Fortnight for Freedom: Votive High Mass of St. Thomas More

It has been a red-letter week for some of us who love pre-conciliar rites.  Last weekend, my chapter had a visit from our religious assistant, Fr. Vincent Kelber, O.P., and he gave us sung High Mass for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in the Dominican Rite.  Yesterday, we had a visit from our dear friend, the Inimitable Fr. Andrew Szymakowski of the Baker Diocese,  on vacation from canon law school, who gave us sung High Mass of St. Thomas More in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.  

Although yesterday was the feast of Thomas More on the new calendar, on the preconciliar calendar it falls on July 6th -- the actual date of his martyrdom -- so this was a votive Mass.  This was our contribution to the Fortnight for Freedom: this Mass was offered for the intention of religious freedom in our country, and the crushing, humiliating defeat of the Church's enemies.

Here, then, appropriately enough, is our battlefield altar -- an actual, collapsible altar for use on the battlefield -- at our temporary chapel in the big room at Chapter House in Homedale, prepared for Mass.  Though this was not an actual battlefield Mass, our conditions are nevertheless pretty primitive: we don't even have matching candlesticks, and we have to borrow supplies anytime we have Mass in the Extraordinary Form.  Fr. Joseph Levine, also of the Baker Diocese -- and who, by the way, preaches a rocking homily and celebrates a beautiful TLM -- was kind enough to lend us the altar cards, altar missal and a set of red vestments.

We tried to get Father to pose for a nice picture in those beautiful vestments, but unfortunately, he wasn't cooperating.  He does love to clown around...  

...but once Mass starts, he's all business.  I have to say that Fr. Andy is a character and a half and has as much personality as any priest, or indeed, any human being I have ever known.  He is highly intelligent, gifted, a great conversationalist, a talented speaker (in no fewer than three languages), and loves to laugh.  But not one iota of any of this shows while he is at the altar.  When he celebrates Mass, Andy Szymakowski is totally hidden -- as he should be, as Holy Mass is not his work or indeed the work of any mere mortal.  Here is a priest who gets out of God's way, and he does it by the simple expedient of saying the black and doing the red.    

Which, frankly, he finds it much easier to do in the Extraordinary Form than his inexperienced little congregation, which made many mistakes.  Here we are.  The best part of this pic is you can't see me in it.  But I'm there!

Father says the words of institution.

The Bread of Life.

And the Chalice of Salvation.

Here is a close-up of that image embroidered on the back of his chasuble.

And Holy Communion on the prie-dieux.

Incidentally, one thing that is not captured by any of these pictures is the howling dust storm that began raging during Mass.  The ferocity of the wind outside, while the August Sacrifice proceeded calmly inside, seemed a perfect analogue of the world's wrack and turmoil as the forces of hell vent their fury on the Church, which nevertheless enjoys the peace the world can neither give nor take away.

The time has come for America to decide where she prefers to be during the storm: outside or inside?  May she choose wisely.   St. Thomas More, pray for us.

Midsummer

Today was the summer solstice, when the sun reached its highest point in the sky, making this the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  From here on out, the days will grow shorter.  

And so, this is a fitting time for the Nativity of John the Baptist, which is celebrated on Sunday.  It shows that John's declaration that he must decrease while Jesus increased was in fact chosen from the beginning to be the theme of his whole life.  As John's decrease was signaled at his birth by the summer solstice, so Jesus' increase was signaled at His birth by the winter solstice, when the hours of daylight begin to increase.

Nor is that the end of the astronomical coincidences.  The vernal equinox heralds the Annunciation -- when the Spring of the Incarnation dissipates the winter of hell's dominion over the world -- and of course also Easter, when new life springs up even from the grave itself.

None of this is the product of chance.  The God of Order arranged it so.

Ireland's War on the Church

St. John Nepomucene: preferred to die rather than give up the secrets of the confessional.

Ireland -- the island that gave the world spiritual giants like Brendan the Navigator, Brigid of Kildare, Columba, Fr. Willie Doyle -- will soon be filling its jails with priests.  At any rate, there is no other way to understand the holding of Ireland's Minister for Justice (or should that be Minister for "Justice") Alan Shatter that the seal of the confessional does not exempt priests from reporting the abuse of children or vulnerable adults.  There is no basis for a claim of privilege, says Shatter, now that the special position of the Catholic Church has been written out of the Irish Constitution.

So, then, it seems priests will be going to jail for the iniquitous crime of upholding the sacramental seal -- and they will go to jail, even the most off-the-wall liberal ones.  And how, it may well be asked, will the police know that priests aren't violating the seal?  Will molesters give themselves up?  Will the government resort to sacrilege in the form of undercover sting operations?  Or will it simply start rounding up priests who haven't reported any abusers, on the assumption that they must be withholding information?   

What are the people of Ireland going to do about this outrage?  In an age when only 31% of Irish attend Mass every week, can we expect an uprising?

The country that once held stubbornly to her Catholic faith in defiance of English oppression is not only abandoning the faith, but peopling her government with evil men of the same stamp as the old oppressors.  God help Ireland.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

I come home tonight, a little queasy from the greasy popcorn that was my dinner, after seeing For Greater Glory.  I hereby mount the bandwagon of bloggers who think every Catholic ought to see this movie -- including the credits, all the way to the end.  I saw For Greater Glory in a theater that I shared with about six other people, illustrating the need to promote by word of mouth this independently-made film that enjoys the backing of no major studios in post-Christian Hollywood.

For Greater Glory is about the 1926-1929 Cristero War in Mexico, a rebellion against Plutarco Calles' brutal persecution of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic forces made mistakes and had plenty of sinners in their ranks, including priests who actually took up arms, thereby excluding themselves, if not from heaven, at least from potential causes for canonization.  Indeed, the most unlikely people found their way into the ranks of the Cristeros, especially Enrique Gorostieta (played by Andy Garcia), the retired liberal atheist general who turned the rebels into an army.   The war did not result in the overthrow of Plutarco Calles, or in total restoration of liberty for the Church; but it did produce many saints and martyrs, including the boy martyr Jose Sanchez del Rio (played by Mauricio Kuri), who was beatified by Pope Benedict during the first year of his reign.  Bl. Miguel Pro, perhaps one of the best-known figures of the war, is not mentioned by name in this film, but there is a scene instantly recognizable as a re-enactment of his martyrdom.

Why is For Greater Glory worth promoting?  Despite liberties taken with the history for the sake of drama, it is a worthy film in every respect.  There is certainly violence, resulting in an R rating, but the violence does not attain to levels of gratuitousness.  There is no sex, no nudity (in one brief scene, female Cristeros are seen in their underwear, secreting on their persons ammunition for smuggling to the troops), no blue language.  And, for once, Catholics are the good guys, and priests are not shown as perverts -- not even Fr. Reyes Vega, who was known not only for his brilliant soldiery but also for his cruelty and his less-than-strict adherence to his priestly obligations.  There are a number of scenes showing the Cristeros at worship.  The Tridentine Mass has a particularly compelling, edgy beauty  when celebrated on the battlefield, or amid ruins, or in a fugitive camp hidden in the desert.  The priest at the altar, with hundreds of scruffy soldiers kneeling behind him, looks like a general leading his troops into battle. Indeed, he is doing precisely that: exercising the priesthood of the baptized, the Cristeros will offer themselves up on the field of battle in union with the Sacrifice of Calvary, for the sake of the Kingdom.  The physical battles of the Cristero War are but the outward, sensible manifestations of the greater spiritual war against the forces of hell; the stakes are nothing less than the eternal destiny of souls.  For Greater Glory is about so much more than freedom in the political order; it is about how individual souls find redemption -- or lose it.     

Finally, For Greater Glory comes out at a time when it has taken on a far greater relevance in the United States than what its makers had anticipated when it was filmed.  Politicians of the same ideological stamp as Plutarco Calles have taken power in this country and have already begun enacting laws that encroach on the freedom of the Church.  In Mexico, Calles' laws against the Church were followed up by brute force; is it not naive to suppose that the same could not happen here?

¡Viva Cristo Rey!  

Recovering Our Lost Weapons

At this moment, the little chant schola I belong to is working on the Mass propers for the feast of Bl. Margaret of Castello, the patroness of my lay Dominican chapter.  I don't believe there is a Mass for her feast in the Roman Rite, but there is in the Dominican Rite; and the plan is to have a votive Mass in her honor the next time the inimitable Fr. Vincent Kelber, O.P., our religious assistant and Dominican Rite expert, comes to visit.

These propers are no easy proposition.  Like chant Mass propers in the Roman Rite, the Bl. Margaret propers are quite intricate; the score to the Responsorium (the Dominican Rite's term for the Gradual) particularly resembles a seven-lane ant highway.  But these chants are not dissimilar to those sung on any Sunday or feast day in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite: thumb through a copy of the Liber Usualis, or look at the sacred music files on the Institute of Christ the King website, and it becomes clear that music of this caliber is business as usual in the older forms of Mass.  Within living memory, there must have been many places where chants like these were sung every week.  Certainly, the Liber Usualis is organized in such a way as to make clear that a high degree of knowledge is presumed on the part of those who use it.

Sadly, such a presumption can no longer be made.  Music in the same league as Bl. Margaret's propers are not business as usual, or even business as unusual, in many places today.  Those of us who are trying to bring back traditional worship, and who have no teachers except what we can find in books or on the internet, are like kindergartners trying to learn calculus.  But what is even sadder is that so many people are happy about this state of affairs.

Let these incredible and appalling facts sink in.  We have fallen from excellence in our worship.  That, in itself, is bad enough.  But it gets worse.  Not only have we fallen from excellence; we do not in the least regret having done so.  Not only do we not regret it; we rejoice in it.  Not only do we rejoice in it; we even go so far as to consider ourselves morally superior to those for whom the excellence we have lost was a way of life.  We do this instinctively -- even those who have never attended any Mass according to the rites of 1962, and therefore have no idea what it is they are so glad to be rid of.  

In short, by having cast off the high and the excellent, we think we have embraced humility and cast off vanity, pride and conceit.  But it is precisely vanity, pride and conceit that we have embraced, and humility that we have cast off, blinding ourselves to the true, the good and the beautiful; and, being thus puffed up and blinded, we find ourselves horribly disadvantaged in the face of the Enemy whose armies, seeing our weakness, advance rapidly and relentlessly upon us.

This, surely, is why Pope Benedict has taken the pre-conciliar rites -- including the Dominican Rite -- out of mothballs and made a gift of them, not only to those who were devoted to them before the changes of Paul VI, but to all Catholics.  We need to recover our lost weapons, and rearm for battle.  And this is why the little schola -- which has never done a sung Mass in the Dominican Rite -- will, with the help of God's grace, struggle on stubbornly to master the propers for our little patroness, and hopefully win for ourselves and those who attend this Mass a share in the virtues that brought her safely through a lifetime of tribulations. 

April 13th: Bl. Margaret of Castello, O.P.

The hippies of the '60s and '70s prided themselves (and some of them still pride themselves) on being "counter-cultural" just because they shunned barbers, smoked dope, wore draw-string pants and primitive jewelry, and could sit through an entire Joan Baez concert without wanting to slit their wrists.  But when it comes to being counter-cultural, the spoiled, disaffected children of middle-class America have nothing on Bl. Margaret of Castello.  Consider:

-- Margaret was short, hunchbacked, clubfooted and blind.  She met no ideals of physical beauty, either in her own time or in ours.  We, on the other hand, write off the physically ugly.

-- Margaret's parents shunned her, isolated her, imprisoned her, abused her, yet she bore it all cheerfully and patiently.  Even after they abandoned her, she would not hear a word said against them.  We, on the other hand, covet "victimhood" status, milking it for all it's worth; we pick constantly at the sores of injuries, real or imagined; we sue at the drop of a hat; we demand "reparations" for injustices of the distant past from the descendants of those who may or may not have had a hand in such injustices. 

-- Margaret sought always to do what was right, no matter what it cost her or what other people thought of her.  We, on the other hand, drop our principles as soon as they become inconvenient, or there is something to be gained by dropping them.

-- Margaret possessed a passionate nature, yet she embraced virginity.  We, on the other hand, embrace immodesty, promiscuity, depravity and even unnatural acts, all while viewing virgins as objects of pity.

Margaret's was a life that today would be considered as worthless.  Had she been conceived in 2012, once her obvious deformities turned up on an ultrasound, she would stand a fair chance of being suctioned out of the womb in pieces in the name of "compassion."  Yet she is a beata of the Church.  How many would-be great saints have we aborted and contracepted out of this world in order not to be "burdened" with them? 

What a fitting patroness of Life, and against abortion and contraception, Bl. Margaret of Castello would be.  Perhaps it is for just such a depraved time as this that she has waited 700 years to be raised to the altar. 

Easter Sunday: The Resurrection and the Five Wounds

Why is the risen Christ always represented with His Five Wounds from the Crucifixion?  Why, if His flesh is now glorified, should His Wounds not have healed?

Trust St. Thomas Aquinas to have answers.

Of course Jesus could have healed His Wounds; yet He has chosen not to.  The Wounds of the Crucifixion remain on Jesus' glorified Body:

1. For His own glory, as trophies of His victory.  

2. To prove to His disciples the truth of His Resurrection.

3. To show to the Father the manner of death that He, our Intercessor, suffered for our sake.

4. As proof of His Mercy to those redeemed by His Blood.

5. For the conviction of the reprobate in the day of judgment, to show them the means of salvation of which they would not avail themselves.

Have a blessed Easter!

Holy Saturday: In Hell Itself

Today Supertradmum at Etheldreda's Place reminds us that the Harrowing of Hell is probably the most ignored of the creedal doctrines.  Certainly my own memory can lay hold of no homilies I have ever heard on the subject, apart from the ancient, anonymous sermon that forms the second reading for today's Office of Readings (Matins) in the revised Breviary.   Yet as Catholics, we are bound to believe that sin shut the gates of heaven against the souls of men; that it was only Christ's Passion and Death on the Cross that opened heaven; that until then, the souls of the Just were imprisoned; and that, after His death, Christ liberated these souls.  Perhaps one reason we do not devote more time to considering this stupendous event is because it has been obscured by the modern obsession with avoiding any and all mention of Hell: its edge has been blunted by the milquetoast English rendition of the event as "He descended to the dead."  This bland, pedestrian translation fails to confront us with the startling fact of Christ in Hell; we are not inspired to inquire further into its meaning.  It seems obvious that the Son of God is among the dead, having died on the Cross; but how can He, pure and sinless, be in Hell, and why?

First of all, what is the Hell to which Christ descends?  We think primarily of the Hell of the damned, from which there is no escape, and from whose punishments there is no reprieve.  Before the coming of Christ, sin barred the gates of heaven to men.  The souls of the Just could not get into heaven until after Jesus had sacrificed Himself to pay the penalty for our sins.  As St. Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa Thelogica:

[T]hrough Christ's Passion the human race was delivered not only from sin, but also from the debt of its penalty.... Now men were held fast by the debt of punishment in two ways: first of all for actual sin which each had committed personally: secondly, for the sin of the whole human race, which each one in his origin contracts from our first parent, as stated in Romans 5 of which sin the penalty is the death of the body as well as exclusion from glory, as is evident from Genesis 2 and 3: because God cast out man from paradise after sin, having beforehand threatened him with death should he sin.

So what happened to all the good people who lived before Jesus' time, and died without ever having the opportunity to believe in Him or receive the Sacraments?  They dwelt in a place of waiting -- variously called, among other things, the Bosom of Abraham, or the Limbo of the Fathers, or the Limbo of Hell.  There they did not suffer the torments of the damned, but they did suffer privation.  Aquinas elucidates:

After death men's souls cannot find rest save by the merit of faith, because "he that cometh to God must believe" (Hebrews 11:6). Now the first example of faith was given to men in the person of Abraham, who was the first to sever himself from the body of unbelievers, and to receive a special sign of faith: for which reason "the place of rest given to men after death is called Abraham's bosom," as Augustine declares (Gen. ad lit. xii). But the souls of the saints have not at all times had the same rest after death; because, since Christ's coming they have had complete rest through enjoying the vision of God, whereas before Christ's coming they had rest through being exempt from punishment, but their desire was not set at rest by their attaining their end. Consequently the state of the saints before Christ's coming may be considered both as regards the rest it afforded, and thus it is called Abraham's bosom, and as regards its lack of rest, and thus it is called the limbo of hell. 

Aquinas goes on to explain that the Limbo of the Fathers is not qualitatively the same as the Hell of the damned, because the damned suffer eternal torment without hope of reprieve, whereas the Just before the coming of Christ suffered no sensible torments and had hope for a release from imprisonment.  On the other hand, situationally, the Limbo of the Fathers was probably the same as the Hell of the damned:  

For those who are in hell receive diverse punishments according to the diversity of their guilt, so that those who are condemned are consigned to darker and deeper parts of hell according as they have been guilty of graver sins, and consequently the holy Fathers in whom there was the least amount of sin were consigned to a higher and less darksome part than all those who were condemned to punishment.

So, as Aquinas says, Directly Christ died His soul went down into hell, and bestowed the fruits of His Passion on the saints detained there; although they did not go out as long as Christ remained in hell, because His presence was part of the fulness of their glory.

We come to the reasons for the Harrowing of Hell, which we have already begun to touch on.  The Angelic Doctor gives three reasons why it was fitting for Christ to descend into Hell.  Firstly, to bear the penalty for sin -- namely, death of the body and descent into Hell -- in order to free us from penalty (though we are not yet delivered from the penalty of bodily death).  Secondly, to force Hell to disgorge its righteous captives.  And thirdly, to show forth His power and glory even in the domain of the devils.


This last point is worth lingering upon.  Because the wills of the damned are confirmed in evil at the moment of their deaths -- just as the wills of the righteous are confirmed in goodness and charity at the moment of their deaths -- Christ did not rescue any of the damned from Hell.  In His essence, He visited only the Limbo of the Fathers; but the effects of His power reached every part of Hell.  Aquinas:

A thing is said to be in a place in two ways. First of all, through its effect, and in this way Christ descended into each of the hells, but in different manner. For going down into the hell of the lost He wrought this effect, that by descending thither He put them to shame for their unbelief and wickedness: but to them who were detained in Purgatory He gave hope of attaining to glory: while upon the holy Fathers detained in hell solely on account of original sin, He shed the light of glory everlasting.

In another way a thing is said to be in a place through its essence: and in this way Christ's soul descended only into that part of hell wherein the just were detained. so that He visited them "in place," according to His soul, whom He visited "interiorly by grace," according to His Godhead. Accordingly, while remaining in one part of hell, He wrought this effect in a measure in every part of hell, just as while suffering in one part of the earth He delivered the whole world by His Passion.

He puts it briefly in another place thus:

When Christ descended into hell, all who were in any part of hell were visited in some respect: some to their consolation and deliverance, others, namely, the lost, to their shame and confusion.

With Christ's visitation, the spoliation of Hell was complete.  A final extract from the Angelical that is worth many hours of meditation (emphasis added): 

When Christ descended into hell He delivered the saints who were there, not by leading them out at once from the confines of hell, but by enlightening them with the light of glory in hell itself.

Think of it.  Hell is the privation of God and His glory.  For the imprisoned elect who found themselves in the presence of the living God and beheld the light of His glory, Hell, in that moment, ceased to be Hell.  Hell was overthrown.


No wonder it is written in Philippians 2:10-11 "That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father."

Nec Laudibus Nec Timore: Bl. Clemens von Galen

It does not seem that very many people have heard of Bl. Clemens August Graf von Galen.  He gets short shrift in popular histories of the Nazi era: in William Shirer's The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940, for example, he rates one sentence in one footnote; in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by the same author, he gets less than that; he gets no mention at all in Wallace Deuel's People under Hitler, or in Winston Churchill's multivolume war memoirs.  At the time of his beatification in 2005, the only English-language biography of Bl. von Galen was one that subjected him to revisionist vilification similar to that which has been leveled at Ven. Pius XII since the 1960s.  Yet throughout the Hitler years, few opponents of religious persecution, racialism, state-sponsored thievery and euthanasia were as outspoken and forthright as Bl. Clemens von Galen.  At a time when the Catholic Church is again beset by both moral confusion from within and increasing attack and encroachment from without, Bl. von Galen should be looked to both as an example for and as a patron to the faithful, and especially clergy, who struggle to do the right thing.

Clemens August von Galen was born in 1878 into a noble Catholic family which, for centuries, had given the Church many priests and bishops.  He was ordained to the priesthood in 1904, and was for years a big-city pastor.  He was an imposing figure both in body (at 6 feet 7 inches tall) and in personality.  His piety -- founded on penance, study, and deep devotions to the Blessed Virgin, the Sacred Heart, the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, and Holy Scripture -- was as straightforward and uncomplicated as his world view, which was pervaded by a sense of the supernatural.  He was known for his sense of duty, his kindliness, and his accessibility, and also scorned for his staunch traditionalism, his opposition to the increasing secularization of public life, and his rejection of the notion that the Church must change in order to become more "relevant" to the modern world.  One critic faulted him for being "entirely 13th century."  The apostolic nuncio went so far as to complain to then-Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) that von Galen possessed an "overbearing attitude, stubbornness and too schoolmasterly a manner for a simple pastor."  Even the Holy See was not enthusiastic about the idea of giving von Galen a position of responsibility in the Church in Germany.  

So it was with dismay that many received the news of his elevation to the bishopric of Münster in 1933 -- the same year that Hitler came to power.  In calling for the intervention of the Holy Spirit upon his accession to the episcopal throne, von Galen's critics failed to recognize that this deplored accession was itself precisely the Spirit's intervention.  While the devil arrayed his army for battle, God was not idle in preparing His counteroffensive.  This purportedly overbearing, stubborn, doctrinaire and inflexible cleric was precisely what was needed in that time and place.  Von Galen let it be immediately and unambiguously known that human respect would have no part in his government of affairs in his diocese when he took as his episcopal motto Nec laudibus nec timore: "Neither praise nor fear."

Bishop von Galen lost no time becoming a thorn in Hitler's side.  One of his first acts as the Shepherd of Münster was to establish perpetual Eucharistic adoration in a centrally located parish in the diocese.  To prevent the seduction of his sheep, he studied Nazi literature and repeatedly publicly challenged the tenets of Nazi doctrine.  He publicly protested Nazi initiatives to the authorities.  When government officials seized convents and monasteries, turning their inhabitants out into the streets, the bishop called them thieves and robbers to their faces.  After failing to prevent a rally in Münster headed by Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi party "philosopher," Bishop von Galen responded the next day with a huge procession of his own.  

Again and again, Bishop von Galen courted martyrdom, fully expecting it -- perhaps even hoping for it -- at any moment.  At a sermon given at St. Lambert's in Münster on July 13, 1941, he said:

None of us is safe — and may he know that he is the most loyal and conscientious of citizens and may he be conscious of his complete innocence —  he cannot be sure that he will not some day be deported from his home, deprived of his freedom and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the Gestapo. I am aware of the fact: This can happen also to me, today or some other day. And because then I shall not be able to speak in public any longer, I will speak publicly today, publicly I will warn against the continuance in a course which I am firmly convinced will bring down God's judgment on men and must lead to disaster and ruin for our people and our country.

But because von Galen had so much prestige, and was so much loved by the people of Münster, the Nazis never dared to touch him, although they longed to be rid of him.  Even the officers of the Gestapo -- of which he was an outspoken critic -- feared to take their lives into their hands by allowing the residents of Münster to see them carting their beloved bishop off to concentration camp.  To the bishop's dismay, they preferred to retaliate against his priests, of whom a number were sent to concentration camps, some never to return.  After the war, upon his return from the consistory where he was created a cardinal, von Galen affectionately chided the people of Münster for their great love and support which had deprived him of the crown of martyrdom.

The centerpiece of von Galen's episcopate was three sermons he gave during 1941, when Hitler's power was at its height.  Despite Nazi censorship of Catholic writings, these homilies were printed, and copies smuggled all over the Reich and beyond.  They electrified the world, and inspired opponents of the Hitler regime.  The Allies used them in their propaganda campaign against Nazism, and the Pope himself approved them in the strongest terms.  The good bishop fully expected to be arrested after preaching these sermons, but still the regime did not dare to touch him, contenting itself instead with rounding up 24 of his secular priests and 13 religious priests.

The first sermon is the one quoted above from July 13, 1941.  In it, the bishop denounces the expulsion of religious communities from Westphalia and the confiscation of their houses, and exposes the hypocrisy of the authorities in the matter of summary "justice."  This homily had an answer for those who took his denunciations during wartime as unpatriotic and subversive.  It is instructive for those who denounce as "counterproductive" the punishing of dissidents within the Church, or the raising of Catholic voices against present-day injustices:

My Christians! It will perhaps be held against me that by this frank statement I am weakening the home front of the German people during this war. I, on the contrary, say this: It is not I who am responsible for a possible weakening of the home front, but those who regardless of the war, regardless of this fearful week of terrible air-raids, impose heavy punishments on innocent people without the judgment of a court or any possibility of defence, who evict our religious orders, our brothers and sisters, from their property, throw them on to the street, drive them out of their own country. They destroy men's security under the law, they undermine trust in law, they destroy men's confidence in our government. And therefore I raise my voice in the name of the upright German people, in the name of the majesty of Justice, in the interests of peace and the solidarity of the home front; therefore as a German, an honourable citizen, a representative of the Christian religion, a Catholic bishop, I exclaim: we demand justice! If this call remains unheard and unanswered, if the reign of Justice is not restored, then our German people and our country, in spite of the heroism of our soldiers and the glorious victories they have won, will perish through an inner rottenness and decay.

On the following Sunday, July 20, 1941, Bishop von Galen delivered what may be thought of as his Hammer and Anvil sermon.  After denouncing in the strongest terms the continuing persecution of the religious orders, the bishop painted a metaphorical picture of a Church under persecution:

Become hard! Remain firm! At this moment we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, mostly strangers and renegades, are hammering us, seeking by violent means to bend our nation, ourselves and our young people aside from their straight relationship with God. We are the anvil and not the hammer. But ask the blacksmith and hear what he says: the object which is forged on the anvil receives its form not alone from the hammer but also from the anvil. The anvil cannot and need not strike back: it must only be firm, only hard! If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil usually lasts longer than the hammer. However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands quietly and firmly in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it.

The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own. God will support them, that they may not lose the form and attitude of Christian firmness, when the hammer of persecution strikes its harsh blows and inflicts unmerited wounds on them....

We are the anvil, not the hammer! Unfortunately you cannot shield your children, the noble but still untempered crude metal, from the hammer-blows of hostility to the faith and hostility to the Church. But the anvil also plays a part in forging. Let your family home, your parental love and devotion, your exemplary Christian life be the strong, tough, firm and unbreakable anvil which absorbs the force of the hostile blows, which continually strengthens and fortifies the still weak powers of the young in the sacred resolve not to let themselves be diverted from the direction that leads to God. 

In the third sermon, delivered on August 3, 1941, Bishop von Galen denounced another horror: the systematic murder of the aged, infirm, crippled and incurably ill.  Since the competent authorities could not be moved to put a stop to these killings, "these unfortunate patients are to die...because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become 'unworthy to live,' because they are classed as 'unproductive members of the national community.'"  The following words are no less pertinent to our own brutal time than to the one in which they were originally uttered:

If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill "unproductive" fellow-men — even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients — then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other "unproductive" persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries!

Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of "unproductive" persons, who in their judgment have become "unworthy to live." And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.

Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man's conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished!

These thundering denunciations did not prove to be the end of the career of this wonderful bishop, the Lion of Münster.  He soldiered on throughout the war and even the destruction of his cathedral and his house under Allied bombs.  When American tanks approached, on Easter Sunday, 1945, he personally went out to meet them.  Yet his gratitude for deliverance from the Nazi oppressors did not prevent him from becoming a thorn in the side of the occupying forces who allowed Russian and Polish former slave laborers to run riot and take their revenge upon his people.  Once again, Bishop von Galen lived up to his motto: neither praise nor fear.  Nec laudibus nec timore.

On February 18, 1946, Clemens August Graf von Galen received from the hands of Pope Pius XII the cardinal's red hat, to the acclaim of the whole world.  He was the first Bishop of Münster to be raised to the College of Cardinals.  Yet the Anvil of the Church who had outlasted the hammer of the Hitlerites had reached the close of his earthly career.  On March 22, 1946, six days after his 68th birthday and his return home from Rome, the redoubtable bishop who had survived the Nazi terror, the world war, and the Allies' destruction of his beloved Münster, succumbed to a perforated appendix.  Amid profound grief, Bishop von Galen was laid to rest in the family crypt in Münster's ruined cathedral.  On December 20, 2003, Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable; on October 9, 2005, his fellow countryman, Pope Benedict XVI, beatified him.

Today, Christian civilization, and particularly the Catholic Church, are under assault not only in the Third World but even in its nursery, Europe, and in the New World, which prides itself on its tradition of religious freedom.  But neither the faithful nor their shepherds need to wonder how to handle the threats of the modern world: they have the Lion of Münster to show them how it's done, even under the most extreme circumstances.  As Pope Benedict said in his Angelus message on the day of von Galen's beatification: "[T]he message of Blessed von Galen is ever timely: faith cannot be reduced to a private sentiment or indeed, be hidden when it is inconvenient; it also implies consistency and a witness even in the public arena for the sake of human beings, justice and truth."

Nec laudibus nec timore.

March 7th: Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (Pre-Conciliar Calendar)

One of the (very few and far between) advantages of having two calendars in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church is that, occasionally, one gets to honor a favorite saint twice in one year.  Such is the case with my friend and illustrious brother in St. Dominic, Thomas Aquinas.  It seems fitting to be able thus to honor the Angelical, and to beg his intercession at a time when vile assaults are being launched against the Eucharist, to which he was so touchingly devoted.  

Here again, and none the worse for having been posted before, is the Litany of St. Thomas of Aquin, published in 1913 in The Dominican Manual: A Selection of Prayers and Devotions.

O THOU, the Most High, have mercy on us.

Mighty One of Jacob, have mercy on us.

Divine Spirit, have mercy on us.

Great Triune God, have mercy on us.

Glorious Mother of the King of kings, pray for us.
Saint Thomas of Aquin, pray for us.
Worthy child of the Queen of Virgins...
Aquinas most chaste...
Aquinas most patient...
Prodigy of science...
Silently eloquent...
Reproach of the ambitious...
Lover of that life which is hidden with Christ in God...
Fragrant flower in the parterre of St. Dominic...
Glory of Friars Preachers...
Illlumined from on high...
Angel of the Schools...
Oracle of the Church...
Incomparable scribe of the Man-God...
Satiated with the odour of His perfumes...
Perfect in the school of His Cross...
Intoxicated with the strong wine of His charity...
Glittering gem in the cabinet of the Lord...
Model of perfect obedience...
Endowed with the true spirit of holy poverty...

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Ant.— Oh, how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory, for the memory thereof is immortal, because it is known with God and man, and it triumpheth crowned for ever.
V. Oh! what have I in heaven, or what do I desire on earth?
R. Thou art the God of my heart, and my portion for ever.

Prayer:

O God, who hast ordained that blessed Thomas should enlighten Thy Church, grant that through his prayers we may practise what he taught, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayers Against Enemies

Years ago, I attended a parish where the people were accustomed to shout out their intentions during the prayers of the faithful at Mass -- a practice I abominate...but I digress.  There was a woman in the front row who used to always shout out the same intention: Lord, give us the strength to go on fighting the war against abortion.

Setting aside the fact that shouting out intentions during Mass really stinks, I always found that lady's intention particularly irritating.  Why would we want to keep any kind of a war going?  We should be praying for victory in the war on abortion, and that swiftly and decisively.  We should be praying to mop the floor with the abortion lobby, in the very near future.  To pray merely for the strength to keep up the war seems to me to smack of despair and pusillanimity.

In fact, we ought to be praying for the resounding, crushing defeat of all evildoers.  We are locked in deadly struggle, firstly, against the devils of hell, and secondly, against their allies on earth.  It is not a recycling, vegan, granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing God who inspired these verses (Psalm 67:22-24):  

But God shall break the heads of his enemies: the hairy crown of them that walk on in their sins. The Lord said: I will turn them from Basan, I will turn them into the depth of the sea: That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thy enemies; the tongue of thy dogs be red with the same.  

We have forgotten this in our squeamish, squishy, emasculated age (and I do not exempt myself from this opprobrium), where, instead of striving for justice, we just whine about getting along.  We have forgotten that we can have no truck with the devil and those who have consciously and deliberately dedicated themselves to his service.  We need to fight them with every fiber, and we need to beg God for their total destruction.

Fortunately, our Mother the Church has taught us how to do this.  We have, in the first place, the Sacraments, to give, restore and increase sanctifying grace (without which we cannot hope to do ourselves or anyone else any good in the spiritual order), and to give us particular necessary graces.  We have penances and indulgences.  And we are taught to pray.  Scripture is full of prayers for the defeat of our enemies (i.e., those who are also enemies of God); the Psalms are loaded with them.  And there are other prayers that are useful for this intention.  Herewith some good ones (given not only in English but also in Latin, because the devil hates Latin):

Prayer against Persecutors and Evildoers

Hostium nostrorum, quaesumus, Domine, elide superbiam: et eorum contumaciam dexterae tuae virtute prosterne. Per Dominum.

Crush, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the pride of our enemies: and prostrate their arrogance by the might of Thy right hand. Through our Lord.

Prayer to St. Michael

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperat illi Deus; supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen 

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.  Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil.  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Some Ejaculations from the Psalms

Psalm 6:11: Erubescant et conturbentur vehementer omnes inimici mei convertantur et erubescant valde velociter.  Let all my enemies be ashamed, and be very much troubled: let them be turned back, and be ashamed very speedily.

Psalm 58:2: Eripe me de inimicis meis, Deus, et ab insurgentibus in me libera me. Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; and defend me from them that rise up against me.

Psalms 53:7: Avertet mala inimicis meis; in veritate tua disperde illos.  Turn back the evils upon my enemies; and cut them off in thy truth.

Psalms 67:2: Exsurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici eius, et fugiant qui oderunt eum a facie eius.  Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered: and let them that hate Him flee from before His face.

So in these stern times, let us do penance, pray for the defeat of our enemies, and then go out and take care of business.

January 28th: St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (New Calendar)

Today is the Memorial of Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, on the new calendar.  His feast on the pre-conciliar calendar is March 8th.

I never had a particular devotion to the Angelical growing up.  But since I entered the Third Order of St. Dominic, I have had reason to believe that he, of whom I had thought so little throughout my life, loves me and has cared for me in a special and particular way that I do not fully comprehend, and probably never will in this life.  Such is the Communion of Saints: in the wild excesses of God's charity and mercy, it is not enough for Him to surround us with His own infinite love: He must also surround us with the love of His friends in heaven.   

Herewith the Litany of St. Thomas of Aquin, published in 1913 in The Dominican Manual: A Selection of Prayers and Devotions.

O THOU, the Most High, have mercy on us.

Mighty One of Jacob, have mercy on us.

Divine Spirit, have mercy on us.

Great Triune God, have mercy on us.

Glorious Mother of the King of kings, pray for us.
Saint Thomas of Aquin, pray for us.
Worthy child of the Queen of Virgins...
Aquinas most chaste...
Aquinas most patient...
Prodigy of science...
Silently eloquent...
Reproach of the ambitious...
Lover of that life which is hidden with Christ in God...
Fragrant flower in the parterre of St. Dominic...
Glory of Friars Preachers...
Illlumined from on high...
Angel of the Schools...
Oracle of the Church...
Incomparable scribe of the Man-God...
Satiated with the odour of His perfumes...
Perfect in the school of His Cross...
Intoxicated with the strong wine of His charity...
Glittering gem in the cabinet of the Lord...
Model of perfect obedience...
Endowed with the true spirit of holy poverty...

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Ant.— Oh, how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory, for the memory thereof is immortal, because it is known with God and man, and it triumpheth crowned for ever.
V. Oh! what have I in heaven, or what do I desire on earth?
R. Thou art the God of my heart, and my portion for ever.

Prayer:

O God, who hast ordained that blessed Thomas should enlighten Thy Church, grant that through his prayers we may practise what he taught, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Purification

The clergy sex abuse scandal seems always ready to vomit forth fresh headlines.  Today we have the news that Bishop Gabino Zavala, auxiliary of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has resigned, a month after admitting to having fathered two children.  Bishop Zavala is known for espousing liberal-leftist causes and presiding over liturgical travesties.  The Church is once again humiliated, but the good news is that an unfaithful shepherd has been dismissed from service. 

Pope Benedict is on record as saying that the Church needs purification, and that it must be attained by penance and suffering.  Not unconnected with the Holy Father's thoughts on this subject is a passage from St. John Eudes' 17th-century work published under the title The Priest, His Dignity and Obligations.  A part of this passage appeared in this space eleven months ago:

The most evident mark of God's anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.  Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally.  Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train.  Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness....

When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them.  That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, "Return, O ye revolting children...and I will give you pastors according to my own heart" (Jer. 3:14-15).  Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin.

We have certainly suffered this scourge of bad shepherds, and all the shame and degradation that comes with them.  The tide is turning, but we still have a long way to go.  If we want good and faithful shepherds, then we ourselves need to straighten up and fly right.  

January 1st: Solemnity of the Mother of God

15th-century Byzantine icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in the care of the Redemptorist Fathers.  Notice how everything about her -- the inclination of her head, her hands, even the lines of her garments -- points to her divine Son.

According to the pre-conciliar calendar, today is the Octave of Christmas, wherein the Church honors the Circumcision of the Lord, the Holy Name of Jesus which He received at His Circumcision, and the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.  This feast celebrates obedience: the submission of Christ to the Mosaic Law, even though it did not apply to Him, so that He might fulfill it down to the last detail.  It also commemorates the first shedding of Christ's innocent Blood for sinful man.  The Collect of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form is the same as that in the Ordinary Form -- a fact not at all obvious in the English-speaking world until we got the new English translation at the beginning of Advent.

According to the post-conciliar calendar, the Feast of the Mother of God celebrates the fact that, though a creature, Mary is nevertheless truly the Mother of her Creator.  This was defined in A.D. 431 at the Council of Ephesus, when the Church condemned the errors of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople.  Nestorius held that Jesus is really two Persons: the human Jesus and the divine Jesus.  Thus, Mary is not really the Mother of God, but only the Mother of Christ.  In his Third Letter to Nestorius, which the Council approved, St. Cyril carefully explains that Jesus is one Person with two natures, human and divine, hypostatically united.  He then discusses the implications for the motherhood of Mary:

Therefore, because the Holy Virgin bore in the flesh God who was united hypostatically with the flesh, for that reason we call her Mother of God, not as though the nature of the Word had the beginning of Its existence from the flesh (for "the Word was in the beginning and the Word was God and the Word was with God", and He made the ages and is co-eternal with the Father and craftsman of all things), but because, as we have said, He united to Himself hypostatically the human and underwent a birth according to the flesh from her womb. This was not as though He needed necessarily or for His own nature a birth in time and in the last times of this age, but in order that He might bless the beginning of our existence, in order that seeing that it was a woman that had given birth to Him united to the flesh, the curse against the whole race should thereafter cease which was consigning all our earthy bodies to death, and in order that the removal through Him of the curse, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", should demonstrate the truth of the words of the prophet: "Strong death swallowed them up", and again, "God has wiped every tear away from all face". It is for this cause that we say that in His economy He blessed marriage and, when invited, went down to Cana in Galilee with His holy Apostles.

The Council confessed the following in regard to the Hypostatic Union and the Mother of God:

We confess, then, our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God perfect God and perfect man of a rational soul and a body, begotten before all ages from the Father in His godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the Virgin, according to His humanity, one and the same consubstantial with the Father in godhead and consubstantial with us in humanity, for a union of two natures took place. Therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the Holy Virgin to be the Mother of God because God the Word took flesh and became man and from His very conception united to Himself the temple he took from her. As to the evangelical and apostolic expressions about the Lord, we know that theologians treat some in common as of one person and distinguish others as of two natures, and interpret the God-befitting ones in connection with the godhead of Christ and the lowly ones with His humanity.

We can see in the story of Nestorius and the Council of Ephesus the justice of honoring Mary as the Destroyer of Heresies.  Nestorius rejected the title "Mother of God," and instead called Mary the "Mother of Christ."  This appears reasonable on its face: Jesus after all is the Christ, and Mary is His Mother; hence, she is the Mother of Christ.  But this is precisely the danger of heresy, which often contains a kernel of truth that lends plausibility.  Although the title "Mother of Christ" is true as far as it goes, it was nevertheless wrong in the mouth and from the pen of Nestorius and his followers, because it was based on a wrong understanding of the two natures of Jesus.  The Church, on the contrary, and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, upheld the title "Mother of God" as justified in view of the fact that Jesus is one Person with two natures, human and divine.  From this we can see that if we are wrong about Mary, we will be wrong about Jesus.  If, on the other hand, we get it right about Mary, we get it right about Jesus.  The truth about Mary dispels heresies and leads surely to the truth about her Son.

That is definitely worth celebrating.   

December 28th: Feast of the Holy Innocents

Salvete Flores Martyrum, Haydn. Thanks to Msgr. Charles Pope for the following transcription and translation of this hymn, and also for his Dangerous Reflection on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (via Fr. Philip Neri Powell): 

Salvete flores martyrum, – Hail Martyr Flowers
quos lucis ipso in limine – On the very threshold of the dawn (of life)
Christi insecutor sustulit – Christ’s persecutor destroyed (you)
ceu turbo nascentes rosas. – like the whirlwind does the budding roses.

Vos prima Christi victima, – You, Christ’s first fruits
grex immolatorum tener, – A flock of tender sacrificial victims
aram sub ipsam simplices – right up by the very altar
palma et coronis luditis. – now play with your palms and crowns.

Iesu, tibi sit gloria, – Jesus to you be glory
qui natus es de Virgine, – who were born of the Virgin
cum Patre et almo Spiritu, – with the Father and loving Spirit
in sempiterna saecula. Amen. – unto to eternal ages. Amen.

Needed: Translators without Agendas

After reading the news that Hildegard of Bingen is to be raised to the altar and declared a Doctor of the Church, I ordered a copy of an English translation of her mystical work Scivias.  I have a CD with some of her musical compositions -- which are very beautiful -- but I had never read any of her works.

And after cracking this translation of Scivias, I fear I still haven't read any of her works.

I ordered this book with some trepidation, as all the English translations I could find date back to within the last 30 years.  When it comes to spiritual reading, I generally look for what one might describe as "antediluvian": works or translations of works that predate the flood of arrant nonsense and outright heresy that swept over the earth in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.  The particular volume I ended up selecting -- the Bruce Hozeski translation from the Critical Latin Edition published by Bear & Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1986 -- looked the most innocuous, so I paid the three dollars and change plus shipping and waited.

And soon discovered it was three dollars and change plus shipping too much.  Not that I have any complaints with the merchant I bought the book from: indeed, it was sent very promptly and arrived a lot more quickly than I expected.  But when I saw that it contained a forward by Matthew Fox, the ex-Dominican-priest-turned-Episcopalian-synchretist who was expelled from the Order of Preachers, my heart sank.  This forward certainly represents the absolute zero in human goofiness: Fox tries to shoe-horn Hildegard's thought into his own kooky ideology, all while reducing her mystical experiences to the physiological effects of migraines brought on by being stuck in the impossible situation of having to fight against a sexist, male-dominated Church.  But the content of the book, purportedly by Hildegard herself -- in which I must confess to not having found myself able to plow very far -- did nothing to lift the heart out of its Foxian doldrums.  

The Editor's Note at the beginning is full of dire portent.  It makes clear that the editors cut out anything that they considered "irrelevant or difficult to comprehend today."  They adopted a particular chopping methodology -- getting rid of whole sections rather than parts of sections --  ostensibly to "avoid distortion as much as possible," apparently oblivious to the fact that they were distorting the work precisely by filtering it through their lenses of relevance and difficulty.  Besides which: who were these editors to save me from deciding for myself what is irrelevant or too difficult?  Given some of the people associated with this project, and the era of its provenance, I can't help thinking the "irrelevant" or "difficult" stuff must be anything that fails to support some particular brand of heterodoxy.  

Then there was the deliberate decision to edit out Hildegard's citations to authority:

Hildegard was an astonishingly brilliant woman during an age when such talent and sensitivity were suppressed.  Many Hildegard admirers, myself included, feel that Hildegard expressed herself very powerfully and individually, and then attempted to justify her thought by presenting supportive ideas from other sources -- such as the Gospels, patriarchs, and prophets, or by citing the Church opinion of her day.  We found the elimination of much of this supportive and repetitive text caused a clearer and more visionary text to emerge.

In other words, Hildegard shrank from putting herself forward as her own authority, so We, the Great and Wise Editors, are going to do it for her.  It is just not on for a prophet to set forth her prophecies within the framework of Authority, even though it is the Authority of Christ Himself through His Church.  Thus are English readers of Scivias to be deprived of Hildegard's insights into Scripture and the Fathers and the Magisterium.  Thus also do the editors suppress the evidence of Hildegard's great scholarship and intellect in their quest for "a clearer and more visionary text."

I can't say I feel sure what a "visionary text" is exactly, as these guys mean it.  But I do have a fair idea what constitutes a "clearer text," and it is obvious that this was not what we got when the editors of this translation decided to use "inclusive language."  As a woman, I find "inclusive language" as patronizing and insulting as it is annoying; as a serious reader, I suspect it really excludes not only all things male but also the true sense of the original text.  "Inclusive language" also proves that its proponents have no sense of humor, since they do not perceive the hopelessly idiotic grammatical contortions to which their stubborn refusal to use masculine pronouns drives them.  Witness the following choice example from page 14:

But Lucifer, who had been cast down from heavenly glory because of pride, at first stood special and great because Lucifer did not yet know of Lucifer's weakness in grace and strength.  Indeed, when Lucifer thought about grace and the power of self-strength, Lucifer became proud.  This caused Lucifer to expect that Lucifer might attempt whatever Lucifer wished, because Lucifer had previously been able to finish whatever Lucifer started.  Seeing a place where Lucifer thought that a stand could be made, and wishing to show grace and self-strength there, Lucifer said to God: "I wish to shine here in that manner and there in that manner."  Every idea of Lucifer's agreed with this, and Lucifer said: whatever you wish, we also wish this too.  And when Lucifer was puffed up with pride and wanted to do what Lucifer had just thought about, the zeal of God -- extending itself -- threw Lucifer and the entire company into the burning blackness, so that they seethed against the brightness and clearness which they had had and they were blackened.

I almost feel as though I am looking at this paragraph with a set of compound eyes that sees not one Lucifer, but thousands.  It is the literary-mystical equivalent of Larry, his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl: Lucifer, his brother Lucifer, and his other brother Lucifer, and his other brother Lucifer, ad nauseam.  The true sense of the original is obscured behind this wretchedly composed paragraph, like a magnificent landscape behind a filthy, grimy window.  What a stupid and unnecessary distraction.

From the howling desert of the mid-'80s, the heyday of modernist theologians of the Matthew Fox vintage, we seem to have crawled into the edge of an oasis.  The sandstorm that has lashed us for decades is beginning to give way; the heritage that we had lost for so many years is back in sight, still dim, yet unmistakable.  Among other signs of the restoration, the new English translation of the Mass, faithful to the original Latin text, is now in use, and the translators' next project is said to be the Liturgy of the Hours.  Since this seems to be the era of dumping lousy translations, I hereby nominate the 1986 Hozeski inclusive-language translation of Scivias for inclusion in the ash-heap of history.  And since Hildegard of Bingen is to be a new saint and Doctor of the Church, I hope some intrepid and gifted translator feels called upon to give the English-speaking world a complete, faithful and artistically rendered translation of her works.

P.S. I wish somebody would get on the stick and also translate some more of St. Albert the Great's writings into English.