True Restoration

Interview with Sir Charles Coulombe on the American Civil War

2012-01-28T10:59:00.000-06:00

can be found on YouTube (below)

You can also find it on my personal blog site.

Immaculate Conception

2011-12-15T08:28:00.000-06:00

While we are still in the octave of the Immaculate Conception, here are two videos from our YouTube Channel to edify you:

Podcasts on the changes to the Mass

2011-12-13T14:33:00.001-06:00

I was recently in Ohio to do a long-form interview with Fr. Anthony Cekada on his book, Work of Human Hands: A theological critique of the Mass of Paul VI. Father has done a podcast series on youtube in which he covers some important points from each chapter of his book. If you haven't read the book or seen a video, please do keep in mind that his book is the undisputed definitive scholarly work on the changes in the Roman Rite due to Vatican II. All Traditional Catholics who seek to be informed about these matters should at least watch these free videos, if they don't think they'll read the 400+ page tome.

(Father also has a blog for the book)

New Photos of Ceremonies posted

2011-12-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

Pontifical Low Mass (for the Immaculate Conception, H.E. Bp. Daniel Dolan celebrating):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.307203615967160.69562.141281255892731&type=1

Low Mass (Fr. Julian Larabee celebrating):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.307254045962117.69570.141281255892731&type=1

Fr. Gabriel Tran OSB sings the Gospel at his first Mass, Fall 2009

2011-12-08T00:48:00.001-06:00

As our streaming site continues to grow and we start adding some free previews to our YouTube channel, we'll have more new free previews to induce those who haven't yet subscribed to our streaming video service to give it a try :-)

Find us on YouTube and subscribe to our free channel

Latest True Restoration Press Newsletter

2011-12-01T17:07:00.001-06:00

Posted today.

Flashback: My 2006 Dr. White interview for the Angelus

2011-11-22T22:42:00.001-06:00

People keep asking me for "more Dr. White" featuring the release of his latest interview. I have answers both now and later.

Now: for those of you who never read it, the interview I did with Dr. White in 2006 was featured in the October Angelus of that year and was also hosted exclusively online by the Cornell Society for a Good Time. The interview has some "dated" material, but much of it is timeless, and more importantly, is classic Dr. White.

Later: in June of this year Dr. White came to Overland Park, Kansas, to be part of a conference I hosted on Integral Catholicism. He gave two talks: one on Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy, one on Richard Wagner's Ring series. Those will be released to subscribers of my streaming video site (as an aside, the $99 current subscriber rate is going up January 1st...there will be some very exclusive content posted at that point, so get in now while it's still under $100) sometime in December and will be available for streaming purchase in January or later. Both talks are nearly 2 hours long and are for those who want deep and real analysis of these fascinating works.

Dr. White interview excerpt posted

2011-11-19T10:55:00.001-06:00

at Durendal.

Dr. White, in this short excerpt, among other things, argues that Bishop Williamson should not continue to be muzzled.

Interviews can be bought for instant streaming download here.

Lunch with Charles Coulombe

2011-11-18T14:52:00.001-06:00

For those in the Kansas City area, Charles Coulombe will be in town tomorrow, Saturday the 19th of November. He's here for a couple days doing some interviews with True Restoration and he'll be heading to the World War I Museum tomorrow. If you'd like to join Charles at the Museum (and for lunch after), please email truerestoration at gmail dot com with contact information and we will give you details. He is singularly funny, erudite, and enjoyable to meet in person.

Interview with Griff Ruby (June 2011)

2011-11-16T10:06:00.001-06:00

I first met Griff at Ordinations this last June but we had "met" virtually before then. He had read some of my interviews and we were both writers for The Four Marks so we saw each other's writing quite regularly.

Griff has a fascinating conversion story and apart from that, he's used years of studies as a layman to create a book that is in a way, a guide to the Traditionalist Catholic movement. It chronicles its history and consequences. Griff pretty selflessly has the entire book online for free here, but if you're like me and prefer an old-fashioned book in your hand, you can buy the book here.

Griff is a gentleman, but I think you will appreciate his kind, straightforward speaking more than anything. The vast majority of my interviews are with clerics so sometimes speaking with a fellow layman shows some of the particular difficulties we face more particularly than priests do (i.e. priests don't have to worry about where to go to Mass, because they celebrate their own, etc.)

As I've mentioned for the most recent interviews posted, your best value is to be found in the annual subscription, but should you only wish to purchase this particular interview, you can do it for $7.99 on streaming or $20.00 should you prefer the DVD.

Please be patient as this free excerpt buffers.

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Durendal reviews the upcoming Dr. White interview

2011-11-13T18:02:00.001-06:00

Dr. David Allen White's interview is already for sale on DVD at www.truerestorationpress.com and on streaming at www.truerestorationpress.com/videos. However, the free 20-minute excerpt of the 90-minute interview doesn't premiere until later this week. If you don't want to wait until then, you can read Mr. Nicholas Wansbutter's review of the interview at Durendal. He will also be hosting the excerpt later this week.

Mr. Wansbutter's lead on the story is reiterating what Dr. White told me: this would be his last interview, ever.

Interview with Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, CMRI (June 2011)

2011-11-09T12:35:00.000-06:00

Bishop Pivarunas is the Superior General of the CMRI, one of the larger religious congregations that offers the Mass of All Time.

I had a chance to sit down with His Excellency on the day of Ordinations this year, which took place on the Feast of Sts. Peter & Paul. In this 20-minute excerpt from a 90-minute interview, the Bishop speaks about his vocation, the early days of the CMRI, his episcopal consecration, the situation in Cullman, Alabama with Christ the King Abbey, and what it's like to exist with the

As with the Fr. Oswalt interview, this interview is available on DVD, as a one-time streaming download, or as part of your subscription package, if you are an annual subscriber. Subscribers get access to all interviews currently in the system plus early (and free) access to any new interviews done over the next 12 months. If you like these interviews, the subscription might be the way to go.

Please be patient when the video reads "buffering." Unlike YouTube's thousands of servers, True Restoration has only several servers and as there are a lot of demands on the videos, worldwide, it might take some time for the video to load.

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New Interviews

2011-11-08T20:14:00.002-06:00

It has been a busy summer for me personally and professionally. While I did manage to get a lot of new content for True Restoration, there are always the logistics of getting the DVDs ready to ship and the film transferred into digital files and then cleaned up and loaded to servers for worldwide download and streaming. This takes a lot of time.

Here are some of the interviews that will appear in the next three weeks.

Dr. David Allen White
Bp. Mark Pivarunas, CMRI
Fr. Michael Oswalt
Mr. Griff Ruby
Fr. Anthony Cekada

More details to follow...

Interview with Fr. Michael Oswalt (June 2011)

2011-11-08T12:46:00.001-06:00

Father Michael Oswalt is the first priest I know of to be absolutely, not conditionally, ordained in the Traditional Rite by a Bishop consecrated in the Traditional Rite after he was originally ordained in the Novus Ordo by a Novus Ordo-consecrated Bishop. While it has never been, nor will it begin to be now, the raison d'etre of this website to comment on sacramental theology, it must be widely acknowledged that the dirty little secret of most Trads is that they have massive doubts about the new sacraments (what this implies for the possibility of an erring Magisterium and the logical consequences in their minds is something we'll sidestep for now). The SSPX has most visibly expressed this doubt not just through their numerous conditional ordinations of Novus Ordo priests, but through many thousands of conditional confirmations (for which no canonical investigation is required for you to present yourself for conditional confirmation). What I think is fascinating about Fr. Oswalt's interview(s) (I met him in 2009, before he walked down this road) is seeing just how the "Tradversion" story that we all experienced was seen through his eyes.

Father Oswalt was ordained a priest forever by Bishop Mark Pivarunas at Mount St. Michael in June of this year. Please enjoy the excerpt below (12 minutes of a 70 minute interview).

As a final note, Fr. Oswalt's interview is one of 5 premiering in the next 3 weeks. Due to comments from some of the earliest subscribers to www.truerestorationpress.com/videos we have lowered our price for the annual subscription, which gives you access to all the video interviews ever done, as well as some of the beautiful ceremonies I've started to capture in High Definition. Long-form interviews like what we do here don't exist anywhere else in the Traditional Catholic world. Now we will be bringing you ceremonies in high-def also. Being a subscriber is cheaper than ordering the DVDs individually, and you get instant access instead of waiting for the DVD.

Depending on where you are in the world, it might take a moment to load the video. Please be patient while it says "buffering."

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CMRI Ordinations, Feast of Sts. Peter & Paul

2011-07-21T15:05:00.000-05:00

There will be more verbiage forthcoming, but for now, here are the links to ordination photos:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.236321876388668.55970.141281255892731&type=1

And to the first Solemn High Mass of Fr. Brendan Legg:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.236174816403374.55959.141281255892731&type=1

I used to be so much faster with these postings, but summer has only gotten busier for me over the past few years with personal and professional commitments. I'm sorry this was not up sooner.

Do "Traditional Catholics" agree about anything?

2011-07-10T21:03:00.000-05:00

There is a hidden assumption underlying conversations between Trads: we agree on certain key issues. I think that assumption is false, and in the piece below I’ll try to talk about certain questions in frames of “Indult/Motu” – by this I refer to anyone that relies on a local bishop or groups like the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St Peter) or ICRSS (Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest) for access to the Traditional sacraments; “SSPX” – by this I mean anyone who receives sacraments from the SSPX and considers him/herself aligned with their views; “SV” – by this I mean those who do not believe the most recent claimants to the Papacy to be true popes (when necessary I will distinguish between those who adhere to the Guerardian thesis and those who do not). It’s important to note that labels are always an oversimplification and in this case, even more so, but in discussing the variances in viewpoints between these positions, we may understand the bigger picture better. Further, as I’ve pursued in other pieces, my framing of these questions doesn’t indicate my point of view on these matters – and ultimately, that shouldn’t matter – what matters is what you’ve understood and discovered through research, study, and prayer during this unprecedented crisis.

Despite the fact that I’ve spent many years studying these issues – though not as many years as many others who know these things better than I do (or were already studying these matters when my birth brought me into this vale of tears in 1979) – I found myself surprised at areas of overlap and agreement which I had known in my head but had never parsed on paper. I hope you find the examination of these positions as useful to consider as I found them helpful to articulate.

The Mass

The New Mass is “defective”

Indult/Motu: No. The Extraordinary Form of the Mass is extended to the faithful by a gracious permission of the Holy Father. If one day he chooses to remove that permission, we will obey rather than put ourselves outside the body of the Church.

SSPX: Yes, in fact, it is “intrinsically evil.” Both Fr. Peter Scott and Fr. Jean Violette have advanced this notion contra Michael Davies on separate and different occasions. The New Mass is “not Catholic,” “Protestant,” and is a “bastard” form of Mass.

SV: Yes, in fact it is invalid. The change in the words of consecration for the bread and the wine, even in the Latin form of the sacrament, compromise validity.

When saying the Traditional Latin Mass, the John XXIII rubrics and 1962 Missal are to be used without question or debate

Indult/Motu: Well, it depends. The FSSP uses the 1962 because they were a split from the SSPX who used the 1962. The ICRSS formerly exclusively used the pre-1955 rubrics and missal, but now use a 1962 missal in concert with the old Holy Week. Both groups have “permission” to use those respective missals and as such, have not really had to make apologias one way or the other.

SSPX: At the first General Chapter of the SSPX it was decided that regions of the SSPX already using the John XXIII revisions and Missal could continue to use them (the French had in this and in the Dialogue Mass, led the way in this progressive-Traditionalist development) but that regions that specifically used the Pius X rubrics and Missal – namely Great Britain and the United States – would continue to use them indefinitely. This changed in the break of 1983 in the United States, when the Archbishop imposed the John XXIII rubrics upon a newly ordained priest, who had spent years in seminary with the Pius X rubrics and had even been taught how to say Mass in that way. Truth be told, we don’t technically celebrate the 1962 rite, as we have introduced as a custom a second Confiteor which was already removed by 1962. This is notwithstanding that the Dominicans with us use their own rite, as guaranteed by St. Pius V in Quo Primum, and that our Benedictines use their monastic rite, which is the 1965.

SV: It depends. The CMRI use a pre-1962 Missal, but use the “restored” Holy Week. Other known sedevacantist groups use the pre-1955 rubrics, not just because the revisions of Holy Week were authored by Bugnini and because Pius XII’s promulgating document gives no indication that he had either read or comprehended the scope of the changes put together by whom he considered to be trusted surrogates, but because the Novus Ordo Holy Week is thus already contained within the 1962 Missal. The “Restoration of Holy Week” was a dress rehearsal for the years of Concilium and the New Mass, and in examining “where to go back to” we must avoid any association with unwarranted changes, esp. by a known Freemason.

The 1962 Missal can be changed by specific Papal legislation, as seen in the Good Friday prayer revision

Indult/Motu: Yes. Again, we have the gracious 1962 Missal by gracious permission of our gracious Holy Father who is infinite in graciousness.

SSPX: It depends. We rejected the Good Friday revision of Pope Benedict XVI through the leadership of Bishop Fellay and plan to resist any modernizing changes to create a future combination 1962/1970 “Single Form” missal as has been indicated and envisioned by surrogates and officials of this Papacy.

SV: While the Pope has the power to surgically change any part of the Mass that he pleases, as supreme legislator of the Church, it is at best troubling to conceive of an evolving, software-upgrade version of Mass, which is always subject to changes. The consistent practice of the Church has been to add feasts or make minor changes, not to whole-cloth create a New Mass. However, leaving aside the discussion of prudence or moral rights, we maintain that the Pope has a legal and moral right to craft a new rite of Mass, as long as he is a valid Pope and as long as the Mass is clearly Catholic. Neither of those conditions apply regarding the current Popes and the current so-called “Ordinary Form” of the Mass. We further maintain that no Pontiff may outlaw immemorial custom.

Vatican II

Vatican II was a “pastoral council” and thus, non-binding

Indult/Motu: Yes! In fact you will note that there isn’t anything in the Vatican II documents that asks you as an individual Catholic to profess anything, therefore, while we (very, very, very quietly and secretly, in the quiet of our hearts) deplore the ambiguous language of the council documents, never before seen in any of the documents of accepted and valid ecumenical councils, we don’t question any of the Vatican II documents.

SSPX: Absolutely. The Archbishop signed all of the council documents and never called it an invalid council. Indeed, he served on the preparatory commission of the Council. Much good work was done there, he told us, but the conflicts during those meetings foreshadowed the Council itself, which was a triumph of liberalism, a “1789 in the Church.”

SV: No. The phrase “pastoral council” was invented by John XXIII and is a novelty when speaking about ecumenical councils. If one wishes to quote “pastoral council” one must also be willing to quote Paul VI, who said that Vatican II was “as important, and in some ways more important than Nicea.” Nicea, for those who don’t know, gave us the Creed said at Mass every Sunday. If Vatican II is as important as Nicea, it is surely a weasel tactic to hide behind the soft ermine of “pastoral council” when confronted with the bête noire of “as important as Nicea.”

There is such a thing as non-infallible Magisterial teaching

Indult/Motu and SSPX: Yes, as can be seen by the correction of Pius XII to the Council of Florence in Sacramentum Ordinis.

SV: The words “fallible” and “Magisterium” only belong in a sentence that contains “anathema” and “sit.”

There is the Catholic religion and the “new religion” of Vatican II, and the two are opposed to each other

Indult/Motu: Absolutely not. You are speaking of “rupture theology” which is simply unsupportable.

SSPX and SV: The religion espoused by the majority of Catholics since Vatican II is a counterfeit fraud and is to be considered, both as a whole and in its parts, to be substantial departures from previous Catholic teaching and praxis. By their fruits you shall know them.

The New Sacraments are all valid

Indult/Motu: Yes, unquestionably! We simply prefer the old ones (Thank you thank you thank you Holy Father!).

SSPX: Yes and No, depending on what the current SSPX policy is. Regarding confirmations, the SSPX has absolutely no investigative process for conditional confirmations and conditionally confirms anyone who presents him/herself to be confirmed and can pass a written doctrinal test. Regarding ordinations, the SSPX has always had a case-by-case basis policy on conditional ordination, though the Angelus some years ago translated Fr. Pierre-Marie, OP’s La Sel de La Terre article, “Why the New Rite of Episcopal Consecrating May Be Valid” into English titled as “Why the New Rite of Episcopal Consecration Is Valid.” Regarding consecrations of Bishops, it is known by not a few that Bishop Tissier de Mallerais has a positive doubt in this matter, as evinced by a late 1990s letter to an inquiring faithful that dealt with two matters: 1) Dr. Coomaraswamy’s book on the new sacraments, particularly the chapter on Episcopal Consecration, and 2) participation of Bishop Salvador Lazo in ordination ceremonies and confirmations. The vast majority of SSPX faithful are positively doubtful about validity of new sacraments and are at best, somewhat suspicious of Novus Ordo priests who “tradvert” without conditional ordination.

SV: As outlined above, the New Mass is invalid, and therefore the Eucharist is invalid. So too the New rite of Episcopal Consecration and Priestly Ordination. The new sacrament of confirmation is suspicious and therefore should be avoided.

SSPX and SV: It is interesting to note that exorcists worldwide complain about the inefficacy of the new rite of exorcism and many have returned to the old rite.

Indult/Motu on the Exorcism issue: No comment.

The New Code of Canon Law is valid

Indult/Motu: Yes, but we get a dispensation to refer to the Old Code to govern things that no longer legally exist in the New Code, like subdeacons.

SSPX: Not entirely. We accept the one hour fast, but we do not accept that Protestants may receive communion. It’s a pick-and-choose sort of thing, again, based on “Tradition” of which we are the sole reliable arbiter in these days of crisis.

SV: Not at all. A new code can only be promulgated by a valid pontiff, and JPII is a doubtful one at best. It is useful to have a 1983 code handy to study and understand the all-encompassing view of the New Religion of Vatican II.

Josemaria Escriva, John XXIII, and John Paul II are Saints and Blesseds respectively and must be called and honored so

Indult/Motu: Yes, beatifications and canonizations are part of the Church’s infallibility. St Josemaria Escriva, Blessed John XXIII, Blessed John Paul II, orate pro nobis.

SSPX: Yes, but beatifications are not infallible, and canonizations are. We can revisit the questions of John XXIII and John Paul II when canonization comes, but then, as now, we accept the validity of the Acts of the Holy See as inscribed in the AAS (Acta Apostolicae Sedis).

SV: No, beatifications and canonizations fall under the disciplinary magisterium of the Church and are covered by the Church’s infallibility and indefectibility. Since we know these men are not Popes who beatified and canonized these men, and because these alleged saints and blessed are known notorious enemies of the Church, this proposition is a non-starter.

Novus Ordo Annulments are valid

Indult/Motu: Absolutely, without question.

SSPX: As has always been the position of the Archbishop, the answer is yes. Additionally, we have set up our own tribunal, outside of ordinary Church authority, headed up by Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, to judge annulment cases of faithful who have been married in our chapels.

SV: Simply based on the high statistical numbers of annulments (over 90% approved in the US alone), as well as the often faulty legal reasoning used in these annulment cases, it is to be assumed that generally speaking Novus Ordo Annulments are invalid and attempt to dissolve what God has joined together in a practice known as “Catholic divorce.” Pay the price, get your pass.

The New Mysteries of the Rosary are good and should be said

Indult/Motu: Of course. Roma locuta est, causa finita est.

SSPX and SV: No. The Rosary was given by Our Lady to St. Dominic. Appending mysteries onto a centuries-old prayer designed by Our Lady and confirmed in form at Fatima is hubristic and smacks of the spirit of Modernism. Oh, and it’s just plain stupid.

The way out of the current crisis requires divine intervention and/or a miracle

Indult/Motu: No, if we simply listen to the Holy Father, he will unerringly lead us.

SSPX and Guerardian SV: In a manner of speaking. We think that either gradually or suddenly the current claimant to the see of Peter (SSPX considers him Pope, Guerardian SV does not) will realize the errors of Vatican II, refute them, and bring the Church and all the bishops and faithful back into line. For the SSPX, this can happen through Rosary crusades or by negotiations in which Rome is shown the error of her ways.

Non-Conclavist SV: We see a problem with the behaviors and pronouncements of the recent claimants to the Papacy, but we do not see anything other than a divine intervention getting us out of this mess.

Other issues

Because Our Lady of Fatima said that the Pope must consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, we have to have a Pope

Indult/Motu and SSPX: Yes. It’s only logical.

SV: No. Just as a way out of this crisis may require a divine intervention, so too, such a consecration, if still requested and wanted by Our Lady, may have to be handled in an extraordinary way, not by the way foreseen by Fr. Gruner for decades now, in a simultaneous disparate worldwide consecration.

The SSPX holds a schismatic position

Indult/Motu and SV: Yes, by their actions they wish to have a Pope for display purposes, but in practice they obey him in nothing except in calls to discussion. They have a “recognize but resist” ecclesiology.

SSPX: Absolutely not. While there may be some understandable confusion about our legal position, there is no doubt that we are “of” the Church, though not necessarily considered “in.” We are the lifeboat for those drowning in the Titanic sinking of the New Religion.

The Assisi events have been deplorable acts of apostasy

Indult/Motu: No, the Pope was simply praying at the same place as those other people. He wasn't praying with them.

SSPX: Yes, but this does not mean that the Pope is not the Pope.

SV: Assisi represents yet another of the events foreseen by Pope Paul IV in his forgotten Papal Bull Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio. Apostasizing and heretical actions and words are self-deposing and no “declaration” that the “See is Vacant” is possible (no man stands above the Pope) or necessary (the distinction of “material” vs. “formal” heresy is IMPOSSIBLE for a Pope), as St. Robert Bellarmine says, “He who is not of the body cannot be the head.”

Chapels which are paid for by the faithful belong to the clergy, not the faithful

Indult/Motu: Of course, Church property is Church property. Our parishes are gifts from the Ordinary, not property of the faithful, (and this is how it should always normally be – SSPX and SV would agree on that point).

SV and SSPX: Indeed, they belong to our respective organizations and we do not feel the need to provide any public accounting for our spending. While these are extraordinary times when faithful must pay for absolutely everything, we do not see a reciprocal extraordinary responsibility to be transparent with our spending, some of which at times involves criminally negligent financial mismanagement which comes from clergy who are too young, green, and unschooled in the incredible responsibilities of managing the heady finances of a parish. We do not involve the laity in our discussions for master planning of chapels/parishes, even though when we transfer to another chapel or pass on from this life, they and their families will be there, not us. Sometimes entire monasteries are lost to the Novus Ordo Church through bad planning.

***

In the final analysis, I hope that people will begin to understand that at a higher level, the questions that are part and parcel of the current crisis have no easy answers, and in some cases, have no answers. Most would agree we are in uncharted waters, so a sectarian spirit that pits fellow Catholics into an “us” vs. “them” paradigm is not helpful. Dr. David Allen White recently said to me, “We are all Protestants now, the way we fight with each other.” Unity at the cost of doctrine is the mistake of the New Ecumenism of Cardinal Kasper. Yet, we must have charity towards all and understanding and patience. As one wise old priest once told me, “These things really take time to understand.” I would add, “and prayer and sacrifice to bear with.”

Sedes Sapientiae, ora pro nobis.

A Bibliography of the Current Crisis in the Catholic Church

2011-06-20T13:25:00.006-05:00

In 1996, a fellow student at the Novus Ordo high school I attended engaged me on Vatican II and the New Mass, things I was quite ignorant about, despite being an engaged-in-my-faith Catholic. He gave me two books: What has Happened to the Catholic Church by the Fathers Radecki, CMRI, and The Problems with the New Mass, by Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy. These books shook my Catholic foundations and questioned everything I didn’t know about the past 40 years of Church history. I would go on to read Open Letter to Confused Catholics, They Have Uncrowned Him, both by Archbishop Lefebvre, and everything that Michael Davies ever wrote in pamphlet and book form. I have read much more since.

An intellectual mentor of mine once said, “When someone says, ‘I don’t know much about x, y, z, but…’ remember to disregard anything that comes out of his/her mouth afterwards.” You do not have a RIGHT to an opinion (no matter what the US Constitution tells you), much less do most people who have not given considered thought nor possess enough education to have useful or insightful opinions into serious matters. So too, I believe that anyone who has not, for example, at least read all of the documents of Vatican II but presumes to have an opinion about them renders him/herself absurd.

What I have enclosed in the bibliography below are 162 books and articles that I have read in the last 15 years which I feel are fundamentally necessary to having useful and productive conversations about the crisis today (note: some of these works are as short as 6 pages, some as lengthy as 800 pages – don’t be intimidated by how long the list is…the important thing is to begin). If you’ve read most of these works, you have a very panoramic view of the crisis and probably possess a diligence of spirit that assumes you can actually learn something from talking to people you disagree with. I would note that I’ve exempted devotional and doctrinal works from this list, because they are not strictly speaking oriented to the Crisis, but those works provide invaluable “background” information that is simply assumed that a Catholic knows. I’ve also excluded “restorationist” works that I deeply value and love, such as Dr. Marian Horvat’s indispensible A Catholic Manual of Civility and Courtesy Calls Again, Dr. John Senior’s Restoration of Christian Culture, the Integrity series as republished by Angelus Press, or Hilaire Belloc's Essay on the Restoration of Property. I think it is vital that a Catholic first understand the problems within the Church, and as such, will see how the Church’s eclipse so deeply affects everything else in our fallen world – our politics, customs and courtesies, our economics.

While I should not have to make this disclaimer, I feel that the current level of so-called intellectual debate requires me to say that I do not endorse all the views of an author simply because I list them on this bibliography (indeed, some of them might shout from the rooftops that they disagree with me!). The authors and their works are listed because they are providing actual engagement in real issues of importance.

While I think all of these works are important, I’ve underlined the ones that I feel are absolutely crucial for those who have limited time to read.

Beginner Works – necessary for all serious thinking Catholics (not just Traditionalists) and not overly difficult to understand

(31 total, 15 of which are crucial)

AA-1025: Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, Marie Carre, TAN
Christ Denied, Fr Paul Wickens, TAN
Cranmer’s Godly Order, Michael Davies, Angelus Press
The Great Façade, Thomas Woods and Chris Ferrara, Remnant Press
I accuse the Council!, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press
The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism, Fr. Denis Fahey, Christian Book Club of America
Letters from the Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary Vol I, Fr Richard Williamson, True Restoration Press
The Liberal Illusion, Louis Veuillot, Angelus Press
Liberalism is a Sin, Fr. Felix Sarda y Salvany, TAN
Open Letter to Confused Catholics, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press
The Ottaviani Intervention, Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, Philothea Press
Previews of the New Papacy, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
Quo Primum Tempore, Pope St. Pius V
They Have Uncrowned Him, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press
What has Happened to the Catholic Church?, The Fathers Radecki, St Joseph’s Media
A Bishop Speaks, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press
Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre Vols I-III, Michael Davies, Angelus Press
Breaking with the Past, Abbot Francis Gasquet
Catholic Prophecy, Yves Dupont, TAN
Close-ups of the Charismatic Movement, John Vennari, Tradition in Action
EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong, Christopher Ferrara, Remnant Press
Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked, Msgr Dillon, Christian Book Club of America
Is Tradition Excommunicated?, SSPX, Angelus Press
Liberalism and Catholicism, Fr. A. Roussel, Angelus Press
The New Rosary, Christopher Ferrara, Remnant Press
Please Don’t Change the Papacy, Tradition in Action
Prophecy for Today, Edward Connor, TAN
Vatican II, Homosexuality, and Pedophilia, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
We Resist You to the Face, Michael Matt, Atila Sinke Guimaraes and others, Remnant Press

Intermediate Works – the reading you can only engage in once you have a working knowledge of the spiderweb of problems created by Vatican II

(78, 45 of which are crucial)

Against the Heresies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Angelus Press
Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican, Fr. Francois Laisney, Angelus Press
Catechism of the Council of Trent, TAN
Complete Documents of Vatican II
Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio, Pope Paul IV
Diuturnum Illud, Pope Leo XIII
Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI
Duties of the Catholic State in Regard to Religion, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani
Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement, Fr. E. Cahill, SJ, MH Gill & Son
E Supremi Apostolatus, St Pius X
Graves di Comuni Re, Pope Leo XIII
Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII
Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII
In the Murky Waters of Vatican II, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism, Fr. Denis Fahey, CssP, Christian Book Club of America
The Kingship of Christ according to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr, Denis Fahey, CssP, Christian Book Club of America
Lambentabili Sane, St. Pius X
“Letter of the Nine” to Archbishop Lefebvre, TraditionalMass.org
“Letter from the then-Fr. Neville to Bishop Fellay,” TraditionalMass.org
Libertas Praestantissimum, Pope Leo XIII
Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII
Mens Nostra, Pope Pius XI
Mirari Vos, Pope Gregory XVI
Mit Brendenner Sorge, Pope Pius XI
Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI
Mystici Corporis, Pope Pius XII
Oath against Modernism, St Pius X
Papacy and Freemasonry, Msgr Jouin, Christian Book Club of America
Pascendi Domenici Gregis, St Pius X
Pope John’s Council, Michael Davies, Angelus Press
Problems with the New Mass, Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy, TAN
Problems with the Prayers of the New Mass, Fr. Anthony Cekada, TAN
Quadragesimo Anno, Pope Pius XI
Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, Pope Pius IX
Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI
Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII
The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, TAN
The Roman Rite Destroyed, Michael Davies, Angelus Press
The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty, Michael Davies, Neumann Press
"Supplied Jurisdiction," Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Angelus Press
Tumultuous Times, the Fathers Radecki, St Joseph’s Media
"Validity of Confessions and Marriages in the Chapels of the SSPX," Fr. Ramon Angles, Angelus Press
The Whole Truth About Fatima Vols I-III, Br. Michael of the Holy Trinity
Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States, Dr. John Rao
Animus Injurandi, Vols I-II, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
Animus Delendi, Vols I-II, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman, Priests of Campos, Angelus Press
The Catholic Church proven by the Bible, Br. Peter Dimond
The Devil’s Final Battle, Fr. Paul Kramer, The Missionary Association
Ecclesia, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
GIRM Warfare, Dr. Thomas Droleskey, Chartres Communications
The Great Sacrilege, Fr. John Wathen, TAN
History of Antichrist, Rev. P. Huchede, TAN
The Horn of the Unicorn, Dr. David Allen White, Angelus Press
Is it the Same Church?, Frank Sheed, Sheed & Ward
Letters from the Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary Vols II-IV, Bishop Richard Williamson, True Restoration Press
The Liturgical Movement, Fr. Didier Bonneterre, Angelus Press
Liturgical Time Bombs in Vatican II, Michael Davies, TAN
Marcel Lefebvre, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Angelus Press
Michael Davies: An Evaluation, John S. Daly
The Mouth of the Lion, Dr. David Allen White, Angelus Press
The Order of Melchisdech, Michael Davies, Roman Catholic Books
Pope Pius IX, Yves Chiron, Angelus Press
Priest where is thy Mass, Mass where is thy Priest?, Various, Angelus Press
The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, Priests of the SSPX, Angelus Press
Restoring Christ as King of All Nations, Dr. Thomas Droleskey, Chartres Communications
The Reign of Christ the King in both Public and Private Life, Michael Davies, TAN
Spiritual Journey, Archbishop Lefebvre, Angelus Press
St Pius X, Yves Chiron, Angelus Press
Twelve Timely Essays on Antichrist, Fr. Charles Coughlin
Trojan Horse in the City of God, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Franciscan Herald Press
Will He Find Faith?, Atila Sinke Guimaraes, Tradition in Action
Who is Dead? God or Democracy? Fr. Charles Coughlin
The complete audio interviews of Bishop Williamson by Bernard Janzen, as delivered over a 20-year period.

Advanced Works – recommended for those with some formal philosophical and theological training and/or those who’ve read the majority of the Beginning and Intermediate lists

(53, of which 12 are crucial)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994), Doubleday
Desire and Deception, Charles Coulombe, Tumblar House
Framework of a Christian State, Fr. E. Cahill, SJ, Roman Catholic Books
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Fr. Michael Muller, TAN
Iota Unum, Romano Amerio, Sarto House
"Is that Chair Vacant?", Fr. Dominique Bourmand, SSPX.ca
One Hundred Years of Modernism, Fr. Dominique Bourmand, Angelus Press
The Plot against the Church, Maurice Pinay, Christian Book Club of America
The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, Msgr Klaus Gamber, Roman Catholic Books
“Resisting the Pope, Sedevacantism and Frankenchurch,” Fr. Anthony Cekada, TraditionalMass.org
“The Pius X and John XXIII Missals Compared,” Bp. Daniel Dolan, TraditionalMass.org
Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the New Mass, Fr. Anthony Cekada, Philothea Press
“An Open Letter to Bishop Kelly on the Thuc Bishops,’” Mario Dirksen, M.A., ThucBishops.com
“Absolutely Null and Utterly Void: The 1968 Rite of Episcopal Consecration,” Fr. Anthony Cekada, TraditionalMass.org
Baptism of Desire: A Patristic Commentary, Fr. Jean-Marc Rulleau, Angelus Press
The Case of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre: Trial by Canon Law, Charles P Nemeth, Esq., Angelus Press
A Catechism of Modernism, Fr. J.B. Lemius, OMI, TAN
Centissimus Annus, John Paul II
Code of Canon Law (1917), Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Code of Canon Law (1983), Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Credo of the People of God, Paul VI
Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II, Knopf
The Destruction of the Christian Tradition, Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy
Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI
The Heart of the Mass, SSPX, Sarto House
“Hermeneutic of Benedict XVI,” Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Le Sel de la Terre
The Hidden Treasure: Holy Mass, St. Leonard of Port Maurice, TAN
How Christ Said the First Mass, Fr. James Meagher, TAN
Humanae Vitae, Paul VI
The Incredible Catholic Mass, Fr. Martin von Cochem, TAN
Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger (also republished recently by Benedict XVI), Ignatius Press
JPII’s Theological Journey to Assisi (2 parts across 4 books), Fr. Joannes Dormann, Angelus Press
Light of the World, Joseph Ratzinger, Ignatius Press
Milestones, Joseph Ratzinger, Ignatius Press
The New Montinian Church, Dr. Joaquin Saenz y Arriaga
Outside the Catholic Church there is Absolutely No Salvation, Brs Peter and Michael Dimond
“The New Ecclesiology: An overview,” Bishop Donald Sanborn, TraditionalMass.org
“Paul VI Beatified?”, Fr. Villa
Pope Paul’s New Mass, Michael Davies, Angelus Press
The Problems with the New Sacraments, Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy
The Ratzinger Report, Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, Ignatius Press
Redemptor Hominis, John Paul II
The Robber Church, Patrick Henry Omlor
Salt of the Earth, Joseph Ratzinger and Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press
Sedevacantism: A false solution to a real problem, Angelus Press
“Sedevacantism and Mr. Ferrara’s Cardboard Pope,” Fr. Anthony Cekada, TraditionalMass.org
The Theology of Karl Rahner, Robert McCarthy, Tradition in Action
Tertio Millennio Adveniente, John Paul II
Ut Unum Sint, John Paul II
Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II

TR Press Video Streaming

2011-06-06T12:35:00.001-05:00

For some time I have been working on a full video-streaming site. This would make my interviews cheaper to the general public (no DVD production/shipping/mailing costs) and also available instantly worldwide once the interviews had been posted.

I am glad to announce that the site is finally live. You can see it at www.truerestorationpress.com/videos. Access to all my interviews I've ever done, as well as a video of a Traditional Latin Mass, done according to Pius X rubrics, is currently available. But I think the real value is coming in the next 30 days, as most of the talks given at my regional conference will be available through that site, as well as new interviews I'm doing both then, and at the end of the month. For more info, read here.

What's the value in subscribing to the video site?

1. Access to all the interviews/ceremonies/conferences produced by True Restoration (that number goes from 10 to 22 by July 3rd, hence the discounted charter price being offered).
2. 20% discount on all TRP purchases.
3. Access to the new content 30 days before anyone else.
4. An ability to converse with the interviewees and fellow subscribers through a forum.
5. A chance to ask interviewees follow-up questions.

The Bishop and I

2011-06-02T14:22:00.001-05:00

The recent publication of my article Quo Vadis, SSPX : Part I has given rise to some confusion and speculation as to how far Bishop Williamson shares, or is responsible for, the positions taken in that article and/or in others expressing various of my personal opinions. This is partly because he and I have been collaborating at True Restoration Press for the last five years. He has provided much (but not all) of the material published by that Press, for which I am solely responsible. It is thus understandable (though it was not intended) that the Bishop may have been implicated to a greater or lesser extent in my past expressions of personal opinion.

During all that time, however, neither the Bishop nor I have ever had the intention of implying – nor have we ever said – that we agreed with all of each other’s positions on various or any particular issues. What each of us thinks, on his own, is a separate matter from, and certainly of more interest than, any coincidental agreement or disagreement we might have on one or another issue. That said, none of our differences of opinion have ever prevented us from collaborating (I hope and believe fruitfully) as writer or speaker, on the one side, and publisher, on the other.

Thus, True Restoration Press will continue, at least until further notice, to carry the Bishop’s books, sermons and interviews. That these serve a useful purpose by their relating of the integral and eternal Catholic Faith to a highly problematic modern world seems to me unarguable. But my private and public opinions on Church and secular issues, past, present and future – including those expressed in the above-mentioned article – are separate matters, and they have never been nor are they endorsed by the Bishop, explicitly or otherwise.

So, to avoid in the future any improper appearance of endorsement (in either direction) or possibility of confusion, the Bishop’s weekly commentary, known as “Eleison Comments” by Dinoscopus, will be, as of July 1, underwritten not by True Restoration Press but by the website Durendal out of Canada.

The Bishop has seen and explicitly approved this clarification.

True Restoration Regional Conference in June

2011-06-01T11:21:00.005-05:00

Messrs. Charles Coulombe and John Sharpe were coming to Kansas City this month to speak to a small group of men on some subjects. Other attendees suggested that both Dr. David Allen White and Dr. E. Michael Jones come to speak as well. I reached out and am honored that both men are coming. Two speakers might be a private affair, but four is a conference, like it or not.

I hope that this rather diverse group of speakers for an impromptu conference signals True Restoration's once and future stance: we stand for truth and do not believe that we can only collaborate with those with whom we agree 100%. That was a luxury afforded to those in the past. In the current crisis, it is not ours. We've gathered a group of erudite speakers who are learned and care about Catholicism, though all do not agree about best remedies to the current crisis. It will be left to you, the layman, to learn with your brain, to contemplate with prayer, and to act when things are made clear to you, with loyalty to the Church, not to a religious congregation.

Here is the most current copy of the schedule: http://freepdfhosting.com/8e57717c33.pdf

I think you're going to find these talks engaging and interesting, but given the short notice, I can imagine that plane airfares will be pricey (but it doesn't hurt to check: I use Hipmunk.com) but those within a driving distance can come in for the Saturday part of the conference only, which includes dinner with Dr. White at a great Austrian restaurant in the evening.

Cost is $350 for all three days, $150 for Saturday ONLY. All meals are included.

There are 5 full scholarships available for high-school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Travel is not included.

For questions of attendance or scholarship, please write to truerestoration at gmail dot com.

More announcements to come in the days ahead.

Quo Vadis, SSPX? Part I: The Failure of the Negotiations

2011-05-29T17:04:00.000-05:00

This article was originally published as an Op-Ed piece in the May 2011 issue of The Four Marks.

I didn’t come to the Traditional Catholic movement until 1996, long after Archbishop Lefebvre had passed from this world to the next. But, I, like any honest Traditional Catholic, know that without him, there would likely be many fewer Traditional Masses throughout the world. Some say he went too far, some say he didn’t go far enough, but I am grateful for what he did do. What Traditional Catholics need to realize is that the situation is now quite different for Catholics than it was in 1991, when the Archbishop died. The question is not “what the Archbishop/SSPX would do” but rather, “what is the reality of the situation?”

Bishop Fellay recently announced the end of the “negotiations” with the Roman authorities. He seems disappointed, but can he really have expected otherwise? Let us review some facts.

The Society of St. Pius X takes dispute with Vatican II. The Roman authorities consider this to be an ecumenical council, much like Nicea, Trent, and Vatican I. Its teachings and spirit have permeated the structures of the Catholic Church since 1962 and have destroyed the faith of millions. The Society of St. Pius X adopts a hybrid position in regards to this Council: their bishops and priests and vast majority of the faithful who attend their chapels consider Vatican II to be an “optional” or “questionable” council. They cite terms like “pastoral” in order to make their case, while ignoring that every Vatican II document was signed by Paul VI as, “We, too, by the Apostolic Authority conferred on us by Christ, join with the venerable fathers in approving, decreeing, and establishing these things in the Holy Spirit, and we direct that what has thus been enacted in synod [council] be published to God’s glory…(signed) I, Paul, Bishop of the Catholic Church.”

I once made this point to a friend outside of Mass, asking him by what authority he, or any SSPX bishop or priest, questioned the authority of Vatican II. “It goes against Tradition,” he said. “Okay, and who made the Society of St Pius X the arbiter of ‘Tradition’? Where can I find in my catechism that if a council is dubious, a religious congregation in Switzerland is to be my guide?” You can imagine I got no answer.

Additionally, what started as a simple fact-finding mission, an interview with Bishop Tissier de Mallerais nearly 5 years ago now, turned into an avocation for me, and apart from hearing Bishop Tissier say that Vatican II must be “erased” from Church history, I’ve also heard Bishop Williamson tell me that Vatican II is a “poisoned cake” and must be “discarded entirely.” Bishop de Galerreta has once referred, in a sermon he gave at a Winona ordination, to the last 20 years as the “institutionalization of the Revolution,” implying that Vatican II was a revolution. Bishop Fellay and the vast majority of Society priests and faithful will often refer to the Conciliar religion as a “new religion” which is manifestly clear, as this new religion has new sacraments, new beliefs, and new behavior. When I ask the question, “How can JPII/Benedict XVI be heads of a ‘new religion’ as well as heads of the Catholic Church?” the silence I receive is indicative of two things: 1) there is a failure to think through the implications of such rhetoric as “new religion” and that 2) the intellectual conclusions of calling it a “new religion” are too horrifying to even discuss.

So, the Society considers Vatican II to be suspect AND Benedict XVI to be a legitimate Pope. There is no Catholic teaching anywhere on earth that makes provision for a Swiss (or any) congregation to be the arbiter of “Tradition” nor is there an explanation anywhere as to how the Supreme Head of the Church on earth, the Vicar of Christ, can be the head of a “new religion” other than the Catholic Church. But, this is the explanation for why there were “negotiations” in the first place. If you believe that you are holding the Catholic Faith, and that all that remains is for you to show the wayward Pope and the other billions of Catholics that they, indeed, are the ones who are lost, then of course you will, like naïfs and ingénues, show up in Rome for “negotiations.” Yet, even this was simply an imitation of the Archbishop’s actions, instead of learning from his mistakes. Countless times the Archbishop went “to Rome” and countless times he was disappointed. Formed in the Roman diplomatic tradition, Archbishop Lefebvre was always looking for one more angle with which to treat with Rome, instead of recognizing that at some point, his tenuous holding position could have only one real conclusion – that the men who let the “smoke of satan” into the Church were the Churchmen themselves. This is why the Archbishop ordained known sedevacantists and had sedevacantist professors at Econe for years: he knew it was a future possibility.

The negotiations failed not because the SSPX was unconvincing or because Bishop de Galerreta was rude, or as some supremely ignorant laymen postulate, because Bishop Williamson hates Jews (or women, or children, or dwarfs too perhaps), but because, as Bishop Fellay seems surprised to learn, they believe in a DIFFERENT RELIGION than the Society holds. The question then devolves to the Society: do we hold the Catholic Faith? If we do, then those in possession of the Catholic instruments of authority are usurpers, as the Arians were during the time of St. Athanasius and St. Eusebius. If those in the Society dare to say that they don’t have the Catholic Faith, and that wearing a white cassock makes you right (even though antipopes have worn the white cassock, reigned from Rome, etc.), then they should humbly, on their knees, seek suppliance, forgiveness, and reintegration into the Catholic Church.

The negotiations failed because the Society of St Pius X has a distorted ecclesiology, and the chickens finally came home to roost. What remains to be seen is what will happen now. For those of us who have watched the SSPX for years, the predictable will likely happen: the SSPX will crawl back into the bunker, after some time in the sunshine after the (ironically more restrictive) Motu Proprio of Benedict XVI and the propagation of the Orwellian phrase "Extraordinary Form." There will be appeals to “tradition” and “the Archbishop” and all that, and no honest confrontation of what is going on.

The negotiations failed because the Conciliar Church, as headed by Paul VI, JPI and JPII, and now Benedict XVI, are bent on creating a One World Religion. All the Archbishop did in 1986 when Assisi I happened was make a statement of protest. He never called it what it was: an act of apostasy. Assisi II happened and Bishop Fellay made his necessary noises. And now Assisi III will happen, in the same year that John Paul II was made “Beato.” Yet the Society continues to, in Orwellian fashion, tell us that none of this means anything. It doesn’t matter that the Pope writes books saying that contraception is okay, it doesn’t matter that he prays in mosques or synagogues, it doesn’t matter that he is calling a congress of religions, and it doesn’t matter that he beatified who is potentially the worst Pope (if he was one) in Church history. Nothing matters. He has a white cassock, and as such, HAS to be Pope. The issue of canonizations/beatifications has proven to be a thornier one, as no one really cared when John XXIII was “beatified.” But people know that JPII was notoriously bad – not just for his heresies, but for his conduct. Yet the SSPX and other "recognize and resisters" maintain that canonizations/beatifications are not covered by infallibility – yet the issue of Sainthood/Blessedhood must indeed be covered by the Church’s disciplinary Magisterium. It is not for a congregation, Swiss or otherwise, to dispute who the Church proclaims as worthy of veneration. It is out of order in the organizational sense, and it is completely unfounded in the Catholic sense.

The negotiations failed because the large checks that flow into Menzingen and other Society General Houses around the world would stop if the Society were to ask The Question: Is the Pope Catholic?

As for the faithful, who are struggling to simply get to Mass, say the Rosary, and live a virtuous life, it is a battle entirely out of their control. If the SSPX does one day lose its schizophrenic current ecclesiology, it will either: 1) rejoin the New World Order Church that it was briefly part of in 1970-1971 or 2) realize its own Catholicity and reject the holders of authority in the Church as usurpers. In the first scenario, tens of thousands of faithful will return to garage and hotel Masses, and learn the lesson that St. Augustine drives home in the City of God: nothing on this earth lasts. In the second scenario, tens of thousands of faithful will ask the question in prayer that has been too horrific for the SSPX to confront since the Archbishop died: what do I do now? Yet, in both of these scenarios, the faithful will gain, as they will be confronted with the truth. The SSPX’s current position, schizophrenic and distorted, is simply unsustainable, and more importantly, not Catholic.

Interview with Sir Charles Coulombe

2011-05-26T10:52:00.000-05:00

I've had the opportunity over the years to have the privilege of interviewing laymen and clergy, but only in the last 6 months have I had the luxury of an HD camera and crew. With this improvement in quality comes an increase in cost on my side, and while I've always made my interviews free on the web, the time has passed for my simply doing the interviews "at cost" - selling the DVDs to cover my travel and video editing and post production costs.

The excerpt of the Sir Charles Coulombe interview below is the third of three new interviews which are part of a new initiative to provide streaming video downloads in addition to DVDs for my interviews. I intend to do more interviews and cover more ceremonies. Traditional Catholicism deserves at least as much news coverage as the latest Jersey Shore outrage, and I intend to, as best I can on a part-time basis, remedy that disparity.

Your options to buy a streaming video or a DVD will display at the end of this video excerpt.

|More

Interview with Father Paul Sretenovic

2011-05-26T03:52:00.000-05:00

I've had the opportunity over the years to have the privilege of interviewing laymen and clergy, but only in the last 6 months have I had the luxury of an HD camera and crew. With this improvement in quality comes an increase in cost on my side, and while I've always made my interviews free on the web, the time has passed for my simply doing the interviews "at cost" - selling the DVDs to cover my travel and video editing and post production costs.

The excerpt of the Fr. Sretenovic interview below is the second of three new interviews which are part of a new initiative to provide streaming video downloads in addition to DVDs for my interviews. I intend to do more interviews and cover more ceremonies. Traditional Catholicism deserves at least as much news coverage as the latest Jersey Shore outrage, and I intend to, as best I can on a part-time basis, remedy that disparity.

Your options to buy a streaming video or a DVD will display at the end of this video excerpt.

|More

Interview with Father Patrick Perez

2011-05-25T15:51:00.001-05:00

I've had the opportunity over the years to have the privilege of interviewing laymen and clergy, but only in the last 6 months have I had the luxury of an HD camera and crew. With this improvement in quality comes an increase in cost on my side, and while I've always made my interviews free on the web, the time has passed for my simply doing the interviews "at cost" - selling the DVDs to cover my travel and video editing and post production costs.

The excerpt of the Fr. Perez interview below is the first of three new interviews which are part of a new initiative to provide streaming video downloads in addition to DVDs for my interviews. I intend to do more interviews and cover more ceremonies. Traditional Catholicism deserves at least as much news coverage as the latest Jersey Shore outrage, and I intend to, as best I can on a part-time basis, remedy that disparity.

Your options to buy a streaming video or a DVD will display at the end of this video excerpt.

|More

The Restoration X: Gift-giving and the Real Christmas

2011-03-24T18:33:00.002-05:00

I do realize that the appearance of this article in March is not as timely as the original planned publication date, which was in February for the end of the Christmas season, at Candlemas. Just consider it advanced planning for this year.

This article originally appeared in the March 2011 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

One of the many forgotten arts of time past is that of gift-giving. Technology, which had promised the gift of extra time, has simply helped us relegate those time-consuming tasks that made us civilized to the realm of oblivion.

Gifts are supposed to be something more than a formality and a duty. They are supposed to pay tribute to the giver and the one to whom the gift is being given. The gift we give reflects not just ourselves, but our relationship with that person. An example that comes to mind is a birthday gift that I gave to my friend Brian some years past. He was in the midst of his new business which took up almost all of his leisure time. I knew that he used to play the harmonica in more leisured times and for his birthday I got him a new one and some harmonica tunes. It was a sign from me to him to relax a bit more, take some time, and remember his past-times. It was not pricey, but also not something I could just pick up from the supermarket on the way to this birthday dinner.

Today, such gifts are often replaced by gift cards. Gift cards are the ultimate expression of the careless culture. Now, I am not saying that all who have ever given a gift card as a gift or those who have gleefully spent them (as I often have) are wretched debasers of gift-culture. I only hope to, as I always do in these columns, challenge our lazy non-questioning of very new social conventions.

Gift cards are essentially cash. They are an admission that, “I didn’t know what to get you, maybe because I don’t know you well enough, or maybe because I didn't take the time to get you a gift, so I took five minutes in person or a minute on the web to get this for you. Cheers.” Companies love the gift card, as almost 40% of them are never redeemed, lost, or stolen. That’s free revenue for them. There is a gift card exchange on the internet, where you can trade your unwanted gift card for another one that you do want, or redeem it for cash. And wonder of wonders, Amazon is currently patenting a way for you to pre-return gifts from certain gift-givers so you don’t have to dirty your hands by actually receiving said unwanted gift.

I say if you plan to give a gift card, why give a gift at all? I am not saying all gifts need to be magnificent. I think of Queen Elizabeth’s gift to President Obama: a pen and stand made of timbers from a slave ship. What did this say about her character, their relationship, and her estimation of him? (and what did his gift of an iPod to her say about the same? Quite the contrary answer!)

Gifts are only obligatory on certain occasions: birthdays of direct family and close extended family, marriages, baptisms and other sacraments, and perhaps too, on Christmas (more on that now-gift-perverted holiday in a moment). If a gift cannot be given, at least give a card with a few thoughts of sentiment, so that like a gift, your card may be kept to reflect on in future times.

It is February and hence we are only just out of the Christmas season as of the Feast of Candlemas, but what a perversion modern Christmas has become! Santa, with his massive girth and bright red robe and hordes of reindeer and elves, has eclipsed Our Lord as the reason for the season. Children, instead of being reminded that Our Lord is come into our world and hearts, are themselves instead worshipped with endless gifts from doting parents and relatives. As joyful a child as I was at the mountain of gifts I received, I cringe now to recall that on not one of those occasions was my joy occasioned by the thought of my Lord’s birth. Christmas morning was about presents, me, and how many I got, period.

I would run down the stairs, survey the scene of booty below, and prepare for my father’s enforced ritual of slow present opening, from youngest to oldest, one-by-one. I don’t fault my parents for taking part in this ritual; it was, for some time, so intertwined with Christmas symbols that people thought they were indeed celebrating Christmas. It is clear now that we were worshipping one thing: Mammon.

Two Decembers ago I was on Orchard Road, the main thoroughfare in the island-city of my birth, Singapore. At the very head of Orchard Road was a giant sleigh with a sign reminding me that this display was brought to me by Visa. Indeed, Visa would receive our oblations, our worshipful thanks, and our true worship. As for Christ, He was to be remembered on one day alone, the 25th. And what an odd way to be remembered, by giving gifts to ourselves instead of Him!

I propose below some ways in which Christians may restore Christmas to its proper meaning and by further result, re-remember the art of gift-giving throughout the year. As always, these are suggestions.

1. Celebrate Christmas via the Liturgical Year. This means that if you wish to put up a Christmas tree in your home (a time-honored, though not-ancient Christian practice), please do so, but think not to adorn it before Gaudete Sunday. The Church affords no liturgical space for you to celebrate, so take it not upon yourself. If you put up manger scenes in your home, take care neither to put the Christ-child in the crib nor to put the wisemen out. It is not yet time. Make sure to celebrate St. Nicholas Day and give your children a holiday that the worldly children do not have.

2. Do not play Christmas music in your house or your car until Christmas Day. You will be unable to avoid the Christmas music played absolutely everywhere, including on hold on the telephone. Take that as penance and remember, we as Catholics celebrate for a month AFTER Christmas. The world starts the month before. So too save your Christmas treats of food and special cooking for after the 25th.

3. Celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas. Instead of making Christmas day about your children, make it about Our Lord. Make sure that everyone has a gift to present to Our Lord on Christmas Day. It might be a poem, or a drawing, or a spiritual bouquet, but make it something that is encouraged and celebrated by all. Your children will, as years go on, strive to outdo each other in a holy completion. Twelfth Night should be a night of joy in your home.

4. Celebrate Epiphany by making paper crowns and putting out the wisemen in the manger scene and singing Christmas songs. On Epiphany exchange gifts as a family. It is then that the Christ-child received His gifts, so too you might exchange gifts as He received them. I feel that young children in general (at least my nieces and nephews) have far, far too many toys and a much more valuable gift to them this time of year might be gold and silver coins, which in addition to reflecting the gifts given to Our Lord, will appreciate markedly in value over time. Limit your gifts to three. Our Lord did not receive more than that, why do you deserve more?

5. Take every opportunity to wish Merry Christmas to those around you far beyond the 25th of December. When they confusedly ask you why you do so, you can explain to them that Catholics celebrate the season of Christmas for over a month after the 25th, and it is thus that you greet them so.

In all of this realize you are fighting the world and as such you will train your children in what they know. If they don’t know, from an early age, that Christmas is a selfish, gift-giving orgy that is all about them, they might instead know, from an early age, that Christmas is a time of great happiness, when young souls may be fired by a generosity of spirit to give all they have to the Newborn King.

I pen this while still in the season of Christmas, so I wish all of you, a very Happy Christmas.

2010 Angelus Press Conference, Days 2 & 3

2010-10-19T14:23:00.001-05:00

Ah, for the good old days of live blogging! The Hilton would not let you get on their internet unless you were staying there, and so I had to do things the old-fashioned way: paper and pen!

I had the opportunity to upload pictures from the Mass and from the conferenc e, as well as a short excerpt of the Mass, but today I will add some extracts of what the various speakers were saying. I want to make sure that unlike my usual pieces that are editorializing, I'm hoping here to simply report what was said and save my own opining for another time.

That said, the first two talks of Saturday were John Vennari and Fr. Kenneth Novak. John's talk was on the Archbishop's role before and during the Council. Because I had work commitments I did not get to the conference until halfway through Fr. Kenneth Novak's talk. Now, for those of you who know Fr. Novak, he has an inimitable style of talking, though it is fun to imitate it in front of him sometimes. He was talking about the importance of the Traditional Mass in our daily lives. Some memorable takeaways:

1. "Priests are absolutely necessary and (raises voice) BOYS, if you have the right DNA, you'll figure that out."
2. "All of these various groups - the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, the Good Shepherd, the Institute of my own Institute - they all owe their existence to the Archbishop."
3. "The darkness is around us, so let your light shine - don't hide it under a bushel...in other words, burn baby burn!"

Fr. Scott Gardner started his talk by pointing out that he was one of the few speakers this weekend who did not ever meet the Archbishop personally. He was only 10 months old when the SSPX was founded and was not even a Catholic. He found a copy of Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre while browsing a conciliar Benedictine library. What he read there and in a book called The Council Date Book (which listed the various interventions of Council Fathers: Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer included) testified to the Archbishop's tenacity, consistency, and fidelity.

He also noted that while some teachers of the Church have been called "the Universal Doctor" or the "Seraphic Doctor" that when history judges the Archbishop he will be called "the Doctor of the Obvious."

He quoted Bishop Williamson regarding the depositum fidei: "It's all there, a giant dump truck left everything by the time John died on Patmos. We may have to sort through everything that was left. We may have to dust off some things. But we are not to throw anything away. We are not to add anything to it. There are no new deliveries scheduled. Ever."

He cautioned against putting all "our eggs in the basket of Modernism" for liberalism predates modernism. It creates a Liberal Catholicism which is not liberal enough for the liberals and not Catholic enough for the Catholics.

The Bishop Fellay talk was by far the longest. This was perhaps the 4th or 5th time that I have heard the Bishop give a conference and I've never heard him speak for less than 2 hours. He has a steady speaking style which, while not dynamic, is engaging in its own way. He kept the audience listening, for the most part, for about 2 1/2 hours.

The first part of the talk was on the Archbishop's book, Spiritual Journey. It was given to the SSPX in September 1990 at a Priests' retreat. He started with some quotes:

"Now I have finished my work. God can call me."

"The evil of the council results from the ignorance of Jesus Christ and of His Kingship, the evil of the bad angels, the evil which is the way to Hell."

"It is because the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer at the center of the preoccupations of our prelates that they lose the sense of God and of the Catholic priesthood. Because of this we can no longer follow them."

Bishop Fellay then continued in his own words:

"We feel as though there is something 'wrong' with the Council. It is difficult to describe. The plain error is very rare.

The only way to read the Council in a Catholic way is to read with the filter of Tradition."

His Excellency also shared some stories about the non-belief in Hell by various churchmen, most notably by von Balthasar who speculated that Hell was "probably empty."

He shared that at the second Assisi meeting, the Franciscans removed crucifixes from all the rooms given to other religions for their false worship. "In order to build unity," he mused, "you don't have to do much, just remove a little crucifix."

"There are no texts after the council that speak of 'false religions.'"

The evening concluded with dinner a slide show of the progress of the SSPX from founding to present, narrated by Dr. Andrew Childs.

Sunday was witness to a very well conducted pontifical high Mass at St. Vincent's. It was full and was followed with a brunch at the parish hall.

The conference ended with Fr. Cyprian talking about his recollections of the Archbishop and the monastic origins of the SSPX, and Fr. McMahon reiterating the importance of Catholic education. He repeated a phrase that had been used in several talks during the weekend: "In order to prepare for the future you have to look to the past."

Fr. Rostand closed the conference with an announcement that next year's conference would be October 7-9 and would be on Christ the King, with H.E. Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais as a keynote speaker.

I must say, as someone who attends conferences frequently, not just religious ones, that for a first-time, Angelus Press did a remarkable job. Despite the fact that we were near capacity at the venue, the talks ran on time, the food was decent, there were plenty of booths and books, and all sorts were drawn to the event, making for remarkable fellowship and friendship-forming. A special thank you to everyone at the Angelus Press & at St. Vincent de Paul who pulled this event off.

2010 Angelus Press Conference: Day 1

2010-10-16T03:06:00.001-05:00

Ongoing coverage will be offered, when possible, of this year's conference in Kansas City.

I had some work commitments that kept me from getting to the conference any earlier than minutes before the first talk. I picked up my badge and schedule and found myself in total surprise at the amount of people in the ballroom. The last Traditional Catholic conference that I covered was in 2006. It was a Remnant conference and even though there were some great speakers, like Dr. David Allen White, the crowd was at the most 1/3 of the size of the crowd I saw tonight.

The crowd waited a few minutes after the start time of 6:00pm. I wondered who we were waiting for, when everyone got on his feet and began applauding. It was Bishop Fellay. When he was seated, James Vogel, Associate Editor of the Angelus and MC for the weekend, introduced Fr. Arnaud Rostand, District Superior of the United States. Fr. Rostand focused his conference on the question: "Why are we here?"

His talk set the tone for the weekend: "We are here to express our gratitude." Reminding the crowd of the degrees of gratitude (recognizing the favor received, expression of appreciation, and repayment of the gift received). Fr. Rostand briefly glossed the Archbishop's life and work, reminding the audience that the Archbishop was not just misunderstood by outsiders, but by members of his congregation.

Father Rostand continued: "We are engaged in a crusade for the Mass, for Christ the King, for the Catholic church, for Catholic families..." which was "not about our opinions or preferences, but about the Holy Catholic Church.”

Fr. Iscara gave a conference recapping the Archbishop's life and work from his days of formation to his final years with the SSPX. The information was not new for anyone who has read Bp. Tissier's biography of the Archbishop or Dr. White's shorter book about the Archbishop. However, Fr. Iscara bookended this broadly-sketched conference with two important points.

He began with a story by recounting a visit to the ruins of Pompeii with seminarians. Some friendly nuns had come by with umbrellas, hoping to shield the young men in cassocks, who they were so pleased to see. "What order are you from?" "The Society of St. Pius X." Not recognizing the name, they asked who the founder was. "Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre." As the name was pronounced, the nuns stopped smiling, beat a hasty retreat, excusing themselves as politely as possible, and left the seminarians once again alone.

Father ended his talk by pointing out that Vatican II was trying to be "up-to-date" and "cool" and ended up by dating itself in the 1960s. The vestments, the music, the architecture of the Vatican II church are stuck in the 1960s, when what is perennially "up-to-date" is the never-dated always-new doctrines of the Church.

The evening ended with hors d'oeurves and musical performances from some of the students from Society schools. The mood was festive and celebratory, and there were many priests, religious, and faithful present.

I'll get an actual head count tomorrow during the longest day of conferences. Photos for tonight available here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=28585&l=9d837f3391&id=141281255892731

The Restoration IX: Letter-writing

2010-06-16T23:10:00.002-05:00

This article originally appeared in the June 2010 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

One of the benefits of moving frequently in my youth was the opportunity that it afforded me to have pen-pals. My most frequent correspondents were my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Jean Caskey from Nebraska, and my Godfather, Mr. Tony Jiggins. I had met her in Singapore while I was attending school and we kept in touch from the 3rd grade until the 8th grade, when we stopped writing (I honestly can’t recall why). He was at my baptism and, of course, we are still in touch.

My letters to and from these special people (and others) gave me a point of constancy in an ever-changing youth. That point of constancy helped contextualize both the rapid changes I was undergoing as a young man and my constantly changing surroundings (I was moving essentially every two years over a decade-long period). It is also a record I can go back to and read anytime. And I do, every few years.

I remember being excited to see my name on an envelope, knowing it was the next installment of an ongoing conversation. I would often tear a letter open with my fingers, not imitating my parents’ methodical and proper use of a letter opener (My mother would often proffer a letter opener to me or leave one on my desk in hopes of reforming me but alas, to this day I am a barbarian. Thank goodness my assistant is not). I would eagerly read the letter once through, quickly, to get the main points. Then I would savor it again, by reading it a second time, but this time slowly. After I made it through my letters (sometimes I got more than one letter a day, even more exciting), the letter would get put back in the envelope and put at the bottom of “the stack.”

The stack was on the right corner of my desk. It was correspondence I needed to return, and its very existence was a reminder to me to do it. The letter at the top of the stack had the longest interval since a reply so it would be attended to first. My mother having raised me properly, I had stationery, and would write back as quickly as I could. I had a 30-day rule, meaning if it was more than a month since I returned a letter I had to sit down as soon as possible and write back. I was 12.

Most 12 year-olds today could barely compose an intelligible email, much less a letter. It is not because, as many easily decry, that our youth are all vapid idiots. They are not (well, maybe just every youth on The Hills). They are just recipients of the legacy we have given them: we have destroyed letter-writing. Or rather, we have let it be destroyed right under us. And I helped.

I am an “early adopter.” As trends come and go, I am often among the first to try a new thing. When the internet and email first dawned, I was one of the first at my college to have a laptop and who was on the internet every single day. I encouraged those to whom I wrote letters to join me on the new exciting “world wide web”. For a while, we just treated it like a new medium for letter writing. We continued our correspondence, but online, and my new “stack” was my online email inbox. Since so few people had email back then, it worked.

But time, and the wave of the internet, changed any hopes I might have subconsciously had that my letter-writing system would stay the same. My correspondence (and correspondents) dropped off, until I am left with the sad fact that I confess to you today: I have none.

Sure, I send emails like anyone else. Sometimes long, meaningful emails. But despite whatever feelings they might express, in their cold, typed ephemera, they are as cold as cyberspace. Surely when they write the history of our times, if this world ever makes it until then, they will search among our meaningless twitter feeds, facebook status updates, and oceans of emails. But will they find anything as meaningful as a diary entry from a Confederate soldier, lamenting the invasion of his country and the end of everything he has known, or the letters of T.S. Eliot, who often scribbled illustrations on the tops or sides of his correspondence, or the simple “I love you” card my youngest sister inscribed to me when she was 6? I won’t wait for your answer. Nor will I wait to change this in one small way.

So, I’ve decided to work on my small corner of the universe. I am going to forcefully reintroduce letter-writing into my life. I’m not going to be too ambitious (I’ve learned from too many failed New Years’ or Lenten Resolutions). I’m going to start with my family first. Three sisters and my parents will be quite a restart after years of not writing. I only have thank-you note stationery (there is one habit my mother taught me that I have never lost, Deo gratias). I’ll have to order letter-writing stationery. I’ll have to re-remember what it is to sit down with a pen and paper and to thoughtfully express myself without a backspace key. I’ll have to set aside time to write, instead of buying into the canard that our tech-driven culture (technology was supposed to free us to have more time, remember?) hands us: being too busy. But in returning to letter-writing I’ll be doing what I did in my youth, and what men and women have done for millennia.

I know it will be hard. I’ll tell you how it goes. But I already know how much it will enrich my life. I’ll return to that place of my youth, and know it again, for the first time.

Interview with Bp. Richard Williamson, London, 2010

2010-05-15T21:08:00.013-05:00

Find below the interview I conducted with Bishop Williamson in January of this year when I was in London visiting him.

I have been the beneficiary of yet another great review on Durendal: this time it was penned by Nicholas Wansbutter, Editor of H.L.'s Dinoscopus weekly column. You can find his review of the interview here:

http://rencesvals.blogspot.com/2010/05/durendal-reviews-bishop-williamson.html

Please enjoy this first interview in English with the Bishop this year. It is over 90 minutes long, and if you need to pause and come back, you can use the question #s to forward to the chapter where you left off.

The interview is divided into 7 chapters: 1) Globalism and 2010, 2) Government above God, 3) True Feminism and Catholic Marriage, 4) Benedict XVI and Vatican II, 5) The Society of St. Pius X, 6) French Leadership of Tradition, and 7) Our Lady.

The Bishop is in good spirits and the interview shows it. This interview is part of the London Interviews series. I did two with H.L. in June 2009 and you can find links to them in the sidebar on the right under "Interviews with SSPX clergy." If you wish to purchase any of these interviews and more, you may visit:

http://truerestorationpress.com/catalog/2

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Interview with Fr. Paul Morgan, London, 2010

2010-04-28T13:31:00.003-05:00

Find below an interview I did with Fr. Morgan in January of this year. It has already received a very generous review on Durendal:

http://rencesvals.blogspot.com/2010/04/review-of-stephen-heiners-excellent.html

It is also available for sale on DVD here:

http://truerestorationpress.com/node/34

Father discusses the history of the British District, the Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay, the negotiations with Rome, and much more...

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Why I don't "support the troops"

2010-03-18T19:01:00.006-05:00

This article originally appeared as an op-ed in the March 2010 issue of The Four Marks. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

Some weeks back one of the speakers at a conference I was attending told me over a meal that his son was heading into the Marines via ROTC, and he wanted to know what I, as a former Marine and as someone who had attended Officer Candidates’ School, thought about his son's military aspirations. I did not have encouraging words for him.

I had a conversation about this subject with one of my former students some months ago. I have taught hundreds of students, but only a few students become friends and keep in touch with me for years after we have stopped having a tutoring relationship. This young man, who had taken advantage of every opportunity to grow and learn about himself, and already a mature gentleman when I first met him at 17, wanted to enter the military, specifically the Marine Corps.

He was attracted to the Marines for the same reasons that I was, when I first enlisted in 1999. The Marine Corps is the most elite branch of the military. Sure, there are the Rangers, and the SEALs, etc., but they are special forces of various branches, whereas “normal” Marines guard our Embassies and the President, apart from having the longest , most demanding boot camp of any of the armed forces, and are always looked to as “first in” in major conflicts. If he was going to be in the military, he reasoned, he wanted to be in the best branch. I couldn’t disagree with that.

We started speaking about the military as a profession and came to the discussion of how empty the notion of "supporting the troops" is. I’ve always been troubled by the red-meat phraseology of “support the troops” because it is a disingenuous, provocative, and loaded phrase. Supporting the troops precisely means caring about the troops. It doesn't mean rah-rah jingoistic victory cheers in the worst tradition of "my country, right or wrong," but rather it means you are willing to support them, make sacrifices for them, encourage and ask them to make their own personal sacrifices, all on behalf of our nation if our cause is morally just and legally true. Such "support" cannot be given in this period of our nation's history.

Indeed, it has become impossible to “support the troops” given our current unprecedented militaristic overreach. We have over 700 known bases in more than 120 countries around the world. The mission of the United States military is to maintain a constant forward presence which helps enable sales of our most important export: weapons. The government, since the War of 1812 (which as the 200th anniversary approaches we should be ever mindful of), has entangled the American people in unnecessary wars through prevarication, provocation, and propagandistic misinformation. As Chalmers Johnson once said in the essential-to-watch documentary, “Why We Fight," "the defense budget last year was $750,000,000,000 and profits went up 25%...when war becomes that profitable, you are going to see more of it.”

If you join the military today, you are not signing up for honorable military service as millions of young men have, willingly or no, throughout millennia; rather, you are signing up for, among other things:

* Illegally occupying countries like Afghanistan and Iraq
* Unnecessarily basing troops in countries that have not been warlike in two generations, like Japan and Germany
* Torturing people in a sitzkrieg called the “War on Terror”
* Continual provocation of China by our schizophrenic stance towards Taiwan
* An outdated warlike footing of NATO based on irrational Russophobia
* An Israel-first policy that is not only harmful to American interests and Americans, but accepts as a priori the legitimacy of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israel in 1948 as well as the ongoing treatment of Palestinians in the tradition of the Nazis' treatment of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.

There are skills that the military teaches that used to be the demesne of local militias: sustained outdoor living, weapons marksmanship, close order combat. These are skills that, without the military, might be lost among my mostly militia-less generation. Yet I must advocate that these skills, needful to men in general, and more than ever as our country heads off the cliff of a major economic collapse, must be learned, however we can manage it, because I told my former student the same thing that I told that professor some weeks ago: that I couldn’t encourage any young man of worth to enter the military today. It is impossible, both practically and legally, for one man to stand up against the behemoth that is the military/industrial complex. One cannot, in good conscience, join the US military of today, engaged as it is, in numerous unjust missions worldwide.

The moral implications of potential deployments to assignments of unjust purport and purpose aside, the military is no place for a stable family to be raised. Children are uprooted every few years, and spouses are subject to sometimes long and painful separations. Entering the military is not only an acceptance of our warlike sham “defense of democracy and freedom,” it is an acceptance of a nomadic lifestyle that is not only inimical to the raising of a stable family, but to the peaceful rootedness of even a single man.

We already have on our shoulders the massive social sins of keeping a government in power that murders civilians in other countries, babies in our own, all while stealing our future through devaluing our currency. We should not encourage our fellow citizens to take up arms to “support and defend” those projects.

By Bishop Tissier's Request

2010-03-12T16:32:00.000-06:00

His article has been removed.

Das ist geschehen: Responding to Herr Krah

2010-02-10T03:31:00.004-06:00

Somewhere, despite my inability to fluently speak the language, a vestigial hatred of seeing a phrase like “die darstellung von Heiner ist falsch” is insulting to the Bavarian blood that flows in my veins. This insult was part of the sad epitaph to the Der Spiegel story of last week, written by its librettist, Maximilian Krah, on Kreuz.net.

In this piece, Krah engaged in various nitpicking points – like saying he wasn’t in London in August – fine, then it was July or some other summer month; or saying that Bishop Williamson did not definitely refuse the interview, when he definitely did; or referring to the fact that Bp Williamson emailed one of the Spiegel reporters, when it was only to respond to something that Krah had leaked to them, that he had told them that the Bishop thought they were “rats” and the reporter wrote back saying, “We may be rats, but we are nice rats.” The bishop, embarrassed at his confidence being broken, apologized and was gracious. But, this is all an unimportant sideshow, and necessary fodder for the most important paragraph that Mr. Krah penned. Point 4 of Krah’s article is translated as well as our staff can manage:

If the SSPX does not here make clear that it has nothing to do with that (Bishop Williamson's failure to fulfill his duty to abstain from historical-political activities), it must reckon with being once more attacked.

I point out that supervision by the Constitution Protection Agency was called for last year, and I point out that if the SSPX gets actually reported on by the same Agency, its apostolate in Germany will become next to impossible.

If anyone does not want that to happen, they must make clear that they distance themselves from Bishop Williamson and his activities. That has happened.

(emphasis mine)

This pithy group of sentences requires some commentary.

First, we should point out the utter absurdity, repeated at the highest levels of the SSPX, that the Society does not concern itself with “historical matters.” As a graduate of an SSPX college, St. Mary’s College in Kansas, I can testify to the fact that, contrary to what any cleric might pronounce, there is indeed a Catholic point of view to any number of historical events, like, for example, the imprisonment of Galileo or the Battle of Lepanto, which is often in direct contradiction to popular notions. Catholicism is not confined to the sanctuary. It encompasses the whole of our lives. Jesus Christ is yesterday, today, and forever. So too the story of His Church, interwoven among the threads of millennia, is indeed a matter of “history.” His very birth and death are history. So, it ist falsch to say that Catholicism, and that bishops, who are guardians of the Faith, are to say nothing about history, and are instead to cow like dogs before politicians who foam at the mouth like the devil himself.

Secondly, if it is said that I am the Bishop’s secretary, so be it. It is therefore understood that anything I write or say about him has at least his tacit approval. If this be admitted, it must also be admitted that Maximilian Krah, who has been counsel to the SSPX longer than I have been “secretary” to Bishop Williamson, also enjoys the same tacit approval for what he says, and from the highest levels of the SSPX.

Therefore, when he says that it was necessary to create distance between the SSPX and Bishop Williamson so that the Society may continue its apostolate in Germany, I believe him. It is a practical measure, but it is one that is pretended to be carried off as noble. The last line of Krah’s response was “this has happened.” Meaning, he set up the Spiegel piece as a way to show Bishop Williamson as unbalanced, ill, and outcast by what might be humorously called his “brothers” in the priesthood. A face-to-face interview would have provided more logs for the burning of the excommunicate, but what kindling Krah could gather, through his various sources, served enough for the necessary “distance” Krah dictated, which any thinking person can gather, was not solely at his own initiative, though it may have been through his own advice. Gut. Es wird getan.

And now we know whose side Krah is actually on.

A little gem

2010-02-09T02:32:00.003-06:00

The Bishop, playing for his seminarians, in Le Reja...

Bp. Tissier article

2010-02-06T22:47:00.000-06:00

In this week's column, Bishop Williamson refers to a recently translated article of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais' on the "Hermaneutics" of Benedict XVI.

We will be releasing this online in the weeks ahead. If you are interested in reading it before then, you can buy a bound copy of it here (no shipping charges):

http://truerestorationpress.com/articles/faith_imperiled_by_reason

Interviews with Father Daniel Couture

2010-02-06T20:53:00.000-06:00

Fascinating interviews with Father Daniel Couture, done at the end of December, 2009.

Part I

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2010/02/interview-with-sspx-district-superior.html

Part II

http://rencesvals.blogspot.com/2010/02/stephen-heiner-interviews-fr-daniel.html

Der Spiegel: The Real Story

2010-02-02T13:06:00.006-06:00

When he was still with us, a famous American journalist named Paul Harvey hosted a short afternoon program called “The Rest of the Story.” The program would feature little known facts about a generally well-known event. It would seem that Der Spiegel’s current hit piece against the SSPX needs its own “rest of the story” given that it is an incomplete version of what happened. The incompleteness is ironic given that the left always pretends to be tolerant and open to hearing other points of view. I will now give the account of the story as it was told to me in person, one week after the Spiegel “incident,” by Fr. Lindstrom and Bp. Williamson themselves, when I was visiting St. George’s House in London.

What actually happened:

Summer 2009

The SSPX’s German lawyer, who advises the SSPX on all legal problems in Germany, visits London to explain a possible plea bargain which would head off the Regensburg trial. In September, the German State prosecutor, for whatever reason, refuses the plea bargain, but the Bishop was grateful to the lawyer, Maximilan Krah, for his pains.

December 2009

The lawyer proposes another Spiegel interview, like the one he arranged in the spring. Now, you should know that Krah was the person who helped “proctor” the last Spiegel interview. For that interview the Bishop was given written questions, he answered, Krah reviewed the answers for propriety, and then Spiegel changed their questions so that they could look more ferocious and the Bishop could look more meek. Given that this was the ill use that the Bishop was given last time, I’m surprised that Krah was able to convince him to do another round with these people. However, Krah is aware of being “in front” of a story and so he wants to limit potential damage in the German Press on the upcoming first anniversary of the Swedish TV interview. The Bishop agrees in principle, though he does not confirm any details.

A couple of weeks later, at the end of the month, Krah proposes an in-person “pre-game” visit which would help prep him for the interview. This will help with the proper spin for the story. The Bishop is uneasy with “spin” and for him, what had been a “green light” earlier in the month now turns "yellow."

5 January 2010

Krah insists on coming for the pre-interview “coaching session.” The Bishop expresses the discomfort he has with Krah’s proposal and expresses the desire to change the interview format to the same as last time: written questions. Such a situation would make any London visit of Krah and the journalists unnecessary. The Bishop says to Krah, “Do NOT come, because I will not speak”. The yellow light turned red.

12 January 2010

Bishop Fellay’s personal secretary telephones St. George’s House at 1500 GMT to notify the Bishop that Krah and “two friends” will visit on Wednesday. It is said that they may indeed "already be in London."

That same Tuesday evening at 2030 Krah and two Spiegel journalists knock on the door at St. George’s House in Wimbledon. It is an odd hour for visiting clergy, and certainly for conducting an interview of this nature. While there was an announcement that “two friends plus Krah” would be coming, no further notice had been given by Krah all Tuesday.

The Bishop says his private Mass at 0545 every morning (a punishing time for a normally late-rising American) so he heads to bed before 2200. He is working on the second-floor common computer when Krah et al. arrive. Fr. Lindstrom, the “gaunt Swede” as he is labeled in the Spiegel hit-piece, shows them in to the first-floor library. The reader may assume at this point that had Krah not come with the permission of Bishop Fellay, he and the journalists would hardly have been admitted to an SSPX priory at 2030.

The journalists have their laptops with them, and Krah sends an email to the Bishop, who is upstairs, as they know, letting him know that they are ready to do an interview with him. The Bishop refuses to see them. They leave after waiting for some 50 minutes, taking a few pictures, as they are not allowed to venture upstairs.

At 2130 the Bishop, feeling bad for Krah, once again reiterates his offer to do a written-question interview.

13 January 2010

In the morning a colleague shows the Bishop a dossier of Spiegel articles written mainly by the senior journalist who had come the night before. The entire tenor of their writing is anti-clerical. The Bishop remembers how he was used last time, concludes that liberals rarely change their spots, and decides in principle to not even do the written questions. It is roughly at 0800 that he is perusing these documents, and at 0815 comes the knock at the door.

Krah is noticeably absent, as he thinks he is the problem (He is not). The journalists try to persuade the Bishop to be interviewed, but he refuses. They plead: “But please, let us at least take a picture of you, so we can tell our bosses that you were here.” He refuses.

At 1000, they return, and Krah with them. Final refusal from the Bishop. Rejected when they are usually welcomed and drooled over, the spurned journalists write a hit-piece which manages to tar every cleric mentioned in it. Der Spiegel has its revenge for having no story to tell, holds the “mirror” up to itself, and shows us a “spaniel.”

Some minor corrections

The above account should serve to correct a mass of disinformation that the article projected. There are some items here or there that unconsciously point to some other important omissions:

1. They frequently cite from the Bishop’s weekly column. They must be subscribers, and they have the luxury of reading the column in German.

2. There are citations of emails he has written to “fellow members of the SSPX.” If this is true, this means that clergy are leaking these emails to the paper. If they are just being incorrect in their terminology and are calling laypeople “members” then laypeople are leaking these emails. In either case, such leaking is unwarranted and wrong, and given where the leaking has led, perhaps sinful.

3. To give the appearance that they actually had access, they describe Bishop Williamson’s “private room” which sounds a lot like the vestibule or sacristy of the Chapel. Nice try, gentlemen. Bishop Williamson’s room is on the third floor; how could you describe that which you’ve never seen?

4. The Facebook page cited is not run by me or the Bishop, and the owner has never contacted either of us. He may indeed be a supporter, but until we hear from him, it can’t really be called “the Bishop’s facebook page.” Nice research job, gentlemen.

5. “Hundreds” do not read his column weekly. The number is “thousands.”

6. If Fr. Pfluger did indeed say: “He gets an idea into his head, becomes fixated on it and exaggerates. But he doesn't study the documents”, he is not only wrong, but unjust in his declaration. I’ll leave it at that.

Finally, I am dismayed that clerics from the SSPX felt obligated to speak unpleasantly about the Bishop. Whatever might have been excusable one year ago, to renew attacks on him now, solicited by a left-wing newspaper, on the one-year anniversary is, at best, disappointing. Shall we look to Menzingen for this to be an annual event?

In the meantime, while the world turns and the liberals rage, let us turn to prayer, not only for the bishop, who has served us so well over many years, but also for ourselves, that we seek truth and charity which is as binding on ourselves as it is on the writers of the Spiegel.

What Haiti should teach us

2010-01-28T11:20:00.003-06:00

This article appears in the February 2010 issue of The Four Marks as an Op-Ed. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

Some time ago The Onion published a story, in its inimitable style, with (roughly) the following headline: “Sudanese warlords lay down weapons and sue for peace after seeing a picture of a Minnesotan high schooler wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Save Darfur’ on it.” If you don’t laugh at that, you probably should stop reading this.

Lampooning the point of “causes” or “awareness” The Onion was gently pointing out a fact that some of us already know: you can’t “care bear stare” a problem away. Being “aware” of worldwide problems is a failure in two respects: 1) You necessarily ignore your own local needs and problems, and 2) You don’t really contribute (because you aren’t really able to) substantive help.

It is a tale as old as time that even though “charity begins at home” we almost never believe or live that. My rather comfortable suburban town of Overland Park, Kansas, situated in affluent Johnson County, has an extraordinary amount of local charities. They include adoption agencies, battered women’s homes, places for runaway kids, food kitchens, homebuilders for low-income families, thrift stores galore, etc. There is any number of causes that you might find fascinating and that would love to have your help. But why don’t we give our time or our talent or our tithe? Because, as one of my friends put it in a comment to a facebook status update on Haiti, “people aren’t dying on the street.”

We are a very generous people in America: our charitable giving is about 2% of our GDP in any given year – more than any other nation. Generosity is blind. It precisely does not count the cost. But, in the wrong situations, generosity can kill. When the victims of concentration camps were first found by Allied soldiers, some of the poor wretched prisoners found death at the hands of the liberators: not by the bayonet, but by the water bottle. The GIs, anxious to help people who looked like husks of humans, gave them all the water and food these poor souls wanted, and these men, who had survived the horrors of these camps, died because their weakened organs couldn’t take the sudden surfeit of nutrition.

The same murder by generosity is going on right now in Haiti, and it is because we are tremendously uninformed as a people. (An aside: I’ve often tried to explain to friends and relatives who live outside the United States that if they lived in a country that was a six-hour flight coast-to-coast, you’d find local and national politics a lot more germane to your lives, especially because the US mainland has never suffered a real military invasion since we have become the nation we are today. We have a big enough country to fill our minds. This isn’t an excuse, just a mitigating explanation on behalf of my countrymen.) All that being said, most people don’t know that Haiti’s corrupt government has prepared it for this situation – or rather, prepared it to be unprepared. The earthquake has destroyed government offices, churches, private homes: it has left no one untouched. But, even had Haiti been hit with half the magnitude of the quake it was hit with, it is likely that the government would still have been powerless to help its people.

The instinct of tender-hearted Americans (remember Katrina? The Tsunami?) is to scream: “For God’s sake, DO something!” More often a nation of action and less one of thought (for better or worse) we’ve often been, in both war and peace, a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type of people. The problem is, Haiti is like that starved concentration camp prisoner. It is severely compromised in its governmental functions, there is basically no infrastructure, and there are dead everywhere. The 24-hour media, with no dead Michael Jacksons to talk about, excitedly rushes to the scene to send home scenes of horror, hour after hour after hour. Americans are rushing to donate in every way possible and yet we will likely help to cripple Haiti for decades to come, not because we aren’t generous, but because we are so clumsy with that generosity.

Americans, because they are mostly ignorant of the rest of the world and its politics and policies, don’t realize that in simply pouring in money (because that solves everything! Check out the bonuses paid at Goldman Sachs with our money!), we may be opening up all sorts of opportunities for the unscrupulous, who have already proven themselves quite capable of making Haiti completely unable to respond to a disaster. Even if I felt like I could somehow exonerate my fellow countrymen for this error in judgment, the 2004 Hurricane Katrina disaster would condemn them.

That disaster happened on our own soil (read Douglas Brinkley’s masterful The Great Deluge or watch Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke if you want to know what really happened before, during, and after). We had FEMA, the National Guard, Coast Guard, Navy, Army, Marines, thugs from Blackwater, et al. down there and through various failures of leadership and overloads of generosity, we witnessed the same suffering that is going on now in Haiti. Dead bodies, not lying out on roads, but floating in the water, where bacteria helped metastasize the problem, dominated news coverage. Rampant looting. Murders. Massive fraud happening through the Red Cross and other “charity” organizations that managed to use disaster for personal gain (if you do give money, have the common sense to give to someone other than the Red Cross, who has, in numerous situations around the world, been guilty of waste and fraud. Give it to charities that were there before the quake, and will be there long after the cameras, the Red Cross, and Slick Willy and W are gone). Sometimes “just do something!” is just plain wrong. Sometimes we have to sit, watch, pray, and (get this!) think about what we should do. A country that is never told “No” is utterly confounded by the idea that sometimes, you can’t solve a problem just by sending money, military forces, food, and water. That may indeed solve the problems of today, and of the next 6 months, and of the next year, but it will do very little to help the Haitian people, who likely will have another earthquake in our lifetime, and we will offer the same unthinking help we did this time. It’s hard for denizens of the so-called “indispensable nation” to think that there is actually a problem we can’t solve overnight: heck, you can get a tan in ten minutes; we should certainly be able to solve the problems of Haiti over a 7-10 night cycle of watching Anderson Cooper!

What Americans should remember the most is that Haiti is not like America, where 9 times out of 10, you can trust that where you send your money will be where it will be used, especially in the case of Wall Street bailouts: we know that our money will end up being spent in San Moritz, Davos, and Monte Carlo on wine, women, and song.

Ultimately there’s nothing wrong with contributing to help those in desperate need. I just think those people are a lot closer than the Caribbean. They are next door. They are in your city. And they’d love your help. You owe it to them. First, because you’re going to make a bigger difference in their lives than your donation won’t ever make in Haiti. Secondly, because whether we believe it or not, charity really does begin at home.

The Restoration VIII: Cell phones

2010-01-22T16:12:00.004-06:00

This article originally appeared in the January 2010 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

When telephones were first invented in 1876, various newspapers proposed proper behaviors for the new invention. Among the myriad ideas put forward was one that admonished readers to dress properly when speaking on the telephone – the idea of talking to someone in pajamas was considered rude. The thought was that this would lead to a gradual diminishment of manners in general conversation. This suggestion might elicit a hearty laugh today, but would that we might have heeded the spirit of the message, if not necessarily the letter.

Fast forward more than a century, and the permutation of Mr. Bell’s original invention, i.e. cell phones, has become an intolerable nuisance in our daily lives. It invades every moment of our existence: cell phone conversations occur in bathrooms, airplanes, classrooms, churches, dorms, taxis, workplaces, cars, bedrooms, subways…you get my point. What is worse is that, given that we cannot turn our ears off, we overhear most of these conversations - conversations that are often representative of the nadir of our civilization:

“Hey, I’m on the bus.”
Response
“Yeah, how was your day?”
Response
“Oh me too, totally.”
Response
“Oh I agree. I can’t stand this weather.”
Response
“Man, I can’t wait for the weekend.”

Do I really need to continue? You’ve witnessed this many a time, and if you’re not willing to admit to such obviously crutch-like conversation making, I certainly can. We have replaced times of silence where reflection on our inner and outer lives might have made for more interesting conversation with an unending stream of insipid banality. God forbid we be alone with our thoughts without a cell phone or iPod. We might read, or write, or (gasp!) pray!

I’ve hesitated to write about this subject for some time because anything I’ve read regarding this matter seems to treat it with blithe ease or rather Luddite fear. But, as the new year is upon us, what is obvious to me is that “always on” communication is harmful to society and to the soul. So, it’s time to push back.

Firstly, let’s make sure we understand the key differences between real communication and virtual communication.

Real communication

Examples: Family dinners, going out with friends, handwritten letters

Characteristics

*tied to a place
*allows for subtlety, subtext, body language
*demands (even if it doesn’t always receive) deliberation and manners

Virtual communication

Examples: Facebook, Twitter, texting, cell phone conversations

Characteristics

*occurs anywhere
*using subtlety is difficult or esoteric
*tends towards pedestrian topics

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for virtual communication. We can’t run from technology. But I do say, as someone who uses Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging, that there is a time and a place for everything, and it’s high time that we, cell phones, and cell phone companies learned that.

As you may consider the New Year a good occasion to try new things, let me propose the following countermeasures against cell phones, countermeasures that I, as one of the guilty, will be implementing, with the following two general principles in place first:

General Principle #1: You are not that important. The President is not going to call. Your boss is not going to call. Neither your mother nor your mother-in-law is going to call. If they call and don’t reach you, they will simply have to endure what every President, boss, mother, or mother-in-law has had to endure in the thousands of years of civilization before the advent of cell phones: waiting.

General Principle #2: You are not at home. You are vomiting out your private thoughts and information in a public forum without consideration for the fact that most of us don’t care to hear about your private life. There was a terribly funny comedy bit some time ago (google “comedian yells into cell phone” for the video) which featured a man carrying an oversized cell phone and screaming banal details into the phone, like, “Hello! No, I’m at a concert! NO, A CONCERT!” The looks on people’s faces who were subjected to this funny-because-it’s-true bit were absolutely priceless. Just think, the next time you answer your phone in public: do I need to subject others to this, and for how long?

Recommendations

1. Cell phones must be turned off during family meals. I would say that the regular telephone, if such an anachronism still exists, should be put off the hook during this time. That way it cannot ring or go to the answering machine. When friends tell you later that it was busy for an hour (gasp!) you can tell them that during your family meals you take the phone off the hook. Then wait for the response. It should be interesting.

2. Cell phones should be turned off during all meals, period. For most people who live outside the drive-thru society that America perpetuates, meal times are a time to rest, recuperate, enjoy, and recharge, on the way back to work (Americans, please read Leon Kass’ The Hungry Soul to re-learn how to eat.). For goodness’ sake, you are at a table with live people. Would you abandon them to attend to the virtual? The unbelievable decline in manners that allows for a solid 1/3 of my Rotary Club (including myself), which has an average of 59, to be checking their cell phones during our weekly meeting is astonishing. Those businessmen who claim self-importance – I would again refer you to General Principle #1 above and assure you that though I have only had a business for six years, I know that it is completely possible to be away from the phone periodically throughout the day. I promise you will not die, your business will not explode, and the earth will keep rotating. Just keep repeating that for a while and you might believe it.

3. Cell phones must be turned off at the movies. Why are you in a movie if not to relax – and how does interrupting your movie to text, “Hey, I’m in a movie – ttyl” help your relaxation? In addition, your bright screen is inconsiderate to others.

4. Cell phones don’t need to be used .0007 seconds after your airplane’s wheels touch down. Yes, we all know you are here. Yes, we know you are carrying your luggage. Yes, we know you didn’t sleep. Yes, I know I sound like Andy Rooney right now, but if you must, please use text messaging and leave the rest of us alone.

5. Cell phones must be turned off at Mass. This is without exception and I’m not going to bother with an explanation why.

6. Cell phones must be turned off at night. If you cry the wolf of “emergency” then get an “emergency” line – be it a prepaid cell phone or a landline, leave it on all the time, and give the number to 2-3 people who can be trusted to understand the meaning of the word “emergency.” If you cry “but I use it for my alarm” please feel free to write me. I will send you an inexpensive, fully functional alarm clock free of charge if you promise to turn off your cell phone at night.

7. Cell phones must be turned off in class. Especially by athletes who are on scholarship. Hey, we know you're bored, but can you show some respect for the professor and for your fellow students? What the heck are you paying for if not to get an education? If you are paying to have text conversations with your friends, good luck finding a job. You already aren't hungry enough.

In short, we should take control of our technology. Why is it that most people are on the leash of their cell phones instead of vice versa? These countermeasures proposed above, while effective separately, used together will constitute a surge that will work, not because Fox News mendaciously says so, but because you will be, in various occasions and opportunities, pushing back on a device that doesn’t ever tell you “No” (well, perhaps when the batteries die).

When you use your phone less you will realize it is not attached to your body. When you realize it’s not attached to your body, you will realize you don’t need a cell phone to live. When you realize you don’t need a cell phone to live, you just might get on with real living.

(Phone powers down).

Poetry Project VI: "The Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

2010-01-12T19:08:00.002-06:00

This is the sixth installment of the occasional poetry series. The analysis is written by Bishop Richard Williamson. You may find the others here on TrueRestoration.blogspot.com. If you are interested in specifically Catholic poetry by a contemporary author, you might consider picking up Fr. Lawrence Smith's We Call Thee Blessed, a collection of Marian sonnets.

After giving due deference to the birthplace of English poetry, I persuaded the Bishop to look at an American poet, T.S. Eliot (I will gently ignore the fact that T.S. Eliot relocated to England later in life - but it might indicate where his heart really lay, and perhaps, where all good English poetry ultimately comes from). We chose a poem fit for the season of Epiphany. You should read the poem, linked here, before reading the analysis.

As the apostasy of the nations in modern times takes the whole world further and further away from God, so there are ever fewer artists and writers who have kept any sense of the things of the human spirit. All that matters henceforth is things material, which is why poetry is widely despised, and serious art, literature and music are all dying or dead. In this land of the blind, the American-born poet, dramatist and critic, T.S.Eliot (1888-1965) is a seer, but his well-known poem, “Journey of the Magi”, shows how he too lost one eye in his struggle with the modern wasteland.

That struggle is reflected in the main event of his life: his move at the age of 26 from the United States where he was born and bred, to England where he was based for the remainder of his life, hardly re-visiting the land of his birth. He once said that while his poetry represented a combination of his being born in the USA with his staying in England, nevertheless “in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” Surely what he meant was that the problem set for him in his early years by the materialism of modern civilisation remained the driving force of his writing, like the grain of sand by its irritation generates the pearl in the oyster, but it was his move back from the New World to the Old that enabled him to get a handle on the problem, and to express in his poetry an at least partial solution.

But the spiritual problem set by the mass of men giving themselves over to materialism runs deep, and that is why many of Eliot’s poems are not easy to understand. He would say that poetry in modern times “has to be difficult”, meaning no doubt that if it is easy, it can hardly be true to the world around us. Thus his first published poems, written around the time of the first World War, already so broke with the century-old tradition of Keatsian romanticism that they were accused by some critics of not being poetry at all ! See for instance in the “Journey” how there are no rhymes at all, nor regular length of lines, nor regular rhythm.

Yet it is enough to read the poem aloud to appreciate the approximate four beats to a line which do make the “Journey” a poem, as opposed to mere prose. The comparison with Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is interesting. Observably Arnold is already (1851) loosening classical poetic discipline as to rhyme and rhythm, and Eliot loosens it still further. But Eliot does still have discipline. Alas, successors of Eliot can pretend to be following him when they have no discipline at all !

However, if one stops to think about it, old-fashioned rhymes would be too pretty for the problematic monologue of Eliot’s Magus (singular of the Latin plural “Magi”), whose modernity in search of the Christ Child requires a re-working of the Gospel story, found in Matthew II, 1-12. Then the three Magi, or astrologers, Kings from the East, followed a miraculous star over a long distance to pay homage and bring precious gifts to the new-born King of Kings, still a little child in the arms of his blessed Mother. Now we have in Eliot’s “Journey” an old man (line 32) recalling from long ago neither star, nor gifts, nor Mother, but in the poem’s three sections only the painful travelling (l.1-20), the arrival (l. 21-31) and the huge question of what it all meant (l. 32-43). Eliot’s is no Christmas card poem, nor short cut to comfort !

The poem’s first section (1-20), easy enough to understand, recreates the physical discomfort of the long journey from the East to Bethlehem, not mentioned. Nor does Eliot suggest there were any of the spiritual consolations that no doubt sustained the three original Magi on their historic journey. On the contrary (l.19,20), their modern successor has only the voices singing in his ears to tell him that he is crazy to be making such a journey.

The poem’s middle section (l.21-31) is less easy to understand. As the journey draws to its close, so the scenery has more warmth and life (21,22). In the next six lines (23-28), the “three trees” evoke the three crosses on Calvary while the “pieces of silver” evoke Judas Iscariot. All other details, e.g. the stream, mill, horse, tavern and wineskins, no doubt had a particular significance for Eliot himself, so that they are somehow suggestive, but of exactly what, it is difficult to say. Together they create a surreal scene which serves as transition from the material discomfort of the first section to the mysterious discomfort of the last section, for (28-31) our modern Magus is not necessarily happy to have arrived at his destination – “you may say” the place was “satisfactory”, he himself seems not so sure…

Indeed, in the poem’s third section (32-43) the old man is sure that the journey was worth the trouble (32,33), but it left him nevertheless with a huge question mark (35-39): how could a scene of birth, the scene of a new-born child, have left him at the same time with such a sensation of death, of “hard and bitter agony” (39) ? Because when the Magus got back to his kingdom (40), he found he could no longer live as he had lived before. He found his own people now “alien” to him, clutching hold of the pagan gods of his old way of life, which could no longer satisfy him, because after meeting the Child he could no longer be a pagan. But he had gone through no rebirth of his own into any new dispensation, so that the whole experience felt only like death. In conclusion (43), he would not be unhappy to die.

Contrast the story of the Magi as told by St Matthew. The Magi make the journey, full of faith that the star will lead them to the Child they mean to adore. It disappears when they visit the court of the treacherous Herod, but when it appears to them again on their way to Bethlehem, “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” (v.10). It stands to reason that their faith and perseverance were rewarded by the divine Child with a flood of light and joy. They died as Saints, and their sacred relics are honoured to this day in the great Cathedral of Cologne which is dedicated to them.

Why then does our modern poet present such a different version of their journey to find Christ ? Because he does not have the faith of the original three Kings. Experts in the life and works of T.S.Eliot are unanimous that the “Journey of the Magi” is a largely autobiographical poem, having been published in August of 1927, just two months after Eliot had converted at 39 years of age to Anglicanism (Episcopalianism in the USA). Let us illustrate the poem by the life.

Eliot had begun life immersed in the “old dispensation” of Protestant Mid-west America (188-1906), Calvinist Harvard (1906-1910; 1911-1914) and liberal Oxford (1914-1915) which he quit after a year – “It’s pretty”, he said, “but I don’t like to be dead”. In 1915 he made an unfortunate marriage which caused him untold stress until (and after) he and his wife separated in 1933. From 1917 to 1925 he worked in a London bank, during which penitential time he published in 1922 what was no doubt the single most influential poem in English of the entire 20th century, “The Wasteland”.

In this poem Eliot could not have given expression to so much of the disorder of an “old dispensation” dying unless he had sensed that disorder, and he could not have sensed that disorder had he not had within him a considerable sense of the order that was missing. This sense of that order he had from the past and its masters. The “Wasteland” is steeped in quotations from them, notably Dante and Shakespeare, Eliot’s two favourites. Scratching his way back to the source of their order, Eliot nearly converted to Catholicism, but he stopped short at Anglicanism, partly because of Pius XI’s controversial condemnation in 1926 of “Action Francaise”, partly because Eliot wished to remain loyal to the country of his adoption. Five months after joining the Anglican Church he took out British citizenship.

This was the same year in which he published “Journey”, and now we can understand why Eliot’s Magus was so lacking in joy. Full marks to Eliot for not contenting himself with the plentiful delights of the disintegrating West (l.10); full marks for persevering on the journey towards Christ (l.33); full marks for never again being “at ease” in the “old dispensation”; but – mystery of grace and free-will – Eliot never made it all the way to Christ in his one true Church, and that is surely why his Magus never “rejoiced with exceeding great joy”.

Yet “God writes straight with crooked lines”. Many readers today immerse themselves in Eliot and feed on his poetry because it grapples with, and grasps, their dying dispensation, without imposing on them any of the demands of Christ’s dispensation. In this way Eliot must have served as at least a first step towards order and salvation for many souls who might not have gone near him had he made himself openly and fully a “Papist”. The same applies to a number of writers and artists who combine a grasp of modern disorder with a more or less disguised conveyance of the values of Christian order. If we should be grateful for small mercies, we should certainly be grateful for a large mercy like the poems of T.S. Eliot even if they are not always easy.

The Restoration VII: Etiquette

2009-12-21T18:02:00.007-06:00

This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

Manners have been out of style for so long that they are finally making it back in as the new “trend.” Well, at least among crusty, fedora-wearing types like myself.

What are manners? They are courtesies that we owe ourselves and each other, and that show our superiority over biologically similar creatures. This month, I thought I might talk about some of these manners so that aspiring cultured young people of either sex might hop on the manners bandwagon as well.

To start at the beginning, we might talk about Introductions.

Meeting people

In Europe, where distinctions of rank were formerly part of the cultural zeitgeist, there is at least a sense of how these introductions should happen. Here in America, where rank is perhaps less obvious, or at least, less willingly observed, a basic rule of thumb is that you should always present the less familiar to the more familiar. For example, if I were introducing a very good friend from school or some other sphere of life to my mother, I would say, “Mother, may I present my friend John. John, my mother.” A less formal, but still proper version would be, “Mom, I’d like you to meet my friend John. John, this is my mom.” A typical American egalitarian response might be, “Who cares?” Who cares, indeed. It’s only the first time you are meeting someone, and first impressions never matter, right?

As these introductions occur, especially in America, inevitably a hand will be extended. Now, if the introduction is man-to-man, hands from both parties should be extended almost simultaneously. The handshake should be firm and how long you sustain it should be in accord with your familiarity with that person, i.e. if you are just meeting them, it should be brief; if it is someone you have not seen for a while or someone you care about deeply, it might be longer, and accompanied by a clasping of an arm. However, if the introduction is between a man and a woman the man should wait for the woman to extend her hand — if she indeed does, for it is a woman’s prerogative.

If she does extend her hand, you certainly should not shake it as you would a man’s hand, in the manner after those who think men and women differ only biologically. Rather, clasp her hand, as you might clasp a set of keys, and squeeze her hand insofar as you are familiar with her. Again, as with the male handshake, a first meeting might involve a brief squeeze, whereas a friend or relative might be held longer. If a woman does not extend her hand, simply bow your head slightly to indicate your pleasure at meeting her.

Women who are new acquaintances will often greet each other in this way, as they should not extend hands to each other. However, a curtsey is just as acceptable as a bow of the head, and a thousand times more attractive and feminine. But, that’s just a man’s opinion.

Table Manners

I’ll speak in terms of a double date, as this allows us to explore some additional situations that a single couple on a date does not allow.

When you escort your dates to the table, one of the men should lead and one should be last. This allows the practicality of a man sizing up the table and making sure it is clean and appropriate. If it isn’t, he can immediately ask the host or hostess to reseat, without troubling the women with it. When escorting women to the table this way, it also preserves the normal order of “protecting” women by creating a dual buffer (much as these imaginary couples might walk on the street – one man closest to the street, to his left his date, next to the other man’s date, while the other man is closest to the storefronts).

When you arrive at the table and everything is in order, rather than waiting for the chaos of people picking their own chairs, a man should select a seat for his date and pull it out, indicating it is where she is to sit. If it is a restaurant that has a coat and bag check, these items will already have been checked. If not, this is a good time to remove her coat and ask the waiter if it is possible to stow it.

Women must also be given preference when ordering — and if your waiter has any class, he will serve them first as well. When a woman has to excuse herself from the table, her date should stand, functionally to pull her chair out, customarily to show the respect due to her as a woman. As with most traditions, there is always a practical reason backing up the form of the gesture. If the other gentleman is not engaged in a separate conversation with his date, he should stand as well, though he will not assist with her chair. This procedure repeats when the woman returns to the table.

Eating

I was at a black-tie event not too long ago and a couple of my table-mates were unsure about the dizzying array of flatware and plates in front of them. Here follows a brief summary of what lies in front of you, particularly in America.

Your glasses and goblets should be on your right. Your napkin will sometimes be artfully stuffed in a glass; otherwise you will find your napkin on your plate. If your wait staff does not remove it and place it in your lap, only do so when you have begun to eat or drink anything. On your left will be a plate for bread or cheese. On your left you will also see forks. You should always work outside in, and in the case of multiple courses, the forks should be sized accordingly — small to large. At some functions the salad fork will be brought out right before the salad, as it will have been chilling. Utensils at the top of the plate (in between the bread plate and your glasses) will generally be for dessert and coffee. Use them then and not before. On the right, of course, are all your knives, a soup spoon, and if there are any shellfish, an oyster fork.

In the days before the insipid question, “Are you still working on that?” there was a silent code you could use to communicate to the discerning waiter. If you are still working on something, you should have the fork and knife nearly perpendicular to each other, across the middle of the plate. If you are done, the knife and fork should be set parallel to each other across the center of the plate. That discerning waiter should also serve from the left, remove from the right; this is also the same direction that items should be passed around the table.

If you do need to get up during your meal, put your napkin on your chair, not the table. If you are speaking with anyone, excuse yourself, otherwise, simply leave. Some restaurants will reset your napkin in an artful form on the table before you return. In either case, the napkin should only ever be on the table at the end of the meal.

Mass

Honestly, I used to be surprised at men who interpret “Sunday best” as a polo shirt, or worse, a t-shirt. In America, the finest attire for a non-formal event (i.e. black tie) is a suit. It is simply assumed that a man will wear such attire on Sunday or any other First Class Feast Day. While there is certainly allowance for anyone who is coming to daily Mass and then leaving for work immediately thereafter (look no further than the Abbe Trochu biography of the Cure of Ars, available from TAN Books, for a description of farmers who left Mass and went right into the fields) to be wearing less than a suit, this exception applies to a very, very small subset of people on a given Sunday. If someone can only afford one suit, so be it! Better one suit of dignity than the greatest variety of casual wear, like polo shirts, worn on golf courses, or jeans, the height of absurdity on a Sunday. What’s even worse is watching fathers who don’t bother to wear suits on Sunday, because the problem is that their sons look up to them and imitate their dress. If Dad never wears a suit or tie to Mass on Sunday, why should I? Now sloppiness in dress is perpetuated to the next generation.

As for the sticky wicket of women’s dress (a losing topic anytime, but always so among Traditional Catholics) on Sunday or anytime, let me say that I would reiterate the standard given to males: wear the equivalent of a suit. This might be a nice dress, or a classy blouse and classy skirt. This is not to be confused with the jean skirt – the female equivalent of male jeans, and as pointed out above, inappropriate for Mass. It is also not to be confused with the t-shirt top – the male equivalent of a polo shirt. Women, unlike men, have an enormous variety of choices for what they can wear. So, ladies, please exercise that freedom of choice! Women, like men, show their class and maturity by what they wear, especially, by what they wear to Mass for ONE hour on Sunday, when they visit the Lord of Creation.

Speaking of the variety of what women may wear, they, unlike men, may wear hats indoors, and can do so in place of the customary veil. Now, a veil is not to be confused with a napkin. The “napkin veil” does very well to meet the letter of the law (as set down in Scripture: 1 Cor 11:5, but also by long-standing custom in the Roman Rite, and by canon law – canon 1262 in the 1917 Codex), but it does nothing to actually cover a woman’s head. As we’ve alluded to earlier, customs often have a practical component. The practical component here is: helping men to focus! Lovely, lustrous hair is a distraction for any man, no matter how pious. Now, I’m not saying that not completely covering your hair is a “near occasion of sin.” I’m only pointing out that a veil is supposed to cover your head and that there is a majesty and air of mystery that it helps to focus and contribute to when the practice is observed. So please, ladies, save your napkins for dinner? They don’t belong at Mass.

More reading

For those who are interested in reading about some other instructions about etiquette and the spirit which vivifies them, viz. an attitude of comeliness rather than some empty show for others, especially from a Catholic perspective, I refer you to two of Dr. Marian Horvat’s books: A Catholic Manual of Civility and Restoring the Family, both of which I enjoyed quite a bit. She has a brand new book out, co-authored with Judith Fife Mead, called Courtesy Calls Again. While I do disagree with Tradition in Action on a number of items, they do often put out quality products. This is, no doubt, another one of those. You can find Dr. Horvat's books at http://www.traditioninaction.org/.

In Act IV of Hamlet, the Danish prince looks out upon the army of Fortinbras and wonders: “What is a man, / If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. / Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, / Looking before and after, gave us not / That capability and god-like reason / To fust in us unused” (IV.iv). Manners help define us as civilized beings. More importantly, they help proclaim who we are as a culture. As this column often tries to suggest – the restoration is not about starting some “movement” akin to a large organization. The restoration is about the morality of your everyday life: not so much worrying about “the other person” as about yourself. What is so elevating about manners is that in being considerate of how you present yourself to others, you edify them, make them ask questions, and perhaps – inspire them to do the same.

Poetry Project V: "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

2009-11-02T18:11:00.003-06:00

This is the fifth installment of the occasional poetry series. The analysis is written by Bishop Richard Williamson. You may find the others here on TrueRestoration.blogspot.com. If you are interested in specifically Catholic poetry by a contemporary author, you might consider picking up Fr. Lawrence Smith's We Call Thee Blessed, a collection of Marian sonnets.

***

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is a poem that deserves its fame and popularity. Its dark message can discourage some readers, but the message is serious and very well expressed in poetic form. It also makes perfect sense if one believes that the modern world has gone off track...

THE POET

Arnold (1822-1888) was the eldest son of Dr Thomas Arnold, the famous trail-blazer of that English public school system which would provide the British Empire with generations of administrators devoted to their imperial duty. After receiving at Rugby and Oxford an excellent classical education, which shows in "Dover Beach", Arnold took in 1851 a job as inspector of schools which gave him a regular income for the rest of his life. It also enabled him to marry two months later, and to write both poetry and works of social, cultural and religious criticism until he died. A highly cultivated and thoughtful man, he shows in "Dover Beach" a grave pre-occupation with the religious heart dying out of modern civilization. Here is the content of "Dover Beach":--

VERSE 1 : Setting the Scene.

In a house or hotel overlooking the beach at Dover where the English Channel between France and England is at its narrowest, the poet is staying with his beloved, actually his recently married wife. Looking out of the window over the moon-lit sea, at glimmers of France in the distance and at the famous white cliffs of Dover closer by, he calls his beloved (line 9) to join him in contemplating the scene, because it is inspiring him with far-reaching thoughts: in the sound of the waves, the surf ever rolling back and forth, he is hearing an ancient sadness.

VERSE 2 : Down the Ages.

As a classical scholar, Arnold's mind was well furnished with human parallels from the ancient world. He recalls how the Greek playwright Sophocles (496 - 406 B.C) in his famous play “Antigone” heard in the same sound of the sea the same echo of human sadness: there is a grief in this “valley of tears” which is common to men of all times and places.

VERSE 3 : The 19th Century.

Arnold's mind turns to his own time, the -- for England -- outwardly great and glorious Victorian age when Britannia ruled those waves. However, he sees clearly how England is losing the Christian Faith, which was once like the glorious sea at full tide but is now ebbing away, leaving behind a bare shore with nothing but stones.

VERSE 4 : All that remains.

The poet turns to his beloved, surely by now sharing his train of thought, and proposes that they cling together through life because all they truly have is one another. In the terrible last five lines of the poem Arnold declares that the world around them has neither light nor certainty nor love, but only darkness and confusion and strife.

OUR OWN DARKNESS.

Coming from Arnold, a gifted Protestant born with a silver spoon in his mouth in a Protestant country at the height of its worldwide power, such a dark conclusion may seem surprising. "Dover Beach" dates from 1851 or 1852, soon after his marriage -- surely the world lay at the young couple’s feet. Yet here he is, instructing his beloved that all they have is one another ! "One another" is certainly a modern solution. Do not the Western nations presently have a suicidally low birth-rate because so many youngsters -- and oldsters -- see identically nothing to live for except the "partner", their love-nest, and weekends and vacations together ? Forget children ! They get in the way ! In fact Arnold and his wife went on to have six children together, so maybe his life was not quite as dark as the message of "Dover Beach". But how marvellously the poem expresses that message !

THE POETRY.

"Dover Beach" has only 37 lines, of unequal length and divided unequally between the four verses. Contrast such irregularity with, for instance, the sublime metronomic plod of Gray's famous "Elegy”. Yet it is a notable feature of "Dover Beach" how perfectly the lines and verses match the poem's content.

The vocabulary is rich ("moon-blanched", "tremulous", etc.) but not excessively so, because the thought remains limpid. There are two main images, both powerful. The first, following Sophocles, compares the rise and fall of the Faith (captalised by Arnold) to the rise and fall of the sea: at high tide -- Arnold must be thinking of the Middle Ages. Once upon a time the Faith wrapped the world and "Merrie Englande" in brightness (l. 21-23). In mid-19th century the Faith is ebbing away, leaving only a bare and dreary beach behind it. More bare and dreary today than ever ! The second main image compares modern life to the fighting of armies by night (l 35-37), which deal out blows without being able to tell friend from foe. Is that not a picture of contemporary wars (not only military in nature), where the true enemy stays hidden, making those fight one another who should be true friends ?

The rhyming of "Dover Beach" is also erratic, following no regular pattern, but it is there. Only three lines of the 37 do not rhyme, and the 34 rhymes serve well in marking the ends of the lines, because in their erratic length lies not the mere disorder of modern poets but the mastery of a true poet. 20 lines are pentameters with five beats, or "feet", 10 lines are tetrameters (four feet), six lines are trimeters (three feet), and "The Sea of Faith" has two feet. Therefore the poem's staple diet is the classic iambic pentameter, interspersed with shorter lines. Notice especially how the shorter lines serve in lines 9 -14 and 24 -28 to evoke that motion of the sea which is the basic inspiration of "Dover Beach": 9, a pause as if to listen; 11, a pause as between waves; 14 as if to linger on the sadness; 24, as if to hear; 26, the quietness of the night; 28, the bareness of the stony beach. "Dover Beach" cries out to be read aloud, when it will appear how skilfully Arnold uses these shorter lines to convey the sense of the Faith's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar".

CONCLUSION.

And so we come back to Arnold's message. Like his father, Arnold had a deep concern for religion, and he could see that the triumph of liberalism was spelling the death of organised religion, and therewith a dark future. He once said, "At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other that they cannot do with it as it is". This is part of the dark message of "Dover Beach" -- there is no hope for Christianity.

Now Catholics may be tempted to dismiss Arnold's pessimism by saying that it only applies to his Protestantism, but they should not be too complacent. Vatican II demonstrated that the mass of Catholic bishops felt the same thing about the future of Catholicism, otherwise why would they have voted to transform it at the Council as they did to make it fit the modern world better? At least humanly speaking, Arnold was certainly a better man than the ringleaders of that official apostasy. The Conciliar collapse of so many Catholic churchmen proves that he was far from altogether wrong when he foresaw Christianity being overcome by the modern world.

Then are we bound to share in the dark conclusion of "Dover Beach" ? By no means. It is true, but it is not the whole truth. By an interesting coincidence another famous English pooet, on the same beach, listening to the same surf, wrote:

"...Listen, the mighty Being is awake
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder, everlastingly..."

No doubt Wordsworth had the advantage over Arnold that he was writing some 50 years earlier, when liberalism could still seem full of promise. and when it was not yet blocking man's vision of God through His creation. And over Wordsworth an uncorrupted Catholic has the additional advantage of knowing that the goodness of God extends infinitely further than such mere beauties of Nature as the sea, however inspiring such beauties are. Nevertheless, such a Catholic will also not fail to appreciate the skill of Arnold's "Dover Beach" in expressing one great truth -- the world is indeed dark when God disappears from men's view.

The Restoration VI: Cooking

2009-10-22T14:40:00.002-05:00

This article originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

I still remember the first time I decided to make the transition from college kid to grown-up, at least as far as food was concerned. I had taken a recipe card to the supermarket, bought everything on it, and now I was going to make some food. Make. Food. My expertise in boiling water for ramen or my speed at tapping in heating instructions to a microwave would not help here. You have to grow up sometime.

Of course, the bachelors brave enough to actually cook probably all start this way. To this day, whenever I have friends over for dinner, they always ask, “Where did you learn to cook?” I learned in part from watching my mom do certain things throughout the years, but I really had to learn on my own.

One of my favorite dishes to make is a penne arrabbiata. Arrabbiata means “angry” in Italian and it means that the sauce is generally spicy. I have only recently started to make my own sauce, but until recently, any of the Whole Foods pasta sauces I used provided a great base. You can add artichokes, olives, bacon, onions, mushrooms, and maybe basil, thyme, or bay leaf, depending. You must add garlic. Meanwhile, cook up some meat in another pan, preferably lamb or buffalo or something else you haven’t had all the time. This adds to the pique of the sauce when you mix it in. At this point the water should be boiling for your pasta. Gently shake, don’t drop, the penne into the water and either set an egg-timer or a mental clock for around 8-9 minutes for al dente. If you have the meat cooked to where you want it, you can blend it in with the sauce, which you’ve been nursing for a little under 30 minutes now.

Now it’s time to let the sauce blend with the meat. Pasta is boiling…good time to make the salad. You toss together some arugula, cut some cucumbers, tomato, and a few slices of brie, and put a salad fork on top and stick it back in the fridge so it will stay chilled. Time to read an article while nursing the sauce and boiling the pasta. You occasionally stir, and after a while fish one out so you can bite down and see if it’s ready to go….not quite…You open a bottle of Italian soda, pour a glass, and start setting the table. Egg timer goes. Double check with a bite test for the pasta, then drain it in the colander. Taste the sauce again. Good. Drop the pasta back into the now empty pot, drizzle some olive oil on it and mix it so the pasta doesn’t stick together. Cover it and the sauce and put it on some hot pads on the table. Pull the salad out, say grace, and start eating.

That’s a typical 9:00pm meal for me (I work until 8pm most nights). What I find intensely enjoyable about that is that when you vary the ingredients for the sauce, you get a slightly different flavor. It can be routine and yet experimental. And all of it was so far from what I thought cooking was in the beginning – some rote following of a recipe card.

Of course, that’s easy for me to say. I have no kids to watch, no cholesterol to be concerned about, and I enjoy cooking. Yet, at the same time – if some bachelor can manage to cook a meal at night for himself after he’s worked all day…can’t anyone? Yeah, I would argue that.

I think one of the greatest daily tragedies that we see, and that I, as an American have participated in far too often, is eating on the run. We can’t seem to help ourselves. We’re content to eat food that is made by someone else, after it has been processed by a machine, processing food that came from a questionable source, if not in the handling of the original ingredients, in perhaps the very seeds and basic ingredients. The simplest thing we can do on a daily basis to watch our health and give thanks is to buy and cook our own food. Life is about simple pleasures. Take this one back.

Interview with Fr. Michael Oswalt, for the Four Marks

2009-10-17T11:45:00.016-05:00

Some months back Kathleen Plumb, editor of The Four Marks, asked me to interview Fr. Michael Oswalt. I had heard about his story in March when I was in Florida to interview Bishop Sanborn. In brief, he is formerly of the Diocese of Rockford, via Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. He has doubts about the new rite of ordination that have caused him to stop celebrating Mass concurrent with the day he left Rockford, which was earlier this year. He is getting ready to leave for Mt. St. Michael, where he plans to pray, study, and work until a time he deems fit for conditional ordination, which will be granted to him by Bishop Pivarunas.

Father and I coordinated our schedules and we met in Des Moines, Iowa, one weekend in September. Father is straightforward and kind and in listening to his experiences I relived so much of what I disliked about the Novus Ordo while I was still "in it." As dysfunctional as the internal workings of the robber church he describes are, the path of his discovery is fresh and insightful in the familiar ruts it runs.

One issue that I did not broach in depth during the interview and which needs explaining now is the question of the validity of Fr. Oswalt’s ordination. He does not consider himself a valid priest and no longer says Mass. Now, while not every Traditionalist knows about the various positions regarding the validity of the new forms of Episcopal consecration and priestly ordination, it is blatantly clear to anyone even attending Indult/Motu parishes that there is an inherent suspicion and distrust of the new sacraments among the faithful. Some give the standard lame boilerplate: “Well, I’m just a layman, so I can’t speak to sacramental validity and efficacy.” Well, this is patently false as any Catholic worth his salt can tell you what makes Baptism, Communion, Confession, etc. valid, and what makes them invalid. Part of being a Catholic is knowing your faith, and knowing your faith is, in part, knowing what makes valid sacraments. On the other hand, given that such cases of doubt regarding sacraments were normally referred to Rome, and that Traditionalists range from thinking that the Pope is “sick” (SSPX) to MIA (sedevacantists), there can be no authoritative pronouncement regarding an opinion on the invalidity of orders. No Traditionalist priest or bishop possesses a mandate from Rome to rule on these issues, and further epikeia, as in the case of annulments, cannot be invoked here. We are in an unfortunate, strange position.

Given the grave concern for valid sacraments, I agree that Conciliar priests who come to Tradition owe it to everyone to be conditionally ordained. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais implied as much in a recent interview: "It is necessary to begin by the liturgy; that would be the simplest [issue], because it will be possible to point out the deficiency of the new rite of priestly ordinations, for example. A deficiency which, on the other hand, when we speak of the new mass, includes much contradiction, pure and simple; because it is a new theology which is expressed, hence a new religion." The Conciliar religion is a mutated, bizarre version of Catholicism, and should, especially regarding sacraments, be treated with deep suspicion.

I also want to mention that Father Oswalt mentions reading a website which we have taken care never to mention by name on TR, but which I want to make clear that I consider to be a hubristic rag, penned by a dubious priest, which features writing of the lowest, trashiest, most salacious order. I believe Father Oswalt is new to some of these sites, and as such, is not yet familiar with their respective histories. Suffice to say, we do not endorse that website at all.

Please enjoy this interview with Fr. Michael Oswalt. He is a good and brave priest who has left the security of the usurpers of our churches for the uncertainty of the Traditionalist wilderness. One more priest forever, according to the order of Melchisdech, to serve faithful who want true sacraments. Deo gratias.

This interview was originally printed, in part, in the October 2009 The Four Marks. For more information, please visit http://thefourmarks.com/

Note: If you would like to help support Fr. Oswalt, 50% of the sales of the DVD of this interview will go directly to him. You can purchase the DVD at http://truerestorationpress.com/cddvd/fr_oswalt_interview.

The Restoration V: Movies

2009-09-20T21:52:00.004-05:00

This article originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

I will never grow tired of being irritated by the phrase, “But I liked the book better than the movie.” It’s rather like saying, “I liked the poem better than the painting.” How does one compare the reading of a book to the watching of a movie? Plainly, you cannot.

Books have their own serene magic. They are available to be read at anytime. They are, by and large, inexpensive. They take us as near or as far as we and our imaginations will let them. They have margins where we can scribble, white space where we can underline, and covers that can be happily worn down. We can give them to friends, or keep them as family heirlooms. Books are treasures.

While movies lack all of the tactility of books and all of the collective written memory of text, they have a powerful grip on our imagination. In my recent interview with Bishop Williamson I was joking with him off-camera about what I have called his “obsession” with the Sound of Music. The conversation then turned to how the songs are stuck in our heads and seeing a statue of St. Thomas More nearby, I hoped to prove a point by quoting from A Man for All Seasons.

The Robert Bolt play? Sure, I’d read it. But the reason I would know the lines I proceeded to deliver were not because I had read the play so many times, but because I had watched the movie so many times. “(More, in a tired voice) Roper, the answer is no and will remain no as long as you are a heretic. (Roper, in a stirring baritone) Now that’s a word I don’t like, Sir Thomas. (More, pedantic) It’s not a likable word, it’s not a likeable thing. (Roper, irritated) The Church is heretical, Dr. Luther has proved that to my satisfaction.” Bishop Williamson, smiling as I delivered the lines with the affectation of the accents of the actors of that movie, interrupted me, laughingly, to say “Q.E.D.”

Yes, while books are powerful, movies are more powerful. Even someone who loves books as much as I do must be honest enough to admit that. While my imagination dimly conceived of the overwhelming Orc attack on Minas Tirith, Peter Jackson, with the assistance of CGI, lit up that imagination for all time. While I imagined different ways that Hamlet could deliver “To be, or not to be” Kenneth Branagh forever asked me to imagine it being delivered into a mirror. Whatever I might have thought Darcy was before I saw Colin Firth, he is the only Darcy I will now ever know. Movies, with their simultaneous assault on our eyes and ears, indelibly stamp us with their notions and grip tightly whenever we revisit the books wherein these characters were born.

Indeed, if there is one thing you can be assured of regarding our modern youth, it is that they are steeped in movies. They may not know the Te Deum, but they can deliver, to a syllable, their favorite movie quotes. Is this a bad thing? I’m not entirely convinced that it is. Surely, we need our youth to learn the Te Deum, but it must be acknowledged that movies are with us to stay. They are an art form – and like any art form (books for example), there are both good and bad examples of it.

And that brings us back to our original erroneous comparison – comparing a movie to a book – rather like comparing a dessert to a main course – it can be done, but what purpose does it serve? Is chocolate cake really better than roast beef? Why can we not have both?

Indeed, in some circumstances, the narrative of a movie quite tops that of a book. For the five or so of us who have read James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, the plodding narrative is nowhere near as interesting and evocative as what Michael Mann’s film rendering was. In the case of the Star Wars movies or the various Star Trek franchises, the imagination was so well-watered by the original productions that books subsequently exploded into print (and continue to be printed in record numbers) – demonstrating the powerful impetus that film can give to the creative mind. And of course, many readers of these pages are familiar with the conversion stories attributed to a single watching of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.

So, rather than engage in the rather limited discussion of “book vs. movie,” or to lament the rather dull point that “our youth don’t read anymore” (believe me, I teach high schoolers so I know that this is true) we might instead, in whatever fashion we deem appropriate in our family settings, watch and discuss good films together. As with literature, the classics are always fascinating. You might watch Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man, a true story about how a man with a striking similarity to a criminal is wrongfully imprisoned and the cascading effect it has upon his family. Or John Ford’s Stagecoach, to remember what Westerns looked like before they engaged in loathing self-hate. Or Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, a story which reminds us that perspectives in a situation always matter. Or Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, where Death, playing chess with the protagonist, reminds us that he can always cheat, whereas we never can.

In the Catholic world, there are little known treasures like the breathtaking The Passion of Joan of Arc, which features a magnificent soundtrack, or The Keys of the Kingdom, starring Gregory Peck, about the life of a missionary in China, or Audrey Hepburn’s A Nun’s Story, which portrayed so well the struggle anyone who wants to persevere in the religious life must undergo, and underscores that it is not a life to be chosen, but one that chooses you, or The Reluctant Saint, about St. Joseph of Cupertino, where we get to watch a flying priest.

See, at the end of the day, movies can be like books. You do have to dig sometimes to find treasures. And the effort is worth it, for in these encounters, we are reminded about the various ways in which our enchanted universe kaleidoscopically reflects His Truth in our daily truths. And fictions.

The Restoration IV: Travel

2009-08-16T22:54:00.004-05:00

This article originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

This piece was also published in the March 2010 edition of Dimensions: The Newsletter of the Thomas More Center for the Study of Catholic Thought & Culture, at Rockhurst University.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss, but it sure gathers a lot of polish.”
Bishop Richard Williamson

I was born an American citizen abroad. I began my life in 1979 in Singapore, the son of American and Singaporean parents. Even while I was swimming in my mother’s womb, I was travelling between the Philippines – where my parents lived – and Singapore – where my mother wanted me to be born. I stayed in Asia for the first decade of my life, then we moved to America: Dallas, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Anaheim. By this time, despite going to boarding school for high school, I had caught the travel bug. I went on to live in and around: Detroit; Boston; Rome; St. Marys, Kansas; Chino, California; and then back to Orange County before moving to Overland Park, Kansas, where I currently work and live.

For years my travels have been a great blessing. Travel for me has not been a “special occasion.” It has been, to this day and hour, a way of life. I always tell people that if “you have always wanted to go there” why not go? As I sit writing this in a cafe across from the Louvre – in a city of my dreams – Paris – I reflect on two things in particular.

One, the healthy and mild envy I have of the rootedness of many of my Midwestern peers. It is not unusual for many of them to have been born, raised, gone to high school and college, and then get married and settle down right where they have been their whole lives. They have bloomed where they have been planted. Their existence and experience of life has been far more conventional and traditional than my own.

What does that rootedness offer? Continuity. Tradition. Accountability. Deep, life-long friendships. I envy this because I’ve never had that continuity, that tradition. My oldest friend, dear as he is, dates to when I was 12.

Two, the richness travel can contribute to that rootedness, if you let it. Professor Robert Greenberg, in his lectures on Mozart (which are simply masterful; you can obtain them from the Teaching Company at teach12.com) pointed out that Mozart only began to write more adventuresome forms of music after he had really and truly mastered the classical forms in hundreds of ways. In other words, he only “travelled” once he knew his own home. How many Americans know their homes?

I don’t mean their backyards or even their cities or counties. Many know those, and know them well. But we live in a nation that stretches from ocean to ocean, and it is so often not explored, and can be done for a fraction of the cost of international travel. Before Paris (though it is well worth your time), perhaps spend some time in Maine, eating lobster rolls and looking out from historical lighthouses. Or watch the leaves change in New Hampshire with Europeans who fly over here to watch it. Visit some of the battlefields of Pennsylvania and Virginia where our country’s future, for better or worse, was decided during the War to Prevent Southern Independence. Sit by the banks of the majestic lakes we call Great, which are so vast, that if they were to be emptied, would cover the entire country in two feet of water. Marvel at the breathtaking majesty of Half-Dome in Yosemite, the Falls in Niagara, or the Canyon in Arizona. This is to say nothing of the food, culture, and heritage of New Orleans, San Antonio, Louisville, Charleston, Richmond, and a hundred similarly-sized cities in between. Be dazzled by the all-encompassing greenness of Seattle, the majesty of Fort Hood on an early Portland morning, the endless quality of Lake Coeur d’Alene, the silence of Whitefish Lake in Montana on a Sunday morning, the quiet rushing of the waters of the still (no matter how much we drain it) mighty Colorado as you wind your way across that state on I-70. Quietly enjoy a California sunset, or let the warm Gulf waters tease your toes…

Europe? Maybe when the endless beauty next door has been a little more explored…

And why? What does travel afford us, at the end of the day?

A realization that life, at least in First World countries, despite many differences, is very much the same everywhere. The conversations of kids on the Metro in Paris are no different than those of my students back in Kansas City nor are they different from the subway conversations I’ve overheard in New York, Boston, Montreal, Singapore, San Francisco, Rome, and Washington, D.C. People are venting about work, or talking about plans for the weekend, or just hanging out with their friends. People everywhere enjoy food, friends, time with their family, things that are free, sunshine, art, and music. You don’t need to fly 3000 miles to realize that life is very much the same everywhere in the world. We all speak in the languages we first learned at Babel (and new ones too) and are increasingly able to communicate and interact with one another.

More importantly, travel affords us a chance to be intensely grateful for what we have. I remember never loving America as much as I did in my final month of living in Rome while I was studying abroad. As much as I adored living in the city of Catholicism, in the heart of classical and Christian culture, and among dear friends, I yearned to get home, have a cheeseburger, and be simply “back” in America. If the phrase “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” has validity, so too does the phrase “you don’t know what you’ve got till you see what other people have.”

If travel teaches us nothing else, it reminds us that Heraclitus was right, and that you never can step in the same river twice. For the Catholic whose heart has stopped – as mine did – in the breathlessness of gazing at the church that is home for all Roman Catholics – St. Peter’s Basilica – my faith was never the same again – and not because of some ephemeral hazy sentiment, but because I had a chance to glimpse in this world, the things that St. Paul has promised us that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

For a sneak preview of those coming attractions, travel.

Poetry Project V: "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard", by Thomas Gray

2009-08-02T23:27:00.005-05:00

This is the fifth installment of the occasional poetry series featuring analysis by Bishop Richard Williamson. Other installments can be found under the heading "Poetry Project" on True Restoration. If you are interested in specifically Catholic poetry by a contemporary author, you might consider picking up Fr. Lawrence Smith's We Call Thee Blessed, a collection of Marian sonnets.

Link to the poem (best to print out and read before/during the critique)

In all human life on earth there is no problem to compare with the problem of death. What sense can life make when from everything we learn by living to love, we are inexorably cut off by death? To trivialize the problem of death, I must scorn love or life. If I value love or life, I am bound to ask myself, what is the meaning of death?

Poets are men who respond to life and love, which is why countless poets have written about life and death. One of the most famous of these poems in English is the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by a poet otherwise virtually unknown, Thomas Gray (1716-1771). A churchyard is where people are buried. An elegy is a mournful poem or song, in particular a lament for the dead. Gray in the “Elegy” is standing in a country churchyard, as we are told, that of the village of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire, England, and he is meditating on the life and death of the humble villagers whose graves surround him.

Composed of 32 four-line verses, the “Elegy” can be divided for purposes of an overview into seven sections: 1-3, setting the scene; 4-7, evoking the dead villagers; 8-11, death common to all men; 12-19, the villagers’ humble lives; 20-23, their desire for life. As for the last two sections, in 24-29 the poet imagines himself dying and being buried amongst them, and in 30-32 he imagines his own epitaph.

In setting the scene, Gray describes the quiet of evening in the country (1,2) as night is descending (3). All around him the dead villagers are resting in their graves (4). No more rising at dawn for them (5), nor joys of family life (6), nor manly work in the fields (7). But let nobody of a higher station in life scorn the lowly villagers’ life or death (8), because death brings all men low (9), despite the noblest of graves or sepulchres (10,11).

In fact these villagers may have led humble lives, but perhaps they had the gifts to be great politicians or poets (12) or scholars, gifts which only their poverty prevented from blossoming (13). Great talent can lie hidden (14), and so buried in these graves may have been the equal of England’s best-known statesmen and writers (15). Fame was not to be theirs (16), nor the notoriety of celebrities known for their cruelty (17) or for their behavior made shameful by lust or pride or flattery (18). The villagers lived quietly, out of the public eye (19).

And yet, as the villagers’ rough and ready graves show, still they longed for some recognition and sympathy (20). The simple epitaphs with quotes from Scripture (21) show how the villagers loved life (22), and did not necessarily find it easy to die (23).

To conclude, Gray brings himself on the scene and imagines himself being buried amidst the villagers (24). In the mouth of a country-lad (25) he puts a portrait of his melancholy self (25-29): rising at dawn to walk in the fields (25), he would by mid-day be lying down under a tree (26), all the while talking to himself as though some heavy sadness or other were pressing down on him (27). One day he was to be seen no more in his favorite haunts (28), and the next day he was being buried in the churchyard (29). His epitaph ran (30-32): here lies a sad young man, undistinguished and unknown (30). Generous and sincere, he honored humble folk and so pleased God (31). Leave him in peace, to the mercy of God (32).

All in all, it is a melancholy poem, truly an elegy. The regular sad tread of the four-line verses with the plod of their alternating rhymes would be monotonous, were it not for the dignity of Gray’s considerations on life and death, and for the felicity of their expression. Several phrases and lines from the “Elegy” have passed into common use in the English language, for instance “to blush unseen”, “mute inglorious Milton”, “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”, and so on. Gray’s vocabulary is rich and his versification is solid. The “Elegy” carries a weight of grief for our human condition, certain to die as we are, and with little prospect for most of us of being remembered or honored after our death.

On the eve of dying in the battle of Abraham Heights to conquer French Canada for the British Empire, England’s General Wolfe said that he would rather have written Gray’s “Elegy” than be the conqueror of Quebec, as he proved on the following day to be. Victory and defeat, life and death, fame and obscurity – what do they all mean? In particular, what meaning does Gray’s “Elegy” give to them?

The “Elegy” dates from 1751, exactly halfway through that 18th century when the Christian Church still had a part to play in Englishmen’s lives, especially in the country, but when especially in the cities rationalism, scientism and industrialism were well on their way to pushing the Christian religion to one side. That is why Gray’s solution to the problem of death is half Christian, half modern.

The Christian solution to death is the certainty of life after death, in Hell if one has led a bad life on earth, in Heaven if one has led a good life. This solution has a place of honor in Gray’s own Epitaph at the end of the poem, but it is lacking in certainty. On the one hand (31) God has rewarded him for being good to poor folk, but on the other hand the “bosom of his Father and his God” is a “dread abode” where one reposes only “in trembling hope” (32). Surely Gray still has some belief in God and in an after-life, but that belief seems hardly to have relieved his melancholy while he lived (25-27), or to have given him a clear confidence for the moment of death (32).

Similarly for the villagers in the body of the poem, on the one hand Scripture is quoted on their tombs and helps them to die (21), but on the other hand they still longed for life at the moment of death so that their religion cannot have given them perfect resignation to their mortal condition (22,23). In other words, for the villagers as for Gray, religion is still there, but its grip is weakening.

And that is why into the gap left by the fading of religion’s solution of the problem of death, we see in the “Elegy” a modern solution flowing: life has meaning if I am known, death has meaning if I have been a celebrity. True (5-8), the “annals of the Poor” are full of “homely joys” (6) and “useful toil” (7), but that is not enough for “Grandeur” and “Ambition” (8), and Gray, instead of telling Ambition and Grandeur that they themselves signify little or nothing before their Father and their God (32), answers their objection to the insignificance of the humble villagers by pleading in the longest single section of the “Elegy” (12-19) that it may have been only circumstances that prevented the villagers from being as well-known as the greatest celebrities in the land!

But how can being a celebrity give significance to life, or consolation in death? Firstly, as Gray sees, one can be famous for good or evil (17,18), and how can evil celebrity be a good thing? And secondly, if every villager in England were well-known, not one of them would be well-known! Yet most everybody today wants to get on television or into the newspapers, because, as they think, it is appearing in the media that gives meaning to life! Yet there is not possibly room in the media for everyone to appear. Do only celebrities then have meaningful lives?

The Prussians used to say “Sein mehr als Scheinen”, meaning that being is more important than appearing. But today I do not mind being a nobody just as long as I appear to somebody, notably on their camera. Hence cameras everywhere, and special smiles and efforts for a camera such as I bestow on no real person. I live only in a lens. To live thus in a world of appearances as opposed to the world of reality is a feature of modern life dawning in Gray’s “Elegy”.

Where does it come from? From the weakening of the Christian religion. For if I not only believe but know that God exists, that He watches all of my actions, and depending on them will reward me with a glorious Heaven or punish me with a terrible Hell, regardless of what my fellow human beings observe or think of me, then my least thought, word and deed take on a significance for eternity which has nothing to do with their being praised or blamed, known or unknown, by other men.

Such meaning being lent to this life by the next was vaguely understood by the pre-Christian pagans, but it was stamped clearly upon medieval men’s hearts and minds by the triumph of Christianity. Then came modern times in which Christ began progressively to be moved out of Christ-ianity, leaving –ianity, only one letter away from inanity, or emptiness. Indeed the emptying out of the Man-God left a huge gap in men’s lives. But Nature abhors a vacuum. Therefore somebody else has to be watching me for a post-Christian’s life to have meaning. So if I no longer believe in God or the angels. I will believe in the media and cameras.

Of course it is not necessarily the business of poets to be writing religious tracts or poems on eternal life. However, it cannot not be their business to tell the truth. If then they tackle a great subject like the meaning of life and death, their poems are bound to be measured against the fullness of known truth. Measured in this way, Gray’s “Elegy” is a noble lament for death as the loss of life, but it is an inadequate understanding of the meaning of that life.

Logically, Gray’s half-solution has little or no appeal for modern readers who have little or no sense of religion left in them. And it can seem to have little to offer to religious souls that have the fullness of the solution in them. But let such souls not scorn Gray or the many artists like him of the last few centuries. What they produced when they produced it may well have formed part of the falling away from the full solution, but by that very fact it can seem less alien and more accessible to modern souls seeking to climb back up, out of today’s desolating materialism. The same staircase that was built to serve downwards can be used to climb upwards!

Interview with Bishop Donald Sanborn on cultural issues: March 2009

2009-07-15T18:33:00.003-05:00

Find below Part 2 of the interview I did with Bishop Sanborn earlier this year in Florida. In this interview he covers items as diverse as how he discovered his own vocation, to the early days of the SSPX in America, to seminary education, to Hitchcock movies, to what Traditional Catholic families are doing well, and not doing well, and much more...and you will find that he agrees with Bishop Williamson on university education - for both men and women! Gasp!

Enjoy more Catholic counsel from yet another Catholic bishop originally ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Stephen Heiner: How long now have you been working in some sort of capacity forming priests?
Bishop Sanborn: Many years. I started in January 1977 in Armada and continued in that capacity until April of 1983 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Then I started forming priests again, I think, in 1989/1990 and had Father Baumberger and Father Greenwell in Michigan at that time. Then when the Bishop Mendez presented himself, they departed. Others came. Two former seminarians of Winona came to us looking for training. I trained both of them for a while, but they decided not to pursue it. Then Bishop Dolan was consecrated in 1993, and the idea of the serious formation of priests became a reality again. In 1995, I officially established Most Holy Trinity Seminary in Warren, Michigan, and we have been functioning ever since.. So really the only time in my 34 years as a priest that I have not been training priests was my first year of ordination and about five years between 1983 and 1989, so maybe six years.

S.H. So that was when you were in Oyster Bay with Father Kelly?
B.S. Yes, my first post was in New York with the then Father Kelly.

S.H. But then you were moved to this house of formation.
B.S. Yes, Father Ward—Father Anthony Ward — had left the Society of Pius X rather quickly, and I think Archbishop Lefebvre had nobody else. I think that’s why. I was really too young.

S.H. How old were you then?
B.S. I was twenty-six years old, and I thought I was too young then and I know now I was too young. I think it can be summed up in this way: “There’s nobody else to do it and you’re American and you’re available. You do it.”

S.H. So when you went to Michigan how many young men were there?
B.S. There were three.

S.H. Three. And then how long were you there before you went to Ridgefield?
B.S. We went to Ridgefield in the fall of 1979.

S.H. So you were there for four years?
B.S. Yes.

S.H. And things were really sort of humming along from all accounts, even from what Bishop Williamson tells me things were just moving along.
B.S. Things were going well in Ridgefield, yes. We were building a new building in Ridgefield. Donations were really strong.

S.H. I want to veer off for a moment and present you with the ability to reflect on the entire “event” as it were of 1983. I have reconstructed the events through the eyes of Bishop Williamson, who has asked to simply retell the story by referring to an Angelus interview he did on the matter in 1983, Fr. Cekada, who wrote a long article in which he talked about the legal matters and did an interview with me about it, Bp. Dolan, in a forthcoming interview where he talked about how his relationship with the Archbishop informed the whole event…now you…the man who was, in effect, fired and expelled as Seminary Rector.
I have three questions and you can respond to them in any order you would like. One, did you expect that this was inevitable? Two, after nearly 30 years of retrospective, would you have done anything differently or do you have any regrets? Three, do you see, as I do, that the clash between the “Nine” and the SSPX still characterizes the “hard-line” and “Rome-line” within the SSPX to this day and hour, though recent personnel moves have certainly displaced some of the more outspoken “hard-line”?
B.S. To answer the first question: yes, it was inevitable. With the election of John Paul II in 1978, Archbishop Lefebvre was on a fast track toward reconciliation with the Vatican. The clash with the Americans was inevitable, therefore, since we wanted nothing to do with the Modernists who inhabit the Vatican. To answer the second question: I regret that the whole thing had to happen. The ideal, of course, is that all of Catholic tradition show itself as a single unified force. But even now looking back at 1983 after more than twenty-five years, I do not see how it could have been done any differently. To answer the third question: Absolutely, the forces which caused the split in 1983 are still very much at work in the Society of Saint Pius X. There are many different currents in that group, and they may well end up with another big split before long. On the other hand, they often manage to bury their differences by some sort of cohesion which springs, I think, from the memory of Archbishop Lefebvre.

S.H. Let's return to the state of the seminary in 1983. You had a good group of young men?
B.S. There were about 30-35, I think, depending on the year. The first year of the seminary, however, can be at times disappointing.

S.H. When you’re saying disappointing, what do you mean by that?
B.S. It means that there is a formation that we have to give them, and they come face to face with that formation their first year. Some of them respond really well and some of them do not. That first year is a critical year: it’s when you lose most of those whom you will lose. And it could be for any number of reasons. It can be for theological reasons. It could be for character reasons. It could be for academic reasons, or maybe disciplinary reasons. There is a formidable formation that they have to face. Many times they have come in from an absolutely abominable academic atmosphere of modern education, and they have no study habits or bad study habits. They do not even know the basics of English grammar. Their English is often marginal, full of grammatical errors. Their pronunciation is bad. You are really dealing with very raw material in many cases. So then we’re faced with teaching them, in many cases, their own language. Then we have to teach them Latin. They have had no Latin. Years ago Latin — unless you were in a B or C track —was obligatory in Catholic schools. Almost everybody took Latin. Since they have no Latin, they’re facing the challenge of language all of a sudden, and it’s a very, very disciplined study, with memorization and grammar. That is a lot. Not everybody can take that. Then they have other courses, namely in philosophy, which is very abstract. It’s just a whole new world of academics for them. Many cannot survive.

S.H. So when you are talking about what we alluded to earlier about having to put up with a smaller group of people to pick from, in the same sense do you find that you’re losing people sometimes not due to a lack of piety or a lack of desire but they just don’t have the academic ability to keep up?
B.S. That’s one of the reasons, one of the reasons.

S.H. Do you think other reasons are occurring more now than before the Council as far as what’s stopping a young man from coming into a seminary?
B.S. Yes. What is stopping a young man from coming to seminary today is the selfishness —that’s one reason — and the other is the distraction of the modern age.

S.H. Can you elaborate on both of those, Your Excellency?
B.S. The way in which children are raised today is one in which the selfishness is accentuated; the natural selfishness of Original Sin is accentuated as a virtue, practically. The question that would arise at the age of fifteen or sixteen is “What is fulfilling to me?”, “How does this fulfill me?” And when you add materialism to that, and certainly Western Europe and the United States are soaked in materialism, the obvious response is “How can I make the most money?” and “How will I be the happiest?” That’s the only question. So the priesthood obviously is way, way down on the list even for the pious person, even for the person who has been raised in the Catholic Faith, and by that I mean the traditional Faith. He cannot overcome that tendency to selfishness, even if he should be pious.

When World War II broke out, the lines for the recruitment offices were packed. You couldn’t even get into the recruitment offices. Those were people who were volunteering. I don’t think you would see that today in the young man. I think he is a whole different kind of person. Before the 1960’s there was the idea of responsibility and work, what you needed to do in life. You picked out your career early on in life and went toward it and were stable in it. That’s gone. The young people want to live for today and have a job that pays today and they don’t want to worry about the next day. There is no idea of great responsibilities. It’s just against the culture.

S.H. So that goes into your second point about distraction then?
B.S. Yes. That goes into distraction and material things and impossibility of seeing beyond today. They’re not attracted to even worldly undertakings that involve responsibility. It’s even hard to convince them to get married.

S.H. Really?
B.S. The idea of settling down with a wife and children, together with all of those responsibilities, sounds hard to them. It’s common knowledge that your twenties are your teens now and your thirties are your twenties, and you might get married when you’re thirty-eight and settle down the way that people would have done when they were eighteen or nineteen, sixty or seventy years ago.

S.H. It’s definitely moved. I can speak from personal experience.
B.S. It’s all of the excessive schooling that goes on too. In the 1930s probably 5% of the male population went to college, and the academics in college were of far better quality. It was truly a university or college in which the idea was liberal arts and the perfection of the mind in various ways, for example, through philosophy and theology and so forth. Now universities are essentially trade schools, business schools concentrating on various forms of making money, even in the sciences and teachnology. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that is not the idea of a university. That’s a trade school. It’s like plumbing or electricity. I’m glad that people go to trade schools still, but it is not the idea of a university.

S.H. It’s a very expensive trade school.
B.S. My brother is a physician in New York. He always said, “I went to trade school.”

S.H. Your Excellency, if you’re talking about a young man changing at fifteen or sixteen, have you thought about a minor seminary? Have you wanted to do something like that? Is it just a matter of numbers?
B.S. We did actually did do a minor seminary for a while. The problem really is staff. They should be separated from the major seminary. It is impossible to do them together. We tried; it’s impossible. You need a separate building. You need a staff, and the formation is entirely different. There is a big difference between someone who is fourteen, fifteen, even sixteen, and someone who is twenty-one. They’re still very much kids. They need both the supervision of kids and the recreation of kids. There’s a much bigger need for programmed recreation than, let’s say, for someone who is twenty-one. So it’s really staff. I think it’s a wonderful thing but it’s a question of staff and facilities.

S.H. Now the CMRI has one, I think.
B.S. Yes, they do.

S.H. Enlarging this question, when you started Most Holy Trinity Seminary and as time has gone on and you’ve sort of become more, amenable to working with a group like the CMRI, was there ever thought given to combining programs and sort of having a staff there for different classes?
B.S. No, our formation is quite different and it would not work out. People always ask me this question and it is difficult to answer because it is sort of a way of doing things that’s different, as well as certain attitudes and…

S.H. Because some would argue that the Roman Seminary (where the Archbishop went) or those other places, you had a bunch of priests there from a hundred different orders and they managed to go to classes together and learn some basic things together, but they all went back to their houses of formation at the end of the day.
B.S. That’s right but they were just taking classes.

S.H. But if you could all take classes there and then you’d have priests on staff responsible for formation and you could pool the teachings stuff. You’d only need one or two, you could use one priest to be the rector for that house of formation but now you’ve pooled the teaching staff so you don’t need to have all those priests there.
B.S. It’s a thought. Yes, it’s a thought but somehow I don’t think it would work out.

S.H. Do you think families are doing enough to encourage vocations?
B.S. Some are; some are not.

S.H. So, in the way of a positive question, what more could be done? What can families do to encourage vocations more?
B.S. What they should do is pave the highway so that if the young man has the grace, there is no obstacle to his pursuing it. The vocation is a grace. It cannot come from any other place authentically. You can join the priesthood for wrong reasons, but authentically it cannot come from any other place than from the grace of God. But it is possible to have the grace of God to pursue the priesthood and it could be the will of God to do that, but that there at the same time be obstacles in the way, either voluntary or involuntary, whereby you don’t make it.

So the parents should pave the highway and should also encourage but obviously not force or insist on the vocation. They should tell their children that the best thing they can do with their lives is to be a priest, a brother, or a nun, that there’s nothing better and nothing would please them more, if that is the will of God for the child. That’s the first thing. The second thing is to have a deep piety in the home. ButI would say even more important than that is a strict adherence to the Catholic rules. Piety should never be seen as a substitute for the obedience of the commandments. Where the Catholic Faith lives in the family is primarily in the observance of Catholic rules: Catholic rules of belief and Catholic rules of morality.

Then they should detach themselves and their children from the evil influences of the modern world. The first place is to get rid of broadcast and cable television. That is number one on the list. That is so culture-forming from every point of view: worldliness, modesty, what is virtue, what is vice. Nothing can compete with that. It goes so deep, that daily dose of television goes so deep, and nothing can compete. The Catholic school can’t compete. Not even good Catholic parents can compete against that. Their entertainments have to be very much controlled and those influences eliminated without compromise.

Another thing I would warn them against, and which is a great vocation-killer, is sports addiction. There’s nothing wrong with sports. There’s nothing wrong with being interested in who won the ball game. But today there is an addiction to sports. The child remains always a child by this addiction because the sport is only a game, and he lives in a world of games as he grows up. The most important thing in life is the game. I see young men at 25 and 30 having discussions about games and about professional players, discussions that you would expect out of an eleven year-old, when in fact it really doesn’t matter a hoot who won that game. It doesn’t matter a single hoot. In a year or two no one will remember, except some fanatics, who won the game, and who those professional players were. If young men live in a fake world of sports, it is a vocation-killer because a vocation is as serious as a heart attack. You are taking on the burdens of the world. You’re taking on the grave responsibilities of being a link between God and man. You couldn’t get something that requires more responsibility and more gravity than that. Being addicted to sports is about the lightest and the most frivolous thing you can do. Consequently those two things are absolutely opposed. Addiction to sports is a vocation-killer.

S.H. So television, addiction to sports…can you think of anything else?
B.S. Discipline. Since the 1960s, the discipline of children has changed radically, and there’s a phenomenon of what I call “child worship” where the child becomes practically a little god in the family and all things are directed toward the child, and there is no sense of having the child live in an adult world. The old way of raising children was that they would be quiet and they had to conform to rules and they had to be good little children. Now they run amok and scream and become totally unruly. That’s considered something that is quite normal and natural. “They are expressing themselves.” In fact, these are effects of Original Sin that are manifesting themselves. There is no attempt to suppress these things. As a matter of fact, any attempt to curtail these tendencies in a child is considered wrong and improper in the modern culture. So many Catholics, although they are very pious about the traditional Mass and the traditional Faith, are completely modernized in regards to the way they are raising their children.

S.H. Well, I was going to follow up with that, Your Excellency, about these norms. Why do you think families would fight you about the television? Why would they fight you about discipline when its advise coming from you or any priest?
B.S. For a number of reasons. One is that many people perceive the problem to be one of merely liturgy. “We don’t like the New Mass. We like the traditional Mass. We have found the Traditional Mass, and that’s the end of the story”. Yet there is a whole other world beyond the traditional Mass, one of sacred doctrine and there’s a world of preserving all of the practices that are dictated by Catholicism and which were observed before the Council. Many people don’t want any part of these.

S.H. Why?
B.S. Because I think they have this schizophrenic personality in the sense of wanting the traditional Mass but at the same time wanting their culture from the modern. They like the modern culture, but they don’t like the New Mass.

S.H. Is there something to be said for reconciling change and permanence, reconciling modern culture with Catholic thought or trying to understand modern thought through a Catholic prism? Why do you think they are not bringing their Faith into observing the culture or changing the culture or adapting the culture?
B.S. They want to live, in my opinion, in two different worlds. There’s the world of Sunday morning and then there’s the world of the week. It is just too disturbing for them to observe certain rules of modesty, certain rules of entertainment, certain rules of discipline. It’s too disturbing for their lives, makes them too different from their peers and their other family members who may not be as traditional. It causes a lot of problems to be sure, even picking a spouse, the person you bring home, and so forth. It’s difficult. It makes you swim against the current and that’s uncomfortable for a lot of people.

S.H. So you still—when you’re speaking about this, Your Excellency, are you talking about the congregations that you and your priests work with? You still have some of these problems?
B.S. Sure. Very much.

S.H. And even though they’ve been properly catechized from the pulpit, they say, “Thank you, Father. Thank you for Mass” and then…
B.S. You know, you have a whole spectrum of people. Some people are very observant in all of those things and others would not be disrespectful to you, but they essentially decide that the priest is excessive or doesn’t understand the situation, or give you some sort of brushing off.

S.H. So is that how it was before the Council?
B.S. Well, I lived before the council. I remember it distinctly. I think people observed the rules overall. We in Catholic school would get a list every week of what was playing in the movie theatres with the Legion of Decency rating next to it. We were told that as children we can only go to “A-1” movies, and if we went to anything that was marked ‘B’ it was a mortal sin. All of my friends observed that. We wouldn’t think of going to a movie without looking at the Legion of Decency. We wouldn’t think about it.

S.H. Well, maybe Bishop Sanborn only hung out with the goody-good kids then?

B.S. I don’t know. I’m sure there were always some that were...

S.H. I mean what would be a ‘B’ movie?
B.S. That would be today…Gone with the Wind was ‘B’.

S.H. Because he said “damn” in there?
B.S. That was one of the things, I am sure, but more importantly there was the theme of a loose-living woman. They were very conscious of themes. Where divorce was glorified or even socially accepted, the movie was given a B. It wasn’t only the skin flick that they were looking for. It was moral and social themes that were very important…so some of them would be put in “A-3” which was for adults only, but some were given B.

S.H. Some of the Hitchcock movies?
B.S. Some of the Hitchcock movies have themes which would not scandalize a prudent adult. Other some are very bad.

S.H. But you would cite that as an example of the fact that it wasn’t just “We went to mass.” We were given instruction…
B.S. People in general observed the rules.

S.H. Catholics could swing elections back then.
B.S. Absolutely. Catholics are the ones who cleaned up television in Hollywood. They would adjust movies in order to get the “A-1” rating or the “A-2” rating. The Legion of Decency was revered.

S.H. And who shut that down?
B.S. That was the Council. 1964, I think, was the last year of the Legion of Decency and then the Catholic Office for Motion Pictures was put in its place, and things were starting to be approved that were totally unacceptable. Then they eventually shut it down when Hollywood started to do the MPAA ratings. But, no, if you look at some of the movies and pictures made in the 1950’s, they were generally clean. By today’s standards they were squeaky clean. Consider all of the Hays Office rules for television. That was from Catholicism. The fact that you could not show adults in bed on television—I don’t know if you noticed that…

S.H. You mean everything had to be Ricky-Lucy beds, so separate.
B.S. That was Hays Office.

S.H. But that wasn’t a norm for couples to sleep in separate beds, that was just something that we didn’t want to talk…
B.S. Right, it was something that television was supposed to avoid. In other words, obviously married people sleep in the same bed. But because married couples sleep in the same bed, it does not necessarily follow that such intimacy should be put on the television screen.

S.H. We’re not going to explore that area.
B.S. Right. In other words, sexual matters are not for the world of television.

S.H. So you would have seen it as a prudent thing, that that was a prudent practice?
B.S. I’m not saying that showing separate beds is necessarily required by the moral law but I am respecting the idea that they did observe this rule, and am admiring the idea that they were keeping sex out of television. That was the effect of the Catholic Church. All of that fell apart in the ‘60’s with the Council. I have a distinct memory of life before the Council. It was a very, very ardent life; the churches were packed, Catholic schools packed, and there were many nuns, brothers, and priests. People obeyed the rules and if people didn’t obey the rules, you were in serious trouble.

S.H. Your Excellency, would you say it must have been very shallow for everyone to fall away after the Council or would you say that it was so earthshaking that is was justifiable their leaving, all of these nuns and priests, brothers just leaving after the council?
B.S. I don’t think it was shallow, no, I don’t. I knew priests and nuns and they were not shallow—I never got any kind of impression of shallowness. I knew brothers. Of course some were better than others, but I never got the feeling of lack of faith, that they did not believe what they professed to believe.

S.H. So why did they leave?
B.S. I think that they were poisoned by the Council. I think that authority, in their minds, what was Catholic authority, was telling them to accept a new religion. Whereas the authority should be confirming the true Faith, it was giving them a false religion, and I think they converted to a false religion based on that authority, in quotation marks, and fell away because of that.

S.H. So you don’t buy the idea of this sort of legalistic shell, ‘50’s sort of Catholicism?
B.S. No. That’s a Bishop Williamson myth. He was busy being an Anglican at that point. He never lived it.

S.H. I’ve heard that sometimes—and Bishop Dolan and Father Cekada reiterated this—priests would do things that are incomprehensible even for those of us who grew up in the Novus Ordo, like the idea that a priest would read announcements while Mass was going on or that Communion was given by the time, let’s say, when the Pater Noster was being said. That these sorts of practices were going on, gave the very mechanized sense that, “Well, I went to Mass and there’s this sort of machine that went on.” That would never happen now. I mean those of us who go to Traditional Mass, we would never—I think we have a very skewed perception of what the Traditional Mass is because we have made it our likeness and image based on what we saw from the Novus Ordo, but before the Council if this sort of stuff was happening…
B.S. I will say it was machine-like, yes. The problem was that there were these enormous city parishes, enormous and swelling from the time of the 1920’s to the 1960’s. There would be six or seven Masses upstairs, six or seven Masses downstairs. You had ten minutes in the pulpit and you had to get the Masses over with quickly or the pastor would be very upset with you. You had all these communions to distribute. So, yes, they were giving short sermons, and yes, it became mechanical. I think the problem was that the parishes were too big.

S.H. So could that also have been part of the problem? When there’s something like that, there’s a lack of catechesis and then people feel like they’re a part of this big machine, and then the machine stops working. Then they think, “I’m not going to go to Mass anymore.”
B.S. I don’t think so, no. I think that certainly, yes, that was a fault, that that could have been corrected somehow, but the people knew their Faith, they observed it. It was a working, functioning church, and it was healthy. Everyone accepted the Faith. Families were united. You would talk about things that pertained to Faith. No one ever questioned it.

S.H. I think that’s what those of us who are under 30 who came and found out about this later, for us there’s a big disconnect between this vibrant Church that I’ve heard you discuss and my dad says the same thing and I don’t doubt it…but I try to connect that vibrancy and that Faith and knowing, these people being fully catechized, coming out on the other side of the Council and wholesale people leaving and accepting these changes without resistance… when we have stories throughout the history of the Church, faithful resisting things like the Milanese resisting just some liturgical changes in the Mass with swords...
B.S. Yes, but I think that you have to understand how Pius XII was viewed and by that I mean the Papacy. He was like a god.

S.H. Did you ever see him in the United States? Did he ever come to the United States?
B.S. Not as Pope, but he came as…

S.H. As a Nuncio?
B.S. It was not an Apostolic Delegation. He was sent over for something when he was here, but I never saw him. Not just Pius XII, particularly, but the pope in general was like a god. He was somebody who belonged more to heaven than to earth. That’s how the Pope was seen in Rome. He was no ordinary personality, just Father Smith that became something. He was seen by people…there was such a deep respect for the Pope that —you would not even think that he could hand you a false doctrine. There was an expression “to be more Catholic than the Pope.” The sense was that no one could be more Catholic than the Pope and Pius XII in particular. All of them conducted themselves with great dignity and perfection as clergy, but especially Pius XII. Just perfect. None of the garbage you see today. They were revered as practically angelic.

S.H. So you’re saying that they took advantage of that to poison them?
B.S. Yes. It was the authority. The faith in Catholics all fell apart when all of those things started to come down from Vatican II. I saw it with my own eyes. It all fell apart. I think a lot of those priests left because they realized that this was a new religion implicitly. It meant that everything that they learned in the seminary was a lot of nonsense. They had lost the faith, and they were being indoctrinated in the early 1960’s and 1970’s with this new stuff. I saw it. I was in the seminary, a college seminary in the 1960’s, and they had what they called the Pastoral Institute. It meant that all the pastors in the diocese came and listened to this indoctrination from liberal professors and all learned how to be good Modernists. It was all under the authority of the “Catholic Church,” and the Catholic Church operates on authority.

Because that was so unthinkable at the time that the authority had defected from the Faith, the only alternative was, “Well I have to become a good Modernist.” I saw a lot of priests and nuns who were fine examples of priesthood and religious life just go down the tubes doctrinally, or they left. It all fell apart. It was like putting a pin in a balloon. The whole thing holds nicely together, but if you break the essence of it, it just disintegrates in front of you. I think that’s what happened. The essential elements of Catholicism were taken out, and it just sank. That’s my estimation. To be sure, Modernists were doing their work; the liturgical people were doing their work. I had a priest whom I knew that was a hospital chaplain in the Brooklyn diocese and he told me he was in the seminary in the 1940’s during the war, and he said that one professor in particular put aside the textbook and said, “Just take notes.” He would take notes and he would say to himself, “I think I could get him for heresy for this.” He said they were waiting in the wings. They were just waiting for their moment, all these liberal members of the clergy and others. They knew each other and they were talking about what was coming and, to use his term, “they were waiting in the wings.” When John XXIII came they moved the whole thing out onto the stage. They were definitely there. It’s not to say all was perfect, by any means. As I said in my article recently, the real cause of Vatican II was this energy of the modernists who had submerged from 1903 to 1914 but who reemerged in the pontificates from 1914 to 1958. I put a great deal of blame on those popes for not heeding what Pius X said to do. I think we would never have had a Vatican II if they had continued the programs, the anti-Modernist programs, of Pius X. They considered him to be excessive, and I wonder if Pius XII did not canonize Pius X for that very reason. There are comments Pius XII made here and there that would lead you to believe that he knew that the situation was out of control and that after him there was going to be a deluge. He canonized Pius X over the objections, fiery objections, of so many people who “suffered,” under him, people like Roncalli. Oh, Pius X. The Godzilla of the ecclesiastical state! Yet Pius XII canonized him over all of those objections. I wonder if Pius XII was not saying that Pius X’s program was correct. Pius X in the minds of the people is frequent communion and communion for seven year-olds. In the mind of the clergy is he’s the lion, the suppressor of Modernism and the sacker of priests, cardinals and bishops.

S.H. Well he was the first Pope Saint in five hundred years. Pius IX now in hindsight as well. There had to be reason for that. The one prior to him was Pius V.
B.S. Yes and I think Pius XII was making a statement. I really do, because Pius XII was certainly a person of great faith but at the same time a timid person and a somewhat worldly person, not from the point of view of morals but from the point of view of enforcing doctrine.

S.H. Well, he came from the diplomatic quarter.
B.S. Yes, and his background was aristocratic and world-pleasing. That’s always the difficulty with aristocratic members of the hierarchy and aristocratic popes: that their whole youth is one of living with the current aristocracy and of being on good terms with aristocracy. Aristocracy, unfortunately, since the seventeenth century has been poisoned by liberal ideas, and so there has always been this idea of balancing Catholicism with the liberal ideas of their peers. So he was raised in that, and I think you can see in his demeanor either weakness or excessive toleration of things, also a tendency to being dazzled by modern science and certain modern ideas, a little dazzled, for example, by satellites. Pius X had a healthy detestation of the modern world as it is modern. He saw the problems. He saw that the modern world and Catholicism were two separate things radically opposed. Those other Popes did not see that, and I think that the fact that Pius X was a farm boy meant he had no care of pleasing anybody. There is a famous quote: when he was told by a bishop that he was going too hard on the modernists, he responded, “The modernists should be beaten with fists. When you’re in a fight with somebody you don’t count how many blows you give him, but you strike him wherever you can.” That was brought up against him in his canonization process.

S.H. (Laughing) Yeah, “You can’t canonize him, he’s violent!”
B.S. “Look at this man, he’s horrible!” But, of course, we know what was going on. It was great to see. He was the one who gave Cardinal De Lai essentially carte blanche to spy on Modernists by means of the Sodalitium Pianum. It was actually Cardinal Merry del Val who thought that that was a little bit too extreme. But the channels were opened straight to Pius X through Cardinal De Lai. It was Msgr. Benigni who ran the Sodalitium Pianum.

S.H. It was a smart move.
B.S. Cardinal De Lai was wonderful. He was the one said at the election of Benedict XV, “Humanly speaking, the Church is finished.”

S.H. For you as a Sedevacantist the clock has sort of stopped at Pius XII, and there are pronouncements of his that address modern issues. For example, NFP is more of a preoccupation for the modern Catholic. People look at that allocution as a way to justify NFP and say, “Well Pius XII said this,” and so do you think it’s problematic to have to look back to Pius XII as we continue forward as Catholics and have to deal with different challenges?
B.S. Sure that’s a very, very serious problem that you don’t have a living Magisterium, extremely serious. It’s like turning off the sun. We would more easily live without the sun than we would live without the living Magisterium. I can’t think of any worse curse upon the earth than to silence the Roman Pontiff.

S.H. But the sun being turned off…that means death…or at least sterility, which is an adjective I often hear ascribed to Sedevacantism. Sedevacantists don’t have any Benedictine monasteries or Dominican Priories, or that sort of thing, how do you respond to that, that accusation that Sedevacantism is sterile? What do you think that means?
B.S. I would not say it is sterile; I would say it is small because it is saying something very unpopular, and not mainstream at all. Furthermore it is difficult to understand.

S.H. Some would say conspiracy theory.
B.S. No. But it is difficult to understand. You have to do your homework to be a sedevacantist.

S.H. So then the argument would be made so Sedevacantism is only available to intelligent Catholics and that the simple Catholic can’t…
B.S. No, that’s not true. It’s just that—I would say that the simple Catholic has to, any Catholic whether intelligent or not, has to do his homework to be a sedevacantist. He has to think it out and move off of the position that all that counts or all that’s important is the Traditional Latin Mass. The Traditional movement has been poisoned from this attitude from the beginning, and that’s why most of the Catholics who did react in the 1960’s and 1970’s went down the route of Latin Massism.

S.H. It was like the Father Gommar DePauw school of thought…
B.S. Yes, something like, “The pope really, secretly, wants this.” Some sort of ridiculous argument regarding their legal acceptability of having the traditional Latin Mass even though it’s been suppressed or outlawed. Casting aside the problem of the papacy and making the pope just a fixture, if you want, that we don’t really have to think about. That has been the path of the traditional movement and it is a poisoned path. It’s going straight back into the Novus Ordo. If you have Benedict’s picture in the vestibule and his name in the canon, you’re going to be back with him sooner or later just like a satellite that is circling the earth. It’s going to fall down onto the earth. All of your logic, your theology, everything is going to lead back to Modernism. There is nothing intrinsically sterile about sedevacantism. I’m just saying it is small and one of the reasons that we’re small is because the SSPX principally has poisoned the traditional movement.

S.H. How?
B.S. By having this schizophrenic position, “recognize and resist.”

S.H. Your Excellency, I’d like to circle back to talking about the religious orders. You mentioned some problems for men and grasping vocations. What about women? Is there any additional element holding back women from being nuns and is it that same explanation for distracting them from marriage or are men more distracted?
B.S. I think men are more distracted. The female vocation has always been easier than the male vocation in the sense that the woman is more inclined to piety, is more inclined to a domestic life by nature. You know the man is the roamer, the hunter-gatherer. You do have a somewhat constrained life in the priesthood although it’s not as constrained as some might perceive it to be. It is something that is a little distasteful, I think, to many.
The female vocation has always been easier. I think that’s even true today. However, I think in both cases you have the uncertainty of the times. This also might be something holding back the girl particularly. You have to have a very stable foundation in order to form nuns and expect them to give over their lives to something. It has to be stable in all ways: not merely theologically and liturgically, but also stable financially and governmentally. That might be a factor in both cases, both men and women, holding them back. What does the future hold? I can’t answer the question. I never could. When I was deciding to become a traditional seminarian back in the 1970’s, I had no idea what was going to happen. So, I think it takes a special person today to pursue the priesthood or the woman’s religious life more than, say, 75 years ago. Things were so stable then. Life was so predictable that it was much easier. I think that would perhaps be a factor for some girls. I don’t see in women the same sort of selfishness as I see in men, but I do see some infection of feminism in women that might be a factor.

S.H. That is a word (feminism) that is always so bandied around so can you be a bit more specific, Your Excellency, and maybe one or two examples of that, you say, feminism. Are modern women more willful?
B.S. I think you have to go back to the basics in Genesis. Women were created as assistants to men, so whenever you have the word “assistant” it means you have a principal. I think that a failure to understand that role is feminism.

S.H. (Pauses.) There are a number of Traditional Catholic women who would, um, take umbrage at that formulation. “Women were created as assistants to men, so we don’t have value ourselves, Your Excellency?” That would be the question, so we’re not valuable in ourselves; we’re only valuable so far as what we can do for men. I think that’s the feminist follow-up to that.
B.S. Valuable, I’m balking at that word. Everyone is valuable. Every soul is valuable in the sight of God even though we’re sinners.

S.H. Maybe worth? Men validate themselves through their work, right? People can validate themselves through their work, but if women are created as assistants to men, it would seem that if they don’t have a man to assist than they’re purposeless.
B.S. I’d say you would have to distinguish between the norm and the exception, which means that in itself the reason why God created women was to be assistants to men, but it could happen that a woman could have a role, by some fluke or accident, that was not intended as the norm. If the husband dies, for example, she has to be the head of the family. But that does not change the intrinsic purpose in creating women was as assistants to men. That’s in Genesis.

S.H. So these women who never get married, let’s say, is there a lack of fulfillment in their role as a woman because they weren’t serving as an assistant to a man, other than let’s say at a job or in a functional capacity that’s over at the end of the day.
B.S. It certainly—I wouldn’t say it’s “without worth” or without value—but I’m saying that it is not the role for which they were created. They may have to assume such a role for reasons of necessity or whatever, but the greatest fulfillment of a woman or the greatest role, in the natural order, that she can undertake is actually that of a mother and that as an assistant to the father of the family. Naturally speaking, the greatest role for a woman, as a woman, is that she become a mother. What is supernaturally a greater dignity is that she preserve her virginity and consecrate her virginity to God. That is yet greater than being a mother, but there again she does that in an assisting capacity to the priesthood.
Just as is the case in any hierarchy, there are some people that are principals and some people that are assistants. If everyone is a principal, you have chaos; if everyone is an assistant, you have chaos, because an assistant implies a principal. In every machine, in anything that works in an orderly fashion, there is a principal and an assistant, and everything works well when the principal acts as the principal and the assistant acts as the assistant. But there could be cases and there are many cases of women who are required to perform functions that ordinarily men should perform. If there is a reasonable cause for it, then obviously it’s not wrong, and, in many cases, there are reasonable causes for it.

S.H. Your Excellency, what about your vocation? I mean was it this traditional sort of thing, where you were praying and you heard a calling, or did you really have a sense that this was something you were suppose to do?
B.S. It actually was one of those dramatic sort of things. I remember very clearly; it was 1965. Really I had never given much thought to the priesthood. I remember the nuns in seventh grade or eighth grade, which would have been 1962, ’63 saying, “Why don’t you become a priest?” and my saying “I don’t think it is for me” and yet I was a pious…

S.H. What were you thinking of being back then?
B.S. I think I was thinking about teaching at a university.

S.H. The intellectual life?
B.S. I think I was attracted to that if I recall. I wasn’t really sure but I didn’t give the priesthood much thought. I thought it was a wonderful thing. I always had a great admiration for the priesthood. I was pious, but I was not very pious. You know I was not in church all the time but I do recall loving to go to high Masses as a child, Stations of the Cross, Benediction. I thought that was always something of interest to me and was happy when it happened. I remember going to daily Mass during Lent, but I mean I was not extraordinarily pious. I remember that it was the first Sunday in November in 1964, the first of Advent 1964. The first changes had come down from Vatican II, and I remember walking home from church practically sick to my stomach.

S.H. Had they dumped the Last Gospel?
B.S. They had dumped the Last Gospel and the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar. There was some English, some English in it. Things were different, and I remember distinctly saying to myself, “There’s something protestant about this and I don’t like it.” I was one of the early traditionalists. I sensed something was deeply wrong. There was something wrong.

S.H. 1964. So you were fifteen, sixteen?
B.S. Fourteen at that time. But like everyone you keep on going to church and keep on doing what you’re told to do. In 1965, I was fifteen years old and troubled by what was going on in the church, and I remember kneeling in my parish and something came over me or something like that. I remember making a very definite but quick decision, “This is what I will do.”

S.H. In response to that sick feeling?
B.S. No. I was just kneeling waiting for Mass.

S.H. So that had happened just like that Sunday and then during that week…
B.S. That was it, and I never swerved from that thereafter.

S.H. And what did your parents think?
B.S. I told them eventually. I didn’t go home and tell them that. Eventually I let them know I wanted to be a priest. So my father went up to the priest of the rectory and said, “What shall I do, my son wants to be a priest. Should we send him to seminary?” And he said, “No just let him stay in the Catholic school where he is in and if he wants to be a priest, he’ll pursue it and if he doesn’t, he won’t.” And that’s true too. The priesthood has such a strong drive in you that if you have a vocation you’ll get there unless you have some serious obstacle like academics or something. So that’s what I did. I stayed in the Catholic high school and after that I went to Cathedral College in Douglaston. They were just changing the system at that time where they wanted you to have a college degree.

It used to be that they would give you four years of high school, and then two years of humanities. This was the minor seminary. The they sent you to the major seminary. At the major seminary, you would do two years of philosophy, and four years of theology. That was the program. They changed the program to four years of minor seminary, four years of college seminary—Father Cekada went to the same thing—and then four years of major seminary. I entered when I was seventeen.

S.H. That’s how they do it now?
B.S. Yes, but now I think they’ve closed down their college seminaries and they send you to local university, like Marquette.

S.H. Because they don’t have enough.
B.S. The college seminaries all old-age homes now. But they were running the college level at that point. That’s where I went. When I was seventeen I thought, “The parish is really liberal but in the seminary, they’ll be straight-laced. Nothing to worry about there.” I thought I would find somewhat of an oasis of Catholicism. But it was typical 1960’s seminary: liturgical abominations, no discipline, all sorts of heresy, awful theology, many, many cases of bad philosophy depending on who you had. At that time it was still a mix of traditional and liberal. I remember on the feast of the Annunciation they brought in a rock band and they sang Lady Madonna, and that’s when I said I cannot…

S.H. I mean were you all wearing cassocks?
B.S. No. We wore the cassock for Sunday Mass and that was it. Then it was sweatshirts. I always wore a jacket and tie.

S.H. I can’t imagine you in a sweatshirt.
B.S. It is the typical college student look. It was a horrible place. When we sang Lady Madonna I thought this is it. I don’t want any part of this, and I remember thinking to myself, “I do not want to be in the same rectories with these people when I’m in my fifties. I have to get out of this one way or the other.” So then…

S.H. What year? That was when?
B.S. That was about 1970. I think that’s when Lady Madonna came out, such a horrible memory of that.

S.H. March 25th, 1970.
B.S. I’m going to guess it as that year. I thought, “This is not my religion.” So then I looked at other dioceses initially, took trips, wrote letters, went up to Massachusetts, went up to Scranton, Pennsylvania thinking that maybe New York was wacko and perhaps something that was a little more countrified or backwater would be conservative. At that time your only hope was to find something conservative and to survive in it. There was no thought of what we’re doing now. All the conservatives thought that Paul VI was the prisoner of a liberal entourage. He was thought to be supremely orthodox. He was thought to be like Pius XII. He was either weak or threatened or in someway wasn’t doing his job—whatever his problem was, but he was still placed on this pedestal.

S.H. Well and that’s continued to the present, through John Paul II.
B.S. Yes. that mentality. So your hope was to find some conservative bishop who would keep things more or less in order in the diocese.

S.H. Like the Bishop Bruskewitz sort of thing.
B.S. Yes, and so you looked for him. That was your only hope. There was no idea of doing what we’re doing now. The only person that was doing what we’re doing now was Gommar DePauw. He said effectively — he didn’t ever say bluntly — but he said effectively, “This is not Catholicism. We have to branch out and preserve Catholicism this way.” He was the only person in the whole world who was doing that, and he started in 1964, even while I was in the seminary, though then I couldn’t buy it. I just couldn’t do that because of the whole notion of Catholic authority and jurisdiction. That just wasn’t right.

S.H. Was he censured in any way?
B.S. He was condemned by the bishop of the diocese.

S.H. Was he allowed to function? Was he suspended?
B.S. I’m sure he received all the ecclesiastical suspensions, etc. I was too young to follow it, but I am sure that everything came down upon him, but he continued to function. He was a priest of the Diocese of Baltimore. He was a canonist and he had a lot of spurious, canonical explanations of what he was doing. Whether he believed them or not, I don’t know, but he would put something out to the people saying that this is all justified.

S.H. If you look in subsection two and such and such…
B.S. I think he was too intelligent to really believe it himself. He taught at Saint Mary’s in Emmettsburg. He was the canon law professor and he was the theologian to a Franciscan bishop at the Council. Fr. De Pauw had him there in Westbury for a while. He was excellent. I forget his name. But Fr. De Pauw was the only one doing that. It was in late 1970 that Archbishop Lefebvre’s name came up, very late perhaps even early ’71.

S.H. Early 1970, late 1969.
B.S. No, no. He founded the SSPX on November 1, 1970. I had heard about him. I’m going to say January of ’71 in a small publication called The Voice. It was coming out of upstate New York. It talked about him, so then I got in contact with him, and he said he was coming to this country in any case. I met with him on March 15, 1971.

S.H. It was almost a year after the Lady Madonna incident.
B.S. Yes, yes. I met him with the then seminarian Kelly, now Bishop Kelly, and then seminarian Anthony Ward who is now Father Ward who is functioning in Colorado Springs.

S.H. How did you all meet each other?
B.S. Because Father Ward was in Douglaston at the college seminary with me for a while, and then he went to the major seminary and he talked to Clarence Kelly…

S.H. So you knew Father Ward?
B.S. Oh very well, yes. I knew him from practically the first day I got there because I was looking for conservatives.

S.H. Then I guess that also makes sense to send you to go clean up the mess then if he leads with everything.
B.S. I don’t think so. I think I was the only possibility. I was the broom in the corner. I don’t think I had any other qualifications. He’s there. Tell him to take care of it.

S.H. So Father Ward was in college with you, college seminary?
B.S. Yes, he was ahead of me, though, so he was finishing while I was starting.

S.H. So you knew him?
B.S. I knew him and we talked a lot. He was so happy. I remember we were sitting around at dinner a few weeks in, a week or two into my first year there. I was saying, “Among all these seminarians, is there anyone conservative here?” You know how blunt you are when you’re young. “Anybody conservative you know? I don’t like all these changes, you know.” He looked at me and said, “You’re a conservative?!” That was the term then. I said, “Yes, I’m conservative.” He said, “Oh, good.” We hit it off right away. We talked a lot, and he actually taught me a lot of things. He was very knowledgeable; he had been through the high school seminary.

S.H. So he’s still stuck in this time warp of “I have to find a good bishop.”
B.S. Yes, and apparently he has found somebody to ordain those people. Whether it was a validly consecrated bishop is another question. I don’t know who ordained them; he will not say who ordained them.

S.H. Well, he’s in the fortress or whatever, right?
B.S. Yes. He was always that way.

S.H. He’s only two years ahead of you, so does that mean he’s in his sixties, early sixties?
B.S. Yes. I’m fifty-nine, so I’d guess he is sixty-one.

S.H. He still has plenty of fortress years ahead then?
B.S. Yes. He told somebody, somebody very reliable, that privately he’s a sedevacantist. He said that to somebody who’s absolutely believable. I can’t remember who said it but somebody who spoke to him. But Father Ward was always someone who wanted to be hooked up with the Novus Ordo hierarchy. I think that he thought that we can’t just go out on our own, so to speak. Somehow we have to get this licensed by the Novus Ordo hierarchy. He always had that in him.

S.H. I think we all have to cross that bridge because I had to as well. I came from all these conservative institutions. I was with the Cistercians in Dallas at their prep school. I went to the prep school of the Norbertines in California. They do the full Office in Latin and the Mass, smells, bells, etc. So when I was crossing that bridge you know, there’s always, “Well, Stephen, you know you can’t go there…”—because they had the Traditional Mass until 1981 and they gave it up out of their own free will…Now before you went to Econe, where were you in Seminary?
B.S. In my final year of the college seminary.

S.H. Where you would have gone next?
B.S. I would have gone there, but I intended not to in any case, but Anthony Ward got to know Clarence Kelly who had come from Catholic University. He was a member of the Diocese of Rockville Center in Long Island. He had achieved a degree in philosophy at Catholic University in Washington.

S.H. Was it the practice to send kids to Catholic (University), to send their seminarians there?
B.S. No. I think he decided to become a priest when he was at Catholic U., and he switched to the seminary afterwards. So they got to know each other. Clarence Kelly had to be converted somewhat to the traditional stance. He definitely was reacting to a lot of the new theology. He saw through them and fought with them in the classroom over the new theology, but it was this enduring war that brought him over to the stronger position. I got to know him at that point, so the three of us met with Archbishop Lefebvre in New York on March 15, 1971. In that discussion, Archbishop Lefebvre came and showed us the decree from the Bishop of Fribourg, that the Fraternity had permission to exist and Clarence Kelly said, “Well, the Traditional Mass is suppressed. How can we have the Traditional Mass?” The archbishop said, “They can’t suppress the Mass. You just have to continue with the Mass. They have no right to suppress the Mass.”

S.H. And you were talking to the Archbishop in French?
B.S. He had an interpreter, Father Peter Morgan, who has since passed over to Anglicanism. Then he was doing interpreting, and I knew some French at the time. He was saying they, the Vatican, didn’t have the right to do that. He was saying, “This [the Fraternity] is a legitimately erected thing and we’re continuing with the Traditional Mass that they don’t have the right to suppress.” So I went over in April of that year and spent a week there, and I was pleased with what I was seeing. They were not by any means perfectly traditional but at that time if you had…

S.H. You might as well have been here.
B.S. After Lady Madonna, anything looked good. It was refreshing to see that there were some other people in the world…

S.H. There were a lot, relatively speaking, not just like you…
B.S. There were thirteen seminarians I think.

S.H. Not just you and another guy among a bunch of others.
B.S. Right, right. And as it was, we were considered to be just crazy for wanting the Traditional Mass in the diocesan atmosphere at that point. You were out of your mind if you wanted the traditional Faith, the Traditional Latin Mass. That was finished. “What are you crazy? You want to go back to that?” You were isolated, not that that bothered me. You just lived a life of theological isolation. It never made me falter. But it was nothing like it is today, and it was even unpredictable that it would get to this today.

S.H. It’s gone mainstream.
B.S. And that was unheard of in the 1970s, unheard of. It was outer space. Then there was the problem, the theological problem, which presented itself more and more. The Novus Ordo got worse and worse. The problem started to present itself. Can we work in this system? Archbishop Lefebvre always said he wanted a society that could go into a diocese and help the bishop. He always had this in mind. For that, he was consistent.

S.H. Did you buy that? Did you think it could work?
B.S. At the time I thought that was a nice idea, you know, maybe if you could find conservative bishops.

S.H. Was there the perception that there were conservative bishops in the United States you could go to?
B.S. Not in the United States.

S.H. Not in the United States? So you’d have to go…
B.S. He was talking about a bishop in Argentina, a bishop in Spain.

S.H. One guy here and I know a guy who knows a guy. Okay.
B.S. Yes, that was the idea but he had a certain hope for the future. He said the New Mass will never last. It will, he said, collapse under its own weight. He said that this [the traditional Mass] is the true Catholic Mass. This is the one that will have endurance. We just have to help it along in a diocesan situation. So that was his plan. There was no idea at that point of really splitting from the Novus Ordo hierarchy. They were seen as the hierarchy at that point. You knew that they were liberals, that they were infected with imperfect theology and things that they shouldn’t be thinking, but the idea that they were heretics and that they defected from the Faith was not there. But as time went by, their defection from the Faith started to become apparent and more and more traditional clergy were saying it. So that’s when you had a split starting to form in Econe of those who wanted to go down their route and those who wanted down go our route. Archbishop Lefebvre presided over all of it, and, as I said in my articles, he gave both sides something to work with at different times.

S.H. He didn’t feel Sedevacantism was a threat, right? (Fr.) Guerard de Lauriers was a Sedevacantist from the beginning, right?
B.S. Yes, and we were quite open about being sedevacantist in the seminary. I became a sedevacantist in 1973 or ’74.

S.H. About the time Bishop Dolan did.
B.S. Yes and…

S.H. So now you were now the new conservative at Econe?
B.S. Well, it wasn’t so bad though. First of all, you didn’t go around preaching it. It was something you talked about…

S.H. People just knew.
B.S. Yes, yes, but it wasn’t a hot-button issue. The then Father Guerard de Lauriers gave a conference on it at Econe.

S.H. Really?
B.S. Yes.

S.H. As far as like, “This is a possibility”, like an opinionist sort of stance?
B.S. I think that’s where he gave his—I wasn’t at the conference but I know he gave one. It was only to certain invited seminarians, and I was one of the ones invited but I didn’t go for some reason. But I know he gave it on that, and I know he told Archbishop Lefebvre about it. Fr. Barbara was a sedevacantist at the time and I think he told Archbishop Lefebvre. You know Archbishop Lefebvre didn’t become heated about it until the bear hug from Wojtyla. He even said things — I remember, Father Anthony Ward telling me — he was at Fribourg where the Archbishop was and he was going to the university at Fribourg for their theology courses. He said to me — this would be 1972 — “You know Archbishop Lefebvre has said things that would lead you to believe that Paul VI is not a true pope.” The Archbishop and the seminarains would talk at the table. He would eat with seminarians. You know you say things somewhat casually and freely at table. I remember his telling me that and my thinking, “Wow. That’s heavy.” At the time I was…

S.H. Well, that’s why the professors don’t sit with the seminarians. You need to have your free time to say what you need to say, freely.
Your Excellency, I want to back up and ask again because I think of these young men at the Seminary all those years ago, and I keep thinking of young men entering today…I asked you if parents were doing enough to support vocations, and we got into the general question of raising children, and we talked about some errors and problems. Can we—because there are so many things parents could do and instead of having a top ten list—what are one or two things you think would be useful for parents to do more so?
You talked about discipline. Are there cultural activities or are there things that can be encouraged in the house that will help destroy this selfishness and lack of discipline, addiction to sports and some of these other things we talked about—one or two positive things they can do to fix some of those problems?
B.S. Yes, it’s difficult. First they have to come to the conclusion that the Catholic family has to be different from the modern culture. They also have to understand that culture is an absolute dictator of morality and mentality, for good or for bad. Whether it’s promoting good morals and a good mentality and attitude or bad, culture has an extremely strong influence on us, indicating to us what is commonly held to be good and beautiful and right. That is culture. Whether it’s art, whether it’s literature, whether it’s religion, whether it’s fashion, what we put on…all those things contribute to culture, and, like I said, it’s an absolute dictator. We very much listen to culture and want to conform to culture, so when we are living in a world that has a completely hostile culture to Christian culture, you must make the Christian culture in your home. It’s the only place you can. Therefore, they must inculcate in their children all sorts of, let’s say, values and attitudes and ways of looking at things that are radically different from those of the modern world.

S.H. Are you implying there’s a discomfort with that notion—let’s say the Amish or Mormons are very comfortable with knowing they’re different and they’re okay with it, you’re saying that as Catholics we have to know that we are different as well.
B.S. Yes, yes. We don’t have to ride in buggies, but we do have to, without hesitation, reject what is not in conformity to Catholic culture.

S.H. A majority of time does this effectively mean television, movies, music, most of what popular culture gives us?
B.S. Television obviously is not bad in itself, but what comes through the television, television programming, especially or including, I should say, commercials. You can be watching something very edifying and the commercial is something that is totally destructive of Catholic morality and is an occasion of serious sin. The television is probably first on the list. Next is rock music, impurity in dress among women. What women wear and the general penchant for the modern woman toward glitz and glamour, the modern Marilyn Monroe culture, the Hollywood movie star culture, that this is what girls should aspire to…that has to be eliminated. It is extremely destructive. That’s part of the sexual revolution which started after WWI with the lifting of the hemlines of the woman’s dress. Just look at the fashions of the 1920’s. That was the beginning of the sexual revolution. It blossomed in the 1950’s and then went wild, just exploded, in the 1960’s. That sexual revolution, all of that culture, has to be absolutely excluded from the Catholic home. Yes.

S.H. So I was asking about parents, but this would also seem to be good guidelines for children as well and obviously that comes with obedience. To tie into that, I was asking yesterday about religious vocations for both men and for women, how does this tie into those who do not have a religious path and are trying to find a useful and important part of being a grown Catholic? What role does vocational training, university, going to college and getting a degree, etc, study abroad, all those things that most 18-22 year olds have to deal with in the world, in that popular culture, how does that relate for what young Catholics should do?
B.S. Well, I would say, considered in itself, the modern university is a serious occasion of sin, considered in itself. I think that, in some cases, that occasion of sin can be lessened to the point of being acceptable. For example, if someone were to live at home and not at the university, that would be one thing that might make it acceptable. Secondly, if you were to pursue a math-science degree over history-English and liberal arts degree, it could possibly make it acceptable. I don’t see how anybody could, without committing mortal sin, pursue liberal arts at a major university. It is a direct assault upon the Faith.

S.H. What about places like Christendom or Thomas Aquinas College where the great books are upheld and they believe in Western culture and there’s a belief in the primacy of dead European males and that sort of thing? Like say, for example, Saint John’s in Maryland which is a secular college but teaches the great books program.
B.S. I think that they are in a certain way even more dangerous because they are presenting liberalism, Vatican II Modernism, under the aspect of Catholicism. They are presenting themselves as a refuge from the horror when in fact they present the horror.

S.H. But let’s say only in theology but not so in, let’s say, history, music or those other things.
B.S. The little experience that I have had is that they are badly tainted and infected despite whatever claims they may make. I remember that that author that is constantly touted as a great anti-modernist, Carroll…

S.H. Warren Carroll.
B.S. I read things in his book that horrified me. He gave…

S.H. Are you talking about his multi-volume history work?
B.S. I don’t remember which book it was but he talked about Moses crossing the Red Sea, and he gave the classic Modernist explanation of Moses crossing the Red Sea.

S.H. Meaning?
B.S. That the wind blew. His interpretation, as I recall, is that the Red Sea was a swamp, and the blowing wind made a path for the Hebrews. It contradicts right reason right off the bat.

S.H. He said the red sea was a swamp?
B.S. As I remember. It’s been a number of years. It was merely that the wind blew in a swamp. If you read Exodus, the water was like two walls on each side. It says it in Exodus. Now no wind that I ever heard of is going to make walls out of water.

S.H. So you’re saying people like that, like down here in Florida at the Ave Maria University…
B.S. They are tainted with liberalism. It’s Vatican II; it’s Modernism. It has to be opposed radically and deeply.

S.H. So you’re saying it’s a serious occasion of sin not just for what you’re learning but because of the lifestyles you’re being exposed to.
B.S. Yes, yes.

S.H. In the cafeteria.
B.S. Yes. All of your friends. Bad friends have always been a very, very serious influence.

S.H. But given that it is near impossible to get any sort of job that provides a good income for a family without a college diploma or without some sort of great job experience that somehow you were able to bypass without a college diploma, you are unable to get a white-collar job without a college diploma. Do you see another path for young men who want to have a job that will provide for their families?
B.S. I would advise them this way: that the first principle is that it would be better to sell pencils on the street than to go to hell. That’s principle number one, that if we have to starve to death it is better, that is to be preferred, than the denial of the Faith and going to hell. If they don’t agree with that principle than I have nothing further to say to them. If they agree with that principle, than I would say, “How are we going to eke out an existence in this kind of atmosphere?” I would say in response that you have to reduce dramatically the dangers to the faith in this atmosphere, so you have to be yourself very strong in the faith, very confirmed, very pious and you have to avoid the bad influences and you should pursue a career either in business administration or mathematics or some of the sciences or a vocational education like an electrician, electrical engineering, those things. Certainly those are the money-making things. You can’t sell liberal arts. And so if you’re saying, “I want to go to college to learn literature or history…”

S.H. Or Classics, or that kind of thing.
B.S. …you have to no proportionate reason to do that because you can not sell those things. You can sell business administration but you cannot sell the fact that you know baroque art.

S.H. Would it have been justifiable in a previous age? Because of circumstances now can say those options are closed off to the serious catholic?
B.S. Yes. There is no proportionate reason to expose yourself to the liberal arts education in any university today, not just at a Roman Catholic university, but in any university today. There’s no proportionate reason. The modern university is permissible only if the occasions of sin are sufficiently lessened, and if there is a proportionate reason to expose yourself to these occasions of sin. Attending the university in the capacity of a trade school, for example, usually lessens the occasions. The proportionate reason is that it is practically necessary to obtain such degrees in order to make a decent living.

S.H. So right now, Your Excellency, we’re talking about males so far. How does this advice modify for women?
B.S. For women I would say this. Are you going to get married or are you going to pursue a career? It’s either/or. Being married and a worldly business career do not go together. If you don’t agree with that, again I have nothing further to say. If you want to pursue some sort of elaborate career, decide you are not going to get married and then do whatever you want as far as career. If you want to become a nuclear scientist or something like that—sure, she can do that. I have no objection that she does that. It’s just that I think that to say, “Well, I’m going to be a nuclear scientist and then I’ll get married when I’m 35, and then have a child or two, and we’ll give the child over to daycare, and my husband and I will work different jobs, or my husband will stay home to cook and clean and I will have my career.” Then she has a completely twisted idea of what her role is.

S.H. Alright, let’s say she’s not a nuclear physicist and she’s saying, “Alright, I’ll tread water until I get married. I’m just going to do something.” Given that our time, everything’s so misshaped and everything’s so corrupted and there are fewer traditional Catholics available than in the past what happens? It used to be that you would show up to church on Sunday and there would be twenty young men and twenty young women and they’d all pair off. Since it is an indefinite amount of time for either sex to tread water waiting for an acceptable spouse…
B.S. Yes. I think it is necessary for women to have some way in which to make decent money today, sufficient money. Not only for the reason you just said, that it is hard to find a spouse but also because of the prevalence of divorce. They could be thrown into divorce, and I know many cases of this, if…

S.H. (Stunned) Among Traditional Catholics?
B.S. Yes. Through no fault of their own, they have to become the breadwinner for little children because divorce is so easy and prevalent today.

S.H. Do you find problems of divorce in the traditional movement?
B.S. Problems. Yes, yes.

S.H. Is this the man or the woman who’s doing this?
B.S. Sometimes it’s the man and sometimes it’s the woman, but in any case you have women ending up as breadwinners and ending up with the need for serious money. I do think it’s good for girls to have a skill because they may never get married or they might be facing divorce.

S.H. What’s something you observe among traditional Catholic couples or traditional Catholic families where the man could do better here or the woman could do better here—obviously we could all do better as a whole.
B.S. It’s the selfishness, the modern day selfishness. That’s the cause of divorce in most cases.

S.H. So within the family, how does that play out?
B.S. To have a successful marriage it has to be not 50/50 but 100/100, and if people go into marriage thinking as they do with regards to religious vocation, “What’s in this for me?” “How am I fulfilled?” “Am I happy today?” — if that’s their attitude, they are going to have an unsuccessful marriage because marriage is a very, very demanding institution. It annihilates selfishness. You almost make your own humility because you must, every single day, suppress your own desires and what you would like to do in order to preserve the unity of the family, to do your duty. It is a very difficult stage in life, especially when children come. It requires a great deal of sacrifice, and sacrifice is the enemy of selfishness. If you have a culture of selfishness, it is a marriage breaker. There is also the sexual revolution. Absolutely no control over sexual impulse. Someone sees a woman and thinks it is perfectly legitimate to seek fornication with her. That’s modern culture.

S.H. So in the past there was a reserve, an understanding that, yes, I have those impulses because of Original Sin but I have a state of life, etc…
B.S. You can’t do that because it’s against the commandments of God. It’s contrary to the fidelity that I vowed to my wife. It would destroy my family. Those considerations have been set aside. Now it’s “I see, I want.”

S.H. That’s goes back to our theme from earlier. You were talking about permanency, seeing beyond today that if you take a vow of marriage that that lasts beyond today and that those are decisions made today.
B.S. Yes, absolutely. It seems that young people are incapable of these long-term decisions that they must make.

S.H. Your Excellency, while I hate to end on that note, perhaps I can turn it by saying that your emphasis on our current selfishness should be an inducement, a challenge, a goal to be selfless, which is the essence of our Christian and Catholic lives.
B.S. St. Thomas says that the greatest obstacle to the grace of God is pride. Selfishness is one of the forms of pride, and until Catholics acquire humility and self-forgetfulness, and learn to embrace duty and responsibility as fulfillments of their obligations to God, I fear that they will fall into all of the faults of the modern culture which is rotting away our society.

Interview with Fr. Florian Abrahamowicz in Paris (English Version)

2009-07-13T09:39:00.005-05:00

When recently in Paris I was inspired to take advantage of Fr. Abrahamowicz's presence in the same city, while using John Daly, a fellow colleague, as an interlocutor. Find below the complete text of the interview, translated from the original French by Mr. Daly.

John Daly, a professional translator of French and Latin, when he is not writing articles about Traditional Catholicism and homeschooling his 8 children with his wife near Bordeaux, France, also runs Tradibooks, a publishing company that specializes in out-of-print Catholic books. You may find his website at www.tradibooks.com.

The interviews also have been translated into Italian and Spanish, but I am only linking to these pages - I do not know how well the translations have been done nor do I know who runs these sites.

The English version of this interview appeared in the August 2009 Four Marks. For more information, click here.

Stephen Heiner: Father, those of us in America are well-known for not following world news, so we may be unfamiliar with your expulsion from the SSPX. If you'll permit, may we start from the beginning? How did you come to the Traditional Mass, and then, to your vocation?

Fr. Abrahamowicz: I came to the traditional Mass in 1978 at Vienna in Austria. When I was present at the old Mass for the first time I was strongly impressed by the difference between it and the new mass – so much so that at first I didn’t think the old rite could be part of the Catholic religion! Later on, great was my joy as I discovered this treasure, this water, which had been concealed from us by the judaised Mass. I began to know the SSPX in 1976. Ten years later, after three years spent in the Society’s University Institute in Paris, I entered the Flavigny seminary and I was ordained in 1992 at Écône by Bishop Licinio Rangel.

S.H.: How long have you been a priest? How long a Superior? What other roles have you held in the Society?

Fr. A.: I have been a priest since 1992. I was in charge of the apostolate in Albania and of training young Albanians in our pre-seminary in Austria. I taught for three years in our seminary at Zaitzkofen. For the last eleven years I have been in charge of the apostolate in the northeast of Italy, but I have never been a superior.

S.H.: When did you start to have disagreements with Menzingen? Were there other priests who agreed with you? What did they advise?

Fr. A.: My first disagreements with Menzingen began in 2001 when the possibility of a deal with modernist Rome was first raised. At that time I was far from being alone. The prior of Rimini, Fr. Ugo Carandino and Fr. Davide Pagliarani were vehemently opposed to coming to terms with the Rome of the Council. Then there were other priests, seminary directors, professors and priors who opposed these things very explicitly and effectively. Our duty in conscience moved us to declare openly to our superiors that we could not follow in the event of the Society’s cohabiting with the modernist church, governed at the time by John Paul II.

S.H.: What were the disagreements over?

Fr. A. The disagreement was theological, but also entailed pastoral consequences. Modernist Rome does not represent the Catholic Church. There is no call to ask for its acceptance, recognition, understanding, hearing, etc. Our duty is to insist on full catholicity on the part of the person occupying the apostolic see. The idea of playing the role of infiltrators in Modernist Rome so as “later” to covert it “from within” would be a childish illusion. Either the Church is Catholic or it isn’t. The Catholic Church cannot exist inside another church. After all, the Church is not a party or a current of political thought that can be more or less present in other entities.

S.H.: Of your public statements regarding the Holocaust controversy, what caused the most problems? Why?

Fr. A.: My fellow-priests agreed with all that I said in my interview with the Tribuna de Trevise. But no one imagined the media effect it would produce. So it was the very fact of publicly attacking the Jews which made my confreres and superiors tremble and then shook their friendship. Touching the new Messiah, i.e. criticising Zionist policy, is the ultimate lèse-majesté. At present the Vatican is bowing down before the Zionist reign. So the Society, by entering into friendship with Ratzinger’s Vatican ought to sacrifice to the gods. Once the Vatican, by its spokesman Lombardi, had distanced itself from Fr Abrahamowicz, the Society went one better: it expelled its life-member, declaring that the statements made by the expelled priest gravely damaged the Society’s image in the service of the Church. But which church?

S.H.: What about Bishop Williamson? What do you think about what has happened to him?

Fr. A.: Bishop Williamson has not been expelled; he has been dismissed from his position and his observations about the technical aspects of gas chambers were scathingly criticised by his confreres in the priesthood and in the episcopate. He has been reduced to silence by his superior, Mgr Fellay. In order to avoid saying that it is forbidden to touch the new Messiah, the affair has been classified as a “historical question”, falling outside the competence of a bishop. Is that really why he is no longer allowed to exercise his ministry?

S.H.: Some say you are a disobedient troublemaker. How do you respond?

Fr. A.: I reply that everything I have done has been done with the agreement of my superiors. Disobedience – proper and holy disobedience – began when I stayed in my chapel after being expelled “for grave disciplinary reasons”. While not resisting physically I nonetheless stayed in my chapel and continued to say Mass for one month until I was dislodged by violence on the part of my superior. Yes, I disobeyed the order to lie publicly. That would have meant publicly disavowing the truths I had confessed the previous day. The trouble did not come from me but from the way in which the superior general reacted to the media campaign against Bishop Williamson and myself. Instead of protecting and defending his members he disowned them. What a victory for the Vatican which, while well aware of the Williamson interview pretended, and continues to pretend, that it knew nothing of Bishop Williamson’s revisionist opinions!

S.H.: Bp. Williamson tells me he completely disagrees with you regarding the Motu Proprio. Explain, please.

Fr. A.: Bishop Williamson didn’t agree with my judgement of the Motu Proprio. Like Bishop Fellay, he declines to pass a definitive judgement on this measure. In my opinion, the Mass of the Motu Proprio is not the Holy Catholic Mass. Materially the gestures and words are the same, but formally, the rite is situated in the context of a modernist and apostate hierarchy, which makes it illicit to participate in this worship just as it is forbidden to participate in heretical and schismatic rites. Article 1 of the MP states clearly that the authority imposes that the rite publicly expresses the faith of the new mass. This applies independently of who is celebrating the rite. Precisely because it is a rite, a function whose gestures and words have the meaning established for them by the legislator. We are therefore in the presence of an old rite with a new faith, a bastard rite like that of the new mass. Bishop Williamson follows Bishop Fellay in refusing to make a judgement on the MP Mass. But in the order of facts, the reaction was the chanting of the Te Deum.

S.H.: What will you do now?

Fr. A.: I am now staying at the service of the faithful who do not wish to abandon the combat of tradition and who intend to do this by remaining faithful to Archbishop Lefebvre’s last arrangements: no discussions with Modernist Rome. It is a puerile illusion to believe that Rome can be converted “from within” by becoming a part of the system of the conciliar church. We simply have to continue sanctifying ourselves. That is what I want to do in the small space I have rented and which I have called “Domus Marcel Lefebvre” (Via Pietro Nenni,6, 31038 PAESE (TV) Italy). Holy Mass every Sunday, catechism, instruction, etc. Apart from that, to complement the gifts of the faithful, I am looking for openings in translation and interpreting work.

S.H.: What do you think will happen to the SSPX? To the priests? To the faithful?

Fr. A.: I don’t know the future, but the present is before our eyes. The SSPX sang a Te Deum for the MP; it expressed its gratitude for the false withdrawal of the excommunications which had never existed; it expressed trust in Ratzinger who, today is even more a “serpent” than in the days when Archbishop Lefebvre so called him. All this is bringing the Society to the absurd situation of the Society of St Peter, of Le Barroux, etc. Admittedly this treason has not taken juridical shape. The paper has not been signed. But, alas!, de facto the betrayal has occurred. The proof is that what I learnt in the seminary and taught in the seminary and in sermons for eleven years here in Italy has been stated by my superior (in the press release announcing my expulsion) to be contrary to the Society’s position. I want to remain faithful to the teachings I received at the seminary, which I am sure are Catholic doctrine.

S.H.: Bishop Tissier de Mallerais recently wrote in response to a query from a priest: “I freely admit that a priest or that the faithful may have doubts about the validity of a pope such as John-Paul II or Benedict XVI...” Are you also happy about such doubts? Do you share them? Are your personal convictions close to those who do not recognize Benedict XVI as a legitimate pope? What do you think of the position known as sedevacantism?

Fr. A.: I am very happy to reply to this question in the same terms I have used on our site
http://www.agerecontra.it/.

When others accuse me or try to demonise me as being a sedevacantist, I reply that I refuse to call myself a sedevacantist, not because I am a “papist” in the sense of those who, while admitting that Benedict XVI is not Catholic, still affirm that he is pope. I insist on offering the following reflection and leaving the reader to reach his own conclusions.

When Archbishop Lefebvre declared, at the conclusion and the end of his life, and therefore after long maturing his attitude towards that Rome which he was seeking right up until the consecrations, “the official Church does not represent the Catholic Church. (...) It is a puerile illusion to want to become part of it in order to convert it from within,” it seems to me that the problem he proposes goes far beyond that of the simple “sedes vacans”.

The vacant see in the sense of the pope who by virtue of heresy ceases to be pope, was considered by the the theologians in the context of a Church which is normally Catholic. But today the problem – mysterious and apocalyptic – is different. Along with the “pope”, it is the orbis catholicus which no longer professes the Catholic faith, the body of bishops who are no longer Catholic, the faithful – even those who are in good faith – who are no longer Catholics. Ought we not therefore to understand that the problem today is therefore greater than that of the heretical pope? Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Archbishop Lefebvre dismissed the sedevacantist solution as “too simple”: the issue is much more complex. Then there is the fact that Josef Ratzinger, whether or not he is pope, is reigning in the Vatican – occupying it, usurping it, if you wish – but he is there, and the great mass of so-called Catholics find that acceptable.

How are we to get through to them that he is not Catholic? How are we to get them to understand that they themselves are no longer Catholics? This may be the reason why Archbishop Lefebvre – finding himself up against such a tough problem – chose in all simplicity to content himself with building : schools, families and Catholic priests, denouncing openly the apostasy in tiara and cope and leaving history to judge definitively the “popes” whom he doubted to be popes and who, today, seem really to give every sign of no longer being so. Has the Society, today, still got the credibility to affirm such truths?

Have not diplomacy and politics in the “disservice” of the combat of tradition made the salt lose its savour? God in his omnipotence can raise up other heralds of the faith. Perhaps some bishop who has been long since dreaming of converting from the oriental schism and heresy to Catholicism? Some precursor of the conversion of Russia? It is very important to admit the highly mysterious character of the present situation without seeking to rationalise the mystery of the general apostasy. Hence, beyond the See, it is the Church that is in a certain sense vacant while nonetheless remaining visible in her humanity and in her divinity wherever the faith is professed without compromise in fact with Modernist Rome.

Interview with Fr. Florian Abrahamowicz in Paris (French Version)

2009-07-13T09:14:00.008-05:00

Lors d’une récente visite à Paris, j’ai eu l’idée de profiter de la présence de l’abbé Abrahamowicz dans la même ville, en me servant de mon collègue John Daly comme interprète. Vous trouverez ci-dessous le texte intégral de l’interview, traduite de l’original français par les soins de M. Daly.

Outre son rôle d’écrivain catholique traditionnel, son métier de traducteur et ses devoirs de père de huit enfants tous recevant leur instruction à domicile, John Daly est président de Tradibooks, une maison d’éditions qui réédite les vieux livres catholiques : www.tradibooks.com.

Stephen Heiner: Monsieur l’abbé, aux États-Unis nous ne sommes pas célèbres pour suivre les actualités mondiales, d’où certains peuvent ne pas être au courant de votre expulsion de la FSSPX. Si vous le permettez, donc, commençons au début : Comment êtes-vous venu à la messe traditionnelle et, puis, à votre vocation ?

RÉPONSE 1. Je suis venu a la messe traditionnelle en 1978 a Vienne en Autriche. Lorsque j'y ai assisté pour la première fois, j’étais fortement impressionné par la différence entre elle et la nouvelle messe – au point même de penser dans un premier temps que l’ancienne messe ne pouvait pas être un culte de la religion catholique. Ensuite, ma joie était grande de découvrir ce trésor, cette eau, qui nous était cachée par la messe judaïsée. Depuis l’année 1976 j’ai commencé a connaître la Fraternité Saint Pie X. Dix ans plus tard, après trois années passées a l’Institut Universitaire de la Fraternité a Paris je suis entré au séminaire de Flavigny et j’étais ordonné par Mgr Licinio Rangel en 1992 a Écône.

2. Depuis combien de temps êtes-vous prêtre ? Pendant combien de temps avez-vous été supérieur ? Quels sont les autres rôles que vous avez occupés dans la Fraternité ?

RÉPONSE 2. Je suis prêtre depuis 1992. J’étais responsable de l’apostolat en Albanie et de la formation des jeunes albanais dans notre pré-séminaire en Autriche; j’ai enseigné pendant trois années dans notre séminaire de Zaitzkofen; je suis responsable depuis onze ans de l’apostolat dans le nord-est de l’Italie, mais je n’ai jamais été supérieur.

3. À quel moment ont commencé vos désaccords avec Menzingen? Y avait-il d’autres prêtres d’accord avec vous ? Qu’ont-ils conseillé ?

RÉPONSE 3. Les premiers désaccords avec Menzingen ont commencé en 2001, lorsqu’il s’agissait de l’éventualité d’un accord avec la Rome moderniste. A l’époque je n’étais pas seul du tout. Le prieur de Rimini, don Ugo Carandino et don Davide Pagliarani étaient farouchement contre un arrangement avec la Rome du concile. Puis il y avait d’autres prêtres, directeurs de séminaire, professeurs et prieurs qui s’opposaient de façon très explicite, et efficace. Le devoir de conscience nous poussait a déclarer ouvertement aux supérieurs que nous ne pourrions pas suivre, dans le cas ou on finirait par cohabiter avec l’église moderniste, a l’époque gouvernée par Jean Paul II.

4. De quelle sorte de désaccord s’agissait-il ?

RÉPONSE 4. Il s’agissait d’un désaccord théologique qui en même temps était un désaccord qui entraînait des conséquences pastorales. La Rome moderniste ne représente pas l’église catholique. Nous n’avons pas a demander d’être acceptés, reconnus, compris, entendus, etc. Nous avons le devoir d’exiger la pleine catholicité de la part de qui occupe le siège apostolique. Ce ne serait qu’une illusion puérile jouer aux infiltrés dans la Rome moderniste, pour “après” la convertir du “dedans”. Ou l’église est catholique ou elle n’est pas. Et elle ne peut pas être dans une autre église. L’église n’est quand même pas un parti ou un courant politique qui peut être plus ou moins présent dans d’autres réalités.

5. Lorsque vous avez pris la parole en public au sujet de la controverse autour du “holocauste”, lequel de vos propos a suscité le plus de problèmes ? Et pourquoi?

RÉPONSE 5. Les confrères étaient d’accord avec tout ce que j’ai dit dans mon interview a la Tribuna de Trevise. Mais personne n’imaginait l’effet médiatique que cela aurait eu. C’est donc le fait même d’attaquer les juifs publiquement qui a fait trembler et en suite ébranler l’amitié des confrères et des supérieurs. Toucher le nouveau Messie, c’est a dire critiquer la politique sioniste, c’est le crime de lèse-majesté par excellence. Or le Vatican se plie a cette majesté. Donc la Fraternité qui est entrée en amitié avec le Vatican de Ratzinger devait sacrifier aux dieux: après que le Vatican, par la bouche de son porte-parole Lombardi a pris les distances de l’abbé Abrahamowicz, la Fraternité a fait mieux; elle a expulse son membre a vie en déclarant que les propos de l’ expulsé portent grave atteinte à l’image de la fraternité au service de l’église. Quelle église ?

6. Quant à Mgr Williamson, que pensez-vous de ce qui lui est arrivé ?

RÉPONSE 6. Monseigneur Williamson n’a pas été expulsé, il a été destitué de sa charge, et son commentaire sur les aspects techniques des chambres a gaz étaient jugés avec les termes les plus péjoratifs de la part de ses confrères dans le sacerdoce et dans l’épiscopat. Il est réduit au silence par son supérieur, Monseigneur Fellay. Pour ne pas dire qu’il est interdit de toucher au nouveau Messie, on a rangé l’affaire parmi les “questions historiques” qui ne sont pas de compétence d’un évêque. Et qui pour cela ne doit plus exercer son ministère?

7. Certains ne se privent pas de dire que vous êtes désobéissant et fauteur de troubles. Comment leur répondez-vous ?

RÉPONSE 7. Je réponds en disant que tout ce que j’ai fait je l’ai fait avec l’accord de mes supérieurs. La désobéissance, – due et sainte – a commencé quand je suis resté dans ma chapelle, après avoir été expulsé “pour des raisons disciplinaires graves”. Sans résistance physique je suis tout de même resté dans ma chapelle et j’ai continué à dire la messe pour un mois jusqu’au jour ou j’étais délogé par la violence de la part de mon supérieur. Oui, j’ai désobéi à l’ordre de mentir publiquement. J’aurai du désavouer publiquement les vérités confessées le jour avant. Le trouble est venu non pas de moi mais en raison de la façon dont le supérieur général a réagi a la campagne médiatique contre Williamson et moi-même. Au lieu de protéger et défendre ses membres, il les a désavoués. Quelle victoire pour le Vatican – qui, tout en étant pleinement au courant de l’interview de Monseigneur Williamson, feignait et feint de ne rien savoir au sujet des opinions révisionnistes de Monseigneur Williamson.

8. Mgr Williamson m’a confié son désaccord total avec vous au sujet du Motu Proprio. S’il vous plaît d’expliquer ce désaccord.

RÉPONSE 8. Monseigneur Williamson n’était pas d’accord avec mon jugement sur le Motu Proprio. Comme Monseigneur Fellay, il refuse de donner un jugement définitif sur cette institution. A mon avis la messe du Motu Proprio n’est pas la Sainte Messe catholique. Matériellement les gestes et les paroles sont les mêmes, mais formellement le rite s’insère dans une hiérarchie moderniste et apostate, ce qui rend illicite la participation à ce culte, comme il est défendu de participer aux rites hérétiques et schismatiques. L’article 1 du MP précise bien que l’autorité impose que le rite exprime publiquement la foi de la nouvelle messe. Et ceci se fait indépendamment de qui célèbre le rite. Précisément parce que c’est un rite, une fonction aux gestes et à la signification des gestes et des paroles établis par le législateur. Nous sommes donc en présence d’un vieux rite avec une nouvelle foi, un rite bâtard comme celui de la nouvelle messe. Monseigneur Williamson suit Monseigneur Fellay dans le refus de donner un jugement sur la messe du MP. Mais dans les faits c’était le Te Deum.

9. Qu’avez-vous l’intention de faire maintenant ?

RÉPONSE 9. Maintenant je reste a disposition des fidèles qui ne veulent pas abandonner le combat de la tradition et qui pour ce faire veulent rester fideles aux dispositions ultimes de Monseigneur Lefebvre: on ne discute pas avec la Rome moderniste. C’est une illusion puérile de croire pouvoir convertir Rome du “dedans” en entrant de le system de l’église conciliaire. Il faut simplement continuer à se sanctifier. C’est ce que je veux faire dans ce petit espace que j’ai loué et auquel je donne le nom de domus Marcel Lefebvre (Via Pietro Nenni,6, 31038 PAESE (TV) Italie). Sainte Messe tous les dimanches, catéchisme, cours de formations, etc. Et puis, outre aux dons des fidèles, j’essaye de travailler dans les traductions et l’interprétariat.

10. À votre avis, que deviendra la FSSPX ? Ses prêtres ? Ses fidèles ?

RÉPONSE 10. Je ne connais pas le futur, mais le présent est devant nos yeux. La Fraternité a chante le Te Deum pour le MP, a remercié pour le faux du retrait des excommunications n’ayant jamais existé, a exprimé confiance en Ratzinger qui aujourd’hui est encore plus “serpent” que du temps ou Monseigneur Lefebvre l’appelait ainsi; tout cela amène la Fraternité dans la situation absurde de la fraternité Saint Pierre, du Barroux, etc.; certes, de jure cette trahison n’est pas faite. Le papier n’est pas signé. De facto malheureusement la trahison est fait. Une preuve: ce que j’ai appris au séminaire et que j’ai même enseigné au séminaire et prêché pendant onze ans ici en Italie a été qualifie par mon supérieur dans le communiqué de presse qui m’expulsait comme contraire à la position de la Fraternité. Je veux rester fidèles aux enseignements reçus au séminaire, dont je suis sûr qu’ils soient la doctrine catholique.

11. Mgr. Tissier de Mallerais a récemment écrit “j’admets très bien qu’un prêtre, que des fidèles, aient des doutes sur la validité d’un pape tel que Jean-Paul II ou Benoît XVI...” Or, admettez-vous que l’on ait ces doutes ? Partagez-vous ces doutes ? Vos convictions personnelles sont-elles proches de celles qui ne reconnaissent pas en Benoît XVI un pape légitime ? Que pensez-vous de la position dite sédévacantiste ?

Lorsqu’on m’accuse ou on essaye de me démoniser comme sédévacantiste je réponds que je me refuse de m’appeler sédévacantiste, non pas parce que je suis “papiste” dans le sens de ceux qui tout en admettant que BXVI n’est pas catholique affirment qu’il est pape. Je tiens a proposer la réflexion suivante et je laisse conclure au lecteur. Quand Mgr Lefebvre affirme en conclusion et en fin de vie, donc après un long mûrissement de son attitude envers la Rome qu’il cherchait jusqu’aux sacres, “l’église officielle ne représente pas l’église catholique,... c’est une illusion puérile de vouloir en faire part pour la convertir du dedans” il me semble que le problème qu’il pose va bien au delà de la simple “sedes vacans”.

Le siège vacant dans le sens d’un pape qui par son hérésie cesse d’être pape, était contemple par les théologiens dans le cadre d’ une église normalement catholique. Or aujourd’hui le problème - mystérieux e apocalyptique - est différent. Avec le “pape” c’est le orbis catholicus qui ne professent plus la foi catholique, le corps des évêques qui ne sont plus catholiques, les fideles, même ceux dans la plus bonne foi qui ne sont plus catholiques: Voulons nous comprendre que le problème aujourd’hui est donc plus grand de celui d’un pape hérétique? Peut être c’est une des raisons pour lesquelles Mgr Lefebvre écartait la solution sedevacantiste comme “trop simple”: La question est bien plus complexe. Puis il y a le fait que Josef Ratzinger, Pape ou non pape, catholique ou non, siège au Vatican, l’occupe, l’usurpe, tout ce que l’ont veut, mais il est là, et cela va bien a la grande masse des soi disant catholiques.

Comment leur faire comprendre qu’il n’est pas catholique? comment leur faire comprendre qu’eux ne sont plus catholiques? Voila peut-être la raison pour laquelle Mgr. Lefebvre, devant un si grand problème a voulu en toute simplicité se contenter de construire: écoles, familles et prêtres catholiques; dénoncer ouvertement l’apostasie en tiare et en chape et laisser à l’histoire le jugement définit sur ces “papes” dont il doutait qu’ils soient papes et qui aujourd’hui semblent vraiment donner tous les signes de ne l’être plus. La fraternité, aujourd’hui, a-t-elle encore la crédibilité pour affirmer de telles vérités? La diplomatie et la politique au “dé-service” du combat de la tradition n’ont ils pas affadi le sel? Dieu dans sa toute-puissance peut faire susciter d’autres hérauts de la foi. Peut-être quelque évêque qui rêve depuis longtemps de se convertir du schisme et de l’hérésie orientale à la catholicité? Quelque précurseur de la Russie convertie? Il est très important de s’incliner devant le grand mystère de la situation actuelle sans vouloir rationaliser le mystère de l’apostasie générale. Donc, plus que le siège, c’est en quelque sorte l’église qui est vacante, tout en restant visible dans son humanité et sa divinité là où la foi est professée sans compromission de fait avec la Rome moderniste.

Video Interview with Bishop Richard Williamson in London, June 2009, Part II

2009-07-11T17:30:00.003-05:00

Find below Part II of the interview I did with Bishop Richard Williamson in London in June of this year. This interview is mostly about cultural matters. While these videos are not available for download, you may purchase them from True Restoration Press on DVD for $10. These discs will play either in your DVD player (if your player will play WMV files) or on your computer. You may do so either by remitting $10 ($15 for international orders) via Paypal to truerestoration at gmail.com or mail a check/money order to 9300 W 87th Terrace; Overland Park, KS 66212; USA. In either case you should specify your mailing address.

There are controls in the player that allow you to rewind or fast-forward based on question number. Please report any technical problems with the player to truerestoration at gmail.com.

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Video Interview with Bishop Richard Williamson in London, June 2009, Part I

2009-07-01T23:58:00.016-05:00

Find below Part I of the interview I did with Bishop Richard Williamson in London last month. His Excellency was in good spirits. Part II of the interview is here.

While these videos are not available for download, you may purchase them from True Restoration Press on DVD for $10. These discs will play either in your DVD player (if your player will play WMV files) or on your computer. You may do so either by remitting $10 ($15 for international orders) via Paypal to truerestoration at gmail.com or mail a check/money order to 9300 W 87th Terrace; Overland Park, KS 66212; USA. In either case you should specify your mailing address.

This interview was done to commemorate the publication of (and help launch) the final two volumes of his four-volume Letters from the Rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary.

There are controls in the player that allow you to rewind or fast-forward based on question number. Find also below some photos I took while he was autographing some books.

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Poetry Project IV: "Tintern Abbey", by William Wordsworth

2009-06-26T15:15:00.008-05:00

This is the fourth installment of the occasional poetry series. The analysis is written by Bishop Richard Williamson. The others have been on Hopkins' "God's Grandeur", Shelley's "Ozymandias", and Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn". If you are interested in specifically Catholic poetry by a contemporary author, you might consider picking up Fr. Lawrence Smith's We Call Thee Blessed, a collection of Marian sonnets.

Link to the poem (best to read before/during the critique)

There is a proverb which can be applied again and again to our apostate world of the 20th century: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king”. The proverb applies to a mass of products of “Western culture”, including the noble poem “Tintern Abbey” of William Wordsworth (1770-1850), which is a classic of English literature.

For “Tintern Abbey” is like a manifesto of the worship of Nature. Now to worship Nature is not to keep the First Commandment, which requires of us to worship God. But Nature-worship does at least mean worshipping a creature of God, outside of man, which is much better than for man to be worshipping himself, which is what we see all around us today.. Therefore Wordsworth is a one-eyed king. After a brief sketch of the background of “Tintern Abbey”, let us admire its nobility in order to probe its inadequacy.

THE BACKGROUND
As the poem’s full title tells us, “Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting The Banks Of The Wye During A Tour, July 13, 1798”, the poem dates from the last years of the 18th century, when the French Revolutionaries were raging through Europe. The young Wordsworth was enthused by what seemed to him the Revolution’s overthrow of an old and stale order of things, and he greeted with all his heart the fresh New Order of life and liberty. As he wrote at the time,

“Bliss was it on that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very Heaven.”

To this democratic Revolution in politics corresponded the Romantic Revolution in the arts. Through the same 1790’s Beethoven, born in the same year as Wordsworth, was preparing in his soul a new kind of passionate music which would explode in the 19th century and has been exploding ever since. In Wordsworth’s passionate young soul (see “Tintern”, lines 67-83) was forming a new kind of poetry, in the “real language of men”, first expressed in the “Lyrical Ballads” of 1798, a volume of poems shared with his still younger friend Coleridge (1772-1834), a volume which blazed a trail for Romanticism in English literature.

“Tintern Abbey” was included at the last minute in the volume of “Lyrical Ballads” where it exemplifies Wordsworth’s wish for poetry to be “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings…recollected in tranquility” He wrote its 159 lines within a few days of visiting majestic scenery on the border between England and South Wales, a river valley which he had visited five years before (line 1) on a solitary walking tour, but which he was now revisiting with his beloved sister Dorothy (111). Both the contrast between the two visits and the company of his sister play an important part in the poem.

THE NOBILITY

The poem flows evenly from start to finish, being “recollected in tranquility”, but we may divide it for convenience into four main sections: a Setting of the Scene (1-22), a Recollection (22-57), a Reflection which is the heart of the poem (58-111), and a Valediction (111-159).

Setting the scene: The poet presents himself to us resting beneath a tree beside the River Wye in summertime, feeding his soul on the peace and majesty of the riverside scene, undisturbed by the few traces of human beings living nearby.

Recollection: Having been here before, he recalls how much this same scenic beauty has meant to him in the five intervening years: for his heart and mind, a healing gentleness spilling over into gentlemanly behavior; for the depths of his soul, a calm and serenity leading above and beyond the weariness of living into a sense of the harmony at the heart of all things. How often has he come back in his mind to this lovely valley !

Reflection: This nourishment for his soul he devoutly wishes may continue for many a year, because while he may no longer experience the rapturous feelings which the varied and deep delights of Nature inspired within him in his youth, still Nature gives to his more thoughtful maturity a profound sense of the Spirit behind all Nature, that Spirit which directs and watches over the poet’s own soul.

Valediction: By way of extended conclusion, the poet’s thoughts turn to the sister at his side. In her youthful reactions to the beauties of Nature in front of them, he recognizes his own reactions of years ago. He prays that the Nature which formed and protected his own heart will do the same for hers, and that if and when the sufferings and hardships of life close in on her later years, she will remember him and his devotion to Nature and this joint excursion of theirs to the Wye Valley, all the dearer to him now than five years ago for her being with him.

Everything in the poem breathes tranquility. There is no seeking after effect, no rhetoric, no striking images other than the pictures drawn directly from Nature. The language is so plain and easy to understand that it would be prosaic, were it not for the honesty and elevation of the thoughts being expressed. Similarly the even flow of the blank (rhymeless) verse, calm and clean iambic pentameters (te-tum, times five), could be monotonous, were it not for the deep and noble ideas they carry. “Tintern Abbey” shows us why poetry with rhyme and/or rhythm gets written at all – because there are thoughts too elevated to be expressed in humdrum prose alone, and such poetry dies, as it is doing today, only when man’s thoughts are too base to call for any elevation.

Then what are the main ideas of “Tintern Abbey”, so well served by the language and meter ? After setting the scene which so impressed the poet with its lofty cliffs and humble habitations, Wordsworth recalls what inspiration it has given him over the last five years: “sensations sweet” (27), “feelings of pleasure” (30) issuing in “acts of kindness” (34), and above all that “blessed mood” in which the quietened soul sees “into the life of things” (49). How often has his spirit, fretted by the “fever of the world” (53), been able to restore itself by recourse to the river wandering through the woods (56) !

Wordsworth goes on to reflect on another two feelings of his, a perplexity and a trust, but it is to be noted that both are still grounded in objective reality. We are not yet into the nightmare world of the modern arts where the artist is spinning dementedly around in his own subjective void ! The perplexity (65-83) is that the wild youthful raptures of his first visit to the “sylvan Wye” are a thing of the past. Unlike Keats longing over his Grecian Urn for a young love to go on for ever and ever, Wordsworth will not seek to perpetuate those special but fleeting passions which will not recur. His trust and hope then are that the enthralling scenery of the Wye will in a deeper and more thoughtful way sustain his spirit in future years, and here, without mentioning God by name, Wordsworth speaks clearly of Him (96-111) as the “presence… far more deeply interfused” in Nature (96), that moves all minds and things (102) and guards the poet’s own soul (109-111).

Finally the poet prays that the same Nature will nourish his sister also in future years, with a quietness and beauty and lofty thoughts (127) sufficient to ward off all eventual disappointments of life. Let her recall at that time how she has observed here her brother’s “worship of Nature”, and how it has become only more “deep, warm and holy” on his second visit to the Wye (152-155).

THE INADEQUACY

Obviously William is trusting in the love of Nature to look after the welfare of Dorothy’s spirit and soul for the rest of her days. But will it be enough if she is oppressed one day by the full weight of Hamlet’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”? William seems to think it will be, but both his own poem and the subsequent decline of civilisation suggest that his solution to life’s problems is relatively lightweight.

For instance, is the “din of towns and cities” (25) or the “dreary intercourse” of rash judgments, empty greetings, etc.(128-131), or the “heavy and weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world” (40) really the worst that life can do to us ? And is the “best portion of a good man’s life” (33) really no more than “little acts…of kindness and of love” (34) ? Is this not a rather water-colour vision of good and evil ?

As for Nature, it only “perhaps” (31) has a good influence on men’s acts. It may lighten the burden of “all this unintelligible world” (40), but it seems to leave it unintelligible. It may give one to believe that one is seeing “into the life of things” (49), but the possibility is evoked that such a belief is “vain” (50), i.e. an illusion. Finally, what do Nature’s “lofty thoughts” (127) give us beyond a mere “Cheerful faith, that all which we behold / Is full of blessings” (133) ? Would such a faith, to take just a recent example, be enough to sustain a Palestinian driven out of his home and out of his mind by phosphorus bombs? The truth of “Tintern Abbey” is that for those who have eyes to see, God is indeed to be found in Nature, as lines 93 to 102 suggest, without their naming Him by His name. The inadequacy of “Tintern Abbey” is that God is infinitely more, for good or ill (if one rejects Him), than all the beauties of Nature created by Him put together.

In brief, Wordsworth’s love of Nature is relatively good, as far as it goes, but absolutely speaking it is inadequate, as the last two centuries since it was written seem to confirm.

For it is true that we have today in various forms a Green Movement to protect the environment, because of course many of Nature’s beauties are still there, and are still being sought out for their healing effect, especially by city-dwellers. Witness how many of these at the first opportunity on weekends or holidays flee their “lonely rooms” and “din of towns and cities” (25), in the instinctive pursuit of an environment of Nature more natural and congenial to their souls.

But is this Green Movement winning, or must we admit that it is fighting a rearguard action against the all-encroaching suburbs and agro-industialisation for which people in effect clamour? Up and down the Wye Valley now runs the A466, a modern highway being no doubt constantly improved for more and more traffic to move faster and faster through the majestic scenery. For sure, this traffic will include numerous tourists to enjoy that scenery, but if these did not tend to destroy what they enjoy in order to enjoy what they destroy, why would we so often see villages or pieces of countryside or seaside advertised as “unspoiled”, etc.?

In truth, today’s democratic masses want the city-life because, for instance, cows needing constantly to be milked do not allow of holidays. But the more people live in the city, the less taste or inclination they have for the beauties of Nature. Are many that come out into the country today not to be observed bringing their city-din with them, in a variety of electronic machines ? Can they still see beyond their screens, or hear beyond their ear-plugs? Or is not the “dreary intercourse” of cyber-life so zapping their vitality that they are hardly any longer capable of “tranquil restoration” (30) ? No wonder Worsworth’s poetry and nearly all of yesterday’s “English Literature” are at a discount in today’s so-called “universities”!

We come to the motion and spirit that “rolls through all things” (102), and whose noble “presence” (94) in Nature is what most sustains and nourishes the poet, and whose lofty description forms the climax of the poem (94-110). Unquestionably it is to be found in Nature as much as ever. But how many souls today are still able or inclined to recognize this “something far more deeply interfused” (96)? Why does Wordsworth himself hold back from calling it – Him – God ? Yet the reality of this “motion and spirit” is the God who tells us in Scripture that He is a jealous God, and He insists on our worshipping no Nature or any other creature before Him, rather we must adore Him alone, the Creator who far surpasses all created truth, goodness or beauty that we can ever come to love.

So this climax of “Tintern Abbey” is a noble tribute to the “anchor, nurse, guardian and guide” of the poet’s “heart and soul” (109,110), but by worshipping Nature (152) instead of, explicitly, God, did Wordsworth not contribute to rendering that Nature incapable of defending itself against the unnatural onward march of modern “civilisation”? What is Nature without God? Bundles of atoms! What is beauty without God? Mere sentimentality! If God slips, all anchors slip, including Nature!

Then where is the heavyweight solution for today’s problems, heavier by the day? It is close at hand, but ruined!

A few miles downstream from the sycamore tree under which William and Dorothy took their repose (9,10) are to be found in the Wye Valley the noble ruins of the medieval Cistercian abbey from which Wordsworth’s poem took its name, but which it never actually mentions. No doubt the Cistercian monks chose the location of the Wye Valley for the same majesty and beauty for which the poet loved it. Yet will the thought even have crossed Wordsworth’s mind that in the Abbey the old monks knew his “all-impelling motion and spirit” with such a completeness and certainty as to leave no problems of life, death or eternity unsolved?

To rebuild those ruins is what Wordsworth should have been recommending to his beloved sister!

The Restoration III: Sustainable Living

2009-06-21T07:11:00.002-05:00

This article originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of The Four Marks as part of a series called "The Restoration." "The Restoration" is a monthly column dedicated to restoring Christian ideals in our modern culture. For more information on The Four Marks, please click here.

We don’t have curbside pickup for recycling in Overland Park, Kansas. I keep Rubbermaid tubs in my kitchen which I fill up with glass bottles, cardboard, egg cartons, aluminum cans, and paper. Being a single guy, I don’t have to go to the recycling facility more than once a quarter, but when I do, it’s quite an exercise. I trundle the six tubs down the stairs from my apartment to my car, which I fill to the brim. I then drive six miles south to our city’s recycling facility, where I, with my other save-the-earthers, fill up large metal containers with our now feel-good consumables.

I drive home, feeling like I’ve done my part to keep our life sustainable, and I know that if it was cheap and easy, everyone would do it. Yet, it’s precisely cheap and easy that has gotten us to our current disaster of civilization.

I wear Birkenstocks a lot, so while this choice of footwear along with the extra effort to recycle might make me seem to be a tree-hugging liberal, I’m rabidly pro-life, abhor taxes, prefer a limited government, and have three guns (a Glock-17, a Winchester 12-gauge, and a Ruger .22) in my house. Some would call this Rod Dreher’s “crunchy conservatism.” I call it “being Catholic.”

Sometimes I try the thought experiment of explaining Catholicism to a total alien. I’d tell the alien that God became man in order to save us from our own sins that we committed against Him, that He established a Church to help us get there, and that the Church possesses 7 sacraments – visible signs of invisible grace – to help us on our journey. Along with these sacraments, one of which involves bread becoming the Flesh of God, we have sacramentals – objects that remind us of the joy that should be within us – like holy water, scapulars, and medals. We have a rosary – a type of prayer – that was given to us by an apparition of God’s Mother. We believe in invisible angels and demons, but we don’t believe in Dan Brown, and we believe in a final judgment in which all mankind will be judged by God Almighty.

Fact: Catholics live in an enchanted universe. We know that our fight is not with flesh and blood alone, but against principalities and powers. Because we recognize this enchantment, we realize that all of creation, including our bodies, are gifts. Given that they are gifts from God, we have a particular obligation to treat them with respect and honor.

This is really much simpler than we make it, and I propose to make it even simpler by speaking in terms of food, clothing, and shelter.

Food

It seems that the last 50 years in food “engineering,” as it might be called, has seen an increasing distinction between “food” and “food products” though this has been done so subtly that most of us never noticed. For those still unaware, food is what you will find on the outside edges of a supermarket. The most profitable stuff (and the least nutritious), food products, will be found in the aisles.

Too many in our society have taken the cheap and easy way out, citing “cost” as the reason they don’t buy more food than food products or why they don’t buy organic food.

This objection is false for two reasons. As Newton’s third law of motion states: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When we put cheap, processed, de-nutrified food into our stomachs, our nervous system reacts accordingly. Michael Pollan, in his book In Defense of Food pointed out that fifty years ago we spent 20% of our disposable income on food and 5% on healthcare. Now we spend less than 10% on food and over 18% on healthcare. I, with him, see a correlation.

Further, buying in bulk doesn’t always save money. If you look at buying fresh foods on a weekly basis , you are likely to spend the same amount of money, if not a little less, when you’re buying a week at a time instead of a month at a time. We’ve come to see buying food, like anything else that doesn’t soak us in somatized amusement, as a nuisance.

Some of us might even overlook the sacramentality of making a meal, so beautifully discussed in Leon Kass’ The Hungry Soul. Sometimes on weeknights I tutor until 9pm, so I don’t start cooking until then, but every time I do, I get the opportunity to think through how good God is to us to provide food for us to live, and how even the simple fact of making and eating a meal helps us realize how powerful creation is. Quite different from zapping a Banquet meal in a microwave (and having done that before, I would know!).

Some might object that there are big corporate organic farms, and this is true, though the vast majority of organic products come from small family farms. But the reason to buy organic is not solely to make a statement that big agricultural farming is unsustainable and reliant on unjust government subsidies, destructive of the nitrates in soil, and impoverishing to the American family farmer, but that organic products recognize that we live in an enchanted world. God’s animals are not “nuisances” to be sprayed with industrial sop that has unknown effects on food. Nature finds a way, and even Monsanto’s demonic GMO seeds routinely have to be updated to deal with new “spray-resistant” pests. Nature has to be dealt with on nature’s terms. Did DDT teach us nothing?

Clothing

Again, in America, cost is king, so people buy cheap clothing that wears out quickly. The clothing, while trendy, is often not classic or truly stylish, and is tossed away like so many of the child laborers who worked 18-hour days to make them. Want a geography lesson? The next time you’re at the Gap simply check out the labels to see the parade of Third World countries that make the clothing of this style empire. The simple math of buying more expensive clothes in classic styles that will last longer seems to escape most of us in the day-to-day hustle of buying from Payless. Pay less. Again, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And what kind of clothing are we buying? Are we buying clothing that respects our bodies and treats it with the dignity that an entity made from dust by a sovereign, omnipotent God deserves? Or do we buy simply what is trendy and will make us fit in with everyone else?

Shelter

Winston Churchill once said something to the effect of “When we design our buildings, we define them. When we move in, they define us.” Where is it that we live? What way does our dwelling recognize that every creature on this planet must rest, recreate, and be sheltered from the elements? Does the television, the very antithesis of “living” reside in our “living rooms”? Do we allow unreal things like video games to dominate our recreation?

How do our cities and buildings recognize the enchantment that is daily life in which we work out our salvation in fear and trembling? Can we be surprised at Columbines when schools look like prisons or can we be surprised when people “go postal” when they live in a Dilbertian existence? Suburbia, our great lie to ourselves that you can live in the country while living in the city, has produced incredibly bad architecture, fractured communities, and cookie-cutter homes that will not even stand a generation.

Life is not compartmentalized, but our neat commute to work from the suburbs pretends that it is. We have dead office parks during the evenings and weekends and dead suburbs during the day. Why is it so alien to Moderns that for millennia people have lived where they have worked and worshipped and played and walked? Why do we have to be so apart from each other? Why do we worship the automobile so much that we define our lives by its existence?

I wish there were easy answers to these questions. But perhaps there are easy answers. Perhaps part of the problem is that we are so distracted by big problems that will never be solved (like worrying about overturning Roe v. Wade) that we forget that the most important task that we have is to save our soul, and that we can do that best, as Russell Kirk so often said, by brightening our little corner of the world. Maybe then we’d support farmer’s markets. Maybe then we’d rediscover clothing of worth. Maybe then we’d let someone other than owners of car dealerships sit on city planning commissions. And perhaps then, we would begin to fire again the moral imagination that reminds us that we live in enchantment.

And at the end, perhaps we can begin again, for the first time, by thinking on these lines from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh:

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.

Live as though you live in an enchanted world. And thank God for His Creation by the way that you live, in the simplest of things.