture to violate so holy an asylum, or that God restrained them by His power, they molested her no farther. She had only to resist the fresh efforts they made to induce her to return to her father. But the love of God gave her courage to resist with such determined firmness, that, giving up all hopes of conquering her, they left her in peace.
A short time after, Francis removed her from the monastery of St. Paul to that of St. Angelo de Panso, of the same Order of St. Benedict, near Assisi, to which she drew her sister Agnes. The conformity of their inclinations and manners, which rendered them tenderly united, had made them sensibly feel their separation.
Clare was greatly grieved that Agnes, at so tender an age, should be exposed to the dangers of the world. She prayed fervently to the Almighty to cause her sister to feel the sweets of His grace, so that she might grow disgusted with the world, and become her companion in the service of Jesus Christ. Her prayer was soon favorably heard, for, a fortnight after her consecration, Agnes came to her, and declared that she was decided to give herself wholly to God. “I return Him thanks,” replied Clare, “for that He has thus relieved me from the uneasiness I was in on your account.”
The indignation of the family was extreme, when it became known that one sister had followed the other. On the morrow, twelve of its principal members hastened to the monastery of St. Angelo. At first they feigned to have come in a peaceful mood; but, having been admitted, they turned to Agnes, for they had no longer any hopes of Clare, and said: “What business have you here? Come immediately home with us.” She replied that she did not choose to leave her sister, when one of the knights, forgetting himself altogether, attacked her furiously, struck her with his fist, kicked her, pulled her down by the hair, and the others carried her off in their arms. All that this innocent lamb could do, thus torn by the wolves, was, to cry out, “My dear sister, come to my aid; do not let them separate me from Jesus Christ.” Clare could give her no assistance, but by praying to God to render her steadfast, and to check the violence of her ravishers. This prayer was followed by a miraculous effect, similar to what the Church records in the Life of the illustrious virgin and martyr, St. Lucia.8
As the relations of Agnes dragged her down the mountain, tearing her clothes, and scattering her hair along the road, because she continued violently to resist, she became suddenly so heavy, that they were unable to raise her from the ground, even with the help of persons who flocked from the fields and the vineyards. They were blind to the finger of God in so extraordinary an event, and they even made a jest of it; for ill-disposed persons, like the Pharisees of the Gospel, do not submit to the evidence of miracles, but carry their impiety to the length of turning all miracles into ridicule. The one which God was pleased to operate in the person of Agnes, threw her uncle, whose name was Monaldi, into such a rage, that he raised his arm to strike her in such a manner as would have killed her, if the Divine power had not arrested the blow by bringing such an excessive pain into the limb as to disable it, and which lasted a considerable time. This is a grand lesson for those parents who prevent their children from consecrating themselves to God in a religious state. If they do not experience in this world the effects of His anger,9 they ought to fear the consequences of the anathema in the next with which the Council of Trent menaces, not only them, but those also who compel their children to embrace a religious state.
Clare came to the field of battle, where she found her sister half dead. She entreated the relations to retire and to leave her in her care, which they regrettingly did. Agnes then rose with great ease, glad to have had a share in the cross of Jesus Christ. She returned to the monastery with her sister, to consecrate herself to God under the direction of Francis, who cut off her hair with his own hands, and instructed her in the duties of the state she was about to enter. Clare, not having her mind quite at ease in the monastery of St. Angelo, removed to the house which adjoined the church of St. Damian, the first of the three which he had repaired, and where he had foretold that there would be one day a monastery of poor females, who should lead a sanctified life, and whose reputation would cause our Heavenly Father to be glorified.
Clare had scarcely fixed herself there, when the fame of her sanctity spread all around, and produced wonderful effects. The influence of grace was so great, that there were many persons of all sexes and all ages, of all states of life, nobles and rich, who took to a religious life. They mutually excited each other in families, as St. Jerome tells us that it occurred in all Africa, when the illustrious virgin, Demetrias, moved by the exhortation of St. Augustine, took the holy veil.10 It was even seen that married persons separated by mutual consent, and entered separate convents: and those who could not do this, strove to sanctify themselves in the world. The virtues of the holy spouse of Jesus Christ, as a precious perfume, attracted pure and innocent souls, who made the house of St. Damian a numerous monastery, and the origin of the Order of the Poor Sisters, or of St. Clare, the second of the three which were established by St. Francis. He appointed Clare abbess of St. Damian, although her humility made her wish to be the servant of the others, and he only overcame her repugnance by enforcing that obedience which she had promised him.
It was there that this holy abbess was enclosed during a period of forty-two years in the practice of the most eminent perfection, and which we shall have an opportunity of referring to, when we come to speak of her rule. 
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1Is. XXVII:6, and XXXV:2; Eccl. XXIV, 23.
2It has been said that about the year 1487 there were still at Assisi some descendants of the family of St Clare.
3See P. Morin Comment. Hist. de Poenit.
4In Italian, Chiara (Clare) means light. -Editor’s note.
5Heretics only, and bad Catholics can disapprove of the order and arrangement adopted for private and public prayers. The Church has regulated the Divine Office in number and time, and she causes the same words to be frequently repeated to honor God and His Saints. See on this subject the learned Mabillon, when treating of the Crown and of the Rosary or Beads (Chapelet, of the Blessed Virgin. -Act. SS. Ord. S. Bened. sec. 5, Præfet. no. 125, et seq. And Bellarmine, de actu Sanctorum lib. 3, cap. 8.
6Hist. Lausiac. cap. 23.
7St. Ambrose lib. I, de Virginibus, cap. 4.
8Offic. S. Luciæ, Surius, cap. 3, Dec. n. 9.
9Conc. Trid. sess. 23, de Regul. cap. 13.
10Div. Hieronym. Epist. 97, ad Demetriad.
No conversions, really?
“Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is “the root and womb whence the Church of God springs,” not with the intention and the hope that “the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail.
Pope Pius XI
Mortalium Animos
Pope Pius XI
Mortalium Animos
“I’m not interested in converting Evangelicals to Catholicism. I want people to find Jesus in their own community. There are so many doctrines we will never agree on. Let’s not spend our time on those. Rather, let’s be about showing the love of Jesus.”
Papa Franciscus
Meeting and meal with assortment of Protestant ministers
Meeting and meal with assortment of Protestant ministers
Of all the silly things Pope Francis has said in his pontificate, this one really takes the cake. Principally, in the realm of prudence, but also because it raises questions about what he believes. In terms of magisterial teaching, it is null, so we don’t need to worry about that.
The greatest difficulty is in this: if you are an apologist, if you are laboring amongst evangelicals, or, whatever you like, working to convince them to return to the Catholic faith, whether you are a priest or a laymen, you may now be greeted with this: “But the Pope said we did not need to convert!” and “Who are you to judge!”
There are many reasons why this statement is fraught with all sorts of problems, but the biggest is that it is contrary to what the Church has always and everywhere believed. It also evinces a lack of the virtue of hope, and a lack of the virtue of charity.
There is a lack of hope, in as much as the Pope has already written off the work of the Holy Ghost, “We’ll never agree anyway.” No, never? What was St. Peter Canisius doing laboring away in Germany and Switzerland? Oh, they’ll never believe anyway, why bother. What was St. Francis de Sales doing, writing tracts and sticking them under doors, and fasting and praying for the conversion of the Calvinists? Oh, we’ll never agree anyway! Not at all. There is another matter, which is the virtue of charity. If the Catholic Church is the true Church, and, at least with respect to the ordinary means of salvation that we can see and know from revelation, there is no salvation outside the Church, then how is it charitable to say “I don’t want to convert you.” That’s like saying “I don’t love you.” It is a false charity to withhold from a man his salvation.
But is this some random statement from the Pope, off the cuff and without notes? Actually no, this is precisely what he believes. In 2010, a dialogue was published between then Cardinal Bergolio and Jewish Rabbi Abraham Skorka, titled On heaven and earth, on a wide range of issues. In that, Francis said the following [My emphasis in bold]:
“When I speak with atheists, I will sometimes discuss social concerns, but I do not propose the problem of God as a starting point, except in the case that they propose it to me. If this occurs, I tell them why I believe. But that which is human is so rich to share and to work at that very easily we can mutually complement our richness. As I am a believer, I know that these riches are a gift from God. I also know that the other person, the atheist, does not know that. I do not approach the relationship in order to proselytize, or convert the atheist; [!] I respect him and I show myself as I am… I do not have any type of reluctance, nor would I say that his life is condemned, because I am convinced that I do not have the right to make a judgment about the honesty of that person; even less, if he shows me those human virtues that exalt others and do me good.” (Pgs. 12-13).
Hence the Scalfari interviews. The curious thing about those, of course, is the Vatican Press office is more or less claiming that Scalfari is changing the Pope’s words, yet the Pope goes to Scalfari again and the Vatican website still promotes the interview. But the Pope’s words are being changed.
More problematic is the unqualified way he speaks of these things. It strikes your feelings, yeah we want to treat people with respect, which then eviscerates truth from your dealings. It is one thing to respect the people in your society, and treat them courteously. It is another, to be entirely unconcerned with their eternal salvation, as though God blesses unbelief. What is the Vatican II mantra, always going back to Scripture? That is largely just a vehicle to discard the Tradition. Congar’s argument is that all Tradition is contained in Scripture, so therefore Scripture has the sufficiency and the Tradition is at best an appendage which we don’t need to worry about, because its all in Scripture. It is also a good argument for discarding the Tradition, once one has judged that it is not in Scripture. But then Scripture itself is cast aside when it doesn’t fit in with the Vatican II meta-narrative, or the religion of feelings and good intentions. What does it say in Scripture?
“Si autem tu annuntiaveris impio, et ille non fuerit conversus ab impietate sua, et a via sua impia, ipse quidem in iniquitate sua morietur: tu autem animam tuam liberasti.
Sed et si conversus justus a justitia sua fuerit, et fecerit iniquitatem, ponam offendiculum coram eo: ipse morietur quia non annuntiasti ei: in peccato suo morietur, et non erunt in memoria justitiae ejus quas fecit, sanguinem vero ejus de manu tua requiram.”
If, however, you will have declared to the impious, and he will not have converted from his iniquity, and his impious life, truly he will die in his iniquity, and you however acquitted your soul.
But even if the just man will have been turned from justice, and committed evil, I will place a stumbling block in his presence, he will die because you will not have preached unto him, and he will die in his sin, and the just things which he did will be forgotten, but I will require his blood at your hand. EzechielIII: 19-20 (All translations from the Vulgate are mine)
Or Again:
Et accedens Jesus locutus est eis, dicens: Data est mihi omnis potestas in caelo et in terra:
Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes: baptizantes eos in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti:
Docentes eos servare omnia quaecumque mandavi vobis: et ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus, usque ad consummationem saeculi.
And coming, Jesus spoke to them, saying: “All power in heaven and earth has been given to me; going therefore, teach all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; Teaching them to keep all things whichever I commanded you, and behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew XXVIII: 18-20(My emphasis)
Or again:
Et dixit eis: Euntes in mundum universum praedicate Evangelium omni creaturae.
Qui crediderit, et baptizatus fuerit, salvus erit: qui vero non crediderit, condemnabitur.
And he said to them: Going into the whole world, preach the Gospel to every creature. Whoever will have believed and been baptized, he will be saved, but whoever will not have believed, he will be condemned.
Mark XVI: 16 (My emphasis)
These scriptural references should be clear, even if you are using a “Good News Bible” or whatever edition you can pick up at Barnes and Noble. Even absent the Tradition, where copious resources could be produced from every Church Father, and every Scholastic, every theologian, and every Doctor of the Church on the necessity for membership in the Church, the necessity of Faith for salvation and so many other doctrines implicitly defied by the Pope’s behavior toward atheists, the scripture clearly shows his behavior is contrary to Christ’s commands. So the Pope, is saying he is not at all concerned that the Atheist doesn’t believe, in spite of Our Lord’s very clear and grave words. Now obviously there is prudence, and many times I’ve been at that point, where you know if you push any harder you’ll lose the person, but you did try, and resort to prayer where argument fails. Francis wasn’t even talking about that, he’s talking about shirking the whole question altogether. “Who am I to judge?” Unfortunately there is the dread verse in Ezechiel: “I will require his blood at your hand.” It get’s even worse:
“God makes Himself felt in the heart of each person. He also respects the culture of all people. Each nation picks up that vision of God and translates it in accordance with the culture, and elaborates, purifies and gives it a system. Some cultures are primitive in their explanations, but God is open to all people. He calls everyone. He moves everyone to seek Him and to discover Him through creation. In our case, that of Judaism and Christianity, we have a personal revelation. God Himself encounters us; He reveals Himself to us, He shows us the way and He accompanies us; He tells us His name, He guides us through the prophets. Christians believe, ultimately, that He manifested Himself to us and gave Himself to us through Jesus Christ. Moreover, throughout history, there have existed circumstances that created schisms and constructed diverse communities that have different ways of living Christianity, like the Reformation. We lived through a thirty year war and it shaped different faiths. It is very hard to accept and it was a disgraceful time, but that is the reality. God is patient, He waits, and God does not kill. It is man that wants to do so on God’s behalf. To kill in the name of God is blasphemy.” (On heaven and earth, pg. 19; my emphasis.)
Well, where do I start? This simply cannot be read as anything but modernism. For instance, it is one thing to say God uses all cultures to reveal his glory. This is true, and when Catholic missionaries brought the faith, for example, to Native Americans, or into the far East, they preserved the local populations’ culture and tradition, which worked in harmony with the Traditional Latin Mass that they also established. When, however, he says: “each nation picks up that vision of God and translates it in accordance with their culture”, this is, or at least appears to be, rooted in the modernist opinion that all religions are essentially different visions of God, and we’re all fellow travelers and that sort of nonsense. Yet, that pesky Bible again, says: “Quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia; Dominus autem caelos fecit.” For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens. -Psalm 95 (96): 5.
Where we circle to the relevance with respect to the Pope’s statement to the Protestant ministers, is in the latter part of this quote. It really expresses the metaphysics of Francis’ philosophy of religion. “diverse communities that have different ways of living Christianity.” Well, what are we to make of this? In proper Catholic ecclesiology, there is no way of living Christianity, except by being Catholic, in the Latin right, or in one of the Eastern rites. There is only one Church, as is clear in the scriptures. To say that other communities have another way of living Christianity, is to hold that there is an anomalous Christianity, that can be done entirely differently by different groups, who only agree on essentials. What the Church has historically called the essentials is, well, a bit different from that. It might have benefitted the then Cardinal Bergolio to examine what his fellow Jesuit, St. Robert Bellarmine, doctor of the Church had said on that subject:
“There is only one Church, not two, that body, both one and true is of men of the same Christian faith with respect to profession, and gathered in the communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of the legitimate shepherds, and especially of the one vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff. It can easily be collected from such a definition, which men pertain to the Church, and those who doe not pertain to her. There are three parts of this definition. The Profession of the true faith, the communion of the sacraments, and the subjection to the legitimate pastor, the Roman Pontiff. By reason of the first part all unbelievers are excluded, as well as those who never were in the Church, such as Jews, Turks and Pagans; and also those who were in and left, as heretics and apostates. By reason of the second, catechumens and the excommunicate are excluded, because these are not admitted to the communion of the sacraments, as these are dismissed. By reason of the third, schismatics are excluded, who have both the faith and the sacraments, but are not subjected to the legitimate pastor, and therefore profess the faith and carry out the sacraments on the outside. All others however are included, even those who might be reprobate, criminal or impious.”1 (De Ecclesia Militante, bk III ch. 2, my emphasis)
Similar statements could be collected from every Theologian until the 1960’s. But no, this was not the religion of Cardinal Bergolio, and it would appear his doctrine has not changed.
Throughout this interview, Francis confesses he is “naive”. This is certainly clear with his historical analysis of the Thirty Years War. This war, from 1618-1648, is often described in popular history as a war between Catholics and Protestants in Germany. This is false, like other pop-history dates, such as assigning 1054 as the date of the Great schism between East and West, even though the Eastern Churches were all reconciled in 1099, and remained so until 1204, and came in and out of union until the 1300’s when the politics in the West caused various worldly Popes from continuing the effort of full reunion. Either way, the Thirty Years war saw Catholics and Protestants fighting on both sides of the conflict. When it broke out, it was when the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick, was invited by the Bohemians (Czechs) who had revolted from the Emperor to become their king. This occurred after the famous “De-fenestration of Prague”. So, Frederick came, and became king, but was put under the Reichs’ ban, which essentially a deposition, that declared all his subjects freed from obedience to him, and made him an outlaw within the Holy Roman Empire. Frederick expected all the Protestant lords and elector’s to come to his aid, but instead they sided with the Emperor, mostly because they wanted to grab some of his land. He also alienated his subjects by his strict Calvinism, which the Lutherans and Hussites did not accept. Later the conflict widened, with Catholics and Protestants on the emperor’s side, and Protestants on the other side. Then the French entered the conflict, and what’s more, induced Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish king, to enter the war on the Protestant side. The French, though Catholic, assisted the Protestants in every way, just as they assisted the Lutherans in 1548 against Charles V, so now they assisted the Dutch against the Spanish, fought the Spanish, and sent troops to fight for Adolphus. Although my expertise in this conflict is more on the military side than the political side, it should be clear to anyone who studies it, that while religious considerations were important, politics and military glory were equally apart of this conflict. The security of states, the prominence of royal houses, these were all considerations at work in this conflict. It was not so much killing in the name of God, but in the name of kings, for worldly glory, and power.
The result, was an agreement for toleration in order to avoid more conflict, and was fully in accord with Catholic principles. It was devastating, it was a scandal, but it did not create “new religions”, or “new ways of being Christian”, it solidified those who had left the Church politically.
Ultimately, then, when the Pope told those Protestants that he didn’t want to convert them, and later, apologized to Pentecostals for the Church preventing their growth, this is not some off the cuff comment that he later regrets to make them feel good, this is really what he believes!
The conclusion, then, is that whenever Francis speaks, it is probably best to run to older works of theology approved by the Church at that time, or to read the Fathers of the Church. Pray, but don’t become despondent over it. Francis cannot change what the Church formally teaches, it isn’t possible. God will judge him, as He promised to judge Ezechiel, and it is our job to pray and refer back to the Church’s perennial teaching as the antidote to all the nonsense.
1 “Ecclesiam unam tantum esse, non duas, et illam unam et veram esse coetum hominum ejusdem christianae fidei professione et eorundem sacramentorum communione colligatum, sub regimine legitimorum pastorum, ac praecipue unius Christi in terris vicarii romani pontificis. Ex qua definitione facile colligi potest, qui homines ad Ecclesiam pertineant, qui vero ad eam non pertineant. Tres enim sunt partes hujus definitionis. Professio verae fidei, sacramentorum communio, et subjectio ad legitimum pastorem romanum pontificem. Ratione primae partis excluduntur omnes infideles tam qui numquam fuerunt in Ecclesia, ut Judaei, Turcae, Pagani; tam qui fuerunt et recesserunt, ut haeretici et apostatae. Ratione secundae, excluduntur catechumeni et excommunicati, quoniam illi non sunt admissi ad sacramentorum communionem, isti sunt dimissi. Ratione tertiae, excluduntur schismatici, qui habent fidem et sacramenta, sed non subduntur legitimo pastori, et ideo foris profitentur fidem, et sacramenta percipiunt. Includuntur autem omnes alii, etiamsi reprobro, scelesti et impii sint.”Caravaggio’s Beheading of St. John the Baptist
The Beheading of John the Baptist – Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
This image, while certainly the largest of Caravaggio’s works, is also in many ways the most disturbing. There is a great power in it, but it is also very dark without any apparent redemption. Like some of Caravaggio’s other works, it is a motif on violence, without any positive resolution, much the same as with violence in the real world. Judgment is for the next life, in this world, evil often seems to be unpunished. This is completely different from the same painter’s martyrdom of St. Matthew (Contarelli Chapel, St. Luigi dei Francesci, Rome), where as the center figure, a pagan who has masqueraded as a catechumen, is about to finish off St. Matthew, an angel, invisible to all but the saint, through a cloud lowers the palm branch, the victory of the martyr. Not so here.
History
This painting hangs in St. John’s co-cathedral in La Valetta, Malta, which in Caravaggio’s time was under control of the old crusading order, the Knights Hospitalers of St. John, and was their chapter house. The knights ruled Malta (whose inhabitants were mostly knights, a handful of European traders, and the local Maltese population) by a strict military code, and the grand master was the final authority of the island, against which there was no appeal. In this time, around 1607, the Knights enjoyed a new renown, for their victory over the Turks in 1565, which prevented an Ottoman invasion of western Europe. They christened the western part of the island La Valetta, after the name of the French Grand Master La Valette, who had engineered the defense against the Turks. It was considered very prestigious to be a knight, and many noble families placed children in the order (who were often ill-suited to it).
Alof de Wignacourt -Caravaggio
In 1607, the Grandmaster, Alof de Wignacourt had a major problem. La Valetta was a bit of a backwater. Malta was not considered a place of culture at the time, and people did not tend to frequent it that often, being a barren military outpost. What does an artist normally want when he paints a masterpiece? In an age where there is no tv, the way to reach people is to have them walk inside a church and see it. Not many people will do this in Malta. Thus Wignacourt had been unable to get artists to come to Malta, let alone become knights. Enter Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
There are some artists whom we know quite a bit about because they wrote their lives (such as Michaelangelo Buonarotti), or because others wrote a good deal about them (Such as Versari in his Le Vite degli artisti), or because they were dodgy characters who were always in court, such as the goldsmith Cellini or Rembrandt. Of the third class is Caravaggio. His violent temper and difficulties with other artists frequently got him into legal trouble. In 1606, he killed another ruffian in a duel, Ranuccio Tomassoni, by the Tennis Courts on the via della Scroffa (today, a mechanic’s shop) which, ironically, was on the same street as St. Luigi of the French, where his St. Matthew series had made him famous. Now he was to become infamous, as dueling was illegal in the Papal States, and Caravaggio, having fled, was given the sentence in absentia of abunde capitale, authorizing anyone to kill him on behalf of the state (The Pope) and then claim their reward by bringing in his head. Caravaggio had fled first to Naples, where patrons kept him afloat, then to Sicily, and at last to Malta. At first he had attempted to buy his reconciliation from Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V and administrator of Papal Justice, by painting for him. He had done this in the past to get out of trouble, and tried again with his famous David and Goliath depicting his self-portrait as the decapitated monstrous Goliath, with the obvious implication that Borghese could have his head in paint if he could but keep it in life. This particular painting is incorrectly dated to the end of Caravaggio’s life (as in Simon Schama’s otherwise powerful documentary, The Power of Art, where he overlooks the fact that the David and Goliath enters the Borghese collection in 1606, the same year as the duel, not 1611 when he died. It made for great drama, but it simply wasn’t historically accurate).
Tomassoni’s family, however, was too strong for him to grant a pardon. With that having failed, it was now presented to him that he could gain a pardon by becoming a knight of Malta. This was a tricky business because a convicted murderer did not normally get considered for entrance into the Knights, and approval would have to come from the Pope.
As soon as Wignacourt heard about Caravaggio’s arrival and intentions, he was delighted. He saw immediately the solution to his problems. He would at last have a painter, and one who was considered the greatest at that, and he would be able to keep him. That was the trick really, he understood well that Caravaggio wanted a pardon so he could return to Rome, as well as the prestige that being a Knight of Malta would give him, and Wignacourt knew that once Caravaggio became a knight, he could not leave without his permission. Problem solved. At least it appeared that way. Events would prove otherwise, as we shall note later.
Caravaggio buttered up Wignacourt with two excellent portraits, (one above, the other is St. Jerome writing) which the latter was pleased with. He also painted portraits for other Knights and royal patrons of other knights (like the Sleeping Cupid, or the Annunciation for the Duke of Lorraine). The prudent Grandmaster petitioned Pope Paul V (whose name is on the front of St. Peter’s) for a pardon for Caravaggio, but he took care not mention the name of who it was, and this was received in May of 1608. The last test Wignacourt laid before Caravaggio was to paint the altar piece of the St. John for what is today the Co-Cathedral, at that time the Knights’ Chapter house in La Valletta, depicting the Church’s titular saint John the Baptist, which was to be ready before the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, when it would be unveiled.
The Painting
The figures are life-sized, to give the knights the sense that this is a real life drama happening before them. Oil painting became the supreme art in the late 15th century after painters like Van Eyck in the Netherlands were able to accomplish what oils had not to that point, make the dead come to life. What Caravaggio does, is not merely make the pictures look lifelike, but to act life-like as well, with a strength and intensity that had not been seen before in European art.
The beheading of John the Baptist, as we noted is very dark. It is certainly the masterpiece of Caravaggio’s later period, and it is the only one to be signed by him in name. It depicts, of course, St. John, his executioner, a soldier, Salome with a golden platter to receive the head of St. John the Baptist and an old woman. The interpretation of the old woman differs amongst art historians. Some think it is actually Herodias, the wife that Herod Antipas had forced his brother to divorce so he could marry her. This interpretation is interesting, and we will take it up later. The other is that she is a bystander who sees the horror of the act, and thus represents us, standing inside the painting and yet outside too, demolishing the barrier between the painting’s space, and our space.
There is a lot to look at here. The space creates a paradox, like a sudden silence in a noisy place, which seems louder than the previous noise by its contrast. The space fills the painting, though it is empty, with foreboding, and horror. This is the point of the two prisoners in the corner who are doing their utmost to have a look. The atmosphere is so terrible, that men of that sort are attracted to it, so that they might see the dirty work carried on.
Judith beheading Holofernes
-Caravaggio
Barberini Palace Museum, Rome
Caravaggio painted a number of beheadings, among which are a Medusa’s head, his own in the famous David and Goliath, which is often incorrectly dated to after this period, when in fact it enters the Borghese collection in 1606, two years before this. The only thing that compares is his beheading of Holofernes by Judith, which explores the pathos between sex and violence. This painting, however, explores the connection, on the one hand, between the state and violence in the person of the soldier, on the other, the fair and innocent who partake in violence in the person of Salome, to which we can add our mixed reaction to it, in the person of the old woman.
Take the Soldier, he is the embodiment of authority, but he is commanding an atrocity, the execution of an innocent man, something authority is supposed to prevent (in a way, in Caravaggio’s own head at least, it is an allusion to his own treatment in life). At least it seems that way, and many modern art historians have liked to find a commentary on the death penalty here, as they are given to reading modern issues into older works. The reality is, it is not state violence as such that Caravaggio presents, but the violence of infidels. The soldier is a Turkish soldier, and since the Fall of Constantinople a century and a half earlier, the word Turk had replaced Saracen in the European lexicon for brutality and barbarity. The executioner goes to his task like to some simple mechanical work. He has made a mess of the job, and so he reaches back to grab a sharp knife, lifting St. John’s hair to finish separating the head, which is half off and bloody. This messy scene is so because this Church, the chapter house, is where new entrants into the Knights of Malta will be initiated into its harsh discipline, and prepared for the fact they could die in such a cruel manner in some distant land for the faith. It also recalls the struggle against the Turks in 1565, a reminder that the enemy was still on the sea, and this could be reality, even here (as the jail scene looks like one of the Knight’s jails in Castel Sant’Angelo.
Next, let’s look at Salome, with her pure white arms carrying a golden plate. Normally, a woman is depicted with fair white skin, because a) the modern craze for wearing less than underwear to the beach or pool hadn’t taken hold yet, b) women of noble birth were protected in the houses of royalty, to be prepared for the soft trappings of noble life. Any woman who was tan was a peasant who worked in the sun. A woman as Salome is depicted, would be expected to be a warm, innocent lady who should have no place in this scene. We know, however, from the biblical account, that she has been complicit in the crime since the first, and she does not bat an eye or even twitch as this gruesome act is carried out.
Now the old woman. Some have suspected it is Herodias, and if so it would be very interesting, as an image of contrition, now that it comes to seeing the blood, she can’t quite bring herself to accept it, wanting to scream, like so many royal killers who normally stand back from their handiwork. But I don’t think this is what Caravaggio is depicting. If we look at, for example, Judith and Holofernes (above), there is an old woman present, almost urging Judith on. This is her maid. Likewise, Salome would have a maid present, since a woman of the status of Salome would have had a maid with her at all times, particularly when going into a dingy prison with dodgy soldiers and executioners. More than likely she is assisting Salome, but she can’t quite aid in such an appalling task. What startles her is the blood gushing from the jugular of a St. John that, in this painting, never really dies, that is in an everlasting agony. Yet there is another detail, she is aghast at the sight, but she covers her ears, not her eyes. This is curious as the medium is to be looked at. It is on the one hand, a way of expressing the gurgling scream that must come forth from such a brutal beheading, by expressing the scream. The other fact is it does what Caravaggio is famous for, demolishing the barrier between us and the painting. As Andrew Graham-Dixon notes, “She stands for Christian pity and prayer.” (Caravaggio: a life sacred and profane, pg. 379).
At last, the figure of St. John himself. He has a read cloak draped over him haphazardly, and beneath him is sheep’s wool. The former symbolizes martyrdom, and the latter the innocent lamb led to the slaughter, which is a type of Christ. Although this is ostensibly depicting the martyrdom of St. John, the saint is not the center-point of the painting, rather the executioner is. This calls to mind, again, Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, which he painted for the Contarelli chapel many years before, mentioned above. In that painting, the assassin, not St. Matthew is the center of the paining, because sin dominates this world, yet there is still salvation. Caravaggio shows St. Matthew’s blood flowing into a baptismal pool, which we see in theology, the Res tantum, the very matter of baptism, is death. Mystically we’re being put to death to sin, and brought back to life with Christ, but the actual fulfillment of baptism is death in a state of grace. Caravaggio has masterfully depicted baptism of blood, as it applies to the martyr. He has signed his name, F Michaelangelo, “F” standing for Fra (Brother) in St. John’s blood. In a spiritual sense,
the theological merit of the martyr allows for Caravaggio’s forgiveness for a murder, and materially the painting of his martyrdom, of his blood in which Caravaggio has signed his name, has made him reborn, as a man liberated from his death sentence, automatically commuted when he will have entered the ranks of the Knights of Malta, which this painting earns for him.
Epilogue
It would make a fantastic story if that was how it all went, but tragically it did not. At first it turned out well, Caravaggio was made a knight of Malta, and declared the greatest of all painters. He now had prestige as a knight, and the 17th century would witness artists receiving marks of status, such as Valezquez, who was made a knight of Santiago, Boromini would become a knight of the Holy Cross, Rubens would be knighted both by Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England, Bernini who was made a Papal knight. Though it is not recorded, we can safely assume that at this point Caravaggio discovered that he would not be able to return to Rome as soon as he had hoped. This disappointment would fester, and within a month of his being a Knight of St. John, he and some other knights assaulted a high ranking knight, and in the code of manhood of the day defaced his door, as well as kicking in the door of a musician. For a long time this detail was not known, and numerous wild theories about Caravaggio’s crime circulated amongst researches, ranging from acts of sodomy to some form of satanic worship. We now know it was none of this, that it had entirely to do with assaulting a brother knight, thanks to Maltese historian Keith Scribberas, who in 2002 took the step of X-raying some old documents which had been smeared with pitch to hide their contents. (Caravaggio, Dixon, pg. 387) The Knight was Brother Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, an administrator of the Knight’s Justice, and we can be certain that he is the one who assaulted Caravaggio in Naples, which left him badly disfigured, and ultimately led to his death. For unknown reasons Caravaggio and 6 other knights made the assault, which also included a pistol. It could be Caravaggio figured out he would not be allowed to leave Malta, and his irritation had concord with the grievances of these other knights who had issue with this particular Justice.
Nevertheless, the assault proved embarrassing for Wignacourt, as on 29 August he unveiled the painting for the feast of the beheading of St. John the Baptist. Caravaggio, who had painted it, was thrown in prison, the guva, a deep underground prison which was thought to have been filled in by the British, but was discovered to still be there in all its terror in the 1970s. High ranking as well as low ranking knights were in jail, one of the assailants was even a deacon and had to be laicized. At the same time, the broken door of the Maltese choirmaster was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the musicians went on strike over pay, and other matters. Thus neither was there a solemn Mass or a Solemn Vespers, on the patronal feast of the Knights of St. John. The whole event was a disaster for Wignacourt, guaranteeing he would not be merciful. No one had ever escaped from the guva, but that was no obstacle for Caravaggio. It would have been all but impossible without the aid of someone else, involving as it did scaling high walls, lowering himself into the harbor and finding a boat. His escape, no matter how it happened, made him a fugitive from the Knight’s justice, and they formally expelled him from the order. He fled to Sicily where he painted a number of paintings, and was an instant celebrity wherever he went, and then back to Naples, where he was beaten and left for dead, almost certainly by Roero. Not long after, he would attempt to go to Rome with the promise of a pardon from the Pope’s nephew, Scipione Borghese, but he died on the way there, which we will take up in a discussion of another of Caravaggio’s paintings.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart: A historical perspective
For those familiar with the question of the third/fourth secret of Fatima, it is well known that the message of Our Lady to the Fatima children explicitly included a reference to the Kings of France, who refused to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart, and warned that if the Popes followed their example, terrible wars and destruction would afflict humanity. We are only a few years away from the 100 year anniversary of the Fatima message, and those who hold, in my view correctly, that the Consecration was not in fact done, have pointed to this as a warning for what is to come. It is best then if we understand what it is Our Lady was referring to when she referenced the kings of France.
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
This centers around the revelations of the Sacred Heart to Margaret Mary Alacoque, beginning in the 1650’s. Now, although devotion to the Sacred Heart certainly preceded St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Our Lord used her to popularize the devotion. The means he chose to popularize it, however, were not only apostolates, and the first Fridays, but also a king.
In 1689, St. Margaret Mary went to Versailles to see King Louis XIV, who at the time was the greatest Monarch in Europe. France had never seemed more glorious, and it was at the cusp of innovating its culture, technology and industry. It had the highest population in Europe (therefore the largest armies), and was undefeated on the battlefield. It had also solidified its Catholic identity, and escaped the Gallicanist heresy (Jansenism was not to come about publicly until 1725). What St. Margaret Mary came to present to Louis XIV was simple: that he consecrate the whole nation of France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and build a chapel so that the Sacred Heart could be adored, and France’s glory would be magnified even more for the Catholic faith.
King Louis XIV
Many of Louis’ advisers warned, however, that if he did it and France suffered at all, it would not only be bad for him, but for religion also (note this point, it ties in with more modern events with Fatima). Moreover, Louis XIV, a well educated monarch who possessed untrammeled power, perhaps wondered why Christ would appear to this uneducated nun of low birth, rather than to him. Pius XI said the same thing when he refused to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart. So, the Rois-Soleil, the Sun King, flat out refused the request from heaven. Previously the very same year, when adjusted for calendar differences, a revolution rocked England.
James II, the last Catholic Stuart to sit on the throne, had an event which usually signifies the strength of a royal house, but in this case led to its downfall. It was the birth of his son, James Francis Edward, who was then baptized Catholic. James’ position as the Catholic king of Protestant England was tenuous, but he was a good administrator and at first he was able to maintain his position. For all that, he was a poor leader and not very astute about judging the political climate. The Seclusion Crisis in the last years of the reign of his brother, Charles II, was settled by the latter’s excellent sense of the political wind. He took advantage of the increasingly radical language of the faction that wanted James secluded from the succession on account of being Catholic, and the mood of the populace which was fearful of another civil war. Putting on his royal robes, Charles declared seclusion, and whigism, to be treasonous, and most of the country supported him, being willing to accept a Catholic monarch over a new war.
King James II, the last Catholic King of England
James when on the throne was less impressive than his brother, or than his heirs might have been if they had actually ruled (namely James III and Charles III, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie). The worldly suggest this is because he wasn’t willing to compromise his religion, or because he wasn’t as duplicitous as he might be. The real reason, however, is that he wasn’t very Catholic in practice (his affairs were as famous as his brothers’) and he was a poor leader. He picked his battles very poorly, and alienated his major support base, the Tories, over issues of law, and kept a standing army. Now his brother also had a standing army, with 20,000 Scots that could be called up at any time, but this was necessary on account of the fact that the restored Stuart Monarchy needed support, coming back after a major civil war which ended in their Father’s execution (Charles I). This in itself wouldn’t have raised any more eyebrows than it did for Charles II, except that he filled command positions with Irish Catholics, and he was formally Catholic (whereas Charles II was a secret Catholic who converted on his deathbed). So the Protestants “whigged out” (pun intended), with the old propaganda of a Jesuit conspiracy to take over England and forcibly convert the country. James certainly was trying to liberate Catholicism in England, but he certainly had no program in mind to forcibly return Englishman to the faith. As poor a politician as he was, he was realistic.
Nevertheless, at the birth of his son, it was no longer a matter of biding time until James II’s daughter, Mary (a protestant and married William of Orange, the protestant champion of Holland), would reign as queen. Now the Protestants in the government and the London establishment faced the prospect of a long lived Catholic dynasty. So they decided to reach out to William of Orange, offering him the crown if he would invade England and depose James. Historians debate whether at this time William had any interest in the crown or simply wanted James to change his policy from French alliance to a Dutch alliance.
Dutch ships invade England in 1689.
Either way, Louis XIV undertook a military campaign in the Holy Roman Empire, and as a result his troops were not available to assist James against the invasion. Thus commenced the so-called “Glorious Revolution”, where the Dutch, with the assistance of several Protestants in the Navy who cleared the channel for them, invaded England, and James, rather than leading his troops, escaped.
Historically this is curious. While, on the one hand, James had good reason to fear treachery in the army (as he had seen it in the Navy), he had two things at his disposal. Irish troops who were in positions of authority, and the natural English Xenophobia and loathing for the Dutch (England had fought 3 wars with the Dutch since Cromwell’s time, and though they were seen as co-religionists, it was largely felt that the Dutch had usurped English rights in the new world and the East Indies). If James had lead his army in person, he might have won the day and kept his throne. These might have been graces flowing to him from the consecration of the Sacred Heart, but it was not done. As a side note, St. Claude de la Colombiere, St. Margaret Mary’s confessor, was a preacher in England for James II’s wife, Mary of Modena, and at one point was imprisoned for missionary activity and ministering to Catholics in the north. He was spared execution because of his position in the Duchess of York’s household, but was exiled.
William of Orange, later King William III of England
James fled England, and William, along with his wife Mary, were made joint monarchs. Now, William was related to the Stuarts, but through Charles and James II’s sister Mary, making the former a nephew of the latter. In the succession, however, he would have had to wait for James Francis Edward (an infant) and both of James daughters, Mary and Anne, to reign before he could have been considered for the succession, and that is if the former all died with no issue. Nevertheless, this is the only time England’s monarchy became elective, with parliament and the new William III and Mary II affirming that James was dead (which he wasn’t) and that he had no heirs (which he did). It was a total usurpation of common law, but it is endemic of the changes that the Glorious Revolution brought to English law. Parliament became supreme in its laws, which meant that the Constitution comprised of a series of parliamentary decisions. For instance, the right to gun ownership for Protestants, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights which was issued at William and Mary’s accession to the throne, was revoked by Parliament in 1998, because Parliament had given the right, and now it could be taken away without any reference to common law or natural law.
The Effects of this were at first a minor setback for Louis XIV. He lost a few thousand troops in Ireland at the battle of the Boyne, where James tried to raise support for himself, but all seemed well. He gave James and his family his summer palace of St. Germaine for their court in exile, and busied himself with other matters. Then came Margaret Mary Alacoque and the request to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart. As we noted, he rejected it firmly out of hand. What did he have to fear after all? The situation in England, however, soon turned into a major headache. William III, as king of England and the Staatholder of Holland, effected an alliance of England, Holland, Sweden, and the Hapsburgs against Louis XIV, in which France suffered its first major defeat. The ink was barely dry on the peace treaty, when a new war raised its head, over the Spanish Succession. Charles II, the last Hapsburg ruler of Spain, was dying with no heir, and his will, ratified by the Cortes, called for Louis XIV’s grandson, the count of Anjou, to ascend the throne of Spain, with the promise that France and Spain would not be united under one crown. The Hapsburgs would not tolerate losing the Spanish possessions from the family, and the Protestants of England and Holland would not tolerate the Bourbons jointly holding France and Spain, along with Spain’s vast new world possessions. All sides threatened war. Again the revelations of Christ to St. Margaret Mary were brought to Louis XIV, promising victory if he would consecrate France to the Sacred Heart. One can imagine that Louis XIV took this a little more seriously after the war of the first coalition, but in the end he refused to do it. Charles II of Spain died, and Louis XIV decided he was in trouble no matter which way he went, so he decided on allowing his grandson to take the Spanish throne, beginning the war of the Spanish succession. Previous to this, James II died and France, Spain and the Pope all recognized his 18 year old son, James Francis Edward, as James III of England (though living in exile at Louis XIV’s palace of Saint Germaine, where an Elderflower liquor was concocted which today we know by the same name!). This made William even angrier, and greased the wheels for a new war.
Battle of Blenheim, one of the decisive victories of the War of Spanish Succession
Mary II died tragically young in 1693, and William III died just before the war got started, but Anne, James II’s other protestant daughter and the last protestant Stuart, carried out the war with the aid of good politicians and a gifted general in the person of Lord Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (Winston Churchill’s ancestor). In a series of astounding victories by Marlborough, the Allied coalition had smashed the French, though they suffered major setbacks in Spain. The war, however, was bloodier and more horrendous than any seen in European history to that point save the Thirty Years war, and can properly be considered a World War, being fought at sea all over the world as well as on the European continent. The war waged on for 12 years, depleting France of resources, population, money and in general devastating the country. The debts from this war were still unpaid when Louis XVI came to the throne two generations later. It was an absolute disaster, and at the end of the war, all the issues over which it was fought came to pass anyway; Philip V (Louis XIV’s grandson) was acknowledged as King of Spain, and both France and Spain promised the crowns of the two countries would not be united in one sovereign. So hundreds of thousands of lives were lost for nothing, livelihoods were destroyed and millions impoverished: for nothing! And the consecration was still not done.
Interestingly, while in England it was 1688, on the continent it was already 1689, due to the fact that England was still on the Julian Calendar. 100 years after St. Margaret Mary first brought the request from heaven to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart, the French Revolution began with the assault on the Bastille in 1789. Death, famine, poverty, war, and a revolution which effaced tradition and the faith from the country. What will October 13 2017 bring us? The signs are there to be read, and they’re not good.
Things I’m working on…
I apologize for the hiatus in regular blogging. My plan is normally to have an article every two days and a podcast every week. I had one interview that has to be redone because the program I was using spontaneously deleted all the data, can’t figure out why, thus I’m going back to the free program Audacity since I have never had a problem with that. Sometimes, the best things in life are free.
In any event, as some of you may seen, I am also the managing editor of Mediatrix Press, and I have been working double-time to get some books finished. Right now the big thing is The Life of St. Francis of Assisi, by Challipe Candide, OFM. This is a spiritual masterpiece, not merely a life of St. Francis, it interprets the events in his life in light of the Church Fathers, and also the subsequent history of the Church from St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas, and even the Council of Trent. It is a marvelous work which I have beautified with open source images from Giotto and other artists depicting St. Francis’ life. It will truly be a beautiful work, but I have to get it done first. Using an OCR, even a professional one, is no picnic, especially when you have children climbing all over you and the original print was not that good. Other works I scanned and OCRed like the Life of St. Peter Canisius, went really quick and easy, and I only fount 3 errors when I proofed it.
The second thing I have been working on is reprinting the entire Opera Omnia of St. Thomas in Latin. This is hugely important for priests and scholars who read Latin to have affordable works of St. Thomas. It is almost impossible for a publisher to reprint major works in Latin because they will not really recoup their investment. So, if you are a print on demand publisher, your investment is time, editing, spell-checking and formatting, plus maybe $10 or $15 per volume, which is much easier. I don’t need to print 1,000 copies, I only need to respond to actual orders. Actually, I don’t even do that, the printing service I use does. Then I have various other devotional works and saints biographies which I am churning out, and Latin educational materials, but those take time. Like my blog articles, I try to get a number of things done at one time.
Third, I am working on translating St. Robert Bellarmine’s sermons on the liturgical year, with the first volume, Advent and Christmas, due out in late October. This has never been translated into English before, and I’m working on getting it done in time for the next liturgical year. That is of course, also time consuming work. What I am also looking at doing, is soliciting money to support me while I translate his entire Opera Omnia, the De Contraversiis, into English, since it is such a good apologetical work. In edition to that, I also have the three catechisms of St. Peter Canisius, and I would like to translate at least the smaller ones, if not the larger one (Summa Christinae Doctrinae) into English. I’m waiting for some of my other translations to come out so I can point out to potential donors, I’ve done these, now help me do this.
I am also still editing my older works on Sedevacantism, which eventually will become a book, but I will post them here first. That is time consuming, because it has required a lot of researching in the manuals. I do hope to get those out soon.
Last, is the finishing touches of my translation of Cardinal Franzelin’s De Divina Traditione (On Divine Tradition), which still needs about 80 pages of editing and some additional formatting before it will be done. The target date for that is for the fall, though it will be printed by another publisher. Thankfully I have two priests working on proofing the English who are proficient both in scholastic theology and Latin.
All in all, lots of work! Keep me and my family in your prayers.
What is the 2nd Confiteor?
The 2nd Confiteor
In Traditional circles there is a lot of debate that swirls around the so-called “2nd confiteor”, which is said immediately after the priest receives communion in the missals preceding 1962. It was removed with the 2nd revising of the rubrics in 1961 (published in 1962), which became what we call today as the “1962 Missal”. There have been a lot of debates over whether it should be done since it is part of the “perennial tradition”, (which actually its not, but we’ll get to that), while others say it is not in the rubrics, so it shouldn’t be done.
Amongst Traditionalist groups, the SSPX has always maintained it, so far as I know. The FSSP actually has permission to use it, on the basis of using the earlier publication of rubrics in 1961, which in consequence would not allow them to use the second revision, which inserted St. Joseph into the Canon. Except for special permission which they possess. I’ve been told that the Institute of Christ the king uses both, but I’ve never been to their Masses and I don’t know their situation. Diocesan clergy who say the Traditional Mass, so far as I know, vary in terms of who does it and who doesn’t, but strictly on the level of permissions they can do the second confiteor, or they can use St. Joseph in the canon, but not both. On the level of tradition they should, and we shall see why.
Some argue that the second confiteor should be removed because it is redundant. We already said it after all, we’re sorry! Really! On the other hand, those who argue it should be said, say that it is used to remit any venial sins one might have committed during the Mass, as well as imperfections. This is true, but only to a point.
The reality is, that at most Masses throughout the year, prior to the time of St. Pius X, would not have had a second confiteor at all. The historic practice of the Latin church was always to administer communion outside of Mass. This means that after the priest received communion, the deacon and subdeacon would prepare the ablutions and move the missal and chalice veil, just as a server does at a private low Mass where he does not receive communion. This had a number of advantages. If you felt you were not in a state to receive communion, you could duck out with a number of other people, and you didn’t have the specter of the old ladies staring you down, wondering “What did you do!”, so there wasn’t a perceived “pressure” to receive. In terms of the smoothness of Mass itself there are some benefits. After Mass, the priest would come out in a surplice with a stole, and distribute Holy Communion from the tabernacle, beginning with the confiteor, misereatur, and indulgentiam, and then the Ecce Agnus Dei, then as normal. Thus, the rite the Church used for the reception of Communion outside of Mass included the confiteor, both as a testament to true devotion and sorrow for sins in the communicant, and to make reparation for their venial sins. On two days of the year, however, the communion rite took place during Mass, namely Maundy Thursday and Corpus Christi. On those days, communion would take place just as it does at solemn Masses today.
What St. Pius X directed, was for communion to take place during Mass as a definitive practice, and the older practice an exception to the rule. This brought into being the practices that Catholics are familiar with today, of the second confiteor, being sung by the deacon, or said by the server outside of Solemn Mass. The reason is, no one left Mass early, and if Communion took place during Mass on a regular basis, it would aid the people in exercising the practice of more frequent Communion.
The problem today then, is not the second confiteor, far too much attention goes to that subject, it is people receiving communion who do not first go to confession, even in Traditionalist circles. We have, largely, the opposite problem that St. Pius X tried to address, which was Jansenism, we have instead, the problem of a false concept of mercy, by which men imagine God will forgive them, and they’re good people, so why not receive communion. While St. Pius X’s goals were laudable, at the same time, they were for a different culture. Today we have the scandalous problem of sacrilegious communions. Thus, what should be considered, is whether or not to move communion once again outside of Mass, combined with increasing confessions and preaching Missions, or conferences, or whatever you like on good preparation for the reception of Holy Communion. This would seem a more fitting discussion on rubrical fights over whether the second confiteor should or should not be said.
Update: I had to correct the earlier article after being advised by a priest in the know that the FSSP actually does have permission to do both, where formerly I had written they do not.
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.
Athanasius Contra Mundum 