Saint Benedict Center: Richmond, New Hampshire

I Don’t Have Time! Part II

2011-07-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

By Sr. Marie Thérèse, M.I.C.M., Prioress

I realize that my hard-hitting article on time and its use may have discouraged a few of you. Yes, you are truly busy and you don’t see how you can cut out anything to be able to make time for the Rosary without jeopardizing your daily duties. I am hoping that the following anecdote about the sisters’ daily Rosary will encourage you to make a leap of faith, if necessary, to pray your Rosary daily. The value of the daily Rosary, as Our Lady requested it, is greater than you can imagine. The following could be the subtitle for this article: A little insight into how the “impossible Rosary” can make things possible.
Our convent manages the duties of twenty-five sisters. The only problem is that there are only eight sisters here, and one of us is a nonagenarian with special needs. Are we busy? No, there has to be a better word for it!

Several years ago, we were at the crisis point of stress from our daily duties. We found ourselves crushed with active duties and losing our peace. Our very health screamed for reform in our religious life. Something had to give — something had to change! But what? How? We decided we needed to give more time to our spiritual life. But, we could see nothing that we could drop in our schedule to make time for anything else. Our active duties were so essentially tied in to the needs of the sisters and the community at large that we were powerless to stop the impending ruin of our little congregation of religious Slaves of Mary. Truly, we were much like a motorist speeding down a steep, winding mountain road who knows he is going dangerously fast, but can’t slow down because the brakes are out!

We had no solution, and so we desperately begged our Mother in heaven for help! Then, we recalled from St. Louis Marie’s Secret of the Rosary that one of the benefits of the Rosary is that “convents will be reformed.” Our community discussions on this subject always dead-ended with the opinion that there simply was no time to use for two more Rosaries in our day. However, taking a leap of faith, we resolved to pray the entire Rosary, come what may. We decided that Our Lady had to help us since we couldn’t help ourselves.

We started by adding only five more decades daily. I must tell you this was more than just difficult! I mentioned that there are eight sisters, but there were only six at that time. Every day it was a real struggle to get these extra five decades said. Soon, though it remained quite difficult, we began to see the fruits of this extra chaplet of the Rosary. We were a little bit less “stressed out,” meaning that we were more recollected and at peace — more prayerful during our work. And, our work was done better, even naturally speaking. In fact, when we took time to consider it, we realized that we actually got more work done, and our energy and health weren’t the worse for it. Yet, perseverance required a constant act of faith in Our Lady’s promise to “aid us in our necessities.”

Not too long after that, we discussed adding the remaining five decades. Mind you, we hadn’t received any more sisters, and we were still overwhelmed with duties. Naturally speaking, we would not be helping our stress level if we added another set of community prayers! If adding the second five decades was an act of faith, adding the last five to total fifteen decades was an heroic act of faith! It definitely looked like we would be wasting necessary work-time by taking more time to pray the Rosary.

Sometimes we have to “live by faith” and go beyond what natural reason would dictate. We entered into ourselves. We prayed for good counsel.

And, finally, spurred on by our heavenly Mother’s love for the Rosary, its causal relation to the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart (more personally for us, victory for our Crusade) and, finally, her inestimable promises for praying it devoutly, we resolved to add the last five decades.

We were resolved in faith that our interior life — our union with God — must come first in our daily priorities. Also, we were convinced that there is no better way to attain that spiritual order than that which our heavenly Mother herself recommended — praying the fifteen mysteries daily. We took seriously Our Lady’s statement that meditating on the mysteries is the very “soul” of the Rosary. Therefore, we added a tiny meditation before each mystery.

Blessed be God! The sisters have found that we actually have more time to use for God’s service now that we pray the entire Rosary, and we are more at peace. How can this happen? Well, for one thing, when you make time for the things that God wants you to do, there isn’t time to do things that He doesn’t want you to do. For another, God has shown continuously throughout history that He is the master of time. He knows the future and has often revealed to holy souls that it can be changed and He can show His mercy; He stopped the sun (therefore prolonging the day) so Joshua could continue to fight for Him; while He walked on earth, He caused Saint Peter’s boat to be “presently” on the opposite shore of the Sea of Galilee; he caused Saint Germaine’s guardian angel to care for the sheep so she had time to go to Mass; he had Saint Zita’s guardian angel take care of the kitchen work so that she could attend Mass. The prodigious numbers of institutions, houses, and writings that the saints have produced in their lifetimes point to God making time sufficient for these impossible accomplishments.

As St. Teresa of Avila simply put it: the saints do God’s will, and therefore He does theirs. They fill their time with His will, and He gives them more time. After all, time is only a creature, a co-creation to be exact, an accident that is the measure of change in material beings in relation to some other material constant.

Please don’t misunderstand me! It is probably not God’s will that you pray all fifteen decades every day as it is for us. However, when our heavenly Mother asks you to pray five decades a day and meditate on the mysteries, can you possibly doubt that God wants you to pray those five?

Here is a quote from a wonderful book that Saint Pius X treasured as his bedside reading: “Since I invariably have more things to do than time in which to do them, and as this prospect preoccupies me, and gets me all worked up, I will cease to think about all that I have to do, and only consider the time I have at my disposal. I will make use of that time, without losing a moment of it, beginning with the most important duties; and as regards those which may or may not get done, I shall not worry about them” Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans (quoted in Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Chautard).

By the way, you surely noticed that our sisters’ numbers grew by thirty-three percent after we started praying all fifteen decades. I am sure that you, too, will be able to count your blessings when you cooperate more fully with Our Lady in your work and in your sanctification. So now, don’t you want to make that “leap of faith” and pray at least five decades every day while meditating on the mysteries?

Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org

Liberalism: Bad for Religion, Good for Education

2011-05-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie

At Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, our forefathers had a saying that epitomized their apostolate in the academic circles in which they mixed: “We are against liberalism in religion, but we are for liberal education.” This was in the 1940’s. At the time, the Jesuits were parting drastically from the traditional ratio studiorum of their institutions of higher learning, modeling them instead after those institutions they were sending their young scholastics to, institutions like Harvard.

Their education was evolving from a classical “liberal” one to its opposite, a “servile” education. The preservation of a Catholic Education worthy of the name was an important goal of the Center in Cambridge, so Father Feeney and his followers were anti-liberal in religion and authentically liberal in education. By contrast, the Jesuits — at least at the institutional level — became educationally illiberal and dogmatically ultra-liberal.

What does it mean to say that we are “against liberalism in religion” but “for liberal education”?

To answer that, I’ll begin with the con and move to the pro.

Most of us regard liberalism as an evil, and so it is as a philosophical and theological construction. “The basic concept of liberalism is liberty, taken as emancipation and independence of man, society, and State, from God and His Church.” Readers may consult “Liberalism: An Evil Defined” on page 5 for a fuller explanation. Liberalism of this philosophical and religious nature is something we execrate as an error. In fact, Liberalism is a sin.

I invite readers to study that above-cited definition carefully. Many of us garner our understanding of liberalism from the partisan politics of the day; therefore, we have a poor understanding of it. Much of what passes for “conservative” in our nation is really old-fashioned liberalism. And this is not a mere matter of preference; it concerns truth versus error. Remember: Liberalism is a sin.

What is this good kind of liberalism — this liberal education? We can summarize it in this wise: man educated as man; that is, man’s rational faculties brought to their perfection by acquiring the habits that lead him to contemplation, the summit of human happiness. This is contrasted with servile education, that schooling that makes man into a servant: a carpenter, a lawyer, a dentist, a bus driver. Note, I mixed up blue collar with white collar jobs. It matters not: both are servile; both are functionaries in society. By contrast, liberal education educates a free man. Brother Francis explained this kind of education in several places, two of them being his “Plato and Liberal Education” and this brief excerpt from the first volume of his Philosophia Perennis:

“The seven Liberal Arts — divided into the three disciplines of Trivium and the four disciplines of Quadrivium — form part of the traditional wisdom which has been handed down from the ages of Faith. These arts work in harmony with scholastic philosophy (Philosophia Perennis) to give the man who would be wise his basic intellectual formation. Liberal education is contrasted with specialized or professional education, the latter being that which prepares a man for a craft or profession whereby he may render a service to society and thus earn a living. Without diminishing the nobility of service, from the Catholic point of view there is implied in the attribute ‘liberal’ another great value: namely, the education of man as a free person; as a value in himself; and for his own perfection and happiness. A person being educated liberally is truly treated as a prince or princess.

“In contrast to liberal education we may talk of servile education, which we may also call ministerial education. Both are necessary, noble, and can make us virtuous. For this reason Christians do not despise service. Man is meant in this life to serve, and especially to serve his fellow men. This is why we call the Order of the priesthood ‘ministerial.’ Our Lord taught us this value when He said to His disciples: ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that have power over them, are called beneficent. But you not so: but he that is the greater among you, let him become as the younger; and he that is the leader, as he that serveth’ (Lk. 22: 25,26).

“When a man seeks training to be a dentist, he does so because he is going to take care of his fellow men’s teeth and somehow make his living doing it. Dental school is training him for a service. When a man is trained to be a smith, this is also to do some service — some human need for which he is going to provide. It is technical knowledge, and it is acquiring skills that are useful to society. The kind of good that is aimed at in non-liberal education is the useful good, also called ‘utililty.’ Utility is truly a good, but it is not the highest good. This last statement cannot be emphasized too much, because somehow one of the biggest fallacies that exists today is the fallacy of utilitarianism. This fallacy can be simply defined: It is the exaltation of utility over all else. This fallacy has reached such a critical state that utility is the only good about which most of those we call ‘thinkers’ actually think.

“One of the prophets against utilitarianism in America was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau said that this country’s biggest problem is preoccupation with means; we never think of ends. People in America are so excited because they have connected Maine to Texas by wireless, but what if Maine and Texas have nothing to say to each other? We build roads and bridges. People are rushing to the right and to the left, rushing everywhere. And where are they going? They are not going to, they are going from. They just want to move. This is a country of means, one of utilities, and one of efficiency. The most pointed way to say it is this: Efficiency has taken the place of wisdom, and utility has come to be the highest good.

“When a man is educated liberally, he is being prepared to be a value in himself. He is being prepared for the joys of knowing for the sake of knowledge, for contemplation, for being perfect. This perfection is not moral perfection but ontological perfection, to be developed according to all the potentialities in him.”

While they must reject the evil of religious liberalism, Catholics dedicated to tradition ought to encourage a liberal education for their children. Why? It’s traditional! Read the lives of the saints. So many times, we read, “after receiving his liberal education at (name of city), he went on to take degrees of doctor of philosophy and theology at (name of city/university).” Besides, in giving man critical thinking abilities, a liberal education also has the practical value of helping him to make proper distinctions, to appreciate current events in a broader setting, to navigate his way through the sound bites of the moment, and be governed by higher principles. Too many of us lack critical thinking abilities and shoot from the hip. In religious matters this can be dangerous, subjecting us to all manner of error.

Email Brother André Marie at bam@catholicism.org.

SBC to Host Papal Knight at October Conference

2011-05-04T07:08:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Catholic PRWire

RICHMOND, NH (May 4, 2011) - The Saint Benedict Center, administered by the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, will hold its fifteenth annual conference on October 7-8, 2011. The conference will be held on the monastery grounds in Richmond, New Hampshire. Call 603-239-6485, email bam@catholicism.org, or visit cat.catholicism.org for registration information.

The theme of this year’s conference will be Right and Freedom: Catholic Considerations on Misused Concepts. Included in the list of speakers is author, papal historian, and lecturer, Charles A. Coulombe, K.C.S.S. By order of Pope John Paul II, Mr. Coulombe was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester for his services rendered to the Holy See. Author of the chart-climbing The Pope's Legion, and Puritan’s Empire: A Catholic Perspective on American History, Coulombe is recognized internationally for his in-depth knowledge of Vatican politics and the influence of Catholicism in America and Europe. His audiences regularly range from graduate students at Oxford University, England to the New Mexico Military Institute, from which he graduated. His international articles have appeared in the New Oxford Review, National Catholic Register, American Thinker, Los Angeles Catholic Mission, Monarchy Canada, and The Irish Democrat.

The list of speakers also includes retired U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer Dr. Robert Hickson, a former professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Defense Intelligence College, and former Chairman of the Literature and Latin Department at Christendom College. Joining Dr. Hickson will be the celebrated Catholic writer and chronicler of the traditionalist movement in the Church, Gary Potter, the founding editor of Triumph magazine and the author of After the Boston Heresy Case.

Other speakers include Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M., Prior of the Saint Benedict Center since 2002, and lecturer in the fields of apologetics, ecclesiology, church history and devotional practices; Boston’s veteran culture warrior and noted defender of the Faith, C.J. Doyle, Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts; and noted Catholic psychotherapist and lecturer, G.C. Dilsaver, PsyD, MTS, author of Imago Dei Psychotherapy: A Catholic Conceptualization and The Three Marks of Manhood: How to Be Priest, Prophet and King of Your Family.

Brother André Marie made the following comment: “This year, our conference will explore two very maltreated concepts, both of which are necessary for an orderly natural society, and both of which are elevated by God in the real life, the life of grace, which we live in God’s true Church. In these days when increasing governmental hubris both asserts non-extant “rights,” (e.g., “gay marriage”) and denies fundamental human freedom (e.g., abortion), Catholics must recover and safeguard the proper notions of right and freedom. As usual, our fine panel of speakers will treat their subject in a way that is both illuminating and motivating, informative and practical. They will show how the solutions to the ills of society, the family, and the individual soul are to be found in Catholic tradition.”

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will be offered according to the traditional Roman Rite (“Extraordinary Form”) during the conference, as it always is offered at Saint Benedict Center.

Contact:	Saint Benedict Center Br. Andre Marie, Prior 603-239-6485 http://cat.catholicism.org/
Keywords:	St. Benedict Center, Gary Potter, Robert Hickson, Charles Coulombe, GC Dilsaver, CJ Doyle

Home Sweet Home

2011-03-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

By Jill Bosonetto

I don’t think our lives really began until we moved to Richmond, to the Center. At least, all I can remember before we came here is that we were seeking a place to call home and hadn’t found it yet. Now we are decidedly home.

I grew up in Maine, met my husband Nicolas, and married. We moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a job and attended a traditional Mass that was offered by a nice priest from the Fraternity of Saint Peter. We were lonely though, far away from home, and not all that impressed with the Oklahoma heat. From there we migrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to live close to Nick’s family. Being with family was wonderful and there was even an indult Mass offered every Sunday in a gorgeous cathedral. Alas, we still felt isolated in a teeming city: home schooling, and trying to live the traditional Catholic life alone in the world. Time to move again.

We knew we wanted a Catholic community in which to raise our expanding family. We needed a support system, with people who understood what we were trying to do, and why. My family lived in Richmond, New Hampshire, right next to Saint Benedict Center, so why not look there? Nick and I scoured online for housing in the small town and saw that there was no way we could afford to live in the middle of the woods. Were these Catholics all rich or something?! With heavy hearts we decided to continue going it alone, move where we could buy some land to farm and home school, and, as well as we could, raise our family that way.

We sold our house in Pittsburgh, and went to visit Richmond, staying with family while we sought land in New York State. Nick vigorously applied for jobs and looked for housing. Nothing. We persevered. Nothing. After a very discouraging passage of time, Nick peeked again into Boston and the local NH areas. It was as if the floodgates opened. Interviews and opportunity abounded! It didn’t take us very long to realize God’s plan for us was here after all. A position in Keene, NH, and a home in Richmond presented themselves to us within two days of each other. We joyfully accepted.

Sometimes, it seems like a dream come true to spend my days here. I will never be able to adequately thank the religious for sharing their lives with us. The kind sisters go out bookselling to raise funds to support our little school so they can instruct my children and help me to love and raise them well. This selflessness of theirs is beautiful and a daily example of the love of God. In the community, I have found my prayers answered, for now we have friends. There is a town full of neighbors to call in a pinch or if you just want to talk. Here I discovered my calling in fundraising and volunteerism. In Richmond we are busy and happy. Who knew that living in the woods could be so fulfilling?

The charming fairytale-like quality of my story ends here, I’m afraid. After our arrival, as we began planning our own home, we found ourselves immersed in a vicious local war with some of the town bureaucrats. Nevertheless, we are grateful. God has given us a home and a purpose. We are supposed to take up arms and fight the devil, the world, and the flesh, with our beloved religious. The sweet Slaves of Our Lady keep trying to warn us that we are in a battle. I believe them! In Richmond we struggle, but I’d rather struggle here than anywhere else in the whole world.

The Economy of Feeding a Family

2011-01-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

By Christine Bryan
I don’t have a business degree and I don’t listen to the news, but there is no need of an expert’s commentary for me to be aware something has happened to the value of the dollar. Every trip to the grocery store or gas station convinces me that my buying power is reduced.
Now what woman wants to be confronted with that? And I find it especially threatening when it affects my system for feeding my family (or worse, makes my advice to others seem completely impractical). The economics of domestic nutrition involve more than just the dollar total at the bottom of the receipt. It is also necessary to balance “good” food with “affordable” food, and weigh the costs of cutting corners on quality.
The question of what is acceptable can vary in every household. It would be ideal if food of the very best quality were available to parents of childbearing age, because the developing bodies of the next generation deserve the opportunity to achieve their genetic potential (that’s a family joke, by the way, not a statement from a eugenics manual). But since young families tend to have the slimmest wallets, they easily fall prey to the prevalent dietary heresy: Cheap Food Will Suffice. In an effort to combat that pitfall, I present several suggestions and supply a source list to provide direction regarding the blending of traditional dietary wisdom and modern scientific research.
Only buy good fats, which are food for every cell, especially the brain, and for satisfaction and peace of mind (as well as the ability to pray). I propose that those with limited resources should regard this as their single most important budget decision. Remember, when the necessities of mankind are listed, food comes first. So it surely follows that the essentials of life are butter, cod liver oil, clothing, and shelter.
Eliminate refined and processed food as much as possible. This means: make your own, maybe even grow your own. “Don’t buy anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” to quote Michael Pollan in Food Rules. Avoid the center aisles of the grocery store. Buy in bulk. Because real food preparation involves more time, cook larger quantities and learn to love leftovers. Shifting to real food will significantly reduce the amount of sugars, artificial food additives, altered proteins, improperly prepared grains and beans, genetically modified foods, and other scary evils waiting to compromise the immune systems of those you love. Provided that the family eats at home, anxiety about consumption of harmful products will be considerably lessened once the cupboards are cleaned out. And it’s really how we eat eighty to ninety percent of the time that matters.
Consider searching out free food from sources you like. Grocery stores have “spoils,” food that has to be rotated out of stock, and most stores are glad to donate it to a non-profit organization. Offer to be the link, and make deliveries, doing so in exchange for some of the food. Check out a “food pantry” in your area. They may need someone to take away all the unclaimed items. Visit a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farmer and ask if they offer free produce in exchange for any services, such as weeding or deliveries. Pursue options with a baker of artisan breads or a dairy farmer.
Study the issues. Check out the sources and start with one topic of interest, absorb what makes sense to you, and implement what you can. Perhaps researching one subject will be of great benefit for your family. For example, learning how harmful high fructose corn syrup is, especially to growing bodies, may provide the motivation to make changes in inherited habits.
I would like to end with a story about our ninety-two-year-old chaplain, Father Michael Jarecki, regarding a small change with major results. Several months ago, Father was bed-ridden with an infection, and those visiting him were struck with his frailty, as he was poised on the very brink of eternity. In the course of his treatment, a naturopath was consulted, who recommended a course of digestive enzymes and probiotics. Suddenly, seemingly miraculously, Father could tolerate foods he’d had to avoid for years. After several short weeks of sharing the brothers’ meals, his vitality surged. Now he is even talking walks outdoors. He is supposed to be with a companion, but he has this uncanny ability sometimes to sneak down a flight of stairs and take off on his own. Even his voice became stronger and his power of concentration vastly improved.
At the end of life, or any point along the way, food is the strongest, most powerful therapy available. It need not be an extravagance to improve the quality of the food we consume. In striving to achieve a proper balance, let us ever rely on our heavenly mother to guide us in our role in the Divine Economy.

* * * * * * *

Sources:

Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, is the single most valuable nutritional reference book, although rarely read cover-to-cover. It is written by the founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization dedicated to research and support for traditional diets, small family farms, and effective legislation: www.westonaprice.org. See also the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation at www.ppnf.org.
www.fourfoldhealing.com, the website of Tom Cowan, MD, helpful for the basics of healthy eating and food preparation, alternative medical answers, and the innovative Community Supported Healthcare.
The Environmental Working Group, www.foodnews.org, supplies a listing of the foods with the highest pesticide residues (the dirty dozen) and those with the lowest (the clean fifteen), helping families decide when to purchase organically grown produce.
www.localharvest.org, for food sources in your area, especially Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where patrons buy a share of a farm’s harvest.
www.saynotogmos.org, a site exposing the genetic engineering of our foods.
The Church and Farming, by Father Denis Fahey, who expressed in 1952 his serious concern that the loss of traditional methods of farming and food preparation would be costly in multiple ways.

The Canadian Maccabees – The Fabulous Le Moynes

2011-01-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

By Russell LaPlume
The history of the founding of New France glitters with astounding personalities that not only brought the Catholic Faith to a heathen population, but also, it would appear, created from the French colonists a new breed of Frenchman – one who adapted immediately to those immense forests, with great fearlessness and vigor — the Canadians. The names of Cartier, Champlain, and LaSalle are familiar to most students of history, but there is one name forgotten, that stands with or above these intrepid adventurers, that of Charles le Moyne who, along with his famous sons, lived a saga that spanned over a century of Canadian history. Unlike Cartier and Champlain, there is little history written about this fantastic family, most of it coming from oral tradition, but there is no doubt that they were considered a legend in their own time – loved and feared by the savages, loved and depended on by the colonists.

The patriarch of the family was Charles le Moyne, of Norman blood, born in 1626, the son of an innkeeper of Dieppe, who, at seventeen, had accompanied the first attempt to colonize Montreal. He sired eleven sons, seven of whom would create legends of their own. The first mention we have of him is in the Jesuit Relations when he was serving as an interpreter to the Huron missions. Soon after, he became known as an expert woodsman, a true “runner of the woods” as the Canadians called them, and an expert guide. It was rumored that, before Joliet and Father Marquette had reached the “Father of Waters,” Charles had been there on one of his numerous excursions throughout that wild and dangerous forest region. To protect the colony at Montreal, he would patrol the surrounding woods alone, and, in many cases, fight single-handedly against the lurking Iroquois. The best indicator we have of his fighting skills is related by the savage Iroquois themselves, who began to fear him and, as a result, began to gather firewood in their Long Houses to burn him at the stake. While exploring on the Richelieu River he was finally captured by the Iroquois. They were full of glee in capturing their mortal enemy, and with hell-speed, canoed to their village to begin the horrible torture of their prize captive. The indefatigable Charles started talking to them, and knowing their sometime childish ways, began to tell them of the disasters that would come upon them if he was not released. He told them of the mighty French guns that would silence the thunder itself, and of the numerous “canoes,” which were bigger than the trees. These canoes would be filled with avenging Frenchmen. After hearing their captive’s harangue, the Indians began to question the wisdom of their undertaking and so they immediately debarked upon an island to hold council. Once the council was over, the Indians not only released Charles, but also brought him back to a village of friendly Indians to show their respect. This same Iroquois tribe would later vent their fury on Father Jogues along with another Indian legend, the convert Ahatsistari, a Huron warrior much feared by the Iroquois.

Much esteem was given to any warrior band who brought back captives; ultimately only three choices remained for the victims: be tortured mercilessly and put to death, be tortured mercilessly and made a hostage for ransom, or be tortured mercilessly, then adopted by the tribe. Such was the savoir faire of Charles le Moyne that he was released unharmed, a testament to the charismatic presence of this woodland giant.

Charles was rewarded for his service to the government by receiving a large tract of land along the St. Lawrence River, where he built a settlement he called Longueuil. It would seem that the government had other purposes than reward, for this tract of land was the main thoroughfare that the Iroquois used on their way to do mischief in the Huron territory. In short time, Charles made this real estate a leading fur trader post, and, with the help of his elder son (also named Charles) — who was considered a financial titan along with being an indomitable warrior — he expanded Longueuil into the model seigneury of New France. The father would be given by Louis XIV the title “Sieur de Longueuil”, while the son would be created a baron, going on to govern both Montreal and Three Rivers.

During Charles’ lifetime you would be hard-pressed finding any significant battle, any important negotiation, or any delicate emissary to the savages that he was not either the head of or driving force behind. Always he was successful — failure never accompanied him through those vast forests — for he walked silently, and failure could not find him. Such was this giant who whispered through the woods performing incredible deeds known only to his contemporaries – not chronicled by any historian – but told and retold at the cabin hearths of his fellow colonists who had received not only security from this intrepid warrior, but also sustenance, for his charity to the indigent was extensive.

Oral tradition has it that after Charles had died (peacefully in bed with the Sacraments), whenever the family would meet in council, his chair at the head of the table was left empty, and his hat placed upon the table. A prayer would be said for the repose of his soul, and guidance asked for in making their plans. The world today detests the principle of patriarchy, but like that great, silent Saint Joseph, who walked through life in obscurity performing great deeds known only to God, to be revealed slowly through the ages to the admiration of all, our Charles glides along the pages of Canadian history with a prominence that demands awe, but is always veiled as if the legend does not need the details.

Charles’ sons would inherit the fire of their father, and would carve their own legends, not only in New France, but in America as well. There was the great Pierre (Iberville) and Jean-Baptiste (Bienville) who would colonize Louisiana and found New Orleans. There were other sons whose stories are rich in valor and daring whose telling will follow.

Editor’s note: Thomas B. Costain’s, The White and the Gold: The French Regime in Canada, provides much of the information for this article.

Email Russell LaPlume at rlp@catholicism.org.

SBC Watch Back Online

2011-01-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

The SBC Watch site is back online:

http://sbcwatch.blogspot.com/

"The Truth about Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Richmond, New Hampshire"

The Fire of Pentecost

2010-09-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

By Brian Kelly
Summer begins on my calendar after our May Procession. In meteorological time, it begins June 1. What this means is that the season of summer extends through the warmest months of the year, which in the Northern Hemisphere are June, July, and August. I only discovered today, while beginning this article, that in Great Britain and Ireland (and other northern countries) summer follows weather, or meteorological time. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream the play takes place during the shortest night of the year, June 21, although this is not, in meteorological time, mid summer. That would be mid July.

However, in North America we start our summer with the summer solstice, June 21, which, I think, makes more sense because it marks the longest day of the year, and even though the days begin to slowly grow shorter after the summer solstice, June, July, and August are the months with the longest days of the year overall. School time, of course, summer begins when school gets out, or, on the average, Memorial Day, the last Monday in May. In the Southern Hemisphere our summer is their winter; so June 21 for them is the winter solstice.

Pentecost

Liturgically, in the summer, the Church lives in the season of Pentecost. On Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the Birthday of the Church, the Day the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, descended on the fearful Apostles and changed hesitant men into roaring lions for Christ.
“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak” (Acts 2:2).
The Holy Spirit, who is everywhere, made His presence known in this place, in this city of Jerusalem, in this house of the family of Saint Mark, in this Upper Room of the house where the Holy Eucharist was instituted, by way of a “mighty wind” and “fire.”

Fire

The sun in the summer is high in the sky and gives off its greatest light and heat during the season of Pentecost. The sun is fire, and without fire there is no light and no heat. There is a trinity in all created things. Light proceeds from the fire, as the Son from the Father, and heat proceeds from the fire and light, as the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and Son as Love.
Why did the Third Person of the Trinity appear as tongues of fire upon the heads of the Apostles? What is it about this material element, or rather, its manifestation as light and heat, which makes it so spiritual that indeed, although invisible itself, all material things must be seen by means of it and, although unfelt itself, makes all things warm that are touched by it. Fire, by its nature, is material, but it is the closest of all material things to immaterial realities.

The Greek Philosophers on Change and the Causes of Change

Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, who lived around the fifth century B.C., was convinced that fire was cause of everything in the cosmos. He was one of many philosophers of that time who studied at Ionia (Miletus, in today’s western coast of Turkey) at the school founded by Thales, the father of western philosophy. The thinkers of that Eleatic school, as it was called, were looking for the ultimate causes of the material universe, and they were stuck in the material realm until Anaxagoras came along. He came up with the idea that nous, or mind, was the ultimate reality that formed all things, and that purpose (telos) was behind the order in the cosmos. However, Plato said that he fell short of attributing design, and, therefore, knowledge to his nous. The Greeks, among others, believed that there were four ultimate elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Thales thought that water was the ultimate element from which all things arise and participate in. Anaxamenes thought that air was the basic element. Heraclitus considered it to be fire, because, he said all things are in flux and always changing and fire underlies all change. He was the first philosopher to use the term logos (reason or word) although he did not rise to the spiritual realm with that concept as Plato did later. For him, logos, was creative of all things, but still material, although utterly ethereal, containing all things, even opposites.
This kind of speculation may not seem very brilliant to us, but we must remember that the ancient Greeks were pagans and had no knowledge of holy scripture, hence creation from nothing by an Omnipotent God. By the light of reason alone they were unable to entertain the concept of a beginning (creation), believing that matter, even if formless, or chaotic, was eternal and infinite. In fact one of their philosophers, Anaxamander, posited that the cosmos arose out a force that was limitless and infinite. He was a fascinating thinker and studied directly under Thales. He was, among many other things, an astronomer and mathematician and he calculated solstices and equinoxes. He had a peculiar theory that the Earth, which he held to be cylindrical, was orbited by a revolving dome that was punctured with holes and that outside the dome was fire, hence the stars were merely small holes in the canopy and the sun was a big one. Nevertheless, I was always impressed by Heraclitus, whose errors, like other Greek philosophers, helped the advance of natural wisdom as much as his correct theories. If we understand by “fire,” in Heraclitus’ thought, the reality of “change,” then that element takes on a deeper significance that mere flames, light, and heat.

Fire in Nature

But enough of that. It is fire that I wish to write about, albeit briefly, in its relation to our Faith. The word “fire” in holy scripture is used analogously and really, spiritually and physically. When Jesus said, “I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled? (Luke 12:49), He was, of course, speaking analogously of spiritual fire. As was His Precursor, John the Baptist, when he told the penitents who had come to his baptism: “I indeed baptize you in the water unto penance, but he that shall come after me, is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire” (Matt. 3:11).
Heraclitus made a good point when he spoke of the power of this incandescent, or flaming, combustion of fuel and oxygen, that seems to defy an adequate definition. Physical fire is not limited to what we are familiar with everyday; lightning is fire; and the sun and stars are fire, but much hotter than the flames that end up as carbon gas in our ordinary experience.
The fire of the sun is the cause of almost all energy related substantial change: photosynthesis and evaporation, which give us plant life and rain; without CO2 in the atmosphere and H2O plants would not live, nor animals, nor man. Carbon dioxide is what plants take in to grow (call it plant "respiration") like our lungs do air. We exhale CO2 on account of our 98.6 degree body’s fire. What we produce in CO2 is not enough for plant life, but it helps. Volcanoes certainly exude a lot, as do forest fires, and all decomposing fossil fuels.

Fire in Supernature

Point being: fire changes things. When Jesus calls us to penance, and fills the world with the grace for all men to amend their lives, He likens it to casting fire upon the earth. We need the fire of grace from the Spirit of Christ to do penance and “change our minds” as the Greek word for penance, metanoia, implies. The sacrament of baptism does even more. The baptized become members of the Mystical Body of Christ and are “washed” (baptizein, in Greek, means “to wash”) from all sin by the fire of the Holy Ghost. That is why John the Baptist was so excited about Jesus’ baptism, which was far greater than his. As the church teaches us, the grace of baptism (and all the sacraments) works ex opere operato, from the act itself of receiving the sacrament; all that is needed for those with personal (and original) sin is Faith and sorrow for sin, and all sin and punishment due to sin is wiped out. That’s a change worthy of supernatural fire, isn’t it? How much of a change? How about being translated from mere children of Adam to becoming children of God and heirs to the kingdom of heaven!
When we see or feel fire we stand away from it lest we get burnt. For all the good that it does for us, it can also kill us. But God has other things that he does with material fire, and you will be surprised to know what He does.
He sometimes manifested His presence in the Old Testament by fire. God spoke to Moses in a burning bush, and that fire, although material with flames and all, did not consume the bush. The laws of nature were suspended by the Author of nature, so that Moses would realize who it was who was speaking to him. A pillar of fire led Moses and the Israelites through the desert nights on their way to the Promised Land. An angel from heaven took a burning coal from heaven’s thurible and purified the lips of Isaias the prophet with it. This fire did no harm, but purified him. And, speaking about suspending the laws of nature, when God punished Pharaoh and the Egyptians for refusing to allow the Israelites to depart their land, one of His punishments was fiery hail. How could hail be on fire? Well, God can make anything, except a contradiction, which is not a thing. Fiery hail is not a contradiction, as would be dry rain, or a square circle.
“And the hail and fire mixed with it drove on together: and it was of so great bigness, as never before was seen in the whole land of Egypt since that nation was founded. And the hail destroyed through all the land of Egypt all things that were in the fields, both man and beast: and the hail smote every herb of the field, and it broke every tree of the country” (Exodus 9:24&25).

Purifying Fire

So fire, material fire, can purify. This is what the fire in purgatory does. It purifies the souls waiting there to be taken as perfect vessels to heaven. Even here on earth fire purifies, as you know. Pure iron is extracted from impurities in iron ore by fire, and iron is purified by fire again to make steel. Iron and brass were being produced by Adam’s grandson Tubalcain. Even steel is mentioned in the Bible (Jeremais 15:12). Today there’s about 1300 million tons of it produced annually.
How does material fire purify souls? Well, we know that it cannot consume souls because the soul is spiritual and immortal. How then does it torment a soul in purgatory? First of all one must realize that the torments of the fire in purgatory are of a different kind than the fiery torments of hell. The fire is material in both places, but in purgatory the suffering souls have holy joy, and they desire to suffer. They know that they will see God and they also know that, although their guilt has been erased by confession, they must be “refined” spiritually from all the dross that the effects of personal sin has stained their wills with. This is why we pray after Holy Communion at Mass that the Body and Blood of Jesus will “cleave” to our very entrails (literally, yes, that is what the Latin viscera means) and wash away “every stain of sin that remains” in us.
I do not claim to understand why God chose fire to purify holy and imperfect souls in the next life, but I do know this, and I’ve been repeating it all along: Fire changes things! It cannot change a soul substantially, like it could a mortal body, but it can change a soul accidentally, by refining it. Therefore, it is better to refer to the punishments in purgatory as a chastisement. Chastisement is medicinal for the soul; it is inflicted in order to bring about change for the better. This is what Saint Paul meant when he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: “For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: Every man's work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire” (3: 12-15).

Hell Fire

The fire in hell does not purify, but it torments in just punishment. It is not a chastisement. These torments are not the essential punishment of hell, but the accidental. The essential punishment of hell is the pain of separation from God, the pain of loss. To miss out, through one’s own fault, on the end for which one was created, the eternal vision of God, is the greatest of all pains that the damned suffer. Some of the more modern opinions proffer that the misery of the damned lies in that they have to live forever with the choice they made final at death to reject the love of God. This is, of course, true. But it is only one side of the coin of misery. The other side, the worse pain, is knowing that in opting for this final act of rebellion, the damned “feel” the turning away of the face of God from them. No, they do not see the face of God in His essence, but they do see the face of Christ the God-Man at their particular judgment. They do experience, and that forever, the horror of His just sentence: “Depart from Me.” And, this is yet another torment, their self-knowledge. They know their sentence is just. They see their own state of perpetual rebellion, which accuses them of a fixed will of preferring to continue in their sins even if they had the opportunity of a thousand more years of life, of two thousand, of a million.
But I am speaking here of fire. How does material fire torment an evil spirit or a human soul? For that matter, after the resurrection of the body, how does fire torment an immortal body in hell, since it does not consume the material substance and does not feed off any fuel. Tough questions, for sure. Nor are there any sufficient answers; for the fire in hell, although material, does not manifest the same nature as that with which we are familiar. The fire in hell, or so say the saints who have seen it, does not give off light. Our Lord referred to hell as “the exterior darkness,” “everlasting fire,” where “the worm dieth not,” and where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
This does not mean that every one who is damned suffers in the same degree. Hell has its own “mansions,” some far more wretched than others. Even when it comes to the fire, not every person in hell is roasting over the flames. What the children of Fatima saw and what Saint Theresa of Avila describes below, is the place where the vast majority of the damned are tormented, each according to their particular vice or vices. But there could be other places in hell where the fire is not burning the unrepentant sinners from within but where it acts from without, tormenting the person by way of ligation. So, says Saint Thomas. The fire acts upon these less evil creatures as would the walls of a prison, afflicting them by way of confinement. But still, and justly, a most horrific end that will never end.
Saint Theresa describes her vision of hell:
"A long time after the Lord had already granted me many of the favors I've mentioned and other very lofty ones, while I was in prayer one day, I suddenly found that, without knowing how, I had seemingly been put in hell. I understood that the Lord wanted me to see the place the devils had prepared there for me and which I merited because of my sins. This experience took place within the shortest space of time, but even were I to live for many years I think it would be impossible for me to forget it. The entrance it seems to me was similar to a very long and narrow alleyway, like an oven, low and dark and confined; the floor seemed to me to consist of dirty, muddy water emitting foul stench and swarming with putrid vermin. At the end of the alleyway a hole that looked like a small cupboard was hollowed out in the wall; there I found I was placed in a cramped condition. All of this was delightful to see in comparison with what I felt there. What I have described can hardly be exaggerated. What I felt, it seems to me, cannot even begin to be exaggerated; nor can it be understood. I experienced a fire in the soul that I don't know how I could describe. The bodily pains were so unbearable that though I had suffered excruciating ones in this life and according to what doctors say, the worst that can be suffered on earth for all my nerves were shrunken when I was paralyzed, plus many other sufferings of many kinds that I endured and even some as I said, caused by the devil, these were all nothing in comparison with the ones I experienced there. I saw furthermore that they would go on without end and without ever ceasing. This, however, was nothing next to the soul's agonizing: a constriction, a suffocation, an affliction so keenly felt and with such a despairing and tormenting unhappiness that I don't know how to word it strongly enough. To say the experience is as though the soul were continually being wrested from the body would be insufficient, for it would make you think somebody else is taking away the life, whereas here it is the soul itself that tears itself in pieces. The fact is that I don't know how to give a sufficiently powerful description of that interior fire and that despair, coming in addition to such extreme torments and pains. I didn't see who inflicted them on me, but, as it seemed to me, I felt myself burning and crumbling; and, I repeat, the worst was that interior fire and despair. Being in such an unwholesome place, so unable to hope for any consolation, I found it impossible either to sit down or to lie down, nor was there any room, even though they put me in this kind of hole made in the wall. Those walls, which were terrifying to see, closed in on themselves and suffocated everything. There was no light, but all was enveloped in the blackest darkness. I don't understand how this could be, that everything painful to see was visible." [Source: The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume 1, Chapter 32: paragraphs: 1,2,3.]
This is the beginning of wisdom, to fear God. First, to have a servile fear of Him, then, after growing in love, to arrive at a filial fear, which is to fear offending God on account of His goodness, rather than His punishments. “But I will shew you whom you shall fear: fear ye him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear him.” (Luke 12:5).

Holy Fire

Surely, even a greater mystery than fire serving as an everlasting or temporary torment in the next life is fire serving unto glory. I do not know if the saints who spoke of such holy fire, as it burned within them, were speaking of the element analogously or in its reality, but I am inclined to think that it was both real and symbolic. Saint Francis Xavier used to have to splash cold water on his breast to relieve the intense heat that he felt inside when God would strike a chord in his heart in one wayward pulsation of divine love. There were numerous times where witnesses saw him do this in public, when the fire in his heart was so torrid that he could not wait until he had found some privacy. Another saint who had to deal with a similar “problem” was Saint Philip Neri. When he assisted at Holy Mass, the fire in his heart used to cause the beating pulsations to become so violent, that not only his body but the walls of the church would shake. During one particularly alarming episode, a fireball was seen to shoot through the church’s ceiling and down into the mouth of the saint then out his chest and back through the roof. Philip collapsed in agony. The ball of fire had burst through his ribs, opening them wide beneath the skin, thus providing his passionate heart more room to express its intense fervor. Then, there was Saint Catherine of Siena. While in ecstasy that seraph of love once cried out: “My nature is fire!”
The Holy Ghost, Author of Grace, used tongues of fire as a symbol of His transforming presence when He filled the hearts of the Twelve Apostles with the fire of the virtue and power of His seven Gifts. The seven Gifts are not habits in the soul, as are the three theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, but they are given, infused, to prompt the receiver to holy action. They are like a spark; hence they ignite, like a spark, like a flame, like tongues of fire. “I am come to cast fire on the earth.”
The highest choir of angels are called seraphim. It is a Hebrew word, derived from sarap, which means “to burn.” Each of the nine choirs performs some service to God that befits their class. The seraphim are the highest lovers of God among the angels; they reflect in the highest brilliance the Nature of God, which is Love. The seraphim ceaselessly praise God in unending chorus: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts (Armies). Heaven and Earth are full of Your glory.” It was a seraph who took a burning coal and purified the lips of Isaias, who had seen two of these angels each with six wings, chanting in a song of praise before the thrown of the King of Glory in heaven.
As we live our Faith during this season of Pentecost, let us renew at times the vows of our baptism as we did during the Easter vigil. Let us deeply desire, as we pray, that the Holy Ghost truly “come” and truly “fill” our hearts, and the hearts of our neighbors in Christ. Baptize us again, O Lord, not, of course, sacramentally, for we can only be born again once, but by Your purging fire. Through Your sanctifying power, may we be worthy flames in that holy conflagration which Jesus came to cast upon the earth.

Third Order Formation and the Saint Augustine Institute

2010-09-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

So much has happened since I last wrote you that I hardly know where to begin. Over the past few months I have spoken on the phone with many of you — tertiaries and non-tertiaries alike. I have explained the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies (SAI) and what it means to be a tertiary of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Your response has been inspiring. I have been getting several requests to help individuals start Circles of Study throughout the country. Our Membership Director, Brother Michael Maria, M.I.C.M., Tert. (Brad Grinstead), and I have also been talking with seven people who wish to join us as third order members; while several others have expressed sincere interest. Tertiaries are, generally speaking, lay people.

In these conversations I have had an opportunity to tell many people about Saint Benedict Center. This is a short summary of what I have told them and what their response has been.
Firstly, I explained that SAI is an easy adult-oriented method of studying the Catholic Faith. It is a tried-and-true method devised by our late superior, Brother Francis Maluf. There is no tuition. One does need, of course, to pay to obtain the books. Some required books, however, can be downloaded at no cost from our website. The Syllabus, which outlines the course of studies, is free at sai.catholicism.org. You can go through the Syllabus at your own pace. You may study on your own, if necessary. If you need any help, please let me know. The required book reports are easy to do and, don’t worry, I do not grade them. If your Catholic education has stopped since you left Catholic school, here is a chance to pick up where you left off. (I promised a friend one more thing. For those in the Chicago area, there is a circle forming right now. Contact me and I will put you in touch with the right people if you are interested in joining that group.)
Secondly, I talked about the Center at large and how it came to be. You would be surprised at the number of people who are just hearing about us for the first time. I took as long as was necessary to explain our double-charism as a crusade: (1) to defend all the dogmas of the Faith, but especially extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation), and (2) our commitment to work for the conversion of America to the one, true, Catholic religion. How could we do otherwise? We wish to share our Faith with our fellow Americans, and help them to know Our Lord in the only Church He founded.
Thirdly, I spelled out what the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are all about. I explained that Third Order members practice both the contemplative and the active life; i.e., they work in the world, but they are not of the world.
Learning the Faith in the proper manner is essential for our crusade. Without this knowledge we cannot be effective instruments in the active work of converting our relatively pagan country to the one, true Faith. Brother Francis used to say that one couldn’t be an aqueduct until he was first a reservoir. In other words: Nemo dat quod non habet (No man can give what he does not have). I stressed the importance of the proven method we use in the proper formation for our Order’s tertiaries today. We have a special mentoring program that nurtures the tertiary-novice so that he is not left to fend for himself. I also talked about the great fruits to be found on our websites, as well as in our monthly mailings, our bookstore, our weekly lectures here at the Center, and our annual conference.
Finally, but certainly not the last or least thing, I discussed our great love and devotion to our Holy Mother Mary. It is she who guides our apostolate. We love her so much that, in the spirit of Saint Louis de Montfort, we have consecrated ourselves in holy slavery to her. She is our mother and our mistress. It is in Mary that we find our way to Jesus. How could a Son deny anything to so good a mother?
And do you know what many of you have said in response to my conversations? I have heard this phrase so many times that I can repeat it to you word-for-word: “That is exactly what I am looking for!” I can understand this because I know how difficult it is to locate a good solid way of finding the Truth today. We are so beset with distractions, so confused with contrary teachings, so overloaded with new ways of doing things, that we no longer wish to hear the tired refrain, “Have you heard the latest?” No, we’d rather not hear the latest thing. We are modern in the good sense of the word and traditional in all respects. What we offer is the Catholic and Marian way to God that you have been looking for. Remember how the Apostle Philip enjoined his friend Nathanael when the latter said, “Can any thing of good come from Nazareth?” Philip responded, “Come and see” (John 1:46).

Email Brother John Marie Vianney at toprefect@catholicism.org.

The Virtue of Patriotism

2010-09-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

By Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.
Editor: The following edited extract is taken from one of Brother Francis’ Sunday talks. We are grateful again to Sister Anna Maria, from the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Vienna, Ohio, for transcribing the lecture.

Patriotism ― We love this country. We are grateful for being in this country. Some of us were born here; some of us are glad to have been brought here. No matter how we got here, as far as being able to work for the Faith, I don’t know any country more favorable. As far as having people with good will that could at least be talked to about the Faith, I don’t know where in the world you could find better folk than you do in this country.

I used to say to Father Leonard and to Sister Catherine, and they always agreed with me, that I don’t know any other country in the world where we could have done what we did here. Of course, we had corrupt courts. Of course, occasionally, we had to deal with tyrannical men in power. Of course, we had lots of persecutions and injustices done to us, but substantially, tell me any other country where we could have gone on for forty years, affirming a most unpopular doctrine ― and still be able to go on.

[Editor’s Note: Today, as the political climate descends further and further in its commitment to exalt secularism and moral degeneracy, and the freedom to preach the truth in America seems about to be legally extinguished, I fear Voltaire’s proscription for the ultimate utopian Masonic state, as outlined in his Social Contract, may soon come to pass: “Let him who says that there is no salvation outside the Church be cast out of the state.” The political situation in America (as in Europe) has gotten a lot worse since Brother Francis said these things.]

Now don’t take these liberties for granted. They are ours because there was some goodness, let it be just natural goodness, in some of the men who founded this country and gave it its ideals and its Constitution. We ought to thank God for that. That’s true patriotism, and patriotism is part of the virtue of religion. The virtue of patriotism includes an active participation in whatever good we can support in the large society in which we live. We should support those running for office who are committed to protecting the just ideals found in the Constitution and to defending the country against subversion and betrayal and treason.

These are all social duties, and they are essential for the promotion of the principles of the natural law. They are not the complete picture, of course, but they are a very essential part of that complete picture. And they can never be ignored with impunity.

Americanism — The fact that Pope Leo XIII, in the 1890s, called the prominent liberal heresies of separation of Church and State, religious individualism, and religious egalitarianism, Americanism (Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae, 1898) ought to be a little challenge to us. We ought to face the fact — and learn a lesson from it as good Catholics — that the Church in America, in some very serious way, has been responsible for this liberal defection from the challenge of the unadulterated Faith, a defection that we see all around us.

Americanismus is a very correct way to name it. You cannot call it French; you cannot call it English; you cannot call it Chinese. It is American ― this whole idea of one religion being as good as another. “The things on which we agree are vastly more important than the things on which we differ.” The principles that Archbishop Cushing and other Americanist clergy gave in the 1940s, and even more stridently in the 1950s and 60s, became the only dogma for ambitious Catholic politicians: “We cannot inflict our conscience on anybody else.” “My Faith will not affect my politics,” etc., etc. They tell me there are any number of Catholics now in the Congress who say, “Oh, I am personally opposed to abortion, but I have no right to inflict my conscience on anybody else.”

So they are against abortion, but they vote for every measure that encourages it. And they’re betraying, through their votes, other moral values as well, through government programs that aid and abet the corruption of youth by way of sex education subsidies and socialist economic policies. This moral relativism, of divorcing right conscience from politics, started mainly here, at least as a powerful force, right here in America; it’s because of the tremendous, paramount influence of America that it has progressed elsewhere. Doctrinal liberalism, even if it seemed to come from radical theologians from Germany, France, or Holland who had a direct influence at Vatican II, was still the American heresy. And it is with us in a far more pervasive degree today. The reason is that, for generations, nothing was done by the American hierarchy to extirpate it; in fact they began to call it “the phantom heresy.” So let this be a challenge to us.

American foreign aid programs fuel many tyrannical regimes with their proliferation of weapons of mass murder. Immodest fashions, at least on the scale of mass production, mostly originated here. Hollywood hedonistic movies and other media of pornography originated here and they are a huge affliction on other countries and whole continents.

We know people who are going to extremes about that, to the point of being unpatriotic, cynical, negative, and ineffective. This was never the spirit of the Center and it will never be. Even though we know that many of our founding fathers were bigots and very wrong religiously, we also thank God that they did have certain natural virtues, and they did have some good ethical principles, and we do not need to be absolutely negative in our appreciation of American history.

I had the privilege this year to teach a whole course in American History, and I am very happy I did it. I can speak now with more confidence. There are some good American principles that should be defended, should be rediscovered, and should be re-affirmed. America can be converted on its own principles. A man who said this very strongly in the last century was Orestes Brownson. He was very critical of the false principles that were gradually creeping into the American Republic, the unconstitutional expansion of centralized government over States’ rights for one thing, but he also was very proud and patriotic. He was glad to employ in his own apostolic work the many positive elements that patriotic Catholics could utilize from our own Constitution as a basis for bringing the complete truth to the nation. In fact, one of his best books, The American Republic and Its Constitution, was written for the instruction of Catholics concerning government in general, its human origins, and concerning the Constitution.

[Editor: I highly recommend Brother Thomas Mary Sennott’s book, They Fought the Good Fight, which juxtaposes the lives and teachings of Brownson and Father Feeney, two of the most valiant defenders of the defined dogma: Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Brother Thomas Mary’s book can be purchased from our bookstore at store.catholicism.org. Brownson had a strong conviction, as well, that our republican form of government absolutely needed the Catholic Faith to sustain it for any long period of endurance. Without the Faith, he believed, the republic would eventually fail. He wrote a treatise on the subject, which was titled: “The Catholic Faith Is Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty.”]

Brother Francis loved his own native country of Lebanon. He lived part of his life there — before coming to America, in 1939, at the age of twenty-six — under the yoke of foreign occupiers, first the Turks, then the French. He was very active in working towards Lebanon’s cherished independence, or any other Arab nation’s, from those who would colonize them. He was the Vice-President of the Syrian National Party, which had as its main objective the establishment of a federated republic of Arab nations, compromising what the Arabs called the “fertile crescent.” I remember him explaining how even Lebanon, in the 1930s, was threatened by Communism and that protection from this menace was another reason behind the platform of a united Syrian Republic of nation states. Brother appreciated the freedom that all nationalities had in the United States, a freedom that Catholic Americans had fought hard to achieve. He believed that, despite its imperfections, without the Constitution, Catholics would have had a far more difficult time achieving their religious and civil rights in these United States. So, he was grateful. He was grateful for whatever good that he was the recipient of, natural as well as supernatural, natural justice as well as supernatural justice, which latter is the grace we call “holiness.”

Divine Love — Requited

2010-09-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

By Sister Marie Thérèse

After coming up with four different ideas for this Convent Corner article, I have decided to publish a personal letter I wrote to a young lady who had expressed interest in religious life several years ago. I have since sent it to a number of other young ladies. Even if you are not personally eligible to become a sister, you may be interested in this letter.

You see, Our Lord may be thinking of some young lady whom you know. If you can in any way help Him to obtain a lovely bride, the desire of His Sacred Heart, He will be eternally indebted to you. (Unrequited love is not only a theme on earth!) May we know and do God’s Holy Will with all of our hearts, and become the saints that the Sacred Heart intends us to be!

Dear Mary,
Laudetur Jesus Christus!

A vocation to be a sister is one of the most wonderful gifts God can give a girl. If you are interested in giving up all of your time and talents to serve God and man through the holy vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, you very well may be called by the Sacred Heart. You are doing well to look into it.
Our Order is very active, so good health (mental and physical) is essential. We accept candidates between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. A young lady must have a high school diploma, a driver’s license, and a clean bill of health. She must also have received the Sacrament of Confirmation.
We accept visits for a week or two from young ladies who are interested in the religious life. If she still wishes to pursue religious life after the visit, and the sisters are in agreement, she may come back as an aspirant for several months, or even up to a year. During this time, she will stay with the Sisters, working, praying, eating, and recreating with them. She will probably be given a duty as an assistant in a classroom or in the kitchen.

If, at the end of the aspirancy, both the young lady and the sisters are assured that this may indeed be God’s Will, the superior will set a date for the young lady to enter, who will then return home for a short while.

A very important part of our lives is the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary. Are you familiar with this great devotion? Have you made your consecration yet?

Another aspect of our work is that we are part of a doctrinal crusade. This means that we teach all of the doctrines of the Faith (even the unpopular ones) clearly and without compromise. Our Order and especially our founder, Father Leonard Feeney, are particularly known for their defense and propagation of the dogma that states, “outside the Catholic Church, no one is saved.” The weakening and denial of this dogma is behind every abuse, heresy, and other problem in the Church — and further, in the world — today. “Baptism of desire” (understood as a speculation about how a justified believer in Christ might get to Heaven without receiving the sacrament of baptism) is not our issue. The necessity of the Church for salvation — with her authority, Faith, and Sacraments — is.
Both our consecration and our defense of the Faith are linked inextricably to the message given by Our Lady at Fatima. You may summarize our work as striving to bring about the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. Is there anything better we could be doing?

In conclusion, I want to encourage you to do God’s Holy Will every day, in little things. Try to get closer to Him through your daily duty and devotion to His Mother. Your present vocation is to be an excellent student, friend, daughter, and communicant. Pray your Rosary, with meditation on the mysteries, daily. By so doing, you will draw down God’s favor upon you. He will see your true interest in His will, and His plan for your vowed state in life will become clearer and clearer. Specifically and fervently, ask His Mother to assist you. She will.

I look forward to your response and hope to get to know more about you. Interest in the religious life, though not conclusive, is one of the signs of a vocation to the religious state. We sisters will be praying for you. Please pray for us. I am sending along a picture of the sisters.

May Our Lady bless you with her Holy Child and help you to discover and do His will.

In Her Immaculate Heart,
Sister Marie Thérèse, M.I.C.M.
Prioress

Dear Readers, I have one more thing to share with you.
Time is short, as you know. As you may not know, souls are more and more receptive to the Faith. Of course, you won’t learn that by listening to the news! We discover good will every time we meet people from across the country. What I want to share with you is a very simple and special way to pray for religious vocations that they may help bring the Faith to all of the millions of souls God wishes to save.

Whenever I attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, at the Consecration of the Host I ask Our Blessed Mother to say something for me to Our Lord as soon as He arrives on the Altar: “Behold! The harvest is great and the laborers are few.” That is all! She doesn’t even have to ask anything of Him. As soon as He hears His beloved Mother state a need, He will surely rise to the occasion and help Her, as He did at the wedding feast at Cana. Furthermore, that prayer is not only for an increase of laborers, but also for a strengthening and perfecting of the existing laborers: the brothers and sisters already here.
I thank you with all my heart for joining me in this prayer for vocations!

Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.

The Mission of the Holy Ghost

2010-08-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie
Pentecost is the anniversary of the Holy Ghost’s mission on earth. Because that mission is largely neglected, sorely misunderstood, and vitally important for the life of the Church and individuals, we should do our best to understand it so that we can profit by it.

The Promise Fulfilled. We get a description of the Pentecost event today in the lesson from the Book of Acts. We’ve been expecting it since the Ascension. It comes to us, much as it came to the Apostles, by way of a promise fulfilled. Remember that Our Lord called the Holy Ghost “the Promise of the Father,” as St. Luke relates in both his Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles.

The List. By way of summarizing who and what the Holy Ghost is, I would like to speak on three important truths about the Holy Ghost. First, the Holy Ghost proceeds in eternity from the Father and the Son, who also together send Him on His temporal mission. Second, that mission of the Holy Ghost is to build up the Church. Third, the Holy Ghost sanctifies each of the faithful. There is an order to these three truths, going from general to specific, the abstract to the concrete, the eternal to the now, the universal to particular, or the big-grand-and-cosmic to the little-you-and-me.

I. The Eternal Procession. First, the Holy Ghost proceeds in eternity from the Father and the Son and He is sent in time by the Father and the Son. In the one substance of the Godhead, there are three Persons. The First Person is the Principle without principle, the Origin without origin. In knowing Himself perfectly, He utters a Word, which we can call His perfect and adequate self-knowledge. This Word is not a creature, but is of the very substance of the same Godhead: it is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. The utterance is also a generation or a begetting. For this reason, we call the Word, in strictest literal truth, God’s Son. This Word, this Son, is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Father beholds His Son and loves him. The Son, in turn, loves His Father. This Love of Father for Son and Son for Father is, like the Father’s self-knowledge, of the very substance of the Godhead. It is the Third Person, the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of a breath of love — a breath, an aspiration, a Spirit.

Temporal Mission. The missions in time follow the order of the processions in eternity. The Father is the Principle without principle. He is sent by no one, therefore he has no “mission.” The Son is generated by the Father. He is sent in time by the Father to do the work the Father has commanded Him to do. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son in eternity and is sent in time by both the Father and the Son, which is why His mission in time had to come after the Ascension. “It is expedient for you that I go,” Our Lord said, “for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7).

Our Lord told His Apostles that the Holy Ghost would “teach [them] all things and bring all things to [their] mind whatsoever I have said to you.” In another place, He said: “He shall glorify me: because he shall receive of mine and shall shew it to you.” And again: “he shall not speak of himself: but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak.” In other words, just as Our Lord said, “my doctrine is not mine but his who sent me,” so, too, can the Holy Ghost say the same thing, but with one difference: “My doctrine is not mine, but theirs who sent me — they, from whom I proceed.”

II. The Soul of the Church. The Holy Ghost’s mission is to build up the Church. Remember that we call the Holy Ghost, “the Soul of the Church.” On Pentecost day we see a pattern of the work of the Holy Ghost: The Apostles are given gifts to preach, their preaching is heard and understood by people in diverse languages, the truth of the Faith is upheld by the wonderful prodigies the Holy Ghost works (the sound “as of a great wind,” the hearing in different languages, the profound preaching by simple men, the tongues of fire, the prodigious courage shown by the Apostles, etc.).

What was the result? Three thousand were baptized that day.

Does it end then and there, that is, on Pentecost day? No. All throughout the Book of Acts — the book sometimes called the “Gospel of the Holy Ghost” — we read of His action, and it’s always the same: building on the work of Jesus, confirming the work of the Apostles, and adding to the Body of Christ.

III. The Sanctifier. The Holy Ghost sanctifies each of the faithful. What He does for the Church He also does for each of us singly: He sanctifies us. How? By bestowing on us those gifts we learn about in our catechisms: The seven gifts of the Holy Ghost: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. The virtues are like our rowing the boat, as those little illustrations in the Baltimore Catechisms showed. But the gifts are the wind of the Holy Ghost filling our sails. The virtues perfect our natural powers, whereas the gifts perfect the virtues. The gifts also, in turn, produce in us the fruits of the Holy Ghost, which are the sweet produce of the soul that has cooperated with the Sanctifier: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, fidelity, modesty, continency, chastity. We call these “fruits” for two reasons: first, they are the produce, or result of living the virtues and the gifts; second, like fruit, they are sweet. St. Thomas Aquinas said that “Every virtuous act which man performs with pleasure is a fruit.” So the list St. Paul gives in Galatians 5, which I’ve just cited, is not exhaustive.

His Spouse. I spoke above of two aspects of the mission of the Holy Ghost — building the Church and sanctifying souls. We see them both in seed in the Holy Ghost’s greatest work, the one appropriated to Him, but which actually precedes His temporal mission. It is His masterpiece: the Incarnation. The head of the Church was made incarnate in Mary’s womb and Mary’s own soul was filled with grace. The Incarnation is the pattern of the work of the Holy Ghost: As He formed Jesus in Mary’s womb; so He informs the Church by being the soul of the Church; so, too, He forms Jesus in the soul of each one of us.

Email Brother André Marie at bam@catholicism.org.

The Tarbell Story

2010-07-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Editor’s note: Several months ago, I came upon an article someone had sent me about the amazing story of the Tarbells of Groton, Massachusettts. It was written by Rudy Bixby and was published in the November 14, 1979, issue of The Times Free Press newspaper from East Pepperell. Kate Walsh, Managing Editor for the owners at Nashoba Publishing, has graciously given permission for us to republish the Tarbell Story.

I had once written a piece for the “Did You Know” section of From the Housetops about Lydia Longley, who has the distinction of being the “First American Nun.” The Tarbells and the Longleys were contemporaries; both were from Groton; both families had children kidnapped by Indians; and, strangely enough, they were cousins. Lydia Longley was taken captive in 1694 during an Abenaki raid on their homestead in the aftermath of King Philip’s War as it played out on this side of the ocean. Lydia’s family was all killed in the raid and she was taken, eventually, to Canada, ransomed by the French, and given over to the Ursuline nuns in Montreal. While there, she became a Catholic and later joined the order.
Before moving on to the story, here are some interesting Catholic trivia concerning “saints” and “firsts” in America:
1) Lydia Longley is the first woman, born in colonial America, to become a nun. The story of Lydia Longley was first popularized by Helen A. McCarthy Sawyer of Groton, Massachusetts. She wrote a children’s book called “The First American Nun.”
2) Frances Allen, daughter of Ethan Allen, was the first woman, born after 1776 in the United States, to become a nun. She was converted while studying with teaching sisters in Montreal. In 1811, she made a religious profession with the Religious Hospitaliers of St. Joseph, and took care of the worst of the sick and indigent. She died of consumption in 1819.
3) Mother Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized, although she was not a native-born American. She died in 1917.
4) The first native-born United States citizen to be canonized was Mother Seton. She died in 1821.
5) The first United States male citizen to be canonized was John Nepomucene Neumann, although he was not a native-born American.

The Tarbell Story

By Rudy Bixby

Wednesday, November 14, 1979

Times-Free Press – East Pepperell, Mass. 01437

Did you ever see a man walking calmly across a steel girder, ten stories up, or doing the same thing on a bridge girder, four or five hundred feet above a river? If you ever have, you probably wondered what sort of a man that he was. Possibly, you may have seen such a man on the ground and have been surprised that he was an Indian. If you happened to hear him called by name, you might have been more surprised to hear the name Tarbell. Well, you might think that it had nothing to do with the Tarbells of Groton and you would be very wrong! The Indian, named Tarbell, would be able to trace his ancestors back to a man named Thomas Tarbell who lived in Groton, almost three hundred years ago.

Thomas Tarbell III, was the son and grandson of original proprietors of Groton and once served as Town Clerk. His wife was the daughter of Richard and Isabel Blood and was named Elizabeth. They had ten children, born between the years 1687 and 1707. The family homestead was on Farmers Row, the present site of the James Lawrence estate.

In the early Summer of 1707, the inhabitants of Groton were beginning to feel reasonably safe from Indian attacks. The local Indians had been killed off or pacified during King Philip’s War, and King William’s War, between the French and British, which had seen an invasion by Indians from Canada, was some five years past. There were rumors that some settlers had been attacked recently but the Tarbell family didn’t feel that they were in any immediate danger. How wrong they were!
It was early evening, June 20th, three of the Tarbell children, Sarah, John and Zachariah were playing in the branches of a cherry tree behind the house when a band of Caughnawaga Indians suddenly surrounded the tree. Cautioning the children to be quiet, Indians and prisoners vanished into the nearby forest. At that time, Sarah was thirteen, John was eleven, and Zachariah was six or seven. Sarah never saw her home or family again.

Traveling swiftly, the Indians returned with their prisoners to the Indian village of Caughnawaga near the city of Montreal. Sarah was soon bought by the French and placed in a convent. In all probability, Sarah met her cousin, Lydia Longley, who had been captured by the Indians, eleven years previously. Lydia had become a nun and, no doubt, influenced her cousin to do likewise. She joined the Congregation of Notre Dame at Lachine.

And what of the two boys? They soon became as Indian as their captors. Reaching manhood, they married daughters of Indian chiefs and, later, moved up the St. Lawrence to found the Indian town of St. Regis.

Some thirty years later, John and Zachariah returned to visit relatives in Groton. Dressed as Indian chiefs and speaking haltingly in English, they attracted much attention. No amount of pleading could induce them to return permanently. Governor Belcher, the Governor of Massachusetts, made an impassionate speech before the General Court, pleading with that body to give the two Tarbells some sort of an inducement to stay in their native town. The worthy gentleman was much distressed over the fact that the two had embraced Catholicism. The free life of the forest proved too much of a magnet to the Tarbells and they returned to their squaws and families.

In the year 1744, Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts was in Albany, New York, and his attention was called to a band of Indians who had come down from Canada to trade. Two of the “Indians” turned out to be the Tarbell brothers, one of whom was said to be the wealthiest of the Caughnawaga tribe.

Sometime during the next century, Dr. Samuel Green visited the village of St. Regis and talked to the parish priest. He was informed that some forty persons carried the name of Tarbell in the village and that they were among the most prominent. Strange to say, the given names of these Tarbell descendants corresponded to names of their distant cousins in Groton.

When Thomas Tarbell III, died, he left the three missing children an equal share in his property but with the condition that they return to Groton to live. The condition was never fulfilled.

One must wonder if the three Tarbells ever regretted their choices and what would have been their lot if they had returned to live in Groton.

And how did the Tarbells become involved in the dangerous trade of building high structural steel buildings and bridges? When the first suspension bridge was built across the St. Lawrence at Quebec, the engineers were astonished by the lack of fear of height displayed by a group of Indians, among whom were some of the Tarbells. The word soon spread and Indians soon became much in demand.
Of all the stories about captured children of New England, surely the story of the Tarbell children is the most interesting.

On Cults and Man Worship, Some Fighting Words

2010-07-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

In "Christology for Joe," an article that answers questions from a thoughtful young man, I made some observations about the way the English language has been Protestantized. In this number of the Ad Rem, I excerpt from that article the part explaining the words used to distinguish the "cult" of the Blessed Virgin and the saints from the "cult" of the Blessed Trinity. This knowledge may prove useful in helping readers to think through, and deal with, certain objections that come to our religion from its critics.

The Germanic language known as English — from the Angles, the Germanic tribe that invaded Celtic Britain — developed substantially under Catholic influence. St. Augustine’s missionary monks were in England in the early seventh century, introducing many Latinisms into the developing language of the British Isles. The Norman invasion in 1066 enriched its vocabulary by the introduction of many French words, and gave it another Catholic influence. Until the Anglican Schism of the sixteenth century, England was a major part of the Catholic world, and its humane letters had a place of dignity in the literature of Christendom. Chaucer was a Catholic; the Arthurian Legends were Catholic; Shakespeare was possibly Catholic himself, and if not, certainly did not “Protestantize” the language. In short, our vocabulary grew and our literature developed while Merry old England was still Mary’s Dowry. Words like lord, lady, worship, adore, and pray had meanings and connotations more deeply rooted in the Catholic culture of England.

But Protestants — not so much Anglicans as Calvinist Puritans — gradually altered the usage of these words, if not by direct effort, then by simple use.

In these United States (whose early colonists included many Puritans), there was a direct effort to divorce our language from the Mother Tongue. It was the continuation, you might say, of the War for Independence. (Noah Webster compiled his dictionary largely for this politico-ideological purpose.) American English, especially of Noah Webster’s New England variety, was more “democratic” and less “monarchical” a language; and even the aristocrats (lords and ladies) took a beating in the developing language of our Republic. Because of all this, concepts of hierarchy — Catholic concepts — were downplayed. Eventually, a bishop or magistrate was no longer “my Lord”; one did not “pray” to a judge (”prithee, milord!”); and nobody was “your worship” except God Himself. All this had the net effect of abstracting a purely religious use, sanitized of Catholic concepts, for certain words. True, some holdovers still exist in the language, as when we call a property owner who rents to us a “landlord,” or when we read older versions of Scripture, but there is a prevalent Calvinism in much of our language that serves to prejudice the American ear in religious matters. (Orestes Brownson’s provocatively entitled “Mary Worship” and “Saint Worship” may have been so named to challenge this prejudice.)

All the foregoing is background to establish that, to our Catholic (and even Anglican) English-speaking forebears, to “pray” to someone other than God, to “worship” a man, and to call upon those in the ecclesiastical and even the civic hierarchy as “lord” did not smell in the slightest of brimstone. Today, however, we have the burden of explaining to a people whose common tongue has been religiously deconstructed what these things mean.

Catholic devotion to Our Lady and the Saints never put creatures on a par with the creator. This is amply proven in numerous works of an apologetical nature (see, for instance, my own “Praying to the Saints,” under the heading “Confirmed by Tradition”). Those who claim that we Catholics give saints the same worship we give to God have the burden of proving it from Catholic sources. The total absence of a smoking gun belies the falsity of their assertions.

There exists in the Catholic theological lexicon the following fourfold distinction:

Latria (cultus latriae) — We usually call this, in English, “adoration.” This is the worship given exclusively to the Blessed Trinity. It comes from a Greek word that the Latins liked so much they imported it. When we say cultus latriae, we are saying that to God is due the “cult of latria [or "of adoration"].” The word cultus has at least three meanings: “to till or cultivate; to protect or nurture; and (in an applied sense) to worship or honor.” From it, we get the words “cultivate,” “agriculture,” “horticulture,” etc. From it also, we get the word “cult,” as in religious veneration. At Dictionary.com, one can see the different meanings of the word “cult.” This proper religious use of the word is the first listed meaning, while the popular meaning of the word is No. 6. (Knee-jerk reactions to the word “cult” — “Ah! So, you Catholics admit you’re a cult!” — would provide yet more examples of the linguistic bias I wrote of earlier.)

Dulia (cultus duliae) — Coming from the Greek word for “servant” or “slave,” this category denotes the veneration shown to the saints, God’s “servants.” In this distinction, one can see that there is a difference between the reverence shown to God and that shown to God’s slave. The honor shown to a master (in this case, the Master of all) is obviously greater than the honor shown to a slave. Clearly, the old social convention of servitude serves as the point of reference for this distinction, just as it was employed by St. Paul to illustrate other concepts in Scripture.

Hyperdulia (cultus hyperduliae) — Because the Blessed Virgin Mary is a saint, she receives the genus of veneration we call “dulia.” However, because she is over all the saints, she is given the highest species of that devotion. So, we unite hyper, the Greek word for “over,” (its Latin equivalent is super) to dulia. The Mother of God receives the highest degree of reverence of any mere creature (excepting, that is, Christ’s sacred Humanity, which is a creature; more on that in a bit).

Protodulia (cultus protoduliae) — A further distinction of some authors employs the Greek word for “first,” prôtos. This is the devotion given to St. Joseph, who is revered “first” among the saints. (But Mary is honored “over” him!)

(A more detailed explanation of the division of latria and dulia can be found in my “On Worshiping Mary and the Saints.”)

The Twelve Apparitions Between  the Resurrection and Ascension

2010-07-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Brian Kelly
Perusing through some old files of mine I came across a list of Catholic twelves, and there are many: Twelve Apostles; twelve articles of the Apostles Creed; twelve days of Christmas; twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost; twelve patriarchs from Adam to Noah; twelve tribes of Israel; twelve loaves of proposition in the temple sanctuary; twelve chiefs of Ismael; Jesus was twelve-years-old when He was first teaching in the temple; twelve baskets of fragments left over after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; the Woman of the Apocalypse had a crown of twelve stars; the tree of life in the vision of the Apocalypse bore twelve fruits; and, in the natural order, we have twelve months of the year.

There was another twelve on the list that I had totally forgotten about. Our Lord appeared to His Apostles and disciples twelve times during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. Two of the dozen apparitions are known from tradition; the other ten are recorded in Holy Scripture.
The first apparition: Although it is not recorded in the New Testament we know from tradition (and common sense) that Jesus first appeared to His Blessed Mother alone, immediately after He rose from the dead. In fact, it was this first apparition that inspired Saint Ignatius of Loyola in writing his Spiritual Exercises. For one of his meditations in the fourth week of exercises he posits this composition of place:

“First Prelude. The first Prelude is the narrative, which is here, how, after Christ expired on the Cross, and the Body, always united with the Divinity, remained separated from the Soul, the blessed Soul, likewise united with the Divinity, went down to Hell, and taking from there the just souls, and coming to the Sepulchre, and being risen, He appeared to His Blessed Mother in Body and in Soul.
“Second Prelude. The second, a composition, seeing the place; which will be here to see the arrangement of the Holy Sepulchre and the place or house of Our Lady, looking at its parts in particular; likewise the room, the oratory, etc.” In his Spiritual Exercises Saint Ignatius also includes a list of these twelve apparitions of Christ from His resurrection to His ascension.

Regarding this, Paul Debuchy relates an interesting tradition in his article on the Spiritual Exercises for the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Another tradition concerns the part taken by the Blessed Virgin in the composing of the ‘Exercises’ at Manresa. It is not based on any written testimony of the contemporaries of St. Ignatius, though it became universal in the seventeenth century. Possibly it is founded upon earlier oral testimony, and upon a revelation made in 1600 to the Venerable Marina de Escobar and related in the ‘Life of Father Balthazar Alvarez.’ This tradition has often been symbolized by painters, who represent Ignatius writing from the Blessed Virgin’s dictation.”
That Our Lord first appeared to His mother after His resurrection is a long-established tradition and is also the subject of many great works of art. Saint Ambrose may have been the first western doctor to affirm the belief explicitly, but many others did so as well. “Mary therefore saw the Resurrection of the Lord” he writes, “She was the first who saw it and believed.” Saint Augustine taught that the only one who held firm the Faith in the resurrection of Christ during the three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday was Mary. She was the only believing member of the Church during that triduum. Other saints that explicitly taught the same were Saints Eadmer (disciple of Saint Anselm), Bernardine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola, and Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. Actually, since no saint ever denied it (how could they?) it would be safe to say that they all took it for granted, even if they did not write about it expressly. Regarding this tradition, Saint Ignatius says: “First: He appeared to the Virgin Mary. This, although it is not said in Scripture, is included in saying that He appeared to so many others, because Scripture supposes that we have understanding, as it is written: ‘Are you also without understanding’?”
The second person to whom Our Lord appeared after His resurrection was Mary Magdalen. We have the story in the Gospel of Saint John, chapter 20, vss. 11-17. “Jesus saith to her: Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, thinking it was the gardener, saith to him: Sir, if thou hast taken him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith to her: Mary. She turning, saith to him: Rabboni (which is to say, Master). Jesus saith to her: Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren, and say to them: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.”

Then, the third apparition was to the “other women” who came either with Mary Magdalen, or separately in another group, to the sepulchre just before or just after sunrise Easter morning. Three of these, the Gospel accounts tell us, were Mary of Cleophas, Salome, and Joanna. These scripture accounts from the Gospels of Saint Matthew, Mark, and Luke need an explanation in order to reconcile them with what we have just read in Saint John.

Without getting into a protracted comparison and reconstruction of the sequence of seemingly contradictory accounts I will follow the Catholic Encyclopedia article’s simple chronology of the Paschal apparitions. On the morning of the Resurrection Mary Magdalen, “the other Mary” and “other women” come to the tomb first, just before sunrise, while it was still dark. Seeing the stone rolled back, Mary immediately left and ran back to tell the Apostles. The other women are stupefied with fear when they see an angel whose countenance was “as lightning” and the guards struck with terror stiffened like “dead men.” The angel tells them not to fear for, Jesus, whom they seek, is not there, He has risen. “Come,” the angel says, “and see the place where the Lord was laid” (Matt. 28:1-6).
These women, with great fear and joy, ran back to Jerusalem, intending to tell Christ’s disciples what they had seen and heard, but they were so afraid that they said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). Meanwhile a second group of holy women arrived at the tomb, including Joanna, who was at the Cross. They probably intended to meet Mary Magdalen and the other women there. These women looked into the empty vault and saw two angels sitting at either end of the tomb. These two angels did not shine like lightning, but looked like men in “shining apparel.” (These were the same two angels that Mary Magdalen was about to see.) The angels told them that Christ had arisen; “he is not here,” and to go quickly and tell His disciples (Luke 24:5-8). They, then, ran back to the home, where the Apostles were staying, and on their way back, Jesus appeared to them on the road (Matt. 28:8-10). Meanwhile, Mary Magdalen had returned to the tomb alone. This is when she encountered the angel and the Risen Christ whom she thought might be the gardener. After Our Lady, she was the first to whom Christ appeared after His Resurrection: “But he rising early the first day of the week, appeared first to Mary Magdalen, out of whom he had cast seven devils” (Mark 16:9). After hearing the report of the other women, Saints Peter and John ran to the tomb and entering in found the linens folded in one place. Seeing this, John believed. Peter, however, seems to have doubted. “Then that other disciple [John] also went in, who came first to the sepulchre: and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead” (John 20:8,9).

That doubt was removed when Jesus appeared privately to him in His fourth apparition (Luke 24:34).
The fifth apparition was to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus as related in detail in Luke, chapter 24. Scripture gives us the name of only one of the two, Cleophas.

The sixth apparition was to ten of the Apostles, Thomas being absent, in the Upper Room of the Cenacle (John 20:19).

The seventh was to the Apostles again, in the same place, Thomas being present this time. “Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed” (John 20:29).

The eighth was to seven disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. The seven were: Saints Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James the Greater, John, and two others not mentioned (John 21).
The ninth was related only by Saint Paul in First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. This was to a large multitude of five hundred on a mountain in Galilee (vs. 6).

The tenth was to Saint James the Less, whom Jesus would leave to pastor the Church in Jerusalem. This apparition is also related only by Saint Paul in the same epistle and chapter as above (vs. 7).
The eleventh apparition of Our Lord is believed by tradition and is found, according to the testimony of Saint Ignatius, in the ancient Lives of the Saints. It was to Saint Joseph of Arimathea, His pallbearer and benefactor.

Lastly, the twelfth apparition was to one hundred and twenty, the infant Church, on the Mount of Olives at His Ascension. “And he led them out as far as Bethania: and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And it came to pass, whilst he blessed them, he departed from them, and was carried up to heaven” (Luke 24:50-51).

Email Brian Kelly at bdk@catholicism.org.

How to Join the Catholic Battle

2010-06-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

Brother John Marie Vianney, M.I.C.M., (Tert.)

In any war there must be a battle plan to win. I reveal no secret to you when I say we are in a war. The war, in our case, harkens back to the word “crusade.” The Crusades were holy wars that were undertaken by Catholic powers to free the Christian Holy Land from its Mohammedan conquerors. The crusade of Saint Benedict Center is a spiritual one. As you know it has two ends: 1) to defend all the dogmas of the Catholic Faith, especially extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) and 2) to convert America to the one true Faith. Ours is a holy war in that we are “fighting” to free our non-Catholic brothers and sisters and bring them to the liberating light of the Catholic religion. This is a work to which the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary have been particularly devoted for sixty years. The goal is good and true, but the laborers are few.

St. Paul encourages us to use spiritual weapons in order to fight the enemies of our souls (Eph. 6:11-17). “Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day… having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace”. One of these spiritual weapons is Catholic knowledge; we must have plenty of it if we are to teach our countrymen. “That in all things you are made rich in him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge” (1 Cor. 1:5). And what will we teach? The Faith, without compromise.

The crusade was launched by Father Leonard Feeney who sought to save the salvation dogma of the Church from obscurity and, in so doing, rescue all Catholic dogmas from the “dictatorship of relativism” — to borrow a term of Pope Benedict’s. That effort began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with, as Sister Catherine writes in The Loyolas and Cabots, the consideration of the “authentic doctrines of the Church through the study of Holy Scripture, and the writings of the Fathers, doctors, and saints of the Church. This program of studies achieved immediate success, filling the spiritual vacuum created by an obvious deficiency in the neighboring academic institutions. The Center was attended in large and growing numbers.”

Father Feeney chose Brother Francis Maluf, our recently deceased superior, to help him establish a strategy for the doctrinal crusade. When Brother Francis received his assignment in the 1940s he knew he had to prepare by prayer and study. And that is just what he did. He did not activate his dream to initiate a school of studies nationwide until the 1970s when he saw the time was right. It was only then that he launched the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies (SAI), announcing the program to friends of the Center across America.

Brother’s assignment is now our assignment. One of the best ways to re-ignite our enthusiasm for the conversion of America is to listen to the words of the man who so deeply desired the personal sanctification of his students and religious disciples and their education in the Faith. Brother Francis had a charism when he spoke. Anyone who heard him was instantly cognizant of it. And, thanks be to God and Brother’s loyal students, we still have his words recorded on tapes and CDs. Although his knowledge was immense in the breadth of its extension, wisdom was his greatest gift. As a true philosopher, he always sought for the causes of things, going from the immediate to the first causes. Yes, he was deep, but he also had the gift of communicating his wisdom in a clear, simple, and, at times, even in a child-like manner.

Brother loved to quote an often-repeated exhortation of Saint Paul: idem sapite, “be of one mind.” To effect this end, a much greater emphasis will be placed on the link, the connection, the training ground, the school we refer to as the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies. Brother Francis often called the Institute and its circles of study, the “engines of the crusade.” Engines require fuel to operate. If we do not work at being reservoirs filled with the fuel of holiness and erudition, we will have ignored one of our founder’s prescriptions for the conversion of our own homes and of our fellow citizens, our neighbors. In order to be good aqueducts we must first be reservoirs.

SAI is under the Third Order and the Third Order will support SAI. In fact, we wish all tertiaries to be active in study circles, or, at least, progressing in the program individually. Why? Brother Francis, in his very first recorded talk about SAI, said he believed that if you gave him a couple of hundred souls working to study the Faith in the friendly atmosphere of the circles of study, that number could eventually turn into many thousands — to the point where America could be converted as the Faith spreads from one soul to another.

Today, sixty years after the founding of our crusade, our purposes are the same. Third Order brothers and sisters, what are we waiting for? Please make it your goal to start or join a circle of study, to obtain the tapes or CDs of Brother Francis, and to share your knowledge and joy with others.

Finally, let me suggest that you purchase two sets of recordings: the “Introduction to the Circles of Study” (by Brother Francis) and “Why Be a Tertiary?” (by Brother André Marie).

Email Brother John Marie Vianney at toprefect@catholicism.org.

Converted by the Resurrection

2010-06-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

By Brother Francis, M.I.C.M.

We are indebted to Sister Anna Maria, M.I.C.M., of the Vienna, Ohio community, for transcribing the following from one of Brother Francis’ recorded lectures.

Difficilius est id quod non sit incipere quam id quod fuerit iterare. And it’s translated, “It’s more difficult for that which had never been to start to begin, than that which had been, to be brought back.” In other words, the fact that we were created is more surprising than the fact that we are going to be resurrected from the dead. That’s the point Minucius Felix, a pagan Roman, was making when he used this quote from Octavius, a Christian of the age of the catacombs, the first Latin apologist. In his work, Felix was recounting a dialogue between the Christian, Octavius Januarius, and the pagan, Caecilius Natalis, at the seashore in Ostia on a Roman holiday in the time of vintage.

The argument proceeded. The first one to speak was Caecilius (a pagan of the second century) and in a very suave, clever way, he presented the argument against the Christian religion from the point of view of a Roman. He insisted that man has a duty to uphold the religion of his ancestors. A false principle, but an attractive one. There are an awful lot of people today who go on living in the wrong religion, just because they think they have the duty to be loyal to “the religion of my grandparents, of my father, or my mother, or my good aunt, or good uncle.”

Now, is loyalty to father and mother and aunt, and relatives, and country a bad thing? No, it isn’t. As a matter of fact, this kind of loyalty is the greatest thing in the natural order, and the only thing it has to yield to, is God.

That same issue that arose among these early Romans of the second century, would arise in the eighteenth century, the century in which the anti-Catholic Masonic conspiracy arose, the century of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, the century of Adam Weishaupt, and Jacob Frank. It was also the century of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori.

In that century a very respectable theologian established a false principle in a catechism that was going to be taught in Italian schools. He was trying to placate the Masons, the Carbonari, who had their hand in public education throughout Italy at that time. Italian Masons didn’t become atheists and they certainly didn’t become Protestants. They claimed to be Catholic, even though they were bad Catholics.

So, according to this theologian and his catechism, the principle was that “one has to be true to the religion of his fathers.” Therefore, “one has to be true to the Catholic Faith.” Saint Alphonsus Maria, when he saw that sentence, was absolutely furious! He said, “That is a false principle; Catholics do not talk like that. If this statement could be true in Italy, it must be true in Turkey! So, are you saying that the Turks have the duty to go on being Moslems? Are you saying that the Chinese have a duty to go on being Buddhists?”

So, Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, God bless him, blasted this theologian and raised quite a crusade against him. He said, “That’s wrong! You can’t say that!”

Now here, in the Dialogue, we find Caecilius saying that it’s patriotic to worship the gods approved by the Roman senate. As a matter of fact, Rome was so generous and so broad-minded in apostolic times that the biggest problem that Saint Peter and Saint Paul and the Christians had when they came to Rome, most of them to shed their blood, was not the bigotry of the Romans, but the broadmindedness of the Romans. They invited the Christians to have a statue of Jesus placed in the Pantheon, the temple of all the gods. “No, thank you!” said the Christians. If Jesus Christ entered the Pantheon, all the other “gods” must go. He is not “a god,” He is the only God, one in three Persons, with the Father and the Holy Ghost.

Resurrection: The argument of the Dialogue was finally mooted on one issue. Who in the world could believe that, after this body is disintegrated, it’s going to be gathered and brought back to life? So, it came down to the Resurrection of the body. That was the big scandal to the pagans. So, it is today with the rationalists, materialistic scientists, and false philosophers. How many physicists, chemists, geologists, astronomers, in our universities believe in the resurrection of the body? I met a Teilhardian once who said to me, “Do you mean to say that the cadaver of Jesus was brought back to life?”

To the rationalist the subject of this incredulity isn’t just the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God, the first fruit of His own victory over death. It is all those who would be united to Him by the Eucharist, by the Faith, by Baptism, all of those who will be resurrected in glory through His glorious Resurrection. It is the challenge for our mind, but it is the only hope that we have! If we lose faith in the Resurrection, then there is nothing left but pagan despair. And pagan despair leads to degeneracy, the very degeneracy that is taking over our country, taking over the whole world today.

Is the world pagan today? I think we owe an apology to the pagans! Minucius was a pagan, but there was some decency about him. At least some of the pagans of Rome and its empire had natural virtue, natural ideals. They would be converted, and from among them there were millions of martyrs in the first centuries of the Church. When a Christian society falls, they don’t fall back to nature; they fall to un-nature, to abnormality, to degeneracy! Corruptio optime pessima est (the corruption of the best is the worst). And the only way to save nature today is to be supernatural, because grace builds on nature and shows the beauty of nature.

“Can you, Octavius, really convince me, Caecilius, a well-educated, reasonable man, a philosopher, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and therefore, that all of us can rise from the dead, that there is such a thing to look forward to — that we will exist forever”? Just imagine discussing a point on which there is so much at stake!

Just imagine the difference between dying like the rabbits, and going on like gods, forever, children, sons of God, forever! You’d think we are talking about some point that you could settle in one way or the other. What difference does it make? It makes all the difference in the whole world!

So it was at that point that this sentence was uttered: It’s more difficult for that which had never been to start to begin, than that which had been, to be brought back. And — Deo gratias! It converted Caecilius. He became a Christian.

“Supposing,” said Octavius, “you were a sheer angelic intelligence and were allowed to look over and see this earth, and you saw the wind blowing and the trees, the rabbits running around and the dogs and the pigs and everything. And then somebody told you that out of that same mud we are going to make the kind of being that you are, a rational, spiritual, intelligent person. Would you think it were possible?” He said, “No, I wouldn’t.”

Octavius replied, “But you know this is a fact. Not only could no man have done it, no man could have even conceived it possible!” So, he said, Difficilius est id quod non sit incipere quam id quod fuerit iterare. What a beautiful classical sentence! Is it not more difficult to have put that amazing being, which is in fact what you are, in existence in the first place, than having existed, to restore it? And at that point, Caecilius was converted to the Catholic Faith, on the issue of the resurrection!

I hit that story just on the week of the Resurrection, and I thought it was a little grace that I should be telling you.

A Letter of Inspiration

2010-05-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

I would like to share with you a letter from a Jesuit missionary in the New World to the first apostle of devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, Saint John Eudes. This is actually an excerpt from an old book by Daniel Sargent (an early Center friend) on Saint John Eudes, entitled Their Hearts Be Praised. How did I come upon this passage? One of our sisters was ill for over a month (we call this a “Slave vacation”) and so she was able to do a bit more reading. When she shared this passage with me, I knew that I had to share it with you! May it make you love Our Lady more and live your total consecration more fully. The passage begins with a brief biography of the writer of our letter:

Our Lady did not make the year 1662 anything but a series of failures for Saint John Eudes, but She did console him. She arranged to have letters come to him from afar, from hands of men from whom he did not expect to hear. One was a Jesuit in Canada, Father Pierre Joseph Chaumonot. Since Our Lady chose this Jesuit to write to him, we will do well to examine Her choice.

Father Chaumonot, when asked by his Superior to write an account of his life, began as follows: “Since your Reverence has ordered me for the greater glory of God to write you at least in summary all my life, I begin by declaring the baseness and the miseries from which Our Lord has had the goodness to draw me, and set me in the Holy Society of Jesus.”

This beginning was an exaggeration. The Society of Jesus was holy, and Our Lord had drawn him into it, but Pierre had not been base. As a lad he had merely been irregular. He had borrowed some money without due permission from an uncle, but it had been in order to study Latin under the Oratorians at Beaune. He simply did not always think. And then, when the money, which was only a hundred sous, was expended before he reached Beaune, what was there for him to do but to wander and beg his way? He begged his way to Rome.

Then, later, he had prayed at the Holy House at Loreto, and had asked to become a priest. To his astonishment the Jesuits had accepted him. He was always being astonished, for everything that happened seemed to him a favor, and he could not see why he of all people should receive any favors.

One of those favors brought him to Québec, where he arrived in 1639, when Eudes was still an Oratorian. He went immediately among the Hurons with Father de Brébeuf, and found that he could learn the Indian tongues better than any other Jesuit. He did not become a martyr as Brébeuf did, and that did not surprise him; he did not think he merited it. One day, it is true, an Indian struck him over the head with a hatchet, and he did not have his hat on, yet he survived. In telling the story he so related it that it seems as if he were congratulating himself that his hat was not hurt, and that only his head had been marred. He has not been canonized as was Brébeuf. He was never during his life given any great position of leadership. Yet he is one of the most fascinating Jesuits that ever came to the New World. He could not grow old. He built a chapel near Québec, modeled on the Holy House of Loreto, which still exists, Indian Lorette. He had his Hurons compose a letter, which he wrote down in Huron, to Our Lady in the Crypt at Chartres, vowing their fealty to Her. He organized in Canada, among the French and the Indians, the Confraternity of the Holy Family, to which Catherine Tekakwitha came to belong. He was in his devotions a child, most childlike, of the Mother of God, and She in a vision hailed him, to his astonishment, as more than Her child, even as her spouse, for, She said, “You are the father of so many of my children.”

This extraordinary Jesuit, who had never seen Father Eudes, was chosen by Our Lady to write a letter to him in 1660, which would arrive in his hands when he was being persecuted. The letter was no usual one:

Pax Christi!

Reverend Father,

I have been consoled to hear through Father Torcapel the holy ambition that you have to surpass no matter who in loving Our Lady. May it please God, that you communicate this spirit to all the ambitious people of the earth! Might I dare to ask of you for the love of Mary, Virgin and Mother, whom you so much love, to procure for me the advantage of being admitted, as the last of your servitors to the service of this Sovereign Mistress, or, if you like it better, as the littlest of all your cadets, into the adoption of this Mother of Mercy. If you die before me, would you have the bounty to resign to me, or to leave to me in heritage, as much as it is in your power, a part of the devotion which you have for Her, in order that you may continue even after your death, to honor Her on earth through me? Father Torcapel will tell you face to face of the displeasure that I have that so many persons receive, in the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord, with the immense gifts which It carries with It, without showing therein to Her who has given Him to us the least sentiment of gratitude. Now, in order to remedy this, or in some fashion, to make up for their ingratitude, I should be glad to learn that there is an association of Chaplains of Our Lady, I mean that there is a quantity of good priests, who make an agreement not to celebrate ever a Mass without having among other intentions, that of honoring the Blessed Virgin, and of offering to God, by Her hands, Her adorable Son, in order that in quality of sacrifice, He mount to His Father, by the intermediary of the same person by whom He descended to us, in making Himself man. I should not want merely that this devotion limit itself to the forming of this intention; but should like it that, in addition, both before and after the Mass or Communion, we make the most honorable mention of the Blessed Virgin possible: for example that the evening before the Communion, we conjure Her to take possession of one’s heart, in order to prepare one to receive Her Son, and that after the Mass or Communion, one thank Her for having given one a so loving Pastor for our souls. I beg of you, my Reverend Father, to consult Our Good Mistress concerning this, and if it be a thing agreeable to Her, set your hand to the task, begin this association, and do me the favor to admit me to it. But, since few persons give themselves to such devotion, if there proves to be little interest in this, I leave it to your prudence and to the fervent desire that you have to increase the cult of the Blessed Virgin, to write something to draw souls to this devotion, and to have a copy of it sent to me. The love which you have for the Blessed Virgin serves me as an excuse for having taken the liberty to write to you so familiarly, I, who am only a poor man whom nobody knows.

Pierre Joseph Chaumonot

I hope that Father Chaumonot’s letter, as well as the brief sketch of his life, gives you ideas and inspiration for how to live your total consecration more fully and joyfully, toward true sanctity. Nos cum Prole Pia, benedicat Virgo Maria!

Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.

Philosophy in Our School of Thought

2010-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

I would like to share with our readers a brief gem that we hope to publish soon as part of a larger work. But before doing that, I will recall something more fundamental. In so doing, I will reveal the “setting” of this gem.

Speaking of the work of Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brother Francis often said, “We are three things at once: a crusade, a religious order, and a school of thought.”

Usually, he would embellish this utterance with little summaries of each of the three. By crusade, he meant our two-fold apostolate for the conversion of America and the restoration of doctrinal sanity, beginning with that very fundamental dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. (We put the definite article and a capital “C” here: The Crusade.) By religious order, he meant our Congregation’s First and Second Orders — brothers and sisters vowed to the life of the evangelical counsels. Our religious live under the same Rule, with duly appointed superiors, embracing the mixed life of contemplation and action, having hours dedicated to prayer, work, and study. By school of thought, Brother Francis meant the common wisdom of the Center, its approach to learning, its shared convictions and opinions in theology, philosophy, and mission, as well as the arts and sciences in general, inasmuch as they touch upon man’s ultimate quest for wisdom — salvation.

Brother believed strongly that without a school of thought, the Congregation would falter and the crusade wither. Contrariwise, he had the conviction that a flourishing school of thought will make the crusade and the Order to thrive. With God’s grace leading, accompanying, and following, may we prove Brother Francis to be visionary in this second sense — by making our apostolate “bring forth very much fruit” (John 15:8).

Those familiar with Brother Francis’ lectures may remember the six reasons he gave to answer the question, “Why philosophy?” I am presenting these reasons below, from an edited transcript of Brother Francis’ first lecture on Logic. These thoughts form part of the bedrock of our school of thought.

Philosophy is hardly a popular subject in our universities today. In fact, true philosophy, perennial philosophy, is non-existent as a particular curriculum of study. Whatever substitutes colleges give for philosophy today ought rather to be called “sophistry.” They are distractions for the mind, having nothing to do with wisdom. Instead of elevating the mind and making it more habituated to deeper realizations of the spiritual realm, modern sophistries are doing the exact opposite.

Why is the study of true philosophy so important?

First: It is natural to man to raise ultimate questions and to try to answer them. The questions raised throughout all the courses of philosophy are the most natural questions every man must raise. We raise them even as children, because they proceed from man’s essence as a rational being.

Second: All of man’s activities and achievements — in the arts, in the sciences, in government, or in any field of civilized work — proceed from thought as from their proper principle. Therefore, these activities can be ennobled by good thinking about fundamental matters; conversely, they can be subverted by bad thinking. The art of thinking well is precisely the province of philosophy.

Third: There is a historical tradition of true philosophy. (In Latin, that tradition is called philosophia perennis.) By uniting our minds to this tradition, we achieve a unity with so many brilliant thinkers of other ages and other countries. These thinkers not only include the great doctors of the Church (saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Anselm, and Augustine), but also other teachers like Duns Scotus and the great educator Alcuin. Every Christian century — including the present one — has had its champions of perennial philosophy, each of whom built upon the wisdom of the past.

Fourth: True philosophy is the handmaid of theology, ancilla theologiae. Without solid philosophic foundations, both piety and morality become superficial, unstable, and ineffective.

Fifth: The spirit and method of philosophy save the mind from the narrowing effects of the scientific method so excessively dominant today in education. Philosophy upholds the reality of the spiritual, the primacy of the contemplative vision over the pragmatic. It restrains the scientific tendency towards materialism and other forms of monisms.

Sixth: Sound philosophy is one of the tools used in the evangelization of the nations, involving, as it does, a common human value. Wherever one goes in the world, he will find a positive response when wisdom is discussed. In fact, the universal value of wisdom has somehow survived (even through distortions and corruptions) the thousands of years that have passed since the creation of Adam and Eve.

There are many who have come to the Center like dynamos, only to leave it with the same sensational dynamism. In some particularly sad cases, they even left the Church altogether through the back door of deranged thinking. I need not name them, but some have gone on to become leaders of their very own bizarre sedevacantist movements. I have seen them come and go, armed only with their Denzinger’s and their arrogance. And in every case, their problem was a lack of docility, and a refusal to sit at the feet of a master like Brother Francis.

In short, they didn’t want to learn how to think, and now they think very badly.

Email Brother André Marie at bam@catholicism.org.

Our Catholic Duty of Feasting Well

2010-04-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

By Christine Bryan

As I write this, it is still Christmas season, which I find a perfect time to pause, between bites of chocolate torte and sips of sparkling wine, to consider if we have learned to feast appropriately. Mind you, the observations that follow relate to the entirety of the Church’s year, so it’s OK if you happen to pick this up during Lent.

The whole matter is less of a financial issue than one of leisure and union with the liturgical year. And it also involves a serious look at how we receive us this day our daily bread and embrace the times of fasting. It is only by the contrasts of these three that we can know if we are connected with hundreds of years of Catholic practice. Our society is rapidly blurring lines of distinction. We see this not only in perpetual gastronomic celebrations but also in attire: as a nation we seem to have forgotten about Sunday clothes and evening dress. I remember (way back in my youth) changing out of play clothes to "go to town." There's a crisis in other areas as well: manners (why wouldn't I text my friends while sitting at your dinner table?) and correspondence (what's a thank-you letter or a pen pal?). But this is not to be a lamentation: rather an encouragement to take a look around the kitchen and decide to feast well, by understanding what it means to eat simply on a regular basis.

Our meals should nourish us body and soul by being wholesome and satisfying. Our bodies are made of what we eat. As one brief example (given while wiping away a chocolate smear), every cell in our bodies regularly recycles — drawing from available nutrients to rebuild. If each cell membrane isn't healthy, the cell itself is limited in its ability to function. Therefore, it seems reasonable that our normal fare should be composed of simple, wholesome foods that promote health, produce satiety and comfort, and are affordable. Research into options needn't be tedious. There's an abundance of good reading about dietary traditions, such as the wealth of information in the second volume of Fatima in Lucia's Own Words. With wise and faithful management, the Portuguese family ate quite well, albeit simply, in the days before the apparitions changed their lives forever. The Weston A. Price Foundation (www.westonaprice.org) is a reliable source regarding traditional diets. And countless times, in reading Catholic biographies, I have come across references to the Sunday dinner being a miniature feast in contrast to the weekly fare.

I feel a warning here is necessary. In our time, there is a mistaken perception that choosing to purchase cheap food is virtuous. Modern, inexpensive, processed products, available in abundance, create a situation where, for the last one hundred years, many people aren't eating quality, or even real, foods. A look at the American populace indicates that we are paying a heavy (ha!) price because of it. We are not a nation of healthy people. It takes concentrated focus to find or make quality food on a tight budget — but I believe it's a vital aspect of the vocation to parenthood.

To fast well means to pare down the regular diet to one that is less comforting but still nutritious. It is the keenest way to wake up a sluggish spirituality. The liturgical year is full of opportunities to experiment in this area. It may take consulting an older missal or calendar and looking at something a bit stricter than the current regulations of only two fast days during the entire liturgical year. A season of fasting can take great courage, but is essential to appreciate a period of feasting.

And feasting (pardon me, while I pour another glassful) is really a simple concept because it is merely an expansion of how we eat regularly. This may include desserts or seasonal treats, dinners with multiple courses, special beverages, and even eating between meals. The art of it all, however, involves not only slowing down our fast-paced lives to enjoy the celebration, but ending the feasting appropriately and not prolonging it perpetually. Again, the Church's year is an excellent guide. Some feasts are celebrated for a season (fifty days of Easter!), some for an octave, and some for only one day. A family might have its own feast day and children (well, most adults, too) enjoy a dinner in their honor — with candlelight and a special dessert.

Because food affects us so deeply, feasting well becomes a duty in a vital Catholic life. It involves thought and discipline (and some attention to personal digestion). The shift into celebration expands our hearts (potentially our waistlines) and helps us live the Church year with a more festive connection. À votre santé!

Related Book: Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

Just Over a Year Ago: Brother Francis and the Richmond 250 Cane

2010-04-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

Only last March, the Richmond town cane was presented to Brother Francis. This cane was given to the town on the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the town’s founding, thus the name: “The Richmond 250 Cane.” It is passed on from year to year at the town meeting and is presented to the oldest citizen. Brother Francis, at 95 years of age, received it last year. (Brother died at 96.) The certificate bears his Lebanese name, Fakhri Maluf.

Brother Francis, the town cane, and the letter that Brother received at the town meeting.

The cane and letter, when they were on display in our Priory,
between Saint Veronica and Saint Benedict.

Promising Signs in Rome

2010-04-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Thanks to the largesse of some benefactors who funded our plane fare, Brother Maximilian Maria and I recently spent two weeks in Rome. The trip, like my last year’s solo pilgrimage, was part “business,” and part “pleasure.” For that reason, I referred to it as a “working pilgrimage.”

I regret to say that I was unable to make regular reports to our web site from Rome. This was partly do to our activity-rich schedule, and partly due to logistical problems that precluded it; it’s simply too hard to get an Internet connection in Rome, at least we found it so.

I’ve decided that, poco a poco, I will post some columns on the site showcasing some of the wonderful Roman churches we saw. First though, I would like to give one little snapshot among hundreds of mental photographs from our fortnight in the Eternal City. It is a picture of the encouragement we felt in the presence of young clerics and a few seminarians.

But it would be precipitous to portray this image without first supplying a background.

Part of our routine was daily Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica, at 7:00 AM, just after the Basilica opens to the relatively small groups of people waiting outside (among whom are many religious sisters). Just before that hour, when the security guards and other Basilica staff allow pilgrims to enter the Church, there is another line forming — a much more competitive one — in a certain wing of St. Peter’s. Here, clerical Vatican employees — who, with their Vatican credentials, can pass the Swiss Guards and other security beyond them — are lining up for the mad dash into the sacristy (specifically, here). The little crowd is composed of priests, bishops, and a few others, who enter with them under the rubric of servers. There must be some thirty of them awaiting the 6:55 or so opening of the sacristy doors. Everyone rushes in to vest, grab an acolyte and Mass provisions, and race for an altar while altars are still available. One Monsignor described it to me as a “rat race.” More than once, Brother Maximilian and I were part of that “rat race,” as we entered the sacristy entrance to serve the Mass of a priest friend of ours, who works for the Holy See. Nearly daily for two weeks, we assisted at his Mass at the altar of the Transfiguration. One day, when that altar wasn’t available (it’s first-come-first-serve), Father offered Mass at the Altar of Our Lady of Succor, which is underneath a twelfth-century icon of the Mother of God, and atop the relics of Saint Gregory of Nazianzen. This particular Mass was a Requiem, offered for a deceased friend of ours, under his Tertiary name, Brother Malachi Mary.

Of course, the Masses were in the traditional rite. And here’s the thing: Now, post Summorum Pontificum, a full half or more of the morning Masses in St. Peter’s are in the classical Roman rite! When our curial priest-friend was out of town for a couple of days, we “tried our luck” one morning and went from one altar to another in search of the traditional rite. Soon, we were at the Mass of a young Czech priest who works for the Secretariat of State’s Office. He had no server, so, not being shy, I jumped in and served. And it was an honor to serve Mass being offered over the body of Pope Saint Leo the Great at this magnificent altar, where one may observe in the altarpiece Pope Leo giving the business to Attila the Hun, with the help of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. (Read the story here if you're not familiar.)

Every day, in close proximity to “our” altar, we could see a few other traditional-rite Masses.

After Mass every morning, we went for a light breakfast in a nearby coffee bar, which is filled with a few small crowds of clerics who, like us, have just come from Mass at St. Peter’s, and are about to begin their day in the office or in the classroom. On a couple of these days, we found ourselves with some seminarians, who talked of their desire to offer the traditional rite Mass, and how their convictions in this area were shared overtly or covertly by many fellow seminarians. In these conversations, the spirit of false ecumenism was seriously scorned, and adherence to all things traditional was made evident. These future priests speak the language of Jerusalem, and not of Egypt.

To quote a song I truly hate, but that aptly captures the thing I want to say: the times they are a-changin'!

R.I.P., Right Reverend Abbot Gabriel Gibbs, O.S.B.

2010-04-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

Abbot Gabriel, one of the early members of Saint Benedict Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, passed away on Saturday, March 27, 2010. We have had a Mass offered, for the repose of his soul, in our Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel in Richmond, N.H. Details of the Abbot’s wake and funeral are on the web site of Saint Benedict Abbey in Still River, Massachusetts.

Please join us in praying for the repose of Abbot Gabriel’s soul, and for the Abbey’s Prior, Father Xavier Connelly, O.S.B., and the community, as they mourn their monastic father and prepare to elect his successor.

Kelly Forum: Keep Our Fires Burning, O Lord

2010-04-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

By Brian Kelly
After Christmas, with the days getting longer in the Northern Hemisphere, one would expect that the temperatures would start rising. Instead, the days actually grow colder in January and February than they do in December. One reason for this is because of water. Three quarters of the earth is water.
That percentage is somewhat less in the Northern Hemisphere (60%) and greater in the Southern (80%). It takes water a longer time to cool and freeze than the ground. So, you’ll notice that, usually, ponds and lakes do not freeze until after the winter solstice. And they retain their frozenness long into the winter months even as the days grow longer. Just as it takes water longer to freeze than land, so does it take it longer to warm. It is the water temperature that affects weather more than the length of the day. Another reason is that, for the Northern Hemisphere countries, the continental landmass has to have time to bottle up cold air from lack of sunlight and increased snow cover. This bottling up begins to occur in October and reaches its full level of frigidity in December. At this point temperatures plummet and the cold air moves south. My meteorologist nephew informed me about this “bottling up” effect, explaining, too, that even the Artic air in Siberia can reach the U.S.

Still, naturally speaking, the longer days do nothing to warm the spirit since the weather is so cold and there’s nothing outside but snow and ice and run-down cars to deal with. All these things we do deal with so that we can go to work, feed the family, feed the oil and gas tanks, pay a ton of bills, pay taxes, and pay mechanics so they can feed their families. Wouldn’t it be nice if it could be otherwise?

The best place my car takes me is to Mass. There, I can be pampered with a liturgy, which brings warmth to the mystical hearth as “the Orient on high” visits us at Christmas, opens His arms to us at His Epiphany, is baptized for us, walks among us teaching and working miracles during the weeks of Lent, suffers and dies for us on Good Friday, and rises from the dead for us on Easter Sunday. By this time, liturgically, it is April or May on the monthly calendar and the weather begins to warm and nature begins to blossom back to life. How much colder winter would be without the liturgy and the daily sacrifice of the altar! Indeed, as Saint Padre Pio said, “It would be easier for the world to exist without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

How much colder, too, would winter be without Our Lady! She it was whose fiat opened the heavens so the clouds could rain down the Just One and the earth bud forth a Savior. Mary, the New Eve, would bring forth a Savior, whereas the Old Eve brought forth death.

This is our Introit for the last Sunday of Advent: “Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour” (Isaias 45:8).

In Our Lord’s extended life in His Mystical Body, the Church, it seems that we, His members, may be living in the winter years. Of all the things that Jesus said in His answer to His Apostles’ questions about the latter times, the following revelation is most disturbing to me. Why? Because it seems that it is coming to pass before our eyes and may be even knocking at the door of our soul. “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold” (Matt 24:11, 12).

For those of us who are entering into the winter years of our life, who have kept the traditional Catholic Faith and tried, however weakly, to live it, for those of us who may be going through whatever degrees of acedia that go with our own personal “battle fatigue,” there may be a temptation to pull in the oars and just coast along.

Coast along? How can we be so ungrateful to entertain the thought? The everlasting “coast” may be over the horizon, or just beyond the thick mist that has enveloped our spirits. When it was suggested to Saint Francis Xavier, after his hair turned gray and he passed his fiftieth birthday, to slow down and let younger missionaries do the field work, he replied: Does the captain of the ship pull in his oars when, after a long voyage, he sees the coast in view? No, rather, with renewed energy, he rows with more gusto, so great is his yearning to reach the shore.

Such ought to be our spirit. But it cannot be our spirit until we open ourselves with abandon to the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit. Through His transforming grace let us allow His spouse, the Blessed Mother, to form Christ more fully in our souls. In so doing we can be more effective servants and slaves of her Immaculate Heart.

Veni Sancte Spiritus, fove quod est frigidum: Come, Holy Ghost, warm the coldness of my soul. Do not let my charity die in this dark and icy winter, which threatens to dehydrate my spirit. Riga quod est aridum: Refresh what is barren.

In his book, True Devotion to Mary, Saint Louis Marie de Montfort writes of a more blessed day, a day that will see all coldness disappear from our hearts. I will conclude my column with his inspiring words:

“‘When will that happy day come,’ asks a saintly man of our own day whose life was completely wrapped up in Mary, ‘when God's Mother is enthroned in men's hearts as Queen, subjecting them to the dominion of her great and princely Son? When will souls breathe Mary as the body breathes air?’ When that time comes wonderful things will happen on earth. The Holy Spirit, finding his dear Spouse present again in souls, will come down into them with great power. He will fill them with his gifts, especially wisdom, by which they will produce wonders of grace. My dear friend, when will that happy time come, that age of Mary, when many souls, chosen by Mary and given her by the most High God, will hide themselves completely in the depths of her soul, becoming living copies of her, loving and glorifying Jesus? That day will dawn only when the devotion I teach is understood and put into practice. Ut adveniat regnum tuum, adveniat regnum Mariae: ‘Lord, that your kingdom may come, may the reign of Mary come!’”

2010 Blueberry Fiddle Festival

2010-03-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars for August 14, 2010, and join us for a wonderful family folk festival!

Step back into the past with a one-of-a-kind, old-fashioned family festival: the eighth annual Blueberry Fiddle Festival, organized by Richmond’s Immaculate Heart of Mary School. Enjoy live music and delicious food, browse the craft vendors, participate in an original New England melodrama, and join us for a family contra dance.

One Man + One Woman = Marriage

2010-03-12T18:17:00.000-08:00

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it. (Ephesians 5:25)

But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother; and shall cleave to his wife. And they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. (Mark 10:6-8)

Richmond Sends Message to Legislature: Let THE PEOPLE Vote on Marriage!

2010-03-10T18:34:00.000-08:00

Notably, some people, who display signs reading "Democracy not Theocracy," voted against the measure seeking to give the people of New Hampshire a voice on the issue. The reason? One spokesman offered his opinion: "It's a civil rights issue."

Who says?

"Civil rights" — arbitrarily defined — has become the new theocracy that supplants the much-lauded democracy. Behold what contradictions result when the pretended rights of man displace the real rights of God, the natural law, the traditional laws of these United States and their antecedents in Christian Europe, and, as David Berman said last night, "6,000 years of history"!

Details from the Sentinel:

Voters spent hours chipping away at proposed spending articles and by midnight more than half the audience was gone — when the Sept. 11 article and a petitioned warrant article for a resolution asking for legislators to allow New Hampshire residents to vote on a state constitutional amendment defining marriage came up.

But the dwindling numbers didn’t tamp down a lively discussion on both articles.

The marriage article passed, 58-33.

Before the vote, Richmond resident David Berman told voters to look at the article not on one side of the gay marriage issue or the other, but as a chance for voters to weigh in for themselves, rather than through elected officials.

“The Legislature has continually decided not to let people speak on this important issue, so what this is is a nonbinding resolution that simply says to the Legislature, ‘It’s our opinion that you should let the people vote and have a say on this issue,’ ” Berman said.

Resident Joshua Jarvis disagreed, saying a citizen referendum would be a chance to take away people’s hard-earned rights.

“People have been struggling in pain and they have finally gotten their own right to live the way they want to,” he said. “We have people vying to take their rights and that’s what giving the vote to people would be.

“It has been taken away in California, it has a chance of being taken away here.”

Tobias and the Priest's Mother (about Father Michael Jarecki, our Chaplain)

2010-03-08T07:46:00.000-08:00

By Brother André Marie

Father Michael Jarecki is our chaplain. At ninety-two years of age, he is not yet quite as long-lived as Brother Francis (who died at ninety six), but he’s close. I fear that his recent hospitalization is a sign that he is soon to exit this world. Truth to tell, he wants to do just that, because, as he has told us many times, he wants to go to Heaven soon. Whether his departure is anon or no, I think a few words in tribute to this heroic alter Christus are appropriate now, even while he is still with us.

His name — Yah-RET-skee, with the “r” tipping the roof of the mouth — is a gift of his Polish immigrant father. Yes, our long-lived chaplain is proudly Polish, and has been labeled a “Polish War Horse” by one of his doctors, also a Pole, who is probably referencing the enormous beasts of burden once mounted by the heavily armed winged Polish lancer hussars. This equine appellation is a tribute to Father’s herculean strength of character as well as his physical robustness. In his youth he hiked every mountain in his native New York State’s Adirondack mountain chain. (To say that Father Jarecki is tough would be like calling Mathusala old.)

I was recently reminded of Father’s Polishness during his hospitalization. When he was awake, but a bit groggy from medications and illness, I asked if he wanted to say another Rosary together. He said that he would like, instead, to say another particular prayer to Our Lady, but he had trouble remembering its name. I suggested that it might be the Memorare he was thinking of, but that wasn’t it.

He said, “My Father taught it to me in Polish. It goes like this…”

Naturally, I did not understand the Slavic verbal outpouring that came my way, but by its rhythmical, repetitive sounds, I discerned that Father was reciting a litany.

“The Litany of Loreto?” I asked.

“Thaaats the prayer!” he enthused, like an excited little boy. We then recited it together. And every day since Father has been back at the Center, one of the brothers recites the Litany with him after his daily Mass — yes, the Polish War Horse still offers daily Mass.

Father’s mother was not Polish. She was a Scots-Irish lady by the name of Black, who professed Presbyterianism and even came from a family of Protestant ministers. She was stalwart in her religion and had no intention of changing it when she went for marriage instruction to a Catholic priest. (There was no way Mr. Jarecki was going to marry outside the Catholic Church!) The first appointment the engaged couple had with the priest saw Miss Black with her Bible under her arm, ready to do battle with the Papist and teach him a thing or two about Holy Writ.

It was something of a surprise to her to find out from the Catholic Reverend that the Bible she cherished was incomplete. To his credit — and probably to his eternal glory — the priest who instructed the future Jareckis in matrimony made it a point to teach them the beauty of marriage, and the chastity to which married couples are called, from the book of Tobias, which he had them both read. Of course, this book is one of the deutorocanonicals, those Old Testament books dismissed by Protestants as “apocryphal.”

How much today’s engaged couples need the advice given by Raphael to the younger Tobias!

Then the angel Raphael said to him: Hear me, and I will shew thee who they are, over whom the devil can prevail. For they who in such manner receive matrimony, as to shut out God from themselves, and from their mind, and to give themselves to their lust, as the horse and mule, which have not understanding, over them the devil hath power. (Tobias 6:16-17)

A tale of an adventurous and dangerous journey, a real-life parable, and a chaste romance all in one, the Book of Tobias has a sweet attraction that I believe only a black heart — no pun intended — could reject.

And thank God, Miss Black didn’t reject it. Far from dismissing it as a Romish interpolation, the future Mrs. Jarecki found great beauty and truth in the book of Tobias, which became to her an efficacious channel of grace. Having failed to rout the priest in a Bible argument, the would-be polemicist desired to embrace that religion which possessed the whole Bible, instead of her incomplete one. She became a Catholic, and — as Father Jarecki emphasizes — she became a real one. As a convert, she respected her husband’s deeply rooted Catholic sense, which converts can often take a long time to acquire due to the non-Catholic culture of their upbringing. She was not adverse to incorporating Polish Catholic customs into her family’s “table culture,” so that her children might have a vital atmosphere for the nurture of their faith. As others have pointed out, the Catholic faith needs a Catholic culture to survive; after all, a culture is an atmosphere conducive to life.

Mr. Jarecki died while his son, the future priest, was yet a teenager. For a time, young Michael Alexander Jarecki had to work jobs to help support the family. But when they could afford it, he left to go to seminary: St. Bernard’s in Rochester, known affectionately to its inmates as “The Rock.”
In the terrible confusion that engulfed the Church in recent decades, Father Jarecki had much to suffer, especially from parishioners and clergy who thought him not sufficiently progressive. Of all things, he was accused of being overly devoted to Our Lady, which charge Father considered a compliment, for he was long since totally consecrated to her (and thus was a Slave before ever being our chaplain). Ever faithful to the traditional Mass, even when people thought it was “outlawed,” he still managed to keep his diocesan faculties for all these years while attending to the needs of various groups of traditional faithful, who were perceived by others as “rebellious.” We here at Saint Benedict Center Richmond have had him these last 20 years, but many other groups and isolated individuals here and there have benefited from his wide ranging priestly apostolate long before and during his association with our community.

Father Jarecki often recalls his mother’s virtues, piety, and practical, homespun advice. Without at all being a “mamma’s boy,” he still bears a great affection for her.

And, oh yes, he still loves the book of Tobias.

Dispelling Misinformation

2010-03-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

There is a large amount of misinformation about SBC that has been circulated in the Town of Richmond. Much of it has been addressed already. Recently, some email correspondences have surfaced, which reveal a concerted effort to portray SBC in a false light for political reasons. This explains the existence of many of the dishonest claims about our community.

There is also the continued dissemination of the false and libelous claims of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

To dispel this misinformation, we draw our neighbors' attention to two letters we have published:

Thank you and God bless you.

The Path of Grace

2010-03-04T11:05:00.001-08:00

By William and Christine Wrobleski
December 31, 2009
Local News

Coming to Saint Benedict Center has been, for Chris and me, a long-term stop on a difficult journey. Hopefully, in the end we will see a situation in which any Catholic in America will be able to go to any parish and find the Traditional Latin Mass along with solid teachings on every aspect of the Faith. My selfish prayer is that my wonderful wife and I will live to see and participate in this restoration. In the meantime, Saint Benedict Center is a good place for us to be.

We are both fifty-nine years old and are cradle Catholics, born twelve years before Vatican II. I went to Catholic school K through 12 and Chris went to Catholic school until third grade. Even with the faults of the Baltimore Catechism, we were pretty well formed in the Faith.

The liberalism that hit the Church in the wake of Vatican II came at a bad time for people our age. Imagine being in your mid-teens and all of a sudden being told that much of what you were taught about faith and morality was not important. It caused me pretty much to leave the Church around 1972 or so. I mean, why bother practicing when you’re told by your “teachers” in a Catholic school, and by priests, that going to Mass is not necessary to save your soul? I would go to Mass on occasion, but I didn’t care much.

I was married in 1972 and ended up divorced in 1982. My former wife cared less about the Faith than I did. Our two children, David and Amy, were being brought up nominally Catholic, but I failed as a parent when it came to teaching my children the Faith.

My divorce was not particularly contentious, but it was difficult for me, as I did intend to stay married permanently. In this situation, however, I had no choice; I just had to make the best of it.. I was away from the Church at that time, so I wasn’t thinking of Catholic teaching regarding dating or anything. (I now know that I should have waited for the Church’s annulment before dating.) In any event, I used to go to a nightclub where an early thirties crowd went to dance and drink. I didn’t drink, so I went to dance and, hopefully, meet the woman of my dreams.

On March 17, 1984, I was at this nightclub on a Saturday night and I looked up and saw a stunning redhead whom I had never seen there before. Little did I know Our Lord had just blessed me greatly. I asked her to dance, and the rest is history.

We were married on September 8, 1985 in a Congregational Church. At the time I wasn’t sure if I even believed in God, but I liked the idea of there being a God. Chris did believe in God, but she didn’t try to force it on me. Looking back it appears that she was just waiting for me to wake-up to reality some day.

In 1986, we bought an old farm house with a barn and twelve acres in Chester, Massachusetts. This was a dream come true for me. We could now grow our own food and we had access to good areas for hunting and fishing. At first, poor Chris came along kicking and screaming but, in time, she ended up loving her new lifestyle. At the time I was not attending any church, Chris, however, would sometimes go to the Novus Ordo at the local parish.

The summer of 1987 was to become extremely important to us. I started praying to God that if He was really there to somehow show me. Shortly after that, which would be the end of May 1987, I became very sick. At first we thought it was the flu, but after three then four weeks we became concerned.

During that summer the doctors ran many tests but found nothing wrong. I worried that I was dying, maybe of AIDS or something, but I wasn’t in any risk group for AIDS. I was getting worried, so I started praying, mostly to Our Lady and St. Jude. Then I started reading about miraculous healings at Lourdes and, with my appreciation of science, I was impressed by the documented evidence. One night, while reading more of these documented miracles from Lourdes, it dawned on me that the Faith I was born into was real.

In late August, 1987, I learned that, back in May, I had picked up a parasite while shoveling manure for our garden. I finally recovered about two months later and started attending the Novus Ordo with my wife. In early 1988 we made Cursillo and I got involved with the Medjugorje movement. We had been away from the Church for so long and just wanted to “do Catholic stuff.” Little did we know at the time how dangerous to the Faith both of these movements are.

In 1992, I received an annulment of my first marriage. Due to certain circumstances I probably would have been granted one even in more Catholic times. That same year Chris and I were married in the Catholic Church.

After learning what had happened to our beloved Church since Vatican II, we slowly started moving toward tradition. Our first exposure was the 1993 Easter Triduum at Saint Benedict Center in Still River, Massachusetts. We started going there as regularly as possible, even though it was a two hour ride from home. Brother Thomas Augustine and especially Brother Joseph (God rest his soul) were a great help to us.

By 1997, Massachusetts was becoming more and more hostile to hunters, gun owners, and anyone who wanted to live reasonably free. We decided it was time to move to New Hampshire, the last state in the Northeast that seemed to respect the rights of its citizens.

We visited Saint Benedict Center in Richmond in January 1998 and had a long chat with Brother Francis and the other religious. Soon afterwards we started attending Mass there and night classes. We moved to Richmond in August 1999 and joined one of the study circles. It’s been ten years now and, yes, they sure have gone by in a flash. Most of our friends are connected with SBC and they, along with the religious, have helped us to grow in and keep the Faith. We try to help out at the monastery whenever we can as it is a very active place, very hospitable, and the brothers and sisters can always use helping hands. SBC has become a home for us — more than that, a family. Hopefully, we can become less unworthy of such a gift from God.

The History and the Purpose of Saint Benedict Center

2010-03-01T08:06:00.000-08:00

Richmond residents (and others) interested in learning a little something about our history, goals, and overall purpose are invited to look at a new posting on our main site: "A Brief History of Saint Benedict Center."

Who Was Saint Benedict?

2010-03-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

Our patron saint, the Father and Lawgiver of western monks, Patron of Europe, rebuilder of civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, man of letters, miracle worker. Saint Benedict of Nursia (480-547) was all these things, but first he was a man of profound prayer, love of God, and interior life. You can read more about him in the Second Dialogue (Life of St. Benedict) written by a Benedictine monk who became Pope: Saint Gregory the Great (540-604).

Saint Benedict, by the great Netherlandish Northern
Renaissance Painter, Hans Memling (ca. 1435-1494)

'Live Free or Die!': A New Hampshire Meditation

2010-02-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

A displaced Dixie-dweller living in the frozen wilds of New England, I was, until recently, quite unaware of the history of my adopted state’s motto. New Hampshire’s license plate sports the catchy slogan, “Live Free or Die.” The phrase was the personal proverb of New Hampshire’s hero of the War for Independence, General John Stark.

Could there be a Catholic angle to this motto? Perhaps, but let’s first explore it at face value.

There are Granite Staters today, Catholics and non, who say that “Live Free or Die” is more than a motto, and they cite the fact that the stark sentiment behind Stark’s words are still enshrined in Article 10 of New Hampshire’s State Constitution:

Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

The possibilities of open revolution or secession put aside for the moment — these options appear fairly limited, to say the least — the average law-abiding, concerned citizen in rural New England has another option to secure his “benefit, protection, and security” this March: Town Meeting.

New England town meetings generally take place during Lent, which seems particularly apt for some reason. Catholics of the Granite State can use this penitential occasion in a penitential season to recall, in keeping with our State’s motto, our obligation to free ourselves from the bondage of sin. Sin is a sort of slavery, as Saint Paul assures us, and we can revolt against that slavery by giving a supernatural meaning to General Stark’s motto.

A seven-year-old Saint Dominic Savio did it quite well in Italian: La morte ma non peccati, which is usually translated, “Death Rather Than Sin!”

From Gate of Heaven

2010-02-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

By Catherine Goddard Clarke

[ Gate of Heaven Note: These words were written in 1951]

It gives me happiness to write, for those who have wanted to know, of what has become of us since October 28, 1949, the date at which our story ends in The Loyolas and the Cabots. I am happy to tell you this further story, even though briefly, because it is a recounting of the bounty and the protection of us by the Blessed Mother of God.

We who took part in the so-called Boston Heresy Case are, thanks to Our Lady, still together and intact. “Heresy,” by the way, was an accusation made by us, not of us. Our accusation was substantiated by Father William Kelleher’s reply in the newspapers to the charge of the four professors.

We have lost of our number only six. Two dropped out, and four were dismissed, because, though we are not strict without reason, we do have our rules and decorum, which must be lived up to.

At this point a reader may ask, “But are you a religious group?” The answer to that question reveals our secret. Yes, we are a religious community. We are indeed a religious order – perhaps more technically a religious congregation. Each of us has, by vow, dedicated his life to the preservation of the truths of his Holy Faith under the title of Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We took our vows and became Slaves of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart on the first of January, 1949, three months before we were disciplined by our Archbishop for continuing to profess the defined doctrines of the Church on salvation. It was while Father Feeney was in correspondence with Father Vincent A. McCormick, S.J., the American Assistant to the General of the Jesuits, and while Father was pleading for a doctrinal hearing before his superiors. It was while three of the professors were under severe pressure by Boston College to give up both the Church’s doctrine on salvation and their support of Father Feeney in upholding it.

We were beginning to realize the character of the battle before us, not only for the preservation of the sacred dogmas of our Church, but actually for their restoration. It was to prepare ourselves by prayer and discipline, and to secure graces enough to enable us to face such a battle, that we became a religious order.

It will be asked of us, “Who are you that you should take responsibility for the Church’s doctrine?” Our answer to that, I hope I have brought out in this book. The answer is, as I wrote in the second chapter, that the sacred doctrine of our Holy Church is the responsibility of each Catholic, be he powerful or lowly, learned or unlearned, clergy or laity, rich or poor. Each of us is the Catholic Church. God’s Truth belongs to each of us, and we are each responsible for it.

We live a community life, as Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with hours of prayer, hours of study, and hours of work. Father Feeney and the young men who someday hope to be ordained priests live in one of the houses known to us as Sacred Heart Hall. Our girls, who have dedicated their lives in singleness to Our Lord and Our Lady, live in a house which we call, among ourselves, Immaculate Heart Hall. Our families live in houses just below Sacred Heart Hall.

We are, during this interval, under fire, waiting for the time when we can present our order to the Holy See, as all other orders must eventually be presented. We know that many of the orders in the Church whose work was most lasting and fruitful began under circumstances similar to ours. We know that many men and women who were later placed upon the rolls of the saints were at some time in their lives under the ban of interdict, and even excommunication. St. Joan of Arc died excommunicated; St. Ignatius of Constantinople died under threat of excommunication. [Editor’s Note: Blessed Mary McKillop (soon to be canonized Australia’s first saint) was also excommunicated by her bishop.] We are not saints – though we pray we may be – and we are not excommunicated. We have offered our lives to God, and have consented to die, if need be, for our Holy Faith, in the saddest way (to our minds) that it is possible to die – under the ban even of excommunication.

We are waiting then, to present our order to the Holy See, to secure the blessing of our Holy Father, and to ask the Holy Father to foundation us as a permanent and abiding battalion in the army of our Holy Faith.

Public Service Message: Town Meeting, Town Elections - Vote Your Conscience

2010-02-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

March 9, 2010 is election day in Richmond. Residents must be registered in order to vote. You can find a number of resources on the Internet, via Google, which will tell you how to register to vote in Richmond.

Remember that candidates night is March 4. (You can do a Google search to find out who the candidates are.)

Here is some additional information from the Town's official Web site:

Poll Location
Veterans Hall
150 Old Homestead Highway

Elections
March 9th 2010
11:00 AM to 7:00 PM

Town Meeting to follow at 7:30 PM

Regarding their civic duties, Catholics are reminded of the following:

We ought to pray for the welfare of our Town, its residents, and its government.
We should vote according to an informed conscience. The Popes have taught us that, where a society is governed according to free elections, Christians are to discharge their duties as citizens for the greater good of society.
Small town politics can become very animated. No matter what, the Gospel imperative to love one's enemies must always be observed.

Fire!

2010-02-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

By Sister Marie Thérèse

Dear Friends,

As you can see from the picture, we are delighted to have our new wood stove at our convent. Besides the stove being donated, the beautiful hearth was built with some of the funds that you provided by your generous donations to the convent. A large portion of the wood was gathered by our brothers from the trees that had been damaged in the ice storm of last year. The rest of the wood for our winter supply was donated by a generous family; so it is not costing us anything to run our wood stove. Finally, we have met the challenge of being able to heat our entire convent with the wood stove and the aid by a few fans. So our furnace room has cooled off and we are now saving many hundreds of dollars per month in heating bills. Deo gratias!

The wood stove has benefits beyond just heating our convent. As one of the brothers said after he finished stacking our woodpile, “You’ll have many meditations with your new wood stove.” He was right. You’ll have to excuse me, Dear Reader, for sharing my Christmas meditations with you during this post-Christmas time, but I promise to lead you into Lent and Passiontide with them. The following is a poem in which I found an eloquent exposition of all the aspects of a hot fire, and it is what I have been using for my meditations in preparation for Christmas and for the twelve days of the feast. It was written by an English martyr, Saint Robert Southwell, S.J. (1560-1595).

The Burning Babe

As I in hoary winter’s night

Stood shivering in the snow,

Surprised I was with sudden heat,

Which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye

To view what fire was near,

A pretty babe, all burning bright,

Did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat,

Such floods of tears did shed,

As though His floods should quench His flames

Which with His tears were bred:

“Alas!” quoth He, “but newly born,

In fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts

Or feel My fire, but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is,

The fuel wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,

The ashes shame and scorn;

The fuel Justice layeth on,

And Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought

Are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am,

To work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath

To wash them in My blood!”

With this He vanished out of sight,

And swiftly shrank away;

And straight I called unto mind

That it was Christmas-day.

Because the wood stove needs frequent attention, I find myself drawn to it in my thoughts and then in my steps. It needs to be checked and fueled, and perhaps the heat generated is so great that it needs help to be dissipated throughout the house. I can’t help but think that there are two fire boxes in our house, not counting the obsolete oil furnace. One warms our bodies and the other warms our hearts. Of course, that “other” fire box is the tabernacle. So I have told the sisters that if they get up in the night they should put another piece or two of wood on the fire and also make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament.

It is unlikely, Dear Reader, that you have a tabernacle and a wood stove in your home, but the burning fire box that you should have can be found right in your own heart. Yes, it needs attention and fuel. Many of the saints felt that fire physically in their breasts. Saint Philip Neri, for example, would wear his cassock unbuttoned at the top to try to cool himself, and once, overcome by the excessive heat, he jumped into an icy pond which immediately began to boil.

Lent is coming, if it isn’t already here when you read this. This is an excellent time to clean out the furnace in your heart and, with Our Lady’s help, light a fire using the flames in Her own Immaculate Heart and fed by the acts of love and sacrifices you will make during Lent. As Our Lord said, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?” A blessed Lent to you, Dear Reader. Thank you for helping to make these special meditations possible by your generous donations.

Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.

Saint André of Mount Royal, a Timely Canonization

2010-02-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Around here, the news of December 19 was received with great joy. I refer to the publication of the decree, approved by His Holiness, Benedict XVI, clearing the way for the canonization of Blessed Brother André. Because this news is so recent, and because his feast day is coming up this week (January 6, which is also the Epiphany), I would like to invite our readers to share our happiness and consider with us the virtues of this little man.

That this popular Canadian Beatus happens to be my own patron has something to do with our joy, but this is only part of it. Given our longing for the conversion of America, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are always happy to invoke another American (albeit not a “Unitedstatesian”) as a saint. But beyond these personal and “religio-patriotic” reasons for rejoicing, there is also a certain timeliness to the canonization. In honor of the eight-day observance of the Epiphany, I will offer a perfect octave of reasons for this claim.

1. Miracles. Like Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, Frère André is a modern miracle worker, who shows a cynical, and empiricist age that the true religion still manifests itself by the wondrous divine interventions we call miracles. Not that any wonder-working saint’s essential sanctity consists in the miraculous, but to read the life of “Saint Joseph’s little dog” (as he styled himself) is to read a litany of miraculous deeds. As Moses showed that the God of Israel was the living God, Frère André showed that the God of the Catholics, and the religion of the Catholics, are uniquely true. And he did this with meekness, humility, and a great joy that lent a certain seal of authenticity to his prodigies.

2. Love of the Cross. We live in an effeminate age. By this, I do not refer principally to the moral degeneracy of homosexuality and the turpitude of those who, while not practicing it, sanction this vice. No, I refer to the general softness and hedonism of the age; that is, to the implicit but nonetheless real conviction in our decrepit culture that pleasure is the only real good and pain is the only real evil. Human suffering makes sense and becomes profitable only in the light of grace and under the shadow of the Cross. Frère André belonged to a religious institute dedicated to the saving Rood: the Congregation of the Holy Cross, founded by Blessed Basile Antoine Marie Moreau, whose own life was marked by superhuman sufferings borne with heroic patience. While it is generally known that Saint Joseph is the patron of this Congregation, relatively few are aware that their principal devotion is to the Passion of Our Lord. Their motto: Crux Spes Unica (the Cross, our only hope), indicates this. Our holy man exemplified the “crucified” spirituality of his great religious family: lifelong physical infirmities, inability to eat anything but a type of mush made from flower, frequent stomach infirmities, deprivation of sleep, scandalous false accusations, persecution from his own religious superior. These are just a few of the crosses he carried with admirable courage and forgetfulness of self.

3. French Canada needs him. An Anglophone American speaking of French Canada’s sad spiritual condition may not be well received in those parts, but it is nonetheless true that after the 1960’s “Quiet Revolution” (Révolution tranquille), Quebec and its environs jettisoned their former Catholicity with a precipitous recklessness. Nobody knows this sad truth better than faithful Catholics from these regions. The sainting of a very public figure — whose miracles were, after all, performed among the grandparents of our contemporaries — might kindle the still glowing embers of French Canada’s Faith to a brighter flame. (For more on French Canada’s former Catholicity, I recommend Gary Potter’s Québec and French America: What Might Have Been.)

4. Love of the Gospel. Brother André died in the year 1937, long before Dei Verbum supposedly revived Catholic devotion to Holy Scripture. Yet, he memorized the Sermon on the Mount (every Holy Cross novice had to), and, later, the account of the Passion recorded in each of the four Gospels. These were no mere memory exercises; he meditated on the Scriptures. Now, while it is a terrible injustice to say that the Church in those days did not appreciate the Bible, it is also true that spiritual reading for religious in those days was primarily from devotional books that offered a highly mechanized approach to the spiritual life. The ancient and medieval forms of religious life, on the other hand, laid great emphasis on reading the Holy Scripture, especially in the form of lectio divina. Our saint soon-to-be belonged to a teaching congregation founded in the nineteenth century, but showing a clear continuity with traditional spirituality, as can be seen in his going to the primary sources of the spiritual life: the Gospels. (Our own Founder, Father Leonard Feeney, had a great predilection for the Holy Gospels as the first and last word in spiritual reading, teaching his disciples to love and cherish them and all the Scriptures.)

5. He was “just a lay brother.” Many practicing Catholics just don’t get religious life. And for them, the most useless appendage in the anatomy of religion is the lay brother. (Many years ago, a lay brother penned a humorous article called, “So, You’re a Brother, Father?” seeking to explain to the perplexed just what men like us are.) The idea of living the counsels of evangelical perfection by vow, without the admittedly “useful” addition of Holy Orders, seems to some the waste of a life. The priesthood and the religious life are radically distinct vocations, even though they can coexist in the same man. Saint Benedict was not a priest. Neither were the vast majority of his early disciples, nor the desert fathers, nor the Irish monks, nor the male religious of Saint Francis (who himself was in Holy Orders, but went no further than the diaconate, having been compelled to do so). To canonize a man popularly known as “Frère” or “Brother” will add a much needed luster to our vocation.

6. Defender of the Social Order. The humble little porter opposed the various anti-Christian -isms that made the twentieth century the most sanguinary in man’s history. Good Catholic common sense made him despise communism, which seriously menaced Canada in his day. He made his feelings known in the most innocent of ways. When his arm suffered from paralysis, he told friends, “My arm is acting like a communist.” On his deathbed, he prayed for Catholic Spain, then in the convulsions of war, as General Franco strove to defeat both communists and anarchists. Let us not forget that in French America, just as in Mediterranean Europe and Latin America, liberalism, socialism, and Freemasonry show themselves in much more explicitly anti-Catholic dress than in the Anglo world. “The old fool on the mountain” (as they called him), with his miracles and his calls to conversion and prayer, was a standing rebuke to their snide ideologies. While the little porter does not rank among the well known defenders of the social reign of Our Lord, his whole long life was a very public affirmation of the primacy of God’s rights. Christ the King is most honored by such little ones.

7. Strongly Roman, Papal. When he was on his deathbed, Frère André was encouraged to ask St. Joseph to spare him because he was “needed.” To this, he responded, “There is one who is far more necessary than Brother André in this world: that is the Pope. If the Holy Father passed away, it would be a disaster; he still has much to accomplish.” Brother André did not survive this illness, but Pope Pius XI, who lay sick and dying at the same time, recovered. It is known that the porter prayed for Pius, and we may believe the Pope’s two more years of life were an answer to those prayers. That such a simple, provincial, supremely not cosmopolitan man should concern himself with the well being of the ailing Italian — Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, who lived 4,000 miles away in Rome — is an eloquent testimony to the universality of the Church, and the doctrine that the Roman Pontiff “is father and teacher of all Christians,” possessing “full power to rule, feed, and govern the universal Church” (Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, III). In these days, when a neo-conciliarist notion of collegiality has well established itself in theological circles, trickling down to the masses as frank disregard for the Supreme Pontiff, such an edifying example of intense devotion to the Holy Father is much needed. Included, by the way, among the deeds accomplished by Pius XI in the time “purchased” for him by Frère André were some that seem especially apt. For one, on March 19, 1937 — the Feast of Saint Joseph — Pius published Divini Redemptoris, an encyclical letter condemning Communism. As if in gratitude for his own recovery and with great confidence in Mary’s spouse, towards the end of the encyclical Pius wrote, “We place the vast campaign of the Church against world Communism under the standard of Saint Joseph, her mighty Protector.”

8. Devotion to the Holy Family. Brother André’s Congregation was part of a larger religious family founded by Canon Moreau, consisting of three parts, each one of which corresponded to a member of the Holy Family. The Holy Cross Fathers, whose members were conformed to Christ’s priesthood by virtue of Holy Orders, corresponded to the Holy Infant. Mary was represented by the sisters, called the Marianites of Holy Cross. The Holy Cross Brothers stood in the place of St. Joseph in this family. They were, in fact, originally a congregation of lay brothers founded by Father Jacques François Dujarie and called “The Brothers of St. Joseph.” Father Dujarie entrusted his foundation to Canon Moreau, who merged them into his already existing religious family. All the members of all these three congregations were imbued with devotion to the Holy Family. In these days when family life is so terribly assailed on so many fronts, devotion to the mystery and the persons of the Holy Family is of great value. And the fact that Brother André acquired his solid piety in childhood is an incentive to Catholic parents to imitate the Bessette’s own “holy family.”

As a closing point, I note out that people have been using the comments boxes in our online article on Brother André for posting their prayer intentions. Please feel free to post your own intentions there, too. You may also report there any favors you have received through the prayers of our American saint.

Brother Francis’ Obituary

2010-01-28T08:04:00.000-08:00

As it appeared in the Local Newspaper

Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M. (July 19, 1913 – September 05, 2009), founding member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, superior of Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire, philosopher, college professor, and published author died on Saturday, September 5, at the age of ninety-six.

Fakhri Boutros Maluf (his name before entering religion) was born in the town of Mashrah, Lebanon, about thirty miles from Beirut, in 1913. His father, Boutros Maluf, was an educational pioneer in Lebanon, and young Fakhri was educated at a school for poor children run out of the Maluf home. He would later teach there.

Fakhri graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics. From 1934 to 1939, he taught physics at that same university. In addition to his academic career, Fakhri was also involved in Lebanese statecraft, being the philosopher, and later, president of the Syrian National Party. He was, during this time, a friend, disciple, and associate of Dr. Charles Malik, the noted Lebanese philosopher and diplomat.

In 1939, he moved to the United States to attend the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he received first an M.A. and, in 1942, a Ph.D. in philosophy. He then undertook post-doctoral studies at Harvard University and Saint Bonaventure University.

From 1942 to 1945, Dr. Maluf taught mathematics and science at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. From 1945 to 1949, he taught philosophy, theology, and mathematics at Boston College. In 1942, the young professor met Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., and soon became involved in the activities of Saint Benedict Center, a Catholic center operating in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dr. Maluf married Mary Healy, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1943.

In 1949, Dr. Maluf became one of the pioneer members of Father Leonard Feeney’s religious order, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As has happened in rare cases in the Church’s history, by mutual consent, both Dr. Maluf and Mrs. Maluf took religious vows and lived separately in the monastery and convent, where they were known respectively as Brother Francis and Sister Mary Bernadette. Both participated in the publishing and missionary work of the fledgling congregation.

For the rest of his life, until overtaken by illness while in his nineties, Brother Francis taught Sacred Scripture, philosophy, theology, science, and mathematics at various levels. For almost twenty years he was the Superior of Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire, teaching in the Center’s high school, overseeing the Saint Augustine Institute of Catholic Studies, and the Center’s publishing apostolate. He authored four published books of poetry and philosophy, published scores of articles on various Catholic subjects, and gave thousands of lectures, many of which were taped and professionally produced. He has also left to posterity many notes for future volumes.

Besides his philosophical and poetical wisdom, Brother Francis was well known for his memory. He memorized all four Gospels, being able to recite the entirety of Matthew, Luke, and John each in Latin, and Saint Mark in Greek. He could name all the popes from Saint Peter to the present, and had numerous other lists of persons, dates, and facts equally at his command. But he was best known as a teacher.

On July 19, 2009, Brother Francis marked his ninety-sixth birthday. Although his order is of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, Brother Francis was a Melkite Rite (Byzantine) Catholic.
Brother Francis is survived by Sister Mary Bernadette Maluf, M.I.C.M., of Richmond, N.H.; by his children, Mariam Maluf of Leominster, MA., Peter Maluf, of Worcester, MA., Leonard Maluf, of Leominster, MA., Sister Anna Maria Maluf, M.I.C.M., of Vienna, OH, and Agnes Malouf-Hood of Halifax, Nova Scotia; and by one granddaughter, July Anne O’Brien, of Los Angeles, CA. The religious brothers and sisters at Saint Benedict Center also regard him as their father in God, and will mourn him accordingly.

Feastday Speech for Brother Francis

2010-01-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

By Mr. John McManus
December 3, 1981

It is certainly my pleasure to be a part of this tribute to our wonderful teacher. I’m sure I speak for all in saying that we know the one, true Faith better because of him. And for that we are all deeply grateful.

You may wonder why it is that I am up here speaking on this wonderful occasion. Well, I’ve been wondering about that too. I’ve come up with a possible answer. It is that I was chosen because I’m the only person in this room — other than Brother himself — who has ever been to Lebanon.

I went there with the U.S. Marine Corps in 1958, and what I remember most about his native land is being shot at — twice. I’m delighted to report that Lebanese are poor marksmen. I even learned a few words in Arabic, like “Yankee, go home!” and “Coca Cola, $1.00.” I even encountered one very enterprising Lebanese who spoke English. He offered me $50.00 for my pistol!

One of my fondest memories of being in Lebanon was serving Mass on a hot August Sunday in 1958. The chaplain created a makeshift outdoor chapel on the hood of a jeep. The Gospel was about Jesus passing through Tyre and Sidon, two cities which are in Lebanon. It was quite a thrill to realize I was in a country that Christ Himself had once visited, the only country outside of the Holy Land where he travelled as an adult.

But that was in 1958 and our good friend had already been gone from his homeland for about two decades. I can be absolutely certain that it was not he who shot at me.

After graduating from the American University in Beirut and then teaching physics there for five years, he left Lebanon to accept a scholarship at the University of Michigan. And it wasn’t a football scholarship! On his way to America, he stopped in Paris to meet a friend named Gabriel Malik, a convert to the Faith who was studying to become a Jesuit priest. This man’s brother, Charles Malik, later became a high official at the United Nations. Charles seems to have discovered the truth about the UN in later years. We hope that he will also discover the truth about the Faith.

Gabriel Malik took our Fakhri Maluf to Notre Dame Cathedral and other religious sites in Paris. We have to remember that Fakhri was not yet a Catholic. Gabriel Malik was concerned about his friend’s eternal destiny and made Fakhri promise that no matter where he was, he would seek out and become friendly with a Catholic priest.

On the boat to America, Fakhri found a Mexican priest with whom he spent some profitable hours discussing the Faith. Once at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Fakhri became friendly with a priest named Father Barry and then Msgr. Babcock who later became the bishop of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He also benefited from some of his students who were urging him toward the Faith. It was in 1941 that Fakhri embraced the Faith on a day that he said was the happiest day of his life. Becoming a Catholic was a big event for him, as it certainly should be for anyone.

The year 1941 saw him receive his Master’s Degree in Philosophy. In 1942, he earned a doctorate with a dissertation on the Philosophy of Science. With his work finished in Michigan, he accepted a fellowship at Harvard University in the fall of 1942. A Harvard student named Father Vincent Flynn brought Fakhri to St. Benedict Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts on a Thursday evening shortly after he arrived at Harvard. After listening to Father Leonard Feeney, Fakhri remarked, “Father Feeney is exactly the priest I have been looking for. It is simply amazing.”

Some of us have heard Brother recount the story of Father Feeney seeking this young man out of that audience. Obviously, Father felt that Fakhri was also what he was looking for. That first encounter almost 40 years ago began a bond of friendship that was broken only by Father Leonard’s death a few years ago. Fakhri lectured every Tuesday at the Center; Father Leonard gave a talk every Thursday.

Within a short time, Fakhri was teaching at Holy Cross College in Worcester, a 45-mile trip. But he lived in Cambridge so as to be near St. Benedict Center where he taught, studied, counseled, and grew in the Faith. When the war ended in 1945 and there was more need for navigation instructors at the Holy Cross V-12 program (soon to become the NROTC), Fakhri began to teach philosophy at Jesuit-run Boston College.

In 1946, the Center began a publishing venture called “From The Housetops.” It was an instant success. In September 1947, the magazine published Fakhri’s “Sentimental Theology” which stirred up a fuss that has yet to die. Father Leonard has put his finger on the root cause of the liberalism in the Church, its denial of the dogma “Outside the Church, there is no salvation.” Fakhri’s article caused the Center to become the eye of a storm that raged furiously for a few years, and promises to rage even more furiously in the future.

In the years ahead, Dr. Maluf and three companions from St. Benedict Center were dismissed from their teaching positions at Boston College and Boston College High School for defending the dogma. Father Feeney was tossed out of the Jesuit order. The whole world was made to think about salvation, a persecution of anyone holding the dogma about salvation was begun by the Church’s authorities, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary came into being, the Center relocated to Still River, Massachusetts, and a courageous few held fast to the foundational teaching of the Church.

Throughout those years, the Center and the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary had Father Leonard as the leader, with Catherine Goddard Clarke and Fakhri Maluf as co-founders. As you know of those founders, only Brother Francis still lives. There are a great many details about those years, many of which are personal in nature, that could be added here. But it is not my intention to dwell any further on the historical side of this story. I would rather take a few moments to paint a small picture of this man’s character.

Were ten or twenty of the people in this room to stand before this gathering and, in turn, each pay tribute to Brother Francis, we might hear ten or twenty different views of this man. It is possible, of course, that all would focus attention on the same element in his character. We will never know about that, of course, because it appears to be my privilege alone to pay public tribute to our wonderful friend. I do not exercise this privilege lightly. And I truly hope that the words I choose will suit all of you, for I know how highly regarded by each of you he surely is.

We all know that life is a test. If we pass the test, we spend eternity with God in heaven. If we fail, we shall languish in hell — and there’s no second chance. Part of the test amounts to God asking us to seek His kingdom, not the praises and material pleasures of this world. When someone learns that lesson and understands this part of the test, he or she becomes different. Now, instead of idle pleasures and small talk, the person who truly understands the Christian message becomes a zealot for Christ. He or she decides that true friendship is the kind that steers a friend toward heaven by steering him or her to the Church.

Father Feeney was always solicitous of souls. But even Sister Catherine said of him that, for all of his early years of writing, speaking and glad-handing, “he had delighted all and challenged none.” When he perceived what was happening to the Church, and why, he started challenging everyone.

So, too, did our brother Francis begin challenging everyone. Christ once said, “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled.” Brother Francis has been lighting Christ’s fires ever since he became a Catholic. The price he has paid for doing so, in material terms, has been very high.

What has this cost him? Well, if you look at the picture through worldly eyes, you would consider him a failure. He certainly isn’t wealthy. He hasn’t won the favor of TIME, NBC or the New York Times. The most prestigious position he ever held saw him fired from it. If he ran for public office, he wouldn’t get elected. And he has spent lifetime seeing friends betray him. But is all of this the way he should be measured? Isn’t there a better way to judge the worth of him and his years?

We who are Catholics know the answer, don’t we! We know that it is impossible to tell the truth and not offend those don’t want truth. There is a story about St. Ignatius who, when he heard that there was no controversy in an area where he had sent some priests, wrote to them to say: “What is the matter? You can’t be telling the truth of Jesus Christ and be getting along so well. You must be compromising!”

But our dear friend has never compromised. Instead, he has challenged here, challenged there, and challenged everyone whom he has ever met. He wants everyone he meets to save his own soul. And the good Lord knows that there are too few issuing that challenge today.

So he isn’t rich; he isn’t famous; he once lost a job; he has lost many friends; and his worldly popularity is virtually non-existent. But he does have other friends. And he can rest assured that the challenge he offers to us has not fallen on deaf ears, or on ears too busy to listen. And, over the past several decades, there are others amongst the tens of thousands he has met while travelling through America who have benefited from the challenge he has given them. Even more, the effect he has caused in us has led to others being challenged by us.

Every age produces its scholars, even its learned churchmen. Even today, there are churchmen who can answer all the questions, quote all the Scripture passages, and recount all the significant events in history. But who among them lives what they know? Who among these scholars issues challenges to one and all to save their soul? Who spends his life kindling the fire that Christ said he came to bring to the earth? It is one thing to have knowledge; it is another to believe what you know and to act accordingly.

Of all the praiseworthy attributes of this man that could be mentioned — and there are many — I find myself most in admiration of his perseverance. He has a willingness to stand alone if need be. That is unique, and it should serve as an inspiration to all of us. He is not alone, of course. But don’t we all know that if every one of us would fade from the scene, he would keep going and keep challenging others.

No amount of false friends, determined enemies, or great multitudes who don’t care one way or the other can change his course. He will keep defending truth and challenging the human race to do God’s will.

The occasion for this special event is the feast day on December 3rd of the great saint who is his patron, St. Francis Xavier. They surely are alike in their zeal and unshakable constancy. St. Francis Xavier issued challenges in his missionary work and he baptized three million pagans. He destroyed 40,000 idols and built over 100 churches.

Our friend can claim no similar accomplishments. But I have often wished to liken him to another saint, one whom I feel he resembles even more than his patron. That saint’s name is Athanasius. What I find remarkable is that the condition of the world in the time of Athanasius is quite similar to what we find today.

Athanasius was a bishop in the fourth century. He lived at a time when the Arian heresy took hold of most of the Church. Later historians would note that 95 percent of the hierarchy was infected with the heresy during that period. But the Arians were wrong and Athanasius knew them to be wrong. His contemporaries repeatedly told him that everyone disagreed with him and he was too stubborn. His response: “If the whole world is wrong and Athanasius knows it to be wrong, then Athanasius stands against the world.” That sentiment has been memorialized as “Athanasius Contra Mundum!” (Athanasius against the world!).

His enemies sought to destroy Athanasius. They forced him to flee and they falsely excommunicated him. Five times he was exiled from his native Egypt. He was hunted like an animal but he kept ahead of his pursuers so that he could fight them on another day. He could have quit. He could have decided that no one would listen, or that evil had triumphed. He could have said that he had done his part and now it was time for others to do theirs.

But he fought on because refusal to defend God’s truth was unthinkable. In the end, he saw his cause vindicated and his enemies routed. He persevered. We are fortunate to have met and to have known a modern Athanasius. We all hope that his example will make each of us another Athanasius.

We thank God for sending Brother Francis to us, and us to Brother Francis. So much of our beloved Church is wandering around aimlessly today. Its roots have been damaged; its sons and daughters have been befogged; and it seems at times to have become determined to commit suicide.

But there has always been refuge in orthodoxy in this storm-tossed world. Just a few who stood firm, against — it seems — the whole world. For that we thank you, Brother Francis and, in thanking you, we also thank Father Leonard, Sister Catherine and Brother Hugh who have departed, as well as the brothers and sisters who are still part of this crusade.

We wish you, Brother Francis, many more years of good health because there are many more who need to be challenged to save their souls. We plan to help you issue those challenges. I ask now that all of you join me in saluting our teacher, our friend, our inspiration — Brother Francis.

Goodbye, O Gentle, Joyful, and Wise!

2009-12-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

By Brother André Marie

Our beloved Brother Francis went to his reward on September 5. What follows in my column are some reflections on his death and funerary rites. Our other writers will also pay tribute to him in this issue of the Mancipia.

A Quiet Passage. Brother Francis had received Holy Communion at about 6:40 a.m. the day he died. Shortly afterward, I gave him some fruit juice to drink, since he had eaten nothing the previous day. We wanted him to have nutrition and hydration right to the end. He was alert at that time. The other brothers and I went to mental prayer and Mass. When we returned, I gave him more liquids, and he was alert enough to say, “Enough!” After that, I went to breakfast with the other brothers. We could all hear him clearing his throat a few times — anyone used to his recorded lectures will know the sound! I remarked to the other brothers that he still sounded strong. After breakfast, the other brothers all went off to their respective chores while I went back to give Brother Francis more to drink. As soon as I walked in the room, I knew he had left us. I cannot say what his last words were, but a few days earlier, he told Brother Louis Marie he hoped they would be, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with you!”

Brother Francis left this world much the same as he entered it: on a Saturday, without noise (he did not cry when he was born, a sign that alarmed the midwife so much that she baptized him straightaway), and, curiously, the day after a full moon. We are consoled that he died on a First Saturday, a day especially dedicated to her that is “fair as the moon.”

Fitting Obsequies. The Mass and other ceremonies were offered in the traditional rite by our local pastor, Father Daniel O. Lamothe, a priest who has shown the Center — and particularly Brother Francis — much kindness. The funeral was a sung Requiem Mass (Missa Cantata), which took place at Saint Margaret Mary Church in Keene, where one of the Manchester Diocese’s regular Latin Masses is offered.

Present in the church were many clerics and religious, including eight priests “in choir,” seated close to the altar during the entire Mass, and assisting with candles in hand at various times. One of these was Abbot Gabriel Gibbs, O.S.B., of Saint Benedict Abbey in Still River. Three other monks were present in choir, two from Saint Benedict Abbey, and another from Saint Anselm’s Abbey in Manchester, New Hampshire. Two were Maronite priests, both long-time friends of Brother Francis: Father Anthony Weiler of the Saint Rafka Retreat Center in Vermont, and Chorbishop Joseph Lahoud, of Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon Parish in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. An old friend of ours, Father Carlos Cassavantes, FSSP, was also there, all the way from Texas.

The display of the Church’s catholicity was wonderful to behold: Roman Rite secular priests in cassock and surplice, Benedictine Monks in habit and cuculla, and Maronite priests in their distinctive Oriental exorasons and iconic stoles.

In the loft, the choir of our brothers and sisters was supplemented by priests and layfolk who, with little time together to practice, sung the Gregorian chant and some sacred polyphony most beautifully. The servers were our boys who serve at the Center regularly. The Master of Ceremonies was your humble servant, a detail which makes me conclude that the angels must have been with us, for the ceremony went off virtually flawlessly.

Who is Next? Because we have a chapel and graveyard, we are on familiar terms with the funeral directors. In our conversations surrounding the arrangements, one of them mentioned to me that the same time he was preparing Brother Francis’ body for the wake, he had in his funeral home the remains of a young lady who died in a car accident. A few days later, I was informed that a man from my high school graduation class had also died. He was thirty-nine. When struck with this news, I could not help but think of Brother’s poem, “Who is Next?”

Pray for Brother. Brother Francis revealed to Brother Louis Marie only a few days before his death that he was afraid nobody would pray for him. The piles of Mass cards that have come in tell me that Brother’s fears were unfounded. However, I would urge our friends to pray for him daily. It is our duty in piety to do this for a man we love.

The Best Tribute. With the funeral now quite behind us, and resolved to pray for his dear soul, we think the best tribute we can make to our father, mentor, and teacher is to continue the work which he did, and which he inspired us to do. I mean, of course, our Crusade in all its facets: missionary, academic, and devotional. I’ve already made a promise to a dear friend that, on the anniversary of Brother Francis’ death, we will all be holding in our hands his logic course in book form. Brother considered the study of philosophy integral to the work we do. We have the recordings of all of his lectures on the eight courses, plus his handwritten notes. It will be our duty in the coming years to turn the materials he left to us into the complete set of philosophy books he envisioned. There are other gems in his personal notebooks, too.

Hopes for Unity. Present at the wake and funeral were religious from Saint Benedict’s Abbey, Saint Benedict Center in Still River, Saint Ann’s House, and Immaculate Heart of Mary Convent in Vienna, Ohio. Not present, because unable to be — but most solicitous in sending condolences and prayers — were the brothers with Brother Leonard Mary in Arcadia, California (“Saint Benedict Center West”). Brother Leonard Mary, one of the founding members of the M.I.C.M., has been very ill himself. It is no secret that there have been various divisions among Father Feeney’s disciples. Brother Francis always desired, prayed for, and worked toward unity. Personally, I hope that he is now in light eternal with Father Feeney, Sister Catherine, Brother Hugh, and all our deceased brothers and sisters, asking Our Lady for a greater unity among her Slaves. Ours would not be the first order riven by strife (read Church history if you don’t believe me: Franciscans, Redemptorists, and many others were afflicted with this). But old wounds are healing, and it appears that a unity of purpose, and of charity, is shared by all these groups — each of which has its unique gifts to contribute to the Crusade for Catholic truth and the conversion of America.

Memory Eternal! I have heard that the Arabs say, “Whoever does not have an old man should buy one.” Having the privilege of being close to such a sage “old man,” I very much appreciate this Oriental wisdom, which leads me to my conclusion. I think the following three verses aptly describe Brother Francis, the gentlest, most joyful, and wisest man I’ve ever known. Two of the verses are from the Old Testament’s Wisdom books. The third is from a book that relates wars and memorializes the virtues of warriors. Those who knew Brother will get it.

In the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days prudence — Job 12:12.

The just shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow up like the cedar of Libanus — Psalm 91:13.

His memory is blessed for ever — Maccabees 3:7.

Email Brother André Marie at bam@catholicism.org.

Please read Brother Francis’ Obituary and the Ad Rem, The Funeral of Brother Francis, in Thoughts and Pictures.

The first lecture of Introduction to Wisdom course is below.

My Ode to Brother Francis

2009-12-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

By Sister Marie Thérèse, M.I.C.M., Prioress

This is Brother Francis,”
he said, as he introduced
the lady guest to Brother.
“What a sweet little old man!”
she cooed sugar-sweetly. Bending
over with a grandmothersmile,
she patted Brother on
the head. Brother nodded and
continued to smile graciously
as she proceeded to seat herself
beside another guest for a visit.
After several hours, she excused
herself and slipped out of the conversation. In hushed and surprised
tones, she confided to a sister how amazed she was at
just “how smart” Brother was!

Knock on his door;
He is always there.
Call his name: “Brother Francis?”
“Yes! Come in” cheerfully greets you.
Turning from his desk he is delighted it is you
And welcomes you — there is always time for you.
Yes, you who are unique and special to God,
Are unique and special to him too.
Do you have a question? His face shows delight!
His eyes close,
His fingers move slowly and methodically over his forehead
As though to help the thinking process

While he listens carefully to your perplexity,
And formulates an answer that is both wise and brief,
Carefully fitted to your understanding and need.
Yes, he truly knows all the answers . . .
And though never pretending knowledge,
Rarely gives the answer “I don’t know.”
This man loves Truth and his life beams it!
The ring of his voice when he speaks of Truth
Is strong and clear, joyful and lovingly challenging.
How about a problem?
No need to worry as he shoulders in fatherly fashion
The care you lay before him.
This too shall pass.
Our Blessed Lady is in charge.
What wise counsel then comes forth from his lips — his soul.
His love for God and Mary,
Enkindles love for souls.
Is there a hindrance to their happiness?
A deliberate hiding of Jesus’ Truth?
Crusade! God wills it!
Take up arms and fight!
Take the Rosary and the Truth!
Cry out, “From the Housetops”!
Not a minute to spare, it’s Our Lady’s time,
Go with haste into cities and towns.
Bring — on foot — this loved Truth to loved souls.
Look into their eyes, into windows, look inside
Where they hide from the Truth, and you find them.

“Why do you weep? He is risen!”
You encourage.
“Get up from your bed and walk!”
You challenge.
“See the lilies of the field, see the birds,”
And see God.
Cast the seed of Faith!
Kindle the Fire of Love!
Carry with you that Lord
Whom you received in the Host.
Lend Him your feet and lips.

Crusade! God wills it!
Plead with the shepherds of the flock
To do what they alone can do
For souls — whose value is yet unmatched.
“Please tell them that Truth
That will bring them to Him;
Fulfill the desire of His Heart.
Save them from fire, eternally.
Salvation of souls! God wills it!”

To Rome, the Eternal City, clearly focused on Our Lady’s cause
Minding the pain she bears in her Heart
The price of those children she loves.
Man to man — with great reverence —
Brother presents this beloved cause,
Most dear to his heart and to Theirs
Pleasing God
And maybe not men.

Don’t forget us Brother!
You promised to remember!
Yes, close to Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
And, of course, your Little Thérèse.
Help us as we continue this battle
Not compromising the challenging Truth!
The battle will only be won
When the Shepherd in Rome
Takes up the Crusade’s banner,
Joined by his shepherd generals,
And leads the crusaders in battle
To victory! to victory!
For souls! For Jesus! For Mary!
Crusade! God wills it!
And then . . .
PEACE. . . .
As the Immaculate Heart finally triumphs.
Peace to men of good will.

In Heaven we’ll be quite surprised
At “how smart” Brother really was.

Back Home After 40 Years Away from the Church

2009-11-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

By Jack Koehler

One day, early last month, my friend Jim approached me at our workplace, and told me how worried he is about the things happening in the world today, especially with this new administration. I simply replied “Jim, don’t worry; whatever happens will happen.” He looked distraught as he told me his fear that the government would take everything he owns someday.

“Jack, how do you keep so calm?” he asked. “Well, Jim,’ I said, “I say the Rosary faithfully every day and I leave everything up to Our Lady. And I also go to Mass every Sunday.”

A couple of days went by before Jim approached me again. He asked me if I could do him a favor. I said, “Sure; what is it?” He said, “I’d like to come back to church, Jack. Can you help me to do that?” “You came to the right guy, Jim,” I said. “I can take you to the abbey where I usually go to Mass.” “Jack, it’s been over forty years since I’ve been to Mass,” he told me, “and it’s time to come back.”

I told him that I go to the Latin Mass, and that I am friendly with all the priests at the abbey in Still River, Massachusetts. “It’ll be like going to Mass as you remember it from forty years ago,” I assured him. “I can’t wait to go,” he said. “What about bringing your wife?” I asked. “No,” he said, “we were married in the Church, but I can’t tell her now.” “Okay, Jim,” I said, “in due time.” “My mother-in-law goes to Mass though,” he was quick to let me know. “All right, that’s good.” I replied, “Maybe someday your wife will come back; let’s both pray for that.”

Jim met me at my house the following Saturday morning. He knew that he had to go to confession, so he was not surprised when I gave him a copy of the Act of Contrition and the Ten Commandments to make it easier for him to examine his conscience and make a good confession. (Actually he had already done the examination.) When we got to the abbey, I brought Jim to the confessional. Father James was hearing the confessions. That was something; Father James would hear the sins and give absolution to another James. One must never dismiss these little signs of God’s goodness and providence!

I sat outside waiting and, even though it took a while, Jim finished in time so that we made the 8:00 Mass, which is always a High Mass at the abbey. Jim followed along as best he could in the missal. He was very happy to let me know that he remembered some of the prayers from when he was a youngster, a long time ago.

After Mass we went to St. Catherine’s House, where the congregation is invited to come and have coffee and sweet rolls. Strolling down the hallway on the way to the dining area, Jim was taking in all the religious statues, pictures, and icons of the Holy Family, Our Lady, and so many saints.

Later, when I asked him how he felt being back in the Church and the life of grace, he said very humbly, “It’s a relief in a way, Jack, but I feel I haven’t done enough to merit this grace after having avoided the Church all these years.” “Don’t worry, Jim,” I reassured him, “just continue going to Mass, learn the Rosary, and wear the scapular, and you’ll receive more and more graces from heaven.” “Thanks Jack,” he said, “I needed to hear that.”

I also told Jim that there are two Masses every morning at the abbey, and confession is available every morning as well. “That’s good to know,” he said.

We weren’t finished yet. “Come on, Jim,” — I didn’t need to prod him — “I want to introduce you to the sisters next door at Saint Anne’s House.” The door was open, so after making a visit in their beautiful chapel, I introduced Jim to some of the sisters. They were delighted to hear his story and told him to come back for Mass. I showed him the sisters’ garden and we continued taking a leisurely walk around the monastery grounds. “Jim, it’s a piece of heaven; there are three chapels all within a five-minute walk, each of them offering the Latin Mass every morning. It doesn’t get any better than that!”

As we were leaving Jim kept saying how good he felt, like a huge load had been lifted off his shoulders. “Well, be faithful in doing your part and it will only get better from here,” I assured him.

It’s been about two months now since Jim went back to Church. I’ve given him some sacramentals, the Miraculous Medal, the brown scapular, and a booklet on how to say the Rosary. He has the Rosary memorized, except for the Hail, Holy Queen.
I noticed my friend has been much calmer at work now and less stressed about things. It must be grace at work because it’s such a drastic change in such a short time. He goes to Mass now at a local church near his home in North Andover, Massachusetts. He told me that they say the Rosary before and after Mass there, which I was surprised and delighted to hear. “That’s great,” I said, adding, “did you know that if you say the Rosary with a group of people you’ll receive greater graces than you would saying it alone?” “No, Jack,” he replied, “I didn’t know that.” Every time I give Jim something about the Faith to read, or a religious item, he says he can’t get enough of such good things.

Just this past week, on May 4, Jim said he went to Mass and there happened to be a first holy communion scheduled. A cardinal from Spain had come to the parish, and he offered a Solemn High Mass that took over two hours. “It was really nice,” he said. Then he informed me that he had the Hail, Holy Queen memorized and all the mysteries of the Rosary. “Good, Jim,” I said, “now you can say it to or from work if you don’t have time during the day.” “Great idea, Jack, I’ll do that.” Then he said, “You know, I didn’t know each day was a different saint’s feast day. “That’s right, Jim;” I said, “Every day a saint is honored on the Church’s calendar and at Mass, and more than one if you count those who are not as well known. Sunday’s specific Mass, however, always take precedence over the feast days of saints, but they can still get a minor commemoration if the priest chooses to do so at the altar.”

“I have much to learn, Jack.” “And you will, Jim, you will,” I said with a smile, “and so will I.”

The Little Way of an Apostle

2009-10-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

By The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

In the feedback from the Catholic America Tour, a common recommendation is that more “practical” considerations be woven into the presentation. Many are saying that the history is interesting and the examples are motivating, but practical “methods” are not sufficiently expounded. To make up for the deficiency, some of us religious and layfolk here at the Center got together and jotted down a list. We hope you find it helpful.

General Dispositions

• Show the people you want to convert — family, friends, co-workers, etc. — that you care for them. This is done in “little ways” (like St. Thérèse) by showing interest in their interests: their families, jobs, hobbies, joys, sorrows, etc. If what interests them interests you, there is a “communion” established between you. That gives you leverage and credibility. If you show people no interest in any tangible way, how do you expect them to think you are interested in their eternal salvation?
• Remember to be pleasant and cheerful. Dour, sad people do not attract others.
• Don’t offend people needlessly. Always be a lady or a gentleman.
• Remember that your enthusiasm will speak to people of the importance of the Faith. If the Faith is truly important to you, this will show in a variety of ways.
• Make yourself a “helpful” person by volunteering in different religious and civic organizations (your parish, Boy Scouts, pro-life organizations, etc.). In these contexts, you can help to influence people.
• Give good example. Saint Peter himself endorsed this as a means to gaining converts: “Having your conversation good among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by the good works, which they shall behold in you, glorify God in the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12).
• If you are the mother or father of a family, remember that your family comes first. Living properly the obligations of your state in life is a very effective and practical way to work for a Catholic America — it’s called raising it! Conversely, abandoning the home-base for otherwise noble purposes is sinful and, ultimately, ineffective.

The Soul of the Apostolate

• Live a wholesome Catholic spiritual life, fed on the Church’s sacraments and liturgy, the Rosary, spiritual reading and personal prayer. Ultimately it is holiness you are trying to spread, so work with Our Lord to get it yourself, first. Nemo dat quod non habet. (”No man can give what he does not have.”)
• Make, renew, and live your Marian Consecration according to the formula of Saint Louis de Montfort (Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe also has a good one). You can also consecrate your family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
• Pray for the person you are trying to convert. Have Masses said. God is interested in what you are trying to do; He might like to hear about it.
• Pray for the grace to be a good apostle for the Faith. Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe’s prayer of consecration to Mary has this intention built into it.
• Pray to the guardian angels of those you’re trying to convert.

Good Habits

• Have “conversation starters” all around. Decorate your house with holy images. Do the same with your desk at work. If there is a rule at your place of employment that you can’t have “religious pictures” in your workspace, then make sure your family pictures have religious images (crucifix, Mary statue, etc.) in them. This is known as being wise as serpents.
• Carry around and hand out Miraculous Medals. Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe called these his “bullets.” (Remember the story of Alphonse Ratisbonne.) You can even leave them with the tip at a restaurant. And make sure it is a decent tip!
• With the knowledge you have of your would-be convert — remember, you’re interested in him, right? — offer him articles on his interests from Catholic sources. (E.g.: “Tom, I know you like U.S. History. Here’s a good article on the diplomat who secured peace with Sitting Bull”. . . and hand him something on Father De Smet.)
• Keep Catholic tracts and/or booklets with you. Hand them out when the occasion arises. (For those who have to be clever as serpents at your workplace, “accidentally” letting these fall out of your briefcase or remain open on your desk can help.
• Be a “public Catholic.” That is, say grace before meals (crossing yourself!), and do other visible acts of faith in a non-pompous manner. Your car can be Catholic, too, in a tasteful way, with a Rosary hanging in the right place, a mini-statue on the dash, and even a side-or rear window holy picture.
• Always show reverence for the Holy Name of Jesus. Bow your head when it is said. Do that and say “Blessed be God” if someone uses the Sacred Name irreverently.
• When someone tells you about his problems, promise him your prayers. You can even have a Mass said. This is a way to show (and act upon) your concern for that individual. In his mind, this will connect your Faith to your practical charity for that person.
• Chances are, the person you are speaking with has a Christian name. Tell him about his patron saint. (If there are multiple candidates — which Saint Andrew? — pick one for him!) You can direct him to a good book on the saint, and encourage him to pray to his patron.

Incidental Practices

• Put Catholic messages on your mail, e.g., “Saint Anthony Guide.”
• Get people to be regular readers of our web site. Send emails recommending particular articles. Put a link to the site on your email signature. If you use Facebook, post articles from our site and Catholic “status messages” on your wall.
• If you read the local paper and see good letters to the editor on hot-button moral issues, send the letter-writer a personal note with kudos and a recommendation to read something Catholic on the same issue (e.g., pro-life, pro-family).

Continuing Education/Formation

• Study as part of the Saint Augustine Institute. Your studies, however modest, will inform your conversations about the Faith, and make you a better apostle. If you organize a study circle — a very good personal apostolate — you can invite people to learn in a group setting.
• Joining the Third Order of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary helps in many ways. For example, by working together at our own sanctity, we assist each other in becoming saints; and by remaining a school of thought with a common sense of purpose, we present a “united front” to the Church and the world. This can make us an organized force for the conversion of America.

“My brethren, if any of you err from the truth, and one convert him: He must know that he who causeth a sinner to be converted from the error of his way, shall save his soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20).

The Catholic Key Blog: Anglican Bishop Confirms St. Therese is Behind Anglican Ordinariate

2009-10-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Catholic Key Blog: Anglican Bishop Confirms St. Therese is Behind Anglican Ordinariate

Giuseppi

2009-10-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

By Brian Kelly

He was probably in his seventies, a frail little man, maybe five feet-four inches tall or so. Always wore a suit and tie, he did — the same suit coat, every day, the shoulders overlapping his own, the sleeves ending half way down his fingers, and the hem of it almost reaching his knees. It may have fit him, more suitably, when he was younger but he would have had to have been a lot huskier, too.

His name was Giuseppi. I’ve long since forgotten his last name, as it was thirty-seven years ago that I knew him. He was the porter at the religious house where I was staying during the one year I spent studying in Rome. I don’t remember if he had any other duties; if he did it may have been as a dispatcher for the community’s phones, for there were about ten priests living in the house at the time. The system would have had to have been very simple because Giuseppi was a very simple man.

Every morning, at the same time we were saying Matins in the chapel before Mass, Giuseppi would come into the back of the chapel and drop down on his knees and proceed to say in alta voce the beginning of the Our Father in Latin, then he’d slip into Italian for the rest of the Lord’s Prayer, which he completed in sotto voce (almost in a whisper). Then, he’d intone in the very same manner the Hail Mary: “Ave Maria, gratia plena,” he’d bellow, continuing on with the prayer in more subdued Italian. That was about it for his prayers, and he was off to his office by the front door.

Giuseppi was always flashing his gold tooth with his perennial smile. He loved to greet us American students and we were always using him to test our conversational Italian. We would say: “Parla lungo, Giuseppi, lenta prego,” and he would accommodate us with the most affected, slow enunciation just to please us.

We had a tutor for some months who would stop by almost every day to teach us Tuscano Italian. She was a native Roman, a well educated matron, about Giuseppi’s age, and she would always chat with him before she left. She was a good woman and I remember how she was so courteous to the little porter who was always delighted to see her. I’ll call her Maria.

Giuseppi had such a good heart; his biggest joy was to greet us, even if it was just a passing “hello” and “goodbye.” He did not get along with the other employee, a younger man, who served in the refectory; his name was Gilberto, and with his occasional snide remarks — covertly delivered, of course — he let us know that he was more than a bit anti-clerical.

As I said, Giuseppi loved to talk to us. After a few weeks, he started to greet us with this endearing salutation: “Good morning, my dear.” And we would reciprocate: “Good morning, my dear,” with a chuckle. Giuseppi didn’t know why we found the greeting so funny. You see, to impress us, he had been listening to “Learning English” cassettes in his office. The speakers played the part of a husband and wife, and, in Italian, carrissima means “dear one,” so to Giuseppi we were all “my dear.”

I once met him walking down the street after he exited a nearby church. “Comé sta, Giuseppi,” I asked. “Bene, bene, grazie a Dio,” he replied. Then I said something that seemed to really upset him. I was young and it just slipped off my tongue without my thinking how such words, even though said half in jest, might affect someone as humble as Giuseppi was. I told him that I thought that God must love him very much — that much was fine — then I said that I considered him to be a saint.

“No, no,” he protested indignantly. “I am a miserable sinner. I have committed many, many sins.”

We were going in opposite directions, so he just kept walking ahead shaking his head, “No, no, not me, not me.” There was nothing I could say.
Giuseppi quickly forgave me for canonizing him, or he just forgot about it, because every day he continued to give me, and all the young Americans, the same unfeigned smile and the same hearty greeting. Every now and then he’d throw in a new word that he had learned, anxious to see if he understood its meaning correctly, and was pronouncing it right.

One day during Advent he couldn’t wait to talk to me. He was so excited and his face was beaming. He told me that he was taking a train to Florence to see his daughter during his Christmas vacation. Then the tears began pouring from his eyes: “I have not seen her since she was a child,” he said. “It’s been forty years. She is a nun in a convent.”

It was hard for Giuseppi to speak, his voice was choking so, and it was hard for me to understand what he was trying to explain. Somehow, during the World War, while he was stationed in Ethiopia, it seems that his wife and daughter were separated from him. I asked him why he could not find them when he returned home after the war. And this is where I could not understand his answer. Nor did I want to press him about it, for the pain, long buried in his heart, was not looking for words; it had found its escape in tears. All I could get from him was, “They were gone, they were gone. No one knew where they were.”

Well, at some point the daughter must have located her father, for he was going to see her for the first time in forty years. And she was a nun. He was so proud, so happy. “God bless you, Giuseppi,” I said. “You will surely have the most joyful Christmas of your life.” I don’t remember if I got choked up at the time, but if I am so now, just thinking about it, I must’ve been so back then.

When our diminutive porter returned to work sometime after Christmas he told us all about his bambina: “She is a nun, now,” he kept saying; “She’s all grown up, and very happy.” As he spoke he kept blessing himself over and over. But I don’t remember that he cried this time. He was perfectly content; he had received the answer to all those prayers that he offered for so many years, going from church to church (and Rome has one on every block) and stopping by one more church after work on his way home.

Home? Giuseppi didn’t have a home, a family to go to; he lived at a nursing facility for the elderly. It was about a half-mile away. One would have thought that he could’ve slept over at the monastery, at least during bad weather, for he did have a cot in his office on which he would take his daily siesta. Apparently, he never asked for this favor from the abbot or the prior, nor was it offered, as far as I know.

A few weeks later Giuseppi developed a bad cough. Each day it got worse. He tried to hide the fact that he was not well and he forced himself to be there at the door to say “hello” when we would come in from classes. There was no one on the first floor in the house to hear the worst of his fits. We were on the second floor, and there were a few priests on the third floor, but no one on the first. We knew that he must have had a bad cold, but the fact that he was up and about, at least when the doorbell rang, quieted any concerns that “maybe this old man has pneumonia.”

Maria was very upset when she came in to give us our lesson that week in Italian. “Don’t you realize that this man is gravely ill,” she chided us. “He belongs in a hospital.” She did not leave without telling the prior that Giuseppi needed a doctor right away.

He never got to see a doctor. In fact, he completed his usual work day, and then, around six o’clock, headed out into the night winter air for his half-mile walk to the hospice. And what about us students and seminarians? After our Italian class that day we had gone upstairs to our rooms for study period. Maria had spoken to the father in charge and, good man that he was, we assumed that he had heeded her admonition. I’ll never forget how upset she was that Giuseppi was working at all.

The next morning the prior told us that Giuseppi had collapsed against a wall on the way to the hospice and that he had died. It was a secluded spot where he fell, no streetlights, and, especially in the freezing cold, no strollers. His body wasn’t discovered until the sun rose.

Every Mass, at the Memento for the Dead, I still pray for Giuseppi. I should be praying to him. “For him,” “to him,” he knows what to do with the prayers. He was, by his own admission, “a miserable sinner.” And miserable sinners, when they are as humble as Giuseppi, make great saints.

Email Brian Kelly at bdk@catholicism.org.

A Tribute to Brother Hugh MacIsaac

2009-10-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

By Brother Francis, M.I.C.M.

(Note: This was written on the occasion of the death of Brother Hugh, M.I.C.M. (+ July 11, 1979), one of the founding members of our Order, who went to his reward on July 11, 1979. The piece introduced From The Housetops No. 18, which featured the life of Saint John Bosco. Brother Hugh was a real giant of a man who left a deep impression on many souls, and was an intrepid leader at Saint Benedict Center during very difficult times. Brother Francis loved him deeply, and has cherished his memory all these years. We thought it fitting, on the thirtieth anniversary of Brother Hugh’s death, to publish this small tribute in our newsletter. It is especially so inasmuch as its author is now very close to entering eternity himself, where, we hope, he will join his old confrère in beatitude.)

The great apostle of youth in modern times, Saint John Bosco, whose inspiring and most exciting story is the feature of this issue, may be styled “The Saint of Enthusiasm.” But as I present the breathtaking epic to be narrated in the following pages, it is my sad duty to announce to our readers the death of another apostle of enthusiasm, our Superior, Brother Hugh MacIsaac, M.I.C.M., whose last cherished project on earth was to plan this very issue of our magazine, From The Housetops.

Brother Hugh is the one responsible, after God and our protectress in heaven, the Immaculate Mary, for the restoration of this magazine after twenty-five years of interruption; an interruption caused by the Liberal forces within the Church — the very forces that now seem so successful in effecting the demolition of faith and tradition.

Brother Hugh was also our most effective leader in our apostolate to bring the message of faith to all our cities and towns throughout the United States. One wonders how many hundreds, or even thousands, were waiting to meet him on his departure from this vale of tears in the early morning of July 11 of this year — souls who might owe their eternal salvation to the loving and enthusiastic challenge given to them by Brother Hugh during his long apostolate of over thirty years.

“When I go to heaven,” he said recently with his characteristic humor, “after I meet the Holy Family and my patron saint, I’ll ask to see Henry.” Henry was an industrial magnate in Chicago whom Brother Hugh met and sent back to the sacraments a few days before Henry went unexpectedly to meet his Creator.

Another person I am sure was there to welcome him is Professor Augusto Bersani, a leader of the Waldensians [also called the Waldenses]. Brother Hugh labored “with the patience of Job” for twenty-five long years before achieving the conversion of this brilliant man who somehow had wandered into the poisoned pastures of heresy. Professor Bersani finally sent for a priest on his deathbed, and made his peace with God.

I would like to bet that Brother Hugh holds the record for the number of miles on this great country’s highways and byways that he traveled on his own two feet, and also for the number of persons in all walks of life that he confronted with the message of salvation “eyeball to eyeball” (to use one of his favorite expressions) in, one might almost say, every city and town of the United States.

The Waldensian conversion forms another bond with the Italian apostle of enthusiasm, Don Bosco, the hero of this volume. The great saint also labored for the souls of the Waldensians in northern Italy.

And another bond that may be mentioned here is Saint John Bosco’s famous concern for the English-speaking world, the United States in particular. We have always known that in aiming at the conversion of America, we could count on the patronage of Don Bosco; now he will be assisted by his humble devotee, Brother Hugh, a Slave of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

We have been referring to that shining virtue common to these two Catholic apostles under the name of “enthusiasm.” But on the supernatural plane, that virtue should be called “zeal”.

The whole world has been talking about the fiery zeal of Saint John Bosco, and we feel confident that the world will one day be talking about the fiery zeal of our Brother Hugh.

And it is through such zeal, which we think will henceforth become infectious, that we hope to convert America.
“Who is the happiest man? He who loves God most.” — Brother Hugh, M.I.C.M.

Secrets

2009-09-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

By Brother John Marie Vianney

In today’s society, the teaching of the world ignores or obscures things that have been known since the beginning of time. It teaches a pagan philosophy and makes it attractive. It ignores history and emphasizes freedom and pleasure to the detriment of one’s life. This is so true, I dare say, that even the most simple truths are now hidden to the point of being secrets. You, dear reader, likely know of these matters, but I write not only for you, but for those who are in the dark. As a Catholic who knows his duty to convert his fellow man, I encourage you to teach the ignorant and I suggest a path for you to follow that guarantees success. It is up to you to reveal the secrets.
Begin slowly and patiently, as a parent with a child. It will do no good to cast your seed upon soil that is dried out and unprepared to receive the good word. You must first nurture the soil with the simple truths of faith and then wait and see if they take root.

Firstly, tell them that God made them in His image and likeness. Let them know that their soul is wholly unique and singular and that it belongs to a person who will live forever. Next explain that God is all-powerful and they belong to Him. They cannot have a better Friend who wills them only good and will give them His paternal protection. Tell them that everything good that they have in this world is a gift from God. Introduce them to their guardian angels, who will be with them at every moment, at every step of the way, while they are on earth. Assure them that the material things necessary for life will be provided if they “seek first the kingdom of God and His justice” (Matt. 6:33).

Explain how God created Adam and Eve and how He promised a Savior after they fell from grace by disobedience, a Savior so great that His birth would split time into what came before His advent and what came after. Show them that the Savior, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, actually gave up His own life on earth so that men would not perish. “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting” (John 3:16). Describe how God acts daily in the lives of men and give examples of His extraordinary manifestations of grace in the lives of the saints and how these great men and women should be emulated.

Describe the place the Savior’s Mother holds in the plan of salvation. Explain to them how God wills that all His graces come through her, as from a mother to her children. Tell them how much Mary loves them and how they should show their fealty to God by offering themselves to her as slaves of love. Explain how the word “slave,” used in this sense of voluntary servitude to Jesus through Mary, is a good offering of filial submission, which devotion God inspired the great saint, Louis de Montfort, to reveal to the world.

Do not be hesitant to present the truth that there is only one way to God, the way Jesus revealed, through the Catholic Church which He established. Make it known to them that all other religions are man-made and can only lead their followers away from the true God. In a thought, give them the Faith, without which no man can ever be saved.

Now you have a plan. It can be put into act as easily as giving a Miraculous Medal to the bank teller who deposits your check, or by explaining what the medal is that you are wearing outside your shirt to the clerk who is checking out your groceries at the supermarket. It could be activated by giving a green scapular to the attorney you meet to help you write your will, or to the doctor who is treating you, or to anyone, anywhere, any time, who manifests a receptive heart by a kind word or gesture. As long as you are doing His will, even while doing the most ordinary of daily occupations, you are where God wants you to be. Don’t disappoint Him by hiding your light under a bushel basket. Try to help save souls. Tell them the secrets.

Email Brother John Marie Vianney at toprefect@catholicism.org.

A Word of Gratitude

2009-09-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

By Sister Marie Thérèse

Dear Friends,
In the last edition of “Convent Corner,” I tried to give you a verbal picture of our beautiful new Saint Philomena Convent and offered you the opportunity to help us establish it. To all of you who sent us your generous donations, I wish to send the sisters’ heartfelt gratitude. A dear priest even sent us two real widow’s mite coins (approximately 2,000 years old) to show the school children! As I promised, your names are on our altar at Saint Philomena Convent, close to the Eucharistic Heart of our dear Jesus. In fact, I decided to put your names in a lovely red leather diary with gilded pages and an image of the Sacred Heart embossed on the front. The picture shown here is our altar, and the inset is the book containing the names of all of you who sent your kind donations. I thought that seeing the special book right next to the tabernacle would remind us even more to pray for all of you.

Just this week, someone promised to donate a life-sized statue of Saint Joseph holding the Child Jesus. A dear friend of ours who has a great devotion to St. Joseph immediately offered to build a stone shrine for the statue when he heard of the gift. We plan to have the shrine located at the turn in our driveway with the intention of obtaining Saint Joseph’s powerful guardianship over our convent (he is, of course, the Father and Guardian of Virgins). Next, the men are planning to come in and install the granite hearth and a donated woodstove with Saint Hubert’s image on it. Then, our brothers have plans to provide us with a generous supply of wood using the trees downed in last winter’s big ice storm.

I want you all to know that we offer our first Rosary of the day specifically for your intentions. Also, I find myself praying little prayers of gratitude throughout the day, such as, “Blessed Mother, please bless our benefactors,” “Please bless their families,” “Dear Lord, help them to know and do Your holy Will and become saints.” I know that the other sisters have prayerful moments of gratitude seasoning their day as well. But more than the specific prayers, we are trying to unite ourselves more closely every day to God through His Blessed Mother. And, as the saints have said (St. Teresa of Avila especially comes to mind), when you do God’s will, He does yours. That is why the prayers of the saints are so powerful. Even if we don’t know all of your intentions in detail, God does; and if our will is to obtain God’s blessing and grace for you, He will care for your needs as we are striving to do His will. My observation is that living in our beautiful and blessedly silent new convent is helping us to become closer to God by aiding us to stay recollected. We are confident in knowing that our cooperation with grace will draw down blessings upon our dear friends.

For those of you who have friends or relatives who might consider it a benefit to have a convent of sisters praying for them, please tell them to send a donation (if they can only afford a small one, that is fine; there is no minimum) marked “for Convent” on the memo line. An imprisoned gentleman received the last Mancipia, saw our offer as a golden opportunity, and now he has the sisters all praying for him. Even though he may desire it, he can’t be near the Blessed Sacrament while in prison, but now his name is very near the tabernacle, and kneeling close in prayer for him are his sisters in Christ.

It isn’t too late to help with the planned repairs and projects. Blessings will come to you and your loved ones from Saint Philomena Convent. And, as you strive to do God’s will, could you pray for your sisters in New Hampshire? Thank you!

Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.

The Passion of Saint Joseph

2009-09-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

It has always been believed that Saint Joseph died some time before Our Lord's Passion. The Virgin-Father of Our Lord breathed forth his last surrounded by Jesus and Mary, and thus became the patron of a holy death. Whereas the most holy Virgin was predestined to participate directly and most closely in the Passion of Our Lord — so much so that she earned the title Co-Redemptrix — not so, Saint Joseph. To speak, then, of "The Passion of Saint Joseph" is to consider something other than the great carpenter's direct participation in the events of Good Friday.

While his body and soul awaited their reunion — the former in the tomb and the latter in the Limbo of the Just — Saint Joseph's foreknowledge and influence both made him an indirect but very real participant in the drama of our redemption.

To Saint Joseph was given a foreknowledge of Our Lord's Passion. In 1956, the Patriarch himself revealed this to the visionary, Sister Mary Ephrem Neuzel, as part of the revelations of Our Lady of America:

"My heart suffered with the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Mine was a silent suffering, for it was my special vocation to hide and shield, as long as God willed, the Virgin Mother and Son from the malice and hatred of men.

"The most painful of my sorrows was that I knew beforehand of their passion, yet would not be there to console them.

"Their future suffering was ever present to me and became my daily cross. I became, in union with my holy spouse, coredemptor of the human race. Through compassion for the sufferings of Jesus and Mary I cooperated, as no other, in the salvation of the world."

If his foreknowledge of Our Lord's terrible sufferings made him participate actively, albeit indirectly, in the Passion, his influence made him also a unique passive participant. For potencies that Saint Joseph had carefully fashioned for many years were put into act long after his death as his son "trod the winepress alone" (Is. 63:3).

Parents often observe each other's features in their offspring. "You look just like your mother when you do that," or some such thing, is commonly uttered -- evoking either a pleasant or a painful correspondence between spouse and child. Jesus, naturally, looked very much like Mary, having received, as He did, all of His genes from her, and none from her husband.[1]

But genes are not all that goes into a child. Whether we call it education, discipline, or training, the multi-faceted art of child-rearing impresses as much or more of the parent onto the child as do the data contained on the double helix of DNA. Personality or temperament are already determined at birth (of this I am reasonably confident), but character is formed by upbringing. As Saint Joseph was truly father to Our Lord in every conceivable way other than the strictly biological, he was, with Mary, responsible for Jesus' upbringing, that is, the formation of His very unique character. As a father in Israel, he had the duty to foster an environment of respect, love, piety, and religious observance in the home. Head of the Jewish "domestic Church" of the Holy House, he dutifully performed certain household religious ceremonies at which Jesus assisted. As a poor artisan, Joseph also had the duty of teaching Our Lord a trade, and that an arduous one. In this light, we can consider what Saint Paul meant when he wrote to the Hebrews that "whereas indeed he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered" (Heb. 5:8). Finally, as the male parent of the Boy, Saint Joseph was particularly responsible for imparting the masculine character that the Son of God would bring to His mission to save our race.

In a word, Our Lord's practice of manly virtue was an icon that had been painted by Saint Joseph.

Some may object to the foregoing as detracting from Our Lord's Divinity. An explanation as to why it does not so detract may be helpful. As the Man-God, Jesus had four kinds of knowledge: the divine, the beatific, the prophetic, and the acquired. The last of these, the acquired knowledge (also called "experimental"), is the learning that Jesus accumulated from His daily experiences as man. The Man-God's acquaintance with manhood itself being chiefly by the observation of His earthly father, we can rightly say that Jesus learned to be a man from Saint Joseph.

What this implies is that the most fertile human mind that ever existed observed the habits, movements, utterances, cadences, expressions, rhythms, carriage, and manners of the greatest specimen of sheer manliness that humanity has ever produced.

Jesus learned, and did in like manner.[2]

It is certainly a point of speculation to probe into the thoughts of Mary as she watched her Son suffering for us, so what I say here is nothing I pretend to know from anything save my own musings. But I have some humble confidence that the musings themselves are safe, informed as they are by Catholic orthodoxy.

If we attempt to think Mary's thoughts as the Immaculate One watched Our Lord carry His Cross, we might consider her harkening back to Saint Joseph carrying a heavy piece of wood into his carpenter shop. "He looks just like his father when he does that," she might have said, as Jesus labored under the weight of the wood. A spasm of pain might have brought to the Holy Face an expression learned from the countenance of Saint Joseph, as Jesus the apprentice watched his father wound himself working with wood and nails.

In His childhood, when Jesus was lost, Joseph and Mary "sought [Him] sorrowing" (Luke 2:48). That sorrow Mary saw on her husband's aspect was mirrored on the Holy Face of Jesus, who became, in His Passion, the very "man of sorrows" (Is. 53:3).

The meek and humble resignation that Jesus showed before Pilate, Annas, and Caiphas also had its antecedent in Saint Joseph. Our Lady had likewise seen her spouse embrace God's inscrutable designs when Simeon uttered his terrible prophesy, culminating in those severe words: "Thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts, thoughts might be revealed" (Luke 1:35). What an ensemble of virtues had that prophetical utterance elicited in Mary's man! Compassion, courage, selflessness, a chivalric desire to protect his bride — all these vied for one another and ultimately ceded to meek and humble abandonment to God's will, an abandonment directed by sublime charity for God and man.

Jesus commanded us: "Learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls" (Mt. 11:29). But where did Jesus Himself learn meekness and humility, those little virtues compatible with, and tempered by, manly fortitude? It was principally from Saint Joseph that He would have learned them. Our Lady, of course, provided an example for Jesus. Her plenitude of grace and the delightful perfume of her virtue permeated the holy house of Nazareth as the Magdalene's ointment filled the house of Bethania with its sweetness (John 12:3). But it is not chauvinistic to point out that men are men and women are women. Both sexes are obliged to practice the virtues, but each must practice them in a way proper to itself. The masculine embodiment of virtue was passed on by Saint Joseph.

Carrying His Cross, Jesus half closed His eyes as blood mixed with salty sweat ran into them. This physiological reaction, combined with the inner drive to carry out the will of His Eternal Father, produced a mien of grim determination on Our Lord. Mary had already seen that look in the face of a difficult mission, for just so had Saint Joseph once clenched his jaw and squinted his eyes as dry, sandy winds blew across the deserts of Egypt when Jesus was a Baby and Herod wanted Him dead.

But what of Our Lord Himself? Did He think of Saint Joseph during His Passion? It would seem unnatural to think He did not.

The Church herself begins her thoughts of the Bridegroom's dolors on "the day before he suffered,"[3] Maundy Thursday. On that most holy night, the institution of the Mass and the Eucharist was preceded by the Passover meal, which began with Our Lord's heartfelt words: "With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). Jesus had seen Saint Joseph preside over many paschal meals, each of them an anticipation of this night whereon the Old-Testament figures would give way to New-Testament realities. It would seem strange if, as He performed the same rites He had seen his father carry out so many times, our Redeemer gave no thought to Saint Joseph.

After celebrating the first Mass, "a hymn being said" (Mt. 26:30), Our Lord proceeded to Mount Olivet, and to the olive garden there, Gethsemane. According to Saint Jerome, that fourth-century biblical scholar who lived in the Holy Land and learned so much of the lore surrounding it, Saint Joseph's tomb was in Gethsemane. Assuming this to be true, and considering how much the Sacred Heart of Jesus loved the most pure heart of his guardian, it follows — as the night does the day — that memories of the "diligent protector of Christ"[4] mixed themselves into the Agony in the Garden.

And later that night, appearing before Joseph Caiphas, Our Lord was likely struck by the same irony we see: that the murderous High Priest, a "father figure" in Israel, bore the same name as the protector of the Holy Family.

From the Praetorium to the Cross to the Tomb, at each station of the sorrowful way, we can find shadows of the Carpenter, and can be well assured that, if we see them, Jesus and Mary saw them, too.

I will not extend this little catalogue of Saint Joseph's sorrowful mysteries much further. Perhaps with your Bible in one hand and your Rosary in the other, you will make your own associations.

I would like to conclude by uniting the purpose of Christ's coming with the mission of his foster father on earth.

Going purely by the explicit evidence of Holy Scripture, there is one word we know for certain that Saint Joseph spoke. It was the Holy Name of Jesus. Saint Joseph not only said it; he gave the "Name which is above all names" (Phil. 2:9) to his Boy. That name means "Savior." On the Cross, when Jesus said, "It is consummated," He was saying that the work His Eternal Father gave Him to do, meriting the salvation of man, was finished. But He was also saying that the name Saint Joseph had given Him was now, alas, fulfilled.

[1] None, that is to say, by generation. But we ought not to forget that Jesus was biologically related to His earthly father. Saint Joseph's father, Jacob, was the brother of Mary's mother, Saint Ann. Mary and Joseph were, therefore, cousins.

[2] Saint Thomas wrote that it would not be fitting for Jesus to be taught, neither by men, nor by angels (ST III, 12, 3-4). In his explanation of Our Lord's acquired knowledge, the Angelic Doctor goes further, affirming that Jesus learned all he learned without teachers. Being the teacher of all, it was not fitting that He should be taught. With all this I agree. But I would like to introduce a distinction here that may be of help, one which I believe to be compatible with the doctrine of Saint Thomas. While He was not, strictly speaking, "taught" by Mary and Joseph, Jesus did learn from them. Saint Thomas also held that the marriage of Saint Joseph to Our Lady was brought about by God in order to serve the Incarnation of His Son (cf., his commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel). The great Thomist Pope, Leo XIII, asserted the following regarding Saint Joseph in the economy of the Incarnation: "Hence it came about that the Word of God was humbly subject to Joseph, that He obeyed him, and that He rendered to him all those offices that children are bound to render to their parents" (Quamquam Pluries No. 3, emphasis mine). I believe that the imitation of a parent's virtues is an office children are bound to render, especially when the parents implicitly or explicitly say "do it this way." Jesus, we are told, obeyed.

In a much celebrated passage, Saint Paul speaks of Our Lord's two natures as the "form of God" and the "form of a servant." He says that Christ Jesus, "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man." If Jesus was "in habit found as a man," He was not merely one in possession of human nature (Aristotle's "second nature"), but one possessing a particular human nature ("first nature"). In other words, He wasn't just "man"; He was "this Man." Now, this Man was conceived in the womb of a Jewish Virgin, came from a specific family lineage, spoke certain languages with a particular accent, practiced the best customs and manners peculiar to the culture in which He chose to be born, etc. He was a particular Man with particular habits. Now, according to Aquinas, Jesus was taught none of these things, but he did learn them from His own human observation. And who were those He observed?

True, both Saint Joseph and the Blessed Virgin learned from Jesus. This was necessary. He was in very truth their Teacher, whose virtues they would have to imitate to be His followers — to be, that is, Christians. But part of the "admirable exchange" of the Incarnation (referred to by the Church in her Christmastide liturgy — O admirabile commercium) is that the Word of God both took from and gave to the human race. His particular practice of virtue, like the way he behaved at table, his Aramaic accent, or the manner in which He utilized the tools of a carpenter, were learned by observing Saint Joseph.

[3] Roman Missal, the Canon.

[4] The Litany of Saint Joseph.

Lex Orandi Lex Credendi

2009-08-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

This ancient Latin axiom is quoted so often, I thought a little explanation of it on our web site would be helpful. A paraphrase of a longer patristic expression, the phrase means, "the law of praying is the law of believing."

The Father of the Church who gave us the axiom is St. Prosper of Aquitaine. He coined it in his controversy with the semi-Pelagians, who held that God's grace was necessary neither for one's first movement towards conversion nor for final perseverance.

According to Prosper of Aquitaine, legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, which is to say, 'the law of prayer determines the law of belief' (Prosper used the equivalent term lex supplicandi in place of lex orandi ). Prosper treats the church's prayer as an authoritative source for theology in arguing that salvation must come entirely at God's initiative since in the liturgy the church prayed for the conversion of infidels, Jews, heretics, schismatics and the lapsed who would not seek the true faith on their own. (Charles R. Hohenstein, “‘Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi’: Cautionary Notes “. Cf. Prosper of Aquitaine, De vocatione omnium gentium, 1, 12: PL 51, 664C.)

The same phrase turns up in an official document of the Holy See, Indiculus, which was a compilation of all the authoritative statements of the popes on the subject of grace. It is believed that this document was edited by St. Prosper himself, as he was Pope St. Celestine's secretary at the time. Here is the relevant passage, as contained in Denzinger's:

Let us be mindful also of the sacraments of priestly public prayer, which handed down by the Apostles are uniformly celebrated in the whole world and in every Catholic Church, in order that the law of supplication may support the law of believing.

For when the leaders of the holy nations perform the office of ambassador entrusted to them, they plead the cause of the human race before the divine Clemency, and while the whole Church laments with them, they ask and pray that the faith may be granted to infidels; that idolaters may be delivered from the errors of their impiety; that the veil of their hearts may be removed and the light of truth be visible to the Jews; that heretics may come to their senses through a comprehension of the Catholic faith; that schismatics may receive the spirit of renewed charity ; that the remedy of repentance may be bestowed upon the lapsed; that finally after the catechumens have been led to the sacraments of regeneration, the royal court of heavenly mercy may be opened to them. (Indiculus, chapter 8; Denz., n. 246 [old edition, n. 139], emphasis ours.)

The editors of Denzinger's inserted a footnote stating that the entirety of chapter eight of this decree agrees with St. Prosper's De vocatione omnium gentium, where the argument first appeared. They also refer the reader to the ancient Solemn Prayers we described above as having been excised from the new Missal. Doubtless, St. Prosper had heard these prayers on Good Friday, as liturgical historians date them back to the earliest persecutions. He probably had them in mind when he wrote this passage.

This highlights the grave importance of tradition in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and all the Church's liturgy. It also shows us that the liturgy itself is a powerful source of Christian truth.

When we Latin Catholics of the West return to our liturgical traditions and show that we take this axiom seriously, the Eastern Orthodox — for whom tradition, liturgy, and the rule of faith are virtually synonomous — will take Catholic unity under the Pope more seriously.

Speeding Ticket to Salvation

2009-08-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

By Mr. Jeremy Patria

We all know that God works in mysterious ways, but little did I realize that my penchant for speeding while driving would be the vehicle that God would choose to slow me down onto the sure path of salvation. I was born into a family of practicing Baptists in a small, southwestern New Hampshire village. It is one of those picturesque towns that can be seen on typical New England postcards — and Yankee to the core. Fitzwilliam by name, it is a popular tourist attraction and even hosted a Good Morning, America show several years ago. Our family regularly attended church services and my father, being a Baptist deacon, would frequently deliver the sermon. I attended Sunday school until thirteen years old when, abruptly, we stopped going to church altogether. It seems my parents had a falling out with the pastor, which led to their refusing to attend that or any other church thereafter. Although confused, I just accepted the fact.

My siblings and I, five in number, attended public schools and immersed ourselves in all the activities being offered. I was very active in sports and I was a member of the choir for all four years of high school. Religion of any sort was not on my mind, but I do remember one time when I attended the funeral of the father of a choir member who was Catholic. I was struck by the smoking incense, the reverence and pageantry of the service but, although curious, I did not investigate. I also found it interesting later, after becoming a Catholic, to discover that many of the songs performed by our choir were of Catholic origin.

My everyday life was in no way soft. I had many chores to perform, such as cutting, hauling, and then splitting the ten cords of wood we needed every winter. My parents were not averse to employing corporal punishment whenever I went astray but I knew it was out of love, not meanness. At the same time, we were given much freedom in our social activities and not really monitored as to our comings and goings. After getting my driver’s license, I purchased a car, for I needed wheels to get to a job I had landed in a restaurant twenty miles from my home. And I always drove fast. My heavy foot led to three speeding tickets and the loss of both my license and my job. As Divine Providence would have it, however, I found another job within walking distance from my home and there my conversion began.

I worked in the kitchen as a chef along with a young man my age named Joe Hazelrigg. He told me he came from a family of eight and had recently moved to the area to be next to Saint Benedict Center. He was not shy about his Catholic Faith and this led to many conversations about religion and my own lack of belief. Some of Joe’s friends also became employed at the same restaurant and, after being introduced, I was amazed by the large families they all came from. There was Joe Filipi, one of eight siblings, Heather Fliss, one of thirteen, and Luke LaPlume, one of eleven, and they all confronted me, in their own particular styles, with the Catholic Faith. Because my parents had continued Bible readings at home, I had enough ammunition to hold my own against their arguments. This friendly, and sometimes intense, undeclared war went on for months, until one day I needed a lift some distance away and Joe Filipi volunteered to drive. It was during this ride that grace began its work, or I should say, I finally began cooperating with grace. Joe simply told me that I had a duty before God to at least investigate the Catholic Faith before rejecting it. It was as simple as that. Where before I had been defiant during our conversations, I found myself now more passive, more docile in my outlook. I started attending Mass at Saint Benedict Center, and believe me, with all those large families I never wanted for a ride. I attended lectures on the Faith, socialized with the community, and gradually was convinced that I needed to join. After lengthy instruction, I was baptized and received the Eucharist on March 25, the great Feast of the Annunciation.

Ironically, my parents did not object to my conversion, except in one particular, that of Baptism. My mother stated that it was not necessary for salvation and, after my reciting the verse that says “unless a man be born of water and the Holy Ghost he will not be saved,” she said that although it mentioned water, it did not mean we had to be baptized!! At that point I knew there was no point in furthering the argument. Interestingly enough, my father took me aside shortly afterwards and said, “Jeremy, I don’t know why, but I could never have taught you the things which you have learned from these folks.”

I settled into my new Catholic life, interacting with the families that associated with the Center, while still being very inquisitive about the philosophy and methods of living a truly Catholic life. I was on the lookout for a marriage partner as well, and that is when I was introduced to a truly strange custom called courting. Although in theory I agreed, it was difficult to understand how you could ascertain your feelings for a young woman while parked in the living room of her parents’ house with their numerous children gawking at your every move. Only after attending a traditional Ignatian retreat did I realize not only the absolute necessity of courtship in maintaining purity, but the increase in virtue that the discipline brought to the future spouses.

I did marry a beautiful Catholic girl, Bridget, and together we have started our own Catholic community, being the proud parents of three wonderful children, Regina, Gemma, and José. I want to thank you, Lord, for your ministers, the policemen who gave me those speeding tickets, and for your Church militant, all of whom in one way or another accelerated me in the pursuit of the Catholic Faith.

When Parents Cry Wolf

2009-08-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

By Russell LaPlume

The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” spoke Chicken Little as she ran to warn the king. Most of us are familiar with this tale, and to most, the moral of the story is, simply, don’t cry wolf to alarm people unnecessarily. But this old fable has received several different endings depending on who related the story. The original ending had Chicken Little picking up her barnyard friends (for she had them convinced that the sky was truly falling) and taking them all to warn the king. One of these friends, a fox that pretended to believe the alarm, and, when the time was right, he proceeded to eat them one by one. Another version had a friend, in his dying breath, warn Chicken Little about the fox, giving her enough time to make good her escape. And still another had the sky truly falling and killing the fox before he could exercise his mischief. And the moral of all this? We do not know the day nor the hour when the sky will fall upon us as individuals and a rendering of all of our life’s actions will have to be made to our Redeemer.

In my lifetime it seems that the pace of social, economic, technological, and educational change has accelerated to warp speeds. One can hardly buy any communications device that won’t be outdated in a matter of months. One cannot dream of financial security without the government, or some social entity, changing the rules and severely altering the plans. One dare not express an opinion contrary to that of the liberal masses on such issues as the environment, the government, morals, or education without eliciting their condemnation. But for all this acceleration one fact remains endlessly true: in terms of eternity we are all rushing to that one defining moment when the Face of the Judge will force us to cease and desist and give an account. And it is this one inescapable truth that all parents should impress upon their children. How to do that? Well, that is what this story is about.

It seems that most Catholics (and many evangelical sects) are intrigued with the “end times” and the signs that mark the end of this life and the beginning of eternity. I was certainly engrossed with this theme for many years, having read all I could on the subject. Whether it was the Apocalypse, or writers such as Yves Dupont, Fr. Miceli, Nostradamus, or Hal Lindsey, no author escaped my perusal. It got so bad that I would eat Chinese just to see what the fortune cookie had to offer by way of prophecy. I became so obsessed with the subject that it became my main topic of conversation, and, as I started to raise a family, this preoccupation was dosed out quite heavily to my children along with Catholic truths. I would tell them about the “three days of darkness” (and being from New England where the electric power goes out quite frequently in the winter, I would have to endure the inevitable comment from my children that I was right all along). I would tell them of the indisputable signs of the end times in the “wars and rumors of wars” and the famines and earthquakes forecast almost everyday in the global events as we read them in the press. I would highlight the crisis of faith the Church was enduring as well as the telltale decline of Catholic influence in the world, quoting Our Lord’s words concerning His second coming: “But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8) And, of course, there was the “Comet,” the great ball of chastisement that would one day come to cleanse the world of demonic activity. I would advise them to keep their eyes up towards heaven but with their feet planted firmly on the ground of truth, not on the clouds of passing fancies. I would comment wittily that “it was better to look up and trip over a curb than to look down and get hit by a comet” — of course, I would add that even though you were looking up you still could get run over by the proverbial beer truck.

How much of this stuck I do not know. Was I crying wolf and thereby filling their heads with unnecessary trepidation? After all, are not current events supporting the latter day expectancy of our time? A few short years ago did we not whisper among ourselves that a one-world government was looming over the horizon with headquarters already established in Geneva? And today, is not this very subject advocated by the majority of our world leaders? Most people called us alarmists and conspiracy theorists amongst sundry other epithets. I never considered myself a pessimist, but a realist. Although never abandoning my conviction that we were on a fast track to apocalyptic events, I finally had second thoughts on my approach in dealing with the subject when one day I heard someone jestingly call me “Doom and Gloom LaPlume.” That is when I took a different tack.

I stopped reading these books and started reading history, specifically history that dealt with Catholic events and how they influenced the world. History does repeat itself and, there being nothing new under the sun, I found more sane knowledge to govern my future than any book I read trying to predict it. By way of prophecy I focused more on the Marian messages of Quito, LaSalette, and Fatima, which not only warned of the dire consequences of not following heaven’s plan, but also gave a positive recipe of how to avoid these predicted calamities, or at least to mitigate them. With this newfound knowledge I was able to guide my children in a more positive way, all the while keeping the negative aspects fully cognizant in their minds. They now know that the “end times” will come to pass. They also know that the hour and the moment is of no consequence to them if they remain in the state of grace, keeping always in mind that eternity could be a heartbeat away.

So, is it more important to focus on the “latter day” dire warnings? Or is it better to focus on the “here and now” positive aspects when we instruct, not only our children, but even ourselves? Every person, parent or not, has a different approach, and I am not one to guide him in the application. Personally, I think a healthy mingling of the two (that is the interaction of Catholic history measured against contemporary events and the Marian warnings from heaven), will do most in impressing upon us and our children the fragileness of our earthly existence and the need to keep our eyes heavenward. Then, if we do trip over the curb, we’ll be quick to pick ourselves up and avail ourselves of the sacramental means of gazing upwards again. But, remember, somewhere out there a beer truck is rolling and your name might be on it.

Email Russell LaPlume at rlp@catholicism.org.

The May Magnificat

2009-08-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

By Brian Kelly

May is here at last. Nature is blossoming with life. “May the sun shine warm upon your face,” as the Irish blessing goes. Easter has come and gone and there is hope in the air. This is the month of Mary, under her title, Mother of God, and she will be crowned all over the world with flowers and song and pageantry. The Church ends the month with the triumphant feast of the Queenship of Mary on the 31st. [This feast has been moved in the new calendar to August 22, which is also the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, while the feast of Our Lady’s Visitation (July 2 in the traditional calendar) has been moved to May 31.]

There are three other months dedicated to Our Lady: August is dedicated to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, September to her Seven Sorrows, and October to the Holy Rosary. But May has a long-standing tradition for being all hers in many Catholic countries. Portugal, for example, has been honoring May as the month of Mary since the thirteenth century.

By the 1700s, however, the May prayers, processions, and crownings became a popular celebration with the Jesuits, who practiced special public devotions at the Gesu, their church in Rome. From there it spread to the whole Church. Pius VII promoted it and Pius IX, in 1859, granted a plenary indulgence to the practice.

Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical on the Sacred Liturgy (Mediator Dei) characterized these devotions as included with “other exercises of piety which although not strictly belonging to the Sacred Liturgy, are nevertheless of special import and dignity, and may be considered in a certain way to be an addition to the liturgical cult: they have been approved and praised over and over again by the Apostolic See and by the Bishops.”

In honor of the feast of the Visitation, May 31, I give you The May Magnificat, a beautiful poem by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins:

May is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why;
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season

Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?

Ask of her, that mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?
Growth in every thing

All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathizing
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.

Well, but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.

This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

John S. Stokes, Jr., writing for Mary’s Garden, gives a good explanation why May is dedicated to Mary:

“The month of May, with its profusion of blooms, was adopted by the Church in the eighteenth century as a celebration of the flowering of Mary’s maidenly spirituality. . . . With its origins in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Virgin birth of the Messiah under the figure of the Blossoming Rod or Root of Jesse, the flower symbolism of Mary was extended by the Church Fathers, and in the liturgy, by applying to her the flower figures of the Sapiential Books: Canticles, Wisdom, Proverbs, and Sirach. . . .

“In the medieval period, the rose was adopted as the flower symbol of the Virgin Birth, as expressed in Dante’s phrase, ‘The Rose wherein the Divine Word was made flesh,’ and depicted in the central rose windows of the great Gothic cathedrals — from which came the Christmas carol, ‘Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming.’ Also, in the medieval period, when monasteries were the centers of horticultural and agricultural knowledge, and with the spread of the Franciscan love of nature, the actual flowers themselves, of the fields, waysides and gardens, came to be seen as symbols of Mary. . . .”

We sing of Our Lady in the beautiful hymn, O Mary We Crown Thee, that she is “the loveliest rose of the vale.” In the Canticle of Canticles, Solomon sings of the “flower of the field, the lily of the valleys, . . . the lily among thorns” (2:1,2). In the King James Bible, “flower of the field” is translated as the “rose of Sharon.” Either way, Our Lady is the “lily among thorns” and the “rose of Sharon,” indeed the “Mystical Rose,” as the Church praises her in the Litany of Loreto.

In the Middle Ages of Christendom, almost every flower had a Marian legend attached to it. The lily, for example, was called “the Madonna Lily.” In Fra Angelico’s fresco of the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel approaches Mary with a lily in his hand. Of the lily, Venerable Bede says that its “white petals [signify] her bodily purity, the golden anthers the glowing light of her soul.”

Another Marian flower is the marigold (Mary’s gold). The faithful in Europe would make garlands out of this flower, which bloomed most brilliantly in early spring, and use them to adorn Our Lady’s altars on Lady’s Day, March 25. There is a tradition that the spice rosemary, taken from the needles of the rosemary bush, received its evergreen-like aroma after Our Lady hung the clothes of the Baby Jesus on its branches during the flight into Egypt. The scientific name for the milk thistle plant is actually carduus marianus, or Mary’s thistle. The cuckoo flower is also called Our Lady’s Smock. Cardamine pratensis, as the plant is called by botanists, is believed to be the fabric used by Our Lady to sew Our Lord’s seamless garment. This garment has been preserved in the Cathedral of Trier in Germany, but it has never been examined by science. In his life of Theresa Neumann, Albert Schimberg notes that the stigmatist affirmed that the relic was indeed the seamless garment of Christ. Finally, there are rosary vines, so called because of their resemblance to the sacramental beads. In fact, the Latin word for a bouquet of roses is rosarius. The word “bead,” incidentally, originally referred to a prayer, and the use we make of this word today came from the perforated prayer balls strung along the rosary line, rather than vice versa.

Other Marian feasts to remember in May are: Our Lady of Fatima, the 13th; Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, also on the 13th; Our Lady Help of Christians and Our Lady of the Way, the 24th; Mediatrix of All Graces, the 31st; and don’t forget to honor Mary on the second Sunday of the month, Mother’s Day. Surely, she will be pleased.

Email Brian Kelly at bdk@catholicism.org.

Rebuke Him, O God

2009-07-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

By Catherine Goddard Clarke*

(Extracted from a longer 1948 From the Housetops article)

There was great glee in hell. Beelzebub was having a meeting of committees, and things were going well.

“I congratulate you, ‘Screwtape,’ he said. “When you first advanced the idea of getting Mr. C. S. Lewis to paint a picture of us, I never believed the Catholics would fall for it. I thought more of them would remember their theology, but you were right, they are farther from it than I had dared hope.” [The devil went on boasting and then told this story:]

“There was, in an old New England town, a man who had fought against coming into the Catholic Church for seven years. He suffered a great deal during that time, and he had to make some real personal sacrifices when he finally gave in and was baptized. One of the first things he did after his baptism was to go and see his mother, in order to teach her the Faith. He had a very difficult time with her, but he never gave up hope. I have known him to put in a long distance telephone call to her from whatever city he might be in on his business just to see how she was getting along with the books that he had mailed her to read. He and his wife made every effort to get back to his mother on Thanksgiving and Christmas, always to assure her of their love and their great desire that she might come into the Church and be with them both on earth and in heaven. It was all to no avail.

“Then one day he dropped in to see a priest, and he explained his mother’s situation to him, and told him that he had spoken strongly to her on the subject of conversion. The priest said to him, “How dare you talk that way to your mother! She has been a good Protestant according to her lights, and a good mother to you!’ The man said, ‘But, Father, she no longer has those same lights. I have very carefully explained the Faith to her, and given her Christ’s challenge. She is in no sense ignorant of the Truth. She is a very intelligent woman.’

“And then he was told: ‘You should not disturb your mother in her religion. Faith is a gift. She may get to heaven a good deal faster than you will — indeed you may find her there before you. You don’t think that only Catholics are saved, do you?’

“My man walked out, thoroughly upset, muttering to himself, ‘In the name of God, why should I have gone through all I did to become a Catholic!’ He tried not to let it [go], but the edge was off the whole thing for him, and I assure you I have made every effort to keep it so. He hasn’t tried to convert anyone since then, and certainly not his mother.”

“Please go on, my lord!” It was the curious little devil again.

“You know the rest of it,” the powerful angel answered. “One makes the most of every opportunity. I noticed that the policy of Catholics used to be to convert, first, by preaching, and second, by living according to that preaching. They called this latter ‘good example.’ Gradually I got them to forget the first principle and to emphasize the second. They are doing a fairly good job of selling themselves, as a result of my foresight, and a very poor job of selling their Christ.”

“Bravo! Bravo!” the cry went up.

“Then, too,” the great one went on, “the following little story will illustrate how far we have come. The Catholics were asked the other day if they held that there was salvation outside the Church. This was their answer: ‘Let us put it this way: heaven is on the distant shore. There are two ways of getting there, by rowboat or by motor-boat. Each will make the shore, but the rowboat takes a longer time. Let us call the motor-boat the Catholic Church.’ Now the non-Catholic merely wants to be assured that he will reach the shore, heaven. And so, much preferring the comfortable and familiar way, he settles back in his rowboat and goes to sleep again.”

“Just as I planned, just as I planned!” Beelzebub was very solemn. “For the first time in the history of the world,” he told his fallen angels, “I have not only been directing you, but I have undertaken a mission of my own, the nature of which is so important that I have not dared to trust it to anyone but myself. You see, she has been appearing in the world. She came down to Fatima, in Portugal, and to Heede, in Germany. Those appearances gave me much to do. I had to work as I never worked before to make men forget and belittle what she prophesied and what she requested them to do in order to forestall my work. But I am pleased to report to you, my sons, that all is well. It is now as if she had never spoken. It is true that her appearances are still mentioned here and there, but men, thanks to my effort, speak of it as they might relate one of their legends.”

* Later known as Sister Catherine, Mrs. Clarke was the foundress of Saint Benedict Center, which began as a lay apostolate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Are You Ready for the Chains?

2009-07-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

By Brother John Marie Vianney

Are you ready for the chains? It is easy to see that personal freedoms, even of conscience, are being undermined by the government and even taken away in our country, and across the world, today. It is easy to see the increasing occurrences of calamities across the globe: earthquakes, floods, famine, pestilence, random violence, etc. The ongoing erosion of our constitutional liberties presages despotism, tyranny. Disasters might lead one to thoughts of the “end times.”

So I repeat, are you ready for the chains? By that I mean the chains of holy slavery. The chains one accepts willingly when one makes his Marian consecration, “An Act of Perfect Consecration to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, through Holy Slavery to the Immaculate Heart of Mary according to the method of Saint Louis Marie de Montfort.” It is the chains willingly accepted in that oblation of the will that I write to you about.

I know there are many of you who have made your consecration in this manner. But there are many who have been delaying it, or perhaps have never heard of it. Are you one of them? Is your spouse, relative, or friend one of them? Wouldn’t May, the month of Our Lady, be a good time to make, or to renew (often done annually), your consecration?

You will need thirty-three days to prepare, so pick a date and count backwards to see when you should begin. There are some special feasts often chosen for the consecration, e.g., Our Lady of Perpetual Help on June 27 (begin May 25), Our Lady of Mount Carmel on July 16 (begin June 13), the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven on August 15 (begin July 13), the Immaculate Heart of Mary on August 22 (begin July 20), the Birth of Mary on September 8 (begin August 6), etc. There are at least eighteen universally celebrated feasts of Our Lady. Choose one, and then begin.

In such troubled times as these, you will find you have your Blessed Mother as your guide. She is the best “coach” you could ever have. After all, it is she who encouraged, taught, nourished, and watched over the Child Jesus as He grew up. We know that we are in a great struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil, which all combine to prevent us from following in Our Lord’s footsteps and saving our souls. Who is better equipped to guard and protect us, to show us the way, than the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

Let me warn you. Be prepared for the devil to get in your way. Many have begun their consecration preparations and found that the easy path was impeded. Don’t let that challenge stop you. Don’t be discouraged. Pick yourself up if you fall off the track and continue on. Our Lady will help you. After all, is she not the Mediatrix of all Graces? Remember, you only need a little time each day devoted to reading and meditating, and at the end you will have the joy of signing your consecration form!

I should also point out that making your consecration is one of the prerequisites to joining the Third Order of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Be, then, truly devoted to Mary, be one of her spiritual children by making your consecration to her. Offer yourself totally to her. She hears you and will answer. She will never desert you. How could she? She is your mother, now and forever. Now, will you accept the chains?

Every sports team has a fight song. Every country has an anthem. Many cities have a special song dedicated to them. The Italian, the Irish, the French, the Polish, all have songs that speak to their ethnicity, their culture. And, of course, Our Lady has many hymns dedicated to Her. Well, the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary have a rousing song written by Father Feeney himself. It is entitled, ‘Tis for the Love of Mary. If you never heard it before, here it is. We sing it here at the Center during special times, e.g., the recent profession of the two sisters, on First Saturday when we have our regular Third Order monthly business meeting, when we end our school plays, programs, etc. We hope you will love it as we do. May God bless you and the Immaculate Heart of Mary always watch over and protect you!

‘Tis for the love of Mary
Each heart becomes a slave
A heart that once was wary
Is through her love emboldened to be brave
Her banner is the only one to wave.
Remember, Virgin Mother,
That never was it known
One needing thy protection
And seeking it was ever left alone
You always come and take him for your own.

Despise not our petitions,
O gracious advocate,
And after this our exile,
And after all the years we still must wait
Take us unto your Heart Immaculate.

Email Brother John Marie Vianney at  toprefect@catholicism.org.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

2009-07-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

By Sister Marie Thérèse

I write this latest edition of Convent Corner from a new location. If I look out of the window of the quaint little library I am in, I can gaze out on a lovely convent garden, complete with fruit-bearing trees, bird bath and wooden bench (I might write the next Convent Corner from the bench). Rock walls grace and fortify this cruciform building, forming lovely pathways through the gardens and around the convent. These are surmounted by statues of various heavenly patrons and crowned by an outdoor set of Stations tucked into its own special rock wall with a rugged yet graceful set of stairs leading up the hill behind them. A perfect set-up for outdoor meditation when the weather is agreeable! The silence is penetrating and peace-giving.

The name of this little heaven on earth? St. Philomena’s Convent. For nineteen years as of this fall, we have been living on the main campus of the Center, in the very midst of all the hustle and bustle of our school, office, main chapel, bookstore, visitors, etc. Yes, living in our public work area. And hoping all the while that we would be able to build a convent of our own for our little family of sisters some day.

We were also praying for vocations to St. Philomena. She heard our prayers over the last few years, filling our available convent space with sisters. Watching our space shrink, we presented our need for a convent to our dear little saint, promising to name our new convent in her honor. Two of the novices she sent just made vows on March 25. Even as they made their three-day retreat preceding that blessed day, it was being decided that this would be the new convent.

Having pine floors, hand-made pine doors with black metal hardware, lattices on the windows, two beautiful stained glass windows in the chapel (Our Lady of Knock and St. Francis Solano with his violin) and small shelves lining the long hallway with statues of saints, we feel entirely spoiled in our new convent! Thank you, St. Philomena! It could not be more perfect.

You are probably wondering about the location and history of this abandoned monastery. A group of Franciscan friars built it over a decade ago in a nestled recess at the foot of the densely wooded hill that is crowned by the Center. The land was generously donated by a Catholic lady. The friars built the monastery (called a “friary” by Franciscans) with their own labor and the help of a few lay persons. When completed, it not only was a practical monastery, but a very beautiful one.

Tragically, the Franciscan superior’s health was so poor that, soon after, the friars were forced to abandon their friary and relocate down South to a gentler climate than New England’s. A zealous retired professor purchased it from the Franciscans with his inheritance, intending to move here and use it as a study center for himself and other scholars. Sadly, he was prevented by many circumstances from doing so. From that time, this hidden treasure was left unoccupied. Finally, this winter, after many years, our scholar gave up hope of being able to use it and, instead of selling it, donated it to the Center for whatever need there was, be it a library, office space, or a convent. Brother André Marie encouraged the sisters to use it as a convent, for which we are very grateful!

After so much generosity, we have felt inspired to offer the first five decades of our fifteen-decade Rosary for all of the benefactors of our beautiful convent. Our powerful saint has left room for your generosity, in case you would be interested in helping us to establish our new house. For you, this may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There are repairs needed to the roof, siding, plumbing, and driveway. Someone was generous enough to donate a green-enameled wood stove with the scene of Saint Hubert engraved on its sides. However, we still have to build a stone hearth and need materials to do so.

Don’t think your donations have to be very sizeable! Our Lord was quite pleased with the Widow’s Mite because, though a small amount, it was all she could give and she gave it from the heart. Whatever you send, we would like to put your name under our little chapel altar, right near His Sacred Heart. Just let us know your interest by writing “For Convent” on the memo line of your check. From His throne of mercy, Our Lord will surely see your generosity, and will not allow Himself to be outdone! Blessings will come to you from St. Philomena’s Convent.

Email Sister Marie Thérèse at convent@catholicism.org.

Marian Consecration and the Conversion of America

2009-07-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

By Brother André Marie

The United States of America are badly in need of conversion. My readers, I think, will take this as axiomatic, so I shall not attempt to prove it. Instead, I would like to propose, in very simple terms and briefly, that Marian consecration is a most excellent way to bring about the conversion of America (i.e., the great majority of Americans) to the one, true Faith.

Why? The answer is quite simple. Saint Maximilian Kolbe reveals it in these tender and grave words addressed to the Holy Virgin: “For wherever you enter you obtain the grace of conversion and growth in holiness, since it is through your hands that all graces come to us from the most Sacred Heart of Jesus” (from his Act of Consecration). The Saint goes on to explain that “God is hers [Mary's] with all the treasures of grace for the conversion and sanctification of souls. … In this act of consecration we beg her to use us to destroy the whole serpent coiled about the earth, the serpent representing the various heresies.”

Mary is the Mediatrix of all graces: that is why the grace of conversion will come through her. Our dear Founder, Father Leonard Feeney, explained it this way:

From Mary, all grace overflows into us. She is the Mediatrix of All Graces. Nothing comes from God to us except through Mary. Nothing goes from us to God except through her. Saint Bernardine of Siena says, “All the gifts and graces that we receive from God are given by Mary, to whom, when, and as she pleases.” Saint Louis Marie de Montfort says that no one gets into Heaven without venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary. (from “The Mother of God”)

Lex orandi lex credendi. The Law of praying is the law of believing. All prayer and devotion has a doctrinal foundation, and the practice of Marian Consecration is founded upon the doctrine of Mary’s universal mediation. If Mary were not the mediatrix of grace, this form of devotion would make no sense, as Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe himself observed.

When I speak of “Marian consecration,” I mean personal consecration, whereby an individual consecrates himself according to the formula of Saint Louis de Montfort, that of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, or some other act of Marian consecration. But I do not restrict my meaning to personal devotion. There is a great tradition of consecrating entire nations to Our Lady. (So, at Fatima, the Blessed Virgin promised that Russia would convert to Catholicism when the Pope, together with all the bishops of the world, consecrates that great nation to her Immaculate Heart.) Portugal, Spain, France, Poland, and other Catholic nations have been consecrated to Our Lady at various times and have reaped heavenly blessings from these acts.

The United States were dedicated to the Immaculate Conception by Bishop John Carroll, its first bishop, in 1792. In 1846, all the bishops of the nation officially named the Immaculate Conception the Patroness of the United States. An act of Consecration to the Immaculate Conception was made by the Bishops of the U.S. on the occasion of the dedication of the National Basilica in 1959 (the formula used was the same as, or very close to, the one employed by Bishop Carroll). Finally, in 2006 the Bishops renewed this act, this time consecrating the nation to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

If the acts of our hierarchy are to have any lasting effect, we Catholics of every state in life must make, renew, and live our own personal Marian consecrations. All advocates of total consecration to the Blessed Virgin tell us that the consecration is not a passing act. For it to be fruitful, it must be lived. We Catholic Americans have great examples of living the Marian consecration in the persons of Saint Katharine Drexel and the Servant of God, Father Thomas Fredrick Price.

I should like to emphasize that Marian consecration is not a phenomenon on the edges of Christianity. It is not merely a form of devotion that grew out of this or that school of piety. Although different schools have given it shape — especially the “French School,” out of which comes Saint Louis de Montfort — Marian consecration is a thing central to the Gospel. This is because Christians are by grace what Christ is by nature, children of God. Christ is constantly renewing the mystery of His Incarnation in the Mystical Body, and Mary is an active participant, being Mother of the Body as well as of the Head. Beyond that, the Christian life is a conformity to Christ, and by drawing close to the Sinless Mother of God, we are made more conformable to Jesus, for she is the “great mold of God,” as Saint Louis de Montfort said. Further, in giving Our Lady and Saint John to one another at the Foot of the Cross, Our Lord entrusted — consecrated, even — all the members of his Mystical Body to His Immaculate Mother. What He did on the Cross, we must second by our own volitional acts, and the act of perfect consecration to the Immaculate Virgin is an excellent way to do this. For, in so doing, we invite into our souls her who obtains for us “the grace of conversion and growth in holiness.”

We can apply to the conversion of America the words of the Servant of God, Cardinal August Hlond, Salesian priest, founder of the Society of Christ, and primate of Poland:

“Victory, if it comes, will certainly be a victory through Mary”!

(Our store site has several resources to help in making and living one’s Marian consecration.)

From Mormon to Catholic

2009-07-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

By Rick McCann

I’m sure most conversion stories start off cheerful and upbeat. However, the conversion which you are going to read about is not such a story. This is an account where Catholicism and an everyday not-so-mild-mannered citizen stand toe to toe for a good old-fashioned brawl. Hopefully, you can take comfort in knowing the fact that she did indeed become a Catholic — not unlike a lobster or a steak dinner, grand and glorious only after the chef had his way. Much like God the Father, I suppose, tenderizing or boiling our stubborn will out of us, until He can season it with His supernatural grace.

Christie’s story begins in the valley of Utah surrounded by mountains thirteen thousand feet high. Her father, Dick Hepworth, was married to her mother, Mary Patricia. It’s fair to say that living in Utah pretty much made her Mormon by association. She went to Sunday school and went through all the motions, but had no serious convictions in her beliefs. Her parents believed in God enough to ask for His help in raising their daughter, Christina Marie. She was a normal child, interested in the things that most children are, such as the insatiable curiosity of what it would be like to stick your hand in a lawn mower, while it was running, of course. Thanks to quick thinking on the parents’ behalf, a blood transfusion, and many hours of surgery, you can barely see the scars. A year later, after falling out of a camper during their annual family vacation, she had to be air-lifted to a hospital to save her life.

Not too many years passed when Christie’s parents divorced. Fast forward through years of dance, gymnastics, cheerleading, boyfriends, slumber parties, and other activities common for teenage girls, and she finds herself a graduate from school, but not sure what to do with her life, so she flies to Europe to get a taste of the European experience. Christie stayed there for the next two years and survived by dressing in a clown suit and selling balloon animals on the street. When people found out she was Mormon they would mock her religion and ask her how many wives the men were allowed these days. Ironically, she came back more grounded in her Mormonism than when she left, and this is where her conversion story begins.

Working at a five-star, fine dining establishment (Denny’s) she had the misfortune to meet an extremely handsome mountain man from Maine. In a short matter of time these two found themselves outside the walls of work enjoying each other’s company. The man from Maine, who had captured her attention, unbeknownst to her, was on the hunt for a bride. I believe it was during the first date that I told her what I was all about. I explained, not holding back at all, that my wife was to be Catholic, have lots of children, and resign herself to God’s will. At that moment she knew that she was not the one I was looking for. I’m not sure why there was another date after that — it could have been my muscular physique, my radiant blue eyes, or perhaps it was my fake Boston accent.

Whatever the case, two dates soon became four, and four turned into eight. It was not too long before we fell in love. It was a well-reserved courtship however, because she knew ultimately how I stood religiously — and I wasn’t even practicing at the time. When it came right to it we both tried not to love each other. She had no interest in being Catholic, and I was tired of not being a good, practicing Catholic. Due to my own weakness I could not stay away from Christie. She was strong-willed, and firm in personality, and I was sure that if I could convert her she would make an awesome Catholic. The more I try to recall the moment of her conversion, the more I have come to realize that it just didn’t happen overnight. We had all-night conversations about the Faith, complimented with coffee, cigarettes, and raw emotion. I am sure these talks helped, although I don’t think they were enough. No, I think my wife’s conversion was ultimately due to three major influences.

The first would be my mother. She raised me to be a good Catholic, having instilled in me the fear of God. I knew that, with her, marrying a non-Catholic was not going to be an option. As Christie grew more interested, my mother began giving her catechism lessons over the phone; she sent her Catholic books, a Catholic bible, tapes, movies, pamphlets, letters, green scapulars, medals, holy water, all the things about the one true religion that could be sent in the mail. And she prayed.

The second source would be my wife herself. She could think logically in spite of the emotional side effects. In short, she had good will and she cooperated with God’s grace. Christie put on her scapular on Sept. 11, 2001, after the Twin Tower attack. I called her from work that day and asked this favor of her, just in case there were worse attacks to come.

Thirdly, and I am sure it comes as no surprise, there was our most holy mother Mary, who, either through the scapular, through the Rosaries being said daily, or simply through an uncountable number of ways in which Mary dispensed her graces, the seed took root in Christie. I would like to publicly and in writing say to our Holy Queen: “Thank you.”

In April 2002, we traveled to Maine to meet and see my family. My wife attended her second Mass that trip and that is when she was baptized and received her first Holy Communion. Three days afterwards, we received the sacrament of Matrimony. Later, when we returned to Utah, Christie’s mother fell ill. She was in intensive care for three weeks. Hearing of Christie’s conversion, she requested that we have one of those Catholic Masses said for her. That evening she fell into a coma. She was conditionally baptized and passed away wearing the brown scapular.

My wife and I are the recipients of God’s abounding generosity. We are the proud parents of six strapping young lads: Tavin James, Sean Patrick, Tristan Matthew, Brendan Timothy, Joseph Shay, Killian Vincent and another one on the way. I am blessed and proud to say we all recite the rosary together daily as a family and, of course, we all wear Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s brown scapular.

This is the brief story of my wife’s conversion to the one true Faith.

Email Rick McCann at  micman@marysimmaculatecleaning.com

The Forbidden Tree

2009-06-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

By Russell LaPlume

I find it peculiar, as I grow older and try to prepare for the heavenly country, to reminisce more and more about my youth. I can certainly apply the words of the author, “they were the best of times; they were the worst of times,” to that of my passage from youth to adolescence. And now, after having embraced the traditional Faith, which I had regrettably abandoned in my young adulthood, I can look back to see just how that abandonment came about.

I was born in 1950 to loving parents of French Canadian descent in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a large mill town filled with every ethnic variety known to man. My parents bore thirteen children, I being number eleven in the clan, and nurtured us all with great earnest in the Catholic Faith. I was sent to the same Catholic school that my siblings had attended before me, which really was a disadvantage, because, by this time, the nuns had learned all they needed to know, in expectation of what I had to offer, from observing the habits of my older brothers. And I did not disappoint them. I was impish and, several times, the nuns had to restrain me by tying me to my desk. Those knots — I don’t know how they looped them — would have defied the efforts of any sailor to loosen.

I can still remember the interior of that school, Sacred Heart by name, with its cavernous classrooms, shoe-stomping stairs, and basement lavatories which, being always poorly lit, were dungeon-like and a great inducement to stay put in the classroom regardless of your needs. And the nuns – oh, how I loved the nuns! They also were from Canada, the Sisters of St. Joseph I believe, and farm girls to the core. It was not uncommon to see them (and Sr. Paul Rita comes readily to mind quite personally) roll up their sleeves and deliver a nasty haymaker to the miscreant: another great inducement to stay out of mischief (or at least not get caught). I really cannot understand when former Catholics, being asked why they left the Church, almost always bring up some episode with a certain sister, blaming her for their departure. They forget the sisters’ patient tolerance of our unruliness, the endless hours they spent in teaching numbskulls the three “R’s” (and they were reading, ‘riting, and religion, I’ll have you know), and the sharing of their intimate faith to mostly distracted students. It was under their tutorship that dirty little boys became civilized altar boys, and giggly little girls learned the rudiments of becoming young ladies. And I’ll never forget the oak tree that stood exactly in the middle of our recess yard. In retrospect it reminds me of the forbidden tree in Paradise, for it was the great dividing line between girls and boys, always patrolled by clapper-wielding sisters ready to stretch the ear of any student whose shadow even crossed that line. And that brings me to the gist of this story.

Our classrooms, from grades one through eight, were arranged so that the boys and girls sat separated. There were three rows each for the boys and the girls, with a double space between the two. To walk down that double aisle without permission from the sister was tantamount to invading a cloister. Lavatory times were also regulated so that the girls went first, then the boys after. I can remember many times when the boys looked squeamish because the girls were running later than usual. “Ladies first” did not make much of an impression to us young boys. The cafeteria was separated also – we all took our lunch at the same time – but after we finished, we boys had to walk through the girls’ recess side to get to our side. Upon leaving the cafeteria, we encountered a line of nuns creating a corridor for safe passage to the boys’ side. At first I thought it was some sort of quality control, because the nuns would stop certain boys and wipe the remainder of their lunch off their chins or uniforms. Much later I realized its true purpose: that of keeping the boys and girls separated. All of these means were employed when we were young and innocent. The “why” is obvious, is it not? It was to impress upon us the biological fact that boys and girls are truly different, and always shall be, in body and temperament. And it was to remind us later that contact with the opposite sex should always be guarded and, unless married, should always be chaperoned.

That figurative oak tree should have stamped forever in my mind the need to separate the sexes and observe that no transgressions should ever occur. As devout as my parents were, for some reason they let us children roam the streets at will. There was minimal diligence in who we played with, or where we were, as long as we were back home before the streetlight in front of our house went on (in later years we figured out how to rig the light to not come on by removing the plate covering the electrical wires, making the connections just loose enough so that with a sharp rap to the pole, the lights would come off and on at will). It all seemed so innocent as children to have someone of the opposite sex as a playmate, but everybody grows up and that familiarity breeds problems. Sooner or later the game of tag takes on a whole new meaning. This pest of allowing children of both sexes to play or socialize together unchaperoned has grown over the past two generations into a moral crisis, even in Catholic families who should know better.

I will always remember the film, “The Quiet Man,” with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. The film concluded with two courting adults riding in the back of a horse-drawn cart that was being driven by their chaperone. You see, even at their advanced age, courting meant being chaperoned. Courting without supervision is properly called dating and, for the safety of our children, should not be tolerated. Not employing this discipline in my own family resulted in several out-of-wedlock childbirths; but thank God we had given them enough of the Faith to repent of their sins and become good, Catholic parents. The sins of the father are visited on the children sometimes, for this blight of the age had happened to me.

In Pius XI’s encyclical, The Christian Education of Youth, he states that those who would not oppose the separation of the sexes, especially in sports, were guilty of denying original sin. The heresy of Americanism is mostly viewed in its spiritual sense; that is, the indifference in regards to other religions. But I think there is a more insidious side to this heresy – that of the discipline side – where we think that we are good Catholics because we attend Mass once a week, maybe say the family Rosary, and oppose abortion, and, therefore, all is covered in our spiritual life. We must remember the social side of Americanism – the side that constantly assaults our children with social activities that co-mingle the sexes. It is a battle for parents – a mighty battle – to keep their children undefiled in this world. We must monitor their activities constantly without letting them lose heart. Satan is seeking an opening to devour them, and if we keep in mind Our Lady’s words at Fatima that more souls go to hell because of the sins of the flesh than for any other reason, our untiring effort in keeping them pure will be rewarded. We need to keep the apple tree of Paradise in our minds and an oak tree in our children’s playing fields.

Email Russell LaPlume at rlp@catholicism.org.

The Seven Sorrows of Mary

2009-06-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

By Brian Kelly

When Our Lady appeared to two Catholic girls in Rwanda from 1981-1984, she asked them to warn and exhort the faithful in her name to return to God, do penance, and recognize and confess their sins in order to avert a horrible chastisement to come. Mary also asked the girls to spread devotion to her holy rosary and to her chaplet of the Seven Sorrows. Her message, which has the approval of the local ordinary, Frederic Rubwejanga, Bishop of Kibungo, went unheeded. The tragedy, which the girls saw in their visions, was horrific. Come April 1994, the country was awash in carnage. The Hutu militia unleashed an inhuman rage on the Tutsi people and moderate Hutus. Eight hundred thousand people died in the one hundred worse days of the slaughter, with the international community doing nothing to intervene. Rwanda is about seventy percent Christian, and over fifty percent Catholic. Most of the victims were Catholic, but so were many of the murderers. It is a horribly tragic episode, having, as a secondary cause, much more to do with ethnicity and the elitism of the ruling Tutsi class than religion. However, priests and nuns were often principal targets of the rampaging Hutus, many of them killed inside their churches, which were also desecrated.

One of the survivors of this genocide was Immaculée Llibagizi, whose book, Left to Tell, was reviewed on our website by Eleonore Villarrubia. Immaculée has become an ambassador for Our Lady, promoting pilgrimages to her shrine in Kibungo. The shrine is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. She has also written a book on the apparitions.

What was true for Catholic Rwanda is true for Catholics throughout the whole world. If we do not do penance, as Our Lord told the Jews, "[we] shall all likewise perish."

At the 2005 synod of bishops, Bishop Rubwejanga spoke about the massacres, about forgiveness, and about hope:

Also, it is a fact that certain persons were killed in our churches . . . . [Our] challenges never lack, especially the one of reconciliation, but the vast majority of survivors of the national drama have understood, better than ever, the need for the sacrament of the Eucharist that gathers and seals our ties of broken brotherhood. Among the promising signs, there is the increase in the devotion to Our Lady of Kibungo, whose apparitions have been recognized by the local bishop for the past four years. The central message of these apparitions was conversion while there is still time.

[W]hile there is still time. These words should stir us to heed the warnings of our Blessed Mother. Let us appease her sorrows by giving her our love and devotion. With her Immaculate Heart she wishes to hold us in the crossing of her arms and in the folds of her mantle, as she assured Blessed Juan Diego.

September 15 is the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows, but on the Friday before Good Friday, April 3 this year, the Church honors Our Lady's Seven Sorrows in particular:

1) The prophecy of Simeon: "Thy own soul a sword shall pierce."
2) The flight into Egypt
3) The losing of the Child Jesus in the temple; Mary's three days of anguish
4) Mary's meeting Jesus as He carried His Cross to Calvary
5) The crucifixion and death of Jesus
6) The taking down of Jesus' body from the Cross and Mary's receiving it in her arms
7) The burial of Jesus

As we move the beads of our rosary through our fingers, let us meditate on these seven sorrows — not as a replacement for the regular fifteen mysteries, but as a special devotion from time to time, especially during the remainder of Lent. Our Lady requested it when she came to Rwanda. Do you not think that, while the Mother of God suffered these things in her mortal life, she was also offering up, in union with her Son, her interior pain for the salvation of the world? Who can fathom the pain of a heart without sin, immaculate, adorned with the jewels of every virtue in measureless degree? Here was a heart so good that it drew the Son of God to leap from eternity into time so that He could unite Himself with it incarnationally. She was His masterpiece, destined from all eternity to be the Mother of God.

After reading Sister Marie Thérèse's article "I Can't Mediate," in which she provides such excellent advice from the work of Father John Moffat, perhaps Our Lady's sorrows can be made more present to us.

It was for our salvation that Mary received with sorrow the prophecy of Simeon. She knew well that the Mother of the Messiah would suffer in union with her Son when she gave God her "fiat" at the Annunciation. Simeon's words only reinforced, more personally for her, what the prophets had foretold of "the Man of Sorrows."

It was for our salvation that Mary and Joseph took the divine Child and fled the wrath of Herod, so shortly after the Baby's birth. Already He was "a sign of contradiction" as Simeon had foretold. Already His Mother felt the first piercing of her Immaculate Heart.

It was for our salvation that Mary and Joseph willingly endured the sorrow of not knowing for three days what had happened to the Child entrusted to them. This was Joseph's greatest sorrow, that the chosen foster-father had failed in his paternal responsibility; understanding his pain, can you imagine the pain of the Mother? "Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing."

It was for our salvation that Mary ran to meet her Son when she received the news of His apprehension. What sorrow she endured when she could not find a way to get to Him at the Praetorium! What sorrow she felt when she heard the rabble call out for His blood! How she longed to look into His eyes and give Him her support, her blessing even, her strength! She would meet Him on the way to His execution. If she ran ahead of the Cross, she could catch Him as He passed by carrying it. Their eyes meet at last. "O Woman," His gaze seems to say to her, "you know, as no other, that I must be about My Father's business." "My Son," she seems to say to Him, "do whatever He tells Thee."

And so, her Heart would continue to be pierced through again and again, as she sacrificed herself with Him while He was being nailed to the Cross; as He hung on it in agony for three hours; and as He commended His soul to His Father in death. She could still feel the piercing of the lance in her Heart, that Jesus was not able to feel in His own, even as she laid Him in the sepulcher, and, perhaps even more agonizingly, as she walked away. But for the beloved John, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the holy women, how sorrowful and inglorious a funeral was this!

The Queen of Heaven did not need to look back when she heard the men roll the great stone in front of the tomb. Jesus, her Son, was the Resurrection and the Life.

Email Brian Kelly at bdk@catholicism.org.

The Third Order has been Hard at Work!

2009-06-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

Br. John Marie Vianney

It is a little difficult to realize that the Feast of the Purification marked the second year of my prefecture. Time flies! The Third Order has not been idle.

We have added a monthly quiz to our regular monthly business meeting on the First Saturday of the month. This lighter part of the meeting helps to foster Brother Francis’ philosophy that what we do intellectually as a school should not be all work, but fun as well.

We have renewed the apostolate of the Pilgrim Virgin Statue, which belongs to the Third Order. Right now, the statue is touring the Richmond, NH area. Families keep the statue for a week and say the rosary before it. The statue will be going across the country later in the year.

We began a formation program for tertiaries, which has the hallmark of assigning seasoned mentors to guide candidates through the matriculation process. The program was in the planning and pilot stages for more than a year.

We began a regular pro-life witness program. On the third Saturday of every month, Third Order members (and whoever else wishes to join them) go to the local Planned Parenthood Center in Keene to offer prayers of reparation for the evil work being performed inside its walls. Not only are birth control pills and devices dispensed at this center, but also the abortifacient “morning after” pill. Mothers are given the tools at this facility to kill their pre-born babies.

We have rejuvenated the Circles of Study program by establishing a new website for the Saint Augustine Institute (http://sai.catholicism.org). The regular business of the Third Order is also published on the SAI website. The circles will be a natural gateway into the Third Order for those who see the value in cultivating a Catholic culture as a united group.

We would also like our Third Order members to make use of the Center’s website, Catholicism.org. Daily news updates, columns, and articles appear on the home page. Inside the site there is a wealth of Catholic information for family use, personal use, and circle use. The Center has put countless hours of work into creating this site. Take advantage of it. It is easy to navigate once you get used to the headings and related topics. It also has a search engine where you can locate any of hundreds of articles published by SBC.

Our team of officers and directors work hard all year for the good of the order and the crusade to convert America. Our board of officers includes Tertiaries: Br. Michael Maria, Membership Director; Br. Joseph Mary, Local Director; Br. John the Baptist, Financial Secretary; Br. Joseph Mary, Treasurer; Br. Louis Marie, Recorder; and Br. Lawrence Mary, Mentoring Director.

As prefect, my hope is to see every tertiary in a Circle of Studies, even if they have already received their diploma. Veteran graduates of SAI can greatly enhance the quality of circle meetings.

During this year I hope to speak directly with as many Third Order members as I can contact. It would be wonderful for those tertiaries who live anywhere near the monastery to make an annual visit to Saint Benedict Center here in Richmond.

What else can we do to please Our Lord? Remember, February was the month of the Holy Passion of Our Lord. Dedicate yourself to making a good Lent. March is the Month of Saint Joseph. We ought not to forget the greatest of all saints after the Blessed Mother. The foster-father of Our Lord is venerated by the Church with the cultus of protodulia, first among the saints. Our Lady is actually venerated on a plane all her own, with the worship of hyperdulia, beyond all angels and saints. The veneration given to God in Three Persons is that of adoration, or latria, which is divine worship. Br. André Marie, our prior, has a beautiful entry on his Theology Blog on Saint Joseph, the Holy Patriarch of Nazareth, the Patron and Protector of Holy Mother Church. To read this wonderful article go to http://brotherandre.stblogs.com. The Litany of St. Joseph is also on that web page.

Please remember, my brothers and sisters, as tertiaries we are part of an order. (Anyone interested in joining the Third Order should contact our Membership Director at thirdorder@catholicism.org.) It’s a very special order. Being a member should result in firm commitment, obedience, and loyalty, in addition to single-mindedness, constancy, and perseverance in pursuit of the goals of our crusade. Being a member signifies one’s willingness to work as part of a team toward the team’s common goals. In unity there is strength.

Being part of an order, it is hoped, will insure the personal sanctification and devotion to Our Lady that were a part of your Consecration.¹
Even though we are active laymen and women, as Third Order members, we should strive to cultivate a taste for the contemplative spirit. This is the counsel of the saints for all the faithful. Prayer and meditation are necessary for all members of the Church Militant.

Our crusade also needs people motivated to be active evangelizers and docile enough to commit to a period of training and study. A nation cannot be converted on zeal alone, without knowledge. Ours is a special formation, and Brother Francis, although no longer actively teaching, is our exemplar. Listening to his recorded talks on tape or CD is the most excellent way to learn the language and the art of evangelization. You will not find a better teacher anywhere. Isn’t it time for you to join this crusade?

Email Brother John Marie Vianney at  oprefect@catholicism.org.

1. Anyone can make his Consecration to Our Lord through Our Lady. You do not have to join the Third Order to do that, but making your Consecration is a prerequisite to becoming a tertiary in our order.

I Can't Meditate

2009-06-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

By Sister Marie Thérèse, M.I.C.M.

This is an excerpt from a treasure of a book for religious sisters by Father John E. Moffatt, S.J., entitled: Listen, Sister. I modified it slightly so that you will more easily be able to apply it to yourself. Father proves again and again in his book that having a sense of humor is a great help to progress in the spiritual life. After reading this article, you could, for starters, apply your newly-discovered talent to the mysteries of the Rosary, particularly when you meditate for fifteen minutes to fulfill Our Lady's request for the Five First Saturdays. And now, Father Moffatt:

Listen, my friend. You can't meditate? You never did learn how? Every time you try you make a miserable mess of it? It's just no use? You simply cannot succeed? You have used all the books with their preludes and points and various devices? You have followed directions with meticulous exactness? But the net result is zero? It's not for you? You just cannot meditate?

Listen, my friend. Don't be ludicrous. You can meditate. Everyone can. Good and bad, saint and sinner, learned and ignorant, all can meditate — all do meditate.

The businessman in his office lost in a brown study over the papers on his desk — what is he doing? He is meditating. Meditating on that business deal that is under negotiation. The small boy in the classroom dreaming his dreams as he stares with vacant gaze at the book before him — what is he doing? He, too, is meditating — meditating on the delightful freedom of the vacation time with its sunlit fields in which to roam, its games, its fishing rod, its swimming hole. The sweet girl graduate, as the day of Commencement approaches — how is she engaged through well-nigh all her waking hours? In eager meditation on the coming thrilling event in her young life.

You are not unlike the rest. You, too, can meditate. You can't help but do so. Listen. After you read that paper at the business meeting, or after you performed on the piano for your family, or sang with your exquisite voice at that little family entertainment, and your mother came to your room and told you, with all her motherly sweetness, how "utterly wonderful it was — the most beautiful thing she had ever heard — how proud she was of her child," tell me, did you meditate? Did you meditate? You certainly did. You know you did. You couldn't help it. (For you gentlemen, imagine getting well-earned praise from your boss.)

All the rest of the evening you meditated on the lovely compliment that you had been given. You fell asleep relishing its sweetness. When you half-awakened in the night you spontaneously took up the thread and reveled in a few precious moments of blissful meditation. It was the first thought with which you greeted the dawn, and all day long, and every day for a week or more, your meditation went on unwearyingly, without effort, intertwining itself into the warp and weft of your daily duties, coloring all with its golden glow of most supreme delight.

And how long were the points of that meditation? There were no "points" and no "preludes," either; just one single "point," quite undeveloped, not more than a dozen words long. Yet those few words were plenty and more than sufficient, for hours and days of delightful, effortless meditation. With what relish you savored, over and over again, each single phrase Mother had spoken: "utterly wonderful" ... "most beautiful she had ever heard" — and Mother had heard so many wonderful things in her life; how proud she was of you — no doubt she would tell her friends all about it. With that delight you recalled even the look on her face, harkened again and again to the tone of her voice and its every inflection as she gave you that "point" of your meditation! Yes, and was that not a fruitful meditation? Were you not "walking on air" for days on end with the joy of it all? And did it not spur you on to outdo yourself in the future as opportunity offered?

Yet — yet you say that you cannot meditate! Listen, my friend. Are you willing to admit that, while a simple compliment a dozen words long is sufficient to hold you under its spell in hours of ecstatic joy, you find nothing to hold your attention, nothing to touch your heart, to arouse your affections and resolutions, in all the precious, blessed things your Lord has said to you: "I have loved you with an everlasting love"... "As the Father has loved me, so do I love you"... "I call you not servants now, but friends"... "I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am you also may be"... . "My delight is to be with the children of men"... "come to me and I will refresh you" — and dozens more? Is it possible that, though the thought of a trifling act of kindness on the part of a creature holds you enraptured in its embrace and carries you off on the wings of undisturbed contemplation, you find no response in your mind or heart at the thought of the infinite deeds of kindness the Master has done for you as His way of saying, "I love you"? Christ, for love of you, a Babe on the straw in a cattle shed! Christ publicly whipped in your stead! Christ dying in agony that you might live! Christ, for you, a prisoner under lock and key in His narrow tabernacle cell! Christ nourishing your soul with His Flesh and Blood! Yet you cannot meditate?

Listen, my friend. Go to your room and blush for shame — and meditate.

Follow SBC on Twitter

2009-06-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

If you use the popular microblogging application, you can now follow our web site updates on Twitter. We are SBC_Catholic. The headline of every new posting to our site will “tweet,” with a shortened URL showing up at the end. This URL will take you to the article on our site.

Should you find this feature useful, we encourage you to notify your friends who use Twitter to follow us. God bless you and may Our Lady watch over you!

Our Lady of America and the Obama Nation

2009-05-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

Brian Kelly has written on this site about Our Lady of America and her apparitions to the holy religious in Ohio, Sister Mary Ephrem (Mildred Neuzil). These apparitions are approved by the Church, as the recent canonical study of the case by Archbishop Burke testifies. While there are many supposed apparitions which claim our attention, we put no credence in those lacking the Church's approbation. Since this apparition is approved, and since it has a message for the Church in America, we consider it worthy of attention, especially now.

Why now? To begin an answer, I present a thumbnail sketch of our present situation in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Our economy is a disaster, with some economists predicting a "super-crash" worse than the Great Depression. Our military is overextended in several unjust wars of aggression, policing the world for interests other than those of the American people. Recently, to the the vote on Proposition 8, furious mobs of homosexual activists have begun to perpetrate hate crimes against law-abiding citizens, who wish to protect marriage from the unnatural agenda of the "gay" lobby. As these and other situations continue to spin out of control, the American people have elected to the highest office of the land a Marxist ideologue who is more beloved by the baby-slaughtering industry than even Hilary Clinton. Therefore, unless present efforts to have his presidency challenged on constitutional grounds succeed (and that doesn't appear likely), we will have in the White House a socialist who wishes to protect, by means of the Freedom of Choice Act, a woman's "right" to commit infanticide. This will be the most militantly pro-abortion regime we have ever had. The American bishops are speaking out against the proposed legislation, and considering strong sanctions against pro-FOCA legislators, but their activities in the political arena have left some of them vulnerable to attack from pro-abortion watch-dog groups. This could presage a constitutional showdown at the OK Corral.

A more focused picture comes into view when you add to this the effects of a ubiquitous entertainment industry that hawks sex and violence; tax-financed indoctrination into feminism, homosexualism, and anti-Christian progressivism (a.k.a., "public education"); and the grim reality of our demographic winter, whereby we are making ourselves extinct.

Could all this mess produce a persecution of the Church? By this I mean a major, government-authorized one. It certainly could. In "Conscience and the Nannie State," I quoted Richard Weaver to this effect: "An ancient axiom of politics teaches that a spoiled people invite despotic control. Their failure to maintain internal discipline is followed by some rationalized organization in the service of a single powerful will. In this particular, at least, history, with all her volumes vast, has but one page" (Ideas Have Consequences, pg. 91). Already, hate-crime laws are being used against professing Christians who defend the natural law in the public arena. Those who push this radical agenda are among Obama's closest allies. As things degenerate a few degrees, what is to prevent wholesale, state-sponsored attacks on the Church's liberty?

The harassment Joe the Plumber received for simply exposing the candidate's socialism could very well auger something much worse when the candidate takes office.

Another consideration is relevant here, one that introduces the doctrine of God's Providence into our considerations. Several American apostles (e.g. Orestes Brownson, Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos) have said that the Church in America will flourish only when it has suffered persecution. We are prosperous and have all the sins of a prosperous people, including spiritual sloth and indifference to supernatural truth. A little suffering, a little hunger, a little taste of the whip, could be just the thing we need to take God's rights and our salvation a bit more seriously.

Now, at last, we come to the prophesies of Our Lady of America. Here is a several-paragraph excerpt describing one apparition. The emphasis is mine.

On the evening of the feast of the Most Holy Rosary, October 7, 1957, Our Lady again appeared. Her hands were clasped in an attitude of prayer. Her look was serious, though her countenance retained its usual deep serenity. Hanging from her right hand was a blue rosary of a glass-like quality. I was conscious of the fact that what she was about to say to me was not only very grave but of the utmost importance. Our Lady reiterated in a similar manner her first warnings:

"My beloved daughter, what I am about to tell you concerns in a particular way my children in America. Unless they do penance by mortification and self-denial and thus reform their lives, God will visit them with punishments hitherto unknown to them.

"My child, there will be peace, as has been promised, but not until my children are purified and cleansed from defilement, and clothed thus with the white garment of grace, are made ready to receive this peace, so long promised and so long held back because of the sins of men.

"My dear children, either you will do as I desire and reform your lives, or God Himself will need to cleanse you in the fires of untold punishment. You must be prepared to receive His great gift of peace. If you will not prepare yourselves, God will Himself be forced to do so in His justice and mercy.

"Making the rosary a family prayer is very pleasing to me. I ask that all families strive to do so. But be careful to say it with great devotion, meditating on each mystery and striving to imitate in your daily lives the virtues depicted therein. Live the mysteries of the rosary as I lived them, and it will become a chain binding you to me forever. They who are found in the circle of my rosary will never be lost. I myself will lead them at death to the throne of my Son, to be eternally united to Him.

'"Write these words upon your hearts, my dear children, because of the compassion I have for you in my Immaculate Heart. Oh, if you knew the punishments I am holding back from you by my pleading and intercession on your behalf!

"Will you do as I wish at last, my children?''

The cynic may say that every apparition — true and false — speaks of chastisements of some sort, and often in a general way. True, but this apparition is approved by the Church, and is for the Church in America. Whatever it says pertains not to the Church in general, but to the Church in our Republic. Because of this, we should pay particular attention to its warnings, which speak of "punishments hitherto unknown to" us if we fail to "reform [our] lives." And we — we American Catholics — have failed to reform our lives from the time this message was given fifty-one years ago. The president whose term we await with dread received 54% of the Catholic vote. More than half of the Catholics of our Republic made themselves accomplices to an Orwellian anti-Christian program.

Some will object that, if so many Catholics are complicit in this attack upon Christian social order, a real persecution of the Church would not seem likely. In response, I would offer the speculation that those who are complicit will suffer from the economic hardships and other calamities visited upon us, but that, in addition, an active persecution will befall all those bishops, priests, and faithful who stand up for Christ the King — however few they may be. I make no pretense of having figured all this out, in the fashion of a slick televangelist, who has the Book of Daniel's end-times chronology neatly schematized. What I do know is the content of the above sober warnings of Our Lady, from an approved apparition. Her words can't even be mistranslated; the revelations were made in English.

But there is hope here, for Our Lady of America also tells us that this suffering will be "purifying," and that it will prepare us to "receive [God's] great gift of peace." Thus, the condition for America's conversion, according to a great nineteenth-century Catholic philosopher and a beatified missionary from the same era, will be realized in what Our Lady has prophesied.

Maybe President Barack Obama is what the Church in this country really needs.

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