My latest essay for Integrity Magazine was published yesterday, September 24, building on the Advocatus Diaboli “Devil’s Advocate” position for Bishop Sheen’s attempted beatification:

Devil’s advocate: 4 inconvenient questions for admirers of Fulton Sheen

For even more materials critically examining Sheen, consider reading the following:

• There are good reasons why Fulton Sheen should not be considered for beatification — American Reform

• Fulton Sheen the Americanist? A critical examination of his remarks on Church-State relations — American Reform

• EWTN shares video of Fulton Sheen promoting dissident Teilhard de Chardin — American Reform

• EWTN deletes scandalous Fulton Sheen video after backlash on social media — American Reform

• Fulton Sheen enthusiastically promoted Vatican II’s Modernist reforms — Kirk Hansen

• Kolbe Center founder warns about Fulton Sheen’s embrace of Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘evolutionary’ theology — Hugh Owen

• Sorry, Fulton Sheen: The laity will not ‘save’ the Church — Father Dave Nix

WATCH — Integrity Magazine Exclusive

Against Bishop Fulton Sheen: Why His Embrace of Vatican II Should Halt His Beatification

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

“God, who fits means to their end, will provide, for the sake of safeguarding the truth in the Church, that the Church’s judgment concerning the saints not be corrupted by any error or falsehood of witnesses. For the Church is guided in judgments of this kind ‘chiefly through the instinct of the Holy Spirit”; and “divine providence preserves the Church, lest she be deceived in such matters through the fallible testimony of men.’ St. Thomas, loc. cit.” — Fr. JV De Groot, O.P.

Introduction

In Catholic circles today the question of infallibility is periodically discussed in relation to the canonization of Saints. Owing to the present Crisis in the Church, many have been tempted to deviate — often unknowingly — from the standard, pre-conciliar teaching surrounding canonizations, that is, primarily their authority and what the life of a Catholic saint evidences, along with the profound danger of denying both. Two streams of errant thought are common, especially amongst self-styled traditional Catholics:

1. Those who chafe at the idea that the sentences are indeed infallible, often citing a change in the investigatory processes following the Second Vatican Council.

2. Those who reduce canonization to simply saying that such and such a man made it to heaven — and nothing more.

Friend of our Journal pointed this out years ago. He noted that recognizing the post-conciliar candidates as living problematic lives, many well-meaning but misguided Catholics have embraced “reductionist theories” and subsequently run afoul of pre-conciliar theological authorities; authorities no less weighty than Benedict XIV, St. Thomas, St. Robert and lesser theologians Parente, Salaverri, Tanquerey, Berry and Fenton. To this end, we highly encourage readers to review Mr. Wright’s robust theological survey available at The WM Review:

• Dogmatic Suicide – canonizations, infallibility and the consequences

More recently, with the imminent beatification attempt of Bishop Fulton Sheen — whose highly problematic career is being exposed anew1 — and given it is almost certainly a precursor to his canonization, more and more Catholics may be tempted to embrace these “reductionist theories.” As a remedy to this, we are providing the following translation from Father JV De Groot, O.P., on the subject.

Focused on apologetics, Father JV De Groot’s treatment explicitly addresses and refutes a number of objections, one of which is often heard today given the aforementioned changes to the post-conciliar canonization process:

Objection: Human testimonies are very often false. But the Church, questioning witnesses about life and miracles, relies on fallible authority in the process of canonization. Therefore the judgment of the Church about saints cannot be infallible.

As will become evident, this objection betrays a naturalistic understanding of the authority of the Church, profoundly downplaying the assistance of the Holy Ghost in her definitive and final judgements.

All theologians today hold that canonizations are infallible, disagreeing only on the note attached to the sentence. Father Joachim Salaverri, S.J, — whose writing on the doctrinal force of papal encyclicals we have previously published — noted the following in 1958:

Now all [theologians] hold that this doctrine is at least theologically certain. Indeed, according to the manifest mind of Pius XI and XII it can be said to be implicitly defined.2

No Catholic, therefore, may deny the infallibility of canonizations lest he commit objective, grave sin.

De Groot’s Biography

Born on July 4, 1848 in Amsterdam, Netherlands Johannes Theodorus Petrus (Jan) de Groot was a Dutch Dominican friar, theologian and neo-scholastic philosopher.3 In 1866, he joined the Dominican order in Huissen and chose the monastic name of Vincentius — hence why he is commonly known as Father JV De Groot. During his life, Father De Groot wrote many works and was renowned for his speaking ability. In 1885 he earned the title of “Master of Theology” in Rome and by 1894 had the distinct honor of being the first chair of Thomistic Philosophy at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. He is most known for the following three works:

• Summa Apologetica de Ecclesia Catholica ad mentem S. Thomae Aquinatis (1st ed. 1890)

• Het leven van den H. Thomas van Aquino (The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas, 1st ed. 1881)

• Denkers van onzen tijd (Thinkers of Our Time, 1910)

After playing an important role in reviving Scholasticism in the Netherlands, Father De Groot died in Amsterdam on February 26, 1922. He is buried at the Roman Catholic Cemetery Buitenveldert.

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present the translated4 text from Father JV De Groot’s dogmatic theology on the Church.

Article V. Whether the Canonization of Saints is the Object of Infallibility

I. The notion of canonization. Canonization is the final and definitive judgement, by which the Church declares that someone led a holy life and has been received among the blessed in heaven, and proposes him to all the faithful for veneration and invocation. By canonization, therefore, three things are established: 1° that the one canonized was resplendent in holiness of life; 2° that he has been received among the blessed in heaven; and 3° that he is, for that reason, to be venerated and invoked. From this it is understood that the men who are numbered among the saints are proposed to the faithful to be imitated and venerated as an exemplar; and that this comes about by a final and definitive judgment for the universal Church. Cf. Benedict XIV, op. cit., bk. I, ch. 39, n. 14.

II. Canonization and beatification agree in this, that both are public testimony of the Church about the virtues and glory of a man inscribed in the catalogue of the heavens. But this is the main difference between beatification and canonization, 1° that the latter, not the former, is considered the final and definitive sentence. And this is the main reason, as Benedict XVI teaches in the place cited: “the ultimate difference between Beatification and Canonization will not be at all to be established either in the permission of worship, or in its restriction to particular persons or places, which is held in Beatification, otherwise than in Canonization; but in the extreme and definitive sentence of sanctity, the worship due to other Saints in the universal Church through Canonization, but by no means prescriptive through Beatification.” 2° The judgment of the Pope in beatification is not prescriptive, but indulgent and permissive. These things are to be understood as much of formal beatification, which is preceded by an examination with the approval of virtues and miracles, as of the equivalent beatittude, by which the worship rendered, having admitted the fame of virtues or martyrdom and miracles, was approved. But we leave other examples of worship to the discussions of learned men, who, with their critical piety, do not cease to sift out certain errors from the truth concerning the worship of the servants of God.5

III. Three opinions on the infallibility of the Church in canonizing saints. 1° The opinion of certain Catholics is that the Church can, absolutely speaking, err in canonizing saints; they teach nonetheless that it would be rash to assert that the Church has in fact erred in these definitive judgments. Among those who do not teach that the Roman Pontiff cannot err in canonization must be numbered even Cajetan, on account of what he wrote in his Tractatus de indulgentia adversus Lutherum, ch. VIII. — 2° Others, among whom Valentia, teach that the infallibility of the Church in canonizing saints cannot be denied without heresy. — 3° The third is the opinion of Canus, who said: “Let us believe that those who detract from the Church’s credibility in these matters are not, indeed, heretics, but rash, impudent, and irreligious.” De locis theologicis, bk. V, ch. 5. This opinion Benedict XIV, op. cit., bk. I, ch. 43, n. 27, approves. Cf. the Salmanticenses, De fide, disp. IV, II, §3, n. 46; John of St. Thomas, loc. cit., etc.

IV. Concerning the principle, which must be considered the foundation of this thesis. Aquinas explains his position on canonized saints in these words: “It is certain that the judgment of the universal Church cannot err in matters pertaining to faith. In other judgments, however, which pertain to particular facts, as when dealing with possessions or crimes or the like, it is possible for the judgment of the Church to err because of false witnesses. The canonization of saints holds a middle place between these two: because the honor which we show to saints is a certain profession of faith, by which we believe in the glory of the saints, we must piously believe that even in these matters the judgment of the Church cannot err.” Quodlibet IX, art. 16. The word piously should not be considered to weaken the certainty, however, which is evident from the quoted article, in which it is posited not as an opinion but as a certainty that the Church cannot error in canonization. What is signified, then, is the highest degree within the genus of pious faith; on which see Benedict XIV, op. cit., bk. I, ch. 43, n. 13.

The Angelic Doctor, therefore, offers this argument: “the honor which we show the saints is a certain profession of faith.” Thus the canonization of saints is connected with those things which pertain to the faith, in which the judgment of the Church cannot err. But what, exactly, is that connection? No canonization is contained among the immediately revealed truths; nor is any canonization, in the way theological conclusions are, deduced from revealed truth by logical necessity. But canonization is a certain special profession of faith, which is evident from the prefatory remarks and which will appear ever more from the arguments: as such, however, it is connected to the faith itself. Therefore it is subject to that special and supernatural Providence, by which Christ promised that he would be present to His Church for all time. Whence St. Thomas, about to set forth his teaching on this matter, proceeds from “the divine providence, which directs His Church by the Holy Spirit, so that she may not err.”

These things being thus laid down, we undertake to prove the thesis as a certain sentence, however setting aside the controversy as to precisely what degree of censure the contrary opinion may be charged with.

Thesis: The Canonization of Saints Is the Object of the Infallibility of the Church

Arguments

Argument I. The Church cannot err in those determinations which pertain to the profession of faith. But “the honor which we show to the saints is a certain profession of faith, by which we believe in the glory of the saints.” St. Thomas, loc. cit. From which Aquinas, in the same place, develops the argument in this way: “just as we are bound to believe that which is in Sacred Scripture, so too that which is commonly determined by the Church: whence he is judged a heretic who holds a view contrary to the determination of the Councils. Therefore the common judgment of the Church cannot be erroneous; and so it is the same conclusion as before,” namely, that “the Church cannot err in such matters (in canonizing saints).”

Argument II. The Church cannot err in handing down a common rule of morals. But through canonization a certain common rule of morals is proposed to us. The major has been proven. Proof of the minor. In the canonized saint, the law of the Christian life is set forth as in an example. “For in human operations and passions, in which experience is of the greatest value, examples move more than words.” St. Thomas, I-II, q. 34, art. 1. For this reason, if the life of the canonized saint were at odds with reason and the Gospel, error would overflow into the doctrine of morals. Whence St. Thomas, Quodlibet, loc. cit.: “in the Church there cannot be a damnable error. But this would be a damnable error, if one who had been a sinner were venerated as a saint, since some, knowing his sins, would believe his sanctity to be false; and were this to occur, they could be led into error. Therefore the Church cannot err in such matters.” — Nor is it any wonder that the Roman Pontiffs have more than once expressly stated, in so many words, the gravity of the causes of Canonization; just as John XXII, in the course of investigating the sanctity of St. Thomas Aquinas, affirms that one must proceed with great maturity in “so weighty a matter of faith”; the very same gravity is called by Nicholas V, in the process of canonization of St. Vincent Ferrer, a “most weighty” cause; and by Leo X, in the cause of St. Francis of Paula, a matter which “touches the divine majesty and pertains forever to the worship of the universal Church.”

Argument III. From untoward consequences. a) If the Church could err in canonizing saints, the whole cult of the saints would be endangered. This is the greatest untoward consequence. For if a doubt is admitted regarding some saint duly canonized, the sanctity of the others too, who are placed on the roll of the blessed, could be called into question. Cf. Cano, loc. cit. b) If it could happen that the Church erred in the canonization of saints, it could come about that, by the Church’s own definitive act, a damned soul would be venerated, and that the faithful would seek help from one who was suffering eternal torments. How unworthy this would be of the Church of God, there is no one who does not see. Cf. St. Jerome, Commentary on the Epistle to Philemon.

Objections

Objection I. The Church is able to err in deciding controversies concerning a purely human fact, as to whether someone has lived a holy life or not.

Response. I distinguish the major: the Church can err in questions of a particular fact, conceded; in facts connected with the faith, denied. The canonization of saints is in the middle between those things which directly and per se pertain to faith and which are merely particular facts.

Therefore, the infallibility that belongs to the Church for the observance of faith and morals extends to the canonization of saints, lest the Church teach anything contrary to faith or morals.

Instance. Human testimonies are very often false. But the Church, questioning witnesses about life and miracles, relies on fallible authority in the process of canonization. Therefore the judgment of the Church about saints cannot be infallible.

Response. I distinguish the minor. The Church relies on fallible authority in canonization, together with the special assistance of the Holy Spirit, conceded; deprived of that assistance, denied. God, who adapts the means to the end, will provide for the sake of preserving truth in the Church, lest the judgment of the Church concerning the saints be corrupted by any error or falsehood of witnesses. For the Church is directed in judgments of this kind “especially by the instinct of the Holy Spirit;” and “divine providence preserves the Church, lest in such things she be deceived by the fallible testimony of men.” St. Thomas, loc. cit.

Objection II. The Roman Martyrology is an authentic catalogue of saints. But it is possible that someone may be listed in that Martyrology who seems to have been undeservedly listed among the saints.

Response. I distinguish the major. The Roman Martyrology is a catalog of those who were solemnly canonized by the Supreme Pontiff, inclusive, conceded; exclusive, denied. And I distinguish the minor. It can happen in the case of a solemn canonizations, denied; in other cases, let it pass. The description in the Roman Martyrology, viewed in its nature and character, does not involve a formal canonization, or something equivalent. However, if anything in the Roman Martyrology seems to need amendment, it should be referred to the Congregation of Sacred Rites. Cf. Benedict XIV, op. cit., bk. I, ch. 43, n. 13; likewise Laemmer, De Martyrologio Romano.

Question. Whether the Church is also immune from error in the beatification of the servants of God.

Answer. a) Some theologians deny that the Church can err in the beatification of the servants of God. Whether their arguments are of such a nature as to demonstrate that the matter is certain is doubted by many doctors. Nevertheless, it would be rash to assert that the Church erred in the judgment of beatification. Cf. Benedict XIV, op. cit., bk. I, ch. 42, n. 10.

b) That the judgments of beatification are not infallible, these are proofs: 1° Beatification is not the final and definitive judgement. 2° Before proceeding from formal beatification to canonization, the whole case is discussed again, a vote is taken. “These things, indeed,” Benedict XI says, “are not merely ceremonial, but concern the substance of the judgment, and are not carried out unless the help of Almighty God is invoked, seeming to show clearly that the judgment of beatification is not held infallible by the Roman Pontiffs themselves.” Op. cit., bk. I, ch. 42, n. 10.

c) What we have said here regarding beatification applies equally to beatification, whether formal or equivalent, as now decreed by the Apostolic See, and to that particular canonization which, when carried out by a bishop, used to be defined within the bounds of a diocese. Such a particular canonization seems to have been reserved to the judgment of the Supreme Pontiffs first by Alexander III, Innocent III, and finally in 1634 by Urban VIII, while canonization more strictly so called was the proper right of the Roman Pontiffs from the earliest times. Cf. Benedict XIV, op. cit., bk. I, chs. 7–13; Zeitschrift für kath. Theologie, 1890, pp. 599–616. — This is worthy of notice also, that if the cult established by such a particular canonization should spread throughout the Church, it can be confirmed and solemnized by such consent of the Roman Pontiff that it becomes equivalent to a canonization strictly so called.

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

With that in mind, I want to introduce regular readers of The Journal of American Reform to some of the essays — important ones, in my view — that I’ve recently penned for this new Catholic publication. Chief among these are critical reevaluations of Bishop Fulton Sheen, coverage of the ongoing GOP civil war and an analysis of Taylor Marshall’s shifting views on the crisis in the Church.

Going forward, you can find all of my work for Integrity Magazine at my dedicated author page.

Latest for Integrity Magazine

Bishop Fulton Sheen

• EWTN shares video of Fulton Sheen promoting dissident Teilhard de Chardin

• Fulton Sheen the Americanist? A critical examination of his remarks on Church-State relations

• There are good reasons why Fulton Sheen should not be considered for beatification

GOP Civil War and the Radical Insufficiency of American Conservatism

• Vance, Vivek speak at Republican Jewish Summit as civil war rages within GOP

• Biden FBI memo is a badge of honor for Traditionalists defending the Kingship of Christ

• James Lindsay is right: Catholic Integralism is a threat to American conservatism

Taylor Marshall

• Taylor Marshall’s shifting ecclesiology: Is he abandoning the recognize and resist position?

Jewish Question

• Should Traditionalists support a Catholic-Muslim alliance against Jewish power?

• Pro-LGBT Jewish feminist elected president of Catholic Biblical Association of America

• Franciscan announces first ‘Coalition of Catholics Against Antisemitism’ chapter

• Meet the ultra-Zionist feminist Leo just put in charge of the Vatican’s media arm

Official Journal Merchandise

In addition to the popular official mug for the Journal, a number of new products are now available for purchase at our store:

Shop American Reform

Of course, absolutely no obligation — only if you’re interested!

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

“Thirteen governments [of the original states] founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe… gained in favor of the rights of mankind.” — John Adams

American Exceptionalism: A Chimera

In July our entire country celebrated the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and the achievement of independence from King George III,1 whose subjects we had been. Leading up to this historic event, the Trump Administration launched an initiative called “Freedom 250.” President Trump’s fundamental reflection was as follows: “With a single sheet of parchment and 56 signatures, America began the greatest political journey in human history.”

This sentiment is thoroughly American. For better or worse — we consistently have argued the latter in our Journal — our country has always viewed itself as unique in its animating spirit, principles, form of government and founding philosophy. This is the vaunted “American Exceptionalism” we hear so much about; a designation in which we would take no issue, were the qualities in question actually exceptional.

While calmly stating this unpopular truth, we must affirm our commitment to and love of our country, heading off the likely objectors. Recall, it is with principles, not passions, that sound judgments are made.

Underlying our love of country, true patriotism,2 are principles independent of the circumstances we find ourselves in today. This patriotism affirms and wants to cultivate the existing good in America while opposing whatever evil is actually present — no more, and no less.

Returning to the claimed American Exceptionalism, perhaps one of the most authoritative witnesses is the celebrated “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison. Writing in Federalist no. 14 in 1787, Madison first entertained the prospect of the Revolution not happening, speculating, “the people of the United States might, at this moment, have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind.”3 Given the American Revolution did succeed, however, he claimed for the Revolution a status “which has no parallel in the annals of human society”, since it established “fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe.”4 The significance of this remark can hardly be overstated: one of the most influential “Founding Fathers” confirmed that both the American Revolution and the governments it produced were without historical precedent.

This same Madison — defender of the Constitution against the anti-Federalists — was also the architect of a second, no less celebrated exceptionalism: a commitment to separating Church and State rivaled only by Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to Edward Livingston in 1822, consistent with his strict stance for separation maintained throughout his life, Madison affirmed the Masonic ideal5 of all government entirely indifferent to religion:

I observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the immunity of Religion from civil jurisdiction… Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.6

Pleased with Livingston’s commitment to this religious liberalism,7 Madison was untroubled by this novel and radical view, whereas the ancient, medieval and Catholic view always proclaimed the union and cooperation of Church and State — a view even all Protestant sects had shared until the American Revolution. Madison accurately summarized it as holding “the establishment of Religion by law, was right & necessary; that the true religion ought to be established in exclusion of every other; And that the only question to be decided was which was the true religion.”8

But the American Republic departed, and proudly so, from this natural, timeless and harmonious union of Church and State. This was motivated in no small part by Madison’s activism, preceded by both his and especially Thomas Jefferson de-confessionalizing Virginia. Remember, prior to the introduction of “religious liberty” in Virginia, there was a state-established Anglican church. Jefferson candidly explained what motivated its introduction in his autobiography, emphasizing that the satanic principle of religious freedom — for who would afford Truth and error equal rights as an ideal — applied to members of every religion:

“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.9

In what may astonish many, forgotten is the approval of George Washington for this act, who relayed to George Mason that a continuing state religion in Virginia would be offensive to a “respectable minority.”10 This is the same Washington who was relieved in 1790 that the American political project confidently overcame the religious toleration of Europe, in favor of “having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” that all men “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”11 His revolutionary call for imitation was well-heeded: every European country in the world, beginning with France in 1789, went on to introduce the solvent of “religious freedom” into its political order.

As we argued earlier this year, this American “exceptionalism” and its legacy has come at tremendous cost:

• The Godless Constitution: America’s Original Sin

Yes, a godless constitution for a godless republic — harsh to hear, but the history bears it out. Consider that our Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times since it was ratified in 1788, however no amendment has ever declared the government to have any religious belief, much less a Christian one.12 That said, there have been meaningful efforts to rectify the omission of what has been termed a “Christian amendment.” During the nineteenth century, the Protestant-led “National Reform Association” made promising steps to both enshrine the Holy Name of Jesus in the Constitution and derive the authority of government from God. However, both efforts failed, not even making it to a vote in Congress.13

Not content with keeping these principles confined to the eighteenth century, America’s presidents and statesmen wanted to see the intensification of the Liberal revolution. Chief among them, alongside Washington and Jefferson, was John Adams. A free-thinking, unitarian radical who blasphemed the the Cross of Christ and the Church,14 Adams wrote to the prominent Jewish statesman Mordecai M. Noah in 1818 that “This Country has done much,” but he wished “it may do more, and annul every narrow idea in Religion, Government and Commerce” (emphasis added).15 He was moved by the conviction, in his own words, to “please the Providence of the ‘first Cause,’ the Universal Cause [ed. phrases by which Adams’ defined his God], that Abraham should give Religion, not only to the Hebrews but to Christians and Mahomitans, the greatest Part of the Modern civilized World.”16

How fitting does all this cohere with what Pope Leo XIII warned in his encyclical Immortale Dei, fittingly “On the “Christian Constitution of States”, where he described the “tenets of unbridled license” culminating in a “new conception of law… at variance on many points with not only the Christian [law], but even the natural law.”17 A new system of government where “The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society.”18

No man then, whatever his rank, should claim “America began the greatest political journey in human history” and not expect to be “likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand (Matt. VII, 26).”

Leo XIII, President Washington, and the Perils of Prooftexting

Hoping to stave off criticism of the American Revolution and Founding, especially when it is severe, the retort from many Catholics is to energetically repeat the praise of Pope Leo XIII for our Republic’s first President. The source of the praise is, of course, the 1895 encyclical Longinqua Oceani “On Catholicism in the United States.” In the text Pope Leo XIII not only gives recognition for Catholic aid in the American Revolution,19 but issues several significant compliments for George Washington.

Before recalling the relevant remarks, it it is essential to remind ourselves of the two most salient points of the encyclical.20 First, the Church at the end of the nineteenth century was growing rapidly in America, aided by the freedoms granted to it by the new republic, but this was accidental — every false religion had the same exact freedoms and privileges — and is rather to be attributed to the “fecundity with which God has endowed His Church.” Secondly, the Church would do better with privileged support and protection from the government, and that “it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church.”

Now, turning to the pontifical remarks concerning President George Washington, we will briefly argue what they support and, no less importantly, by what they do not. In Longinqua Oceani, Pope Leo XIII called President Washington not only “great,” but an “illustrious citizen” with “keenness of insight worthy of his genius and statesmanship”21 In other words, this was deserved recognition of Washington’s natural virtues. Recall also that Popes, in addition to being teachers and legislators, are rulers of the universal Church and therefore prudence dictates establishing warm relations — to the extent possible — with all heterodox regimes and certainly not going out of one’s way to offend them. Why would President Washington be an exception?

Lest one think this kind of praise is unique to Washington, Pope Pius XII said similar things to the Indian ambassador to the Holy See in 1949 and even to Mahatma Gandhi, who was recognized as bequeathing his people a “legacy of great price: a staunch faith in the rightful ascendancy of the spiritual over the material.”22 The same Pope did not hesitate use honorifics for an infidel — that is, an unbaptized, pagan ambassador — whom he called “a representative so able and accomplished.”23Again, this was in the context of a newly-formed regime, the founding of modern state of India, so it made sense to secure the rights of the Church and Catholics by way of expressing personal respect for state leaders.

All this said, while it is true Washington had many admirable qualities,24 we know from Saint Paul that “Without faith it is impossible to please God” and that a committed Freemason,25 like himself, would not have faith.26

Washington’s commitment to religious indifferentism emerges clearly from this and other evidence. In a 1789 letter to the Hebrew Congregations of the City of Savannah, he first rejoiced that the “spirit of liberality and philanthropy is much more prevalent than it formerly was among the enlightened nations of the earth” (emphasis added).27 He continued in the letter, equating the “wonder-working Deity” of the Old Testament with that of modern Rabbinical and Talmudic Jews28 and then further with the God of “every denomination.”

In 1792, he told Sir Edward Newenham that “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by a difference of sentiment in Religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.”29 In this revealing quote, Washington identifies the religious dogma producing strife between Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants as a mere “difference of sentiments”, recommending they cease hostilities since “religious differences” can and should be done away with. Any remaining doubt about his indifferentism vanishes with the next sentence in the letter:

I was in hopes that the enlightened & liberal policy which has marked the present age would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see their religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of Society (emphasis added).30

How far is this admonition from that of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is (Jn. XIV, 6) “the way, the truth, and the life” and came (Matt. X, 34) “not to send peace, but a sword.” The false peace of this world is rather destroyed as a consequence of the Truth of the Gospel, not lamented. For is it not better to have temporal strife and eternity with God then temporal peace and eternity with the Devil?

Another interesting indirect detail about Washington and his legacy is to be found in the story of his monument and another Pope, Pius IX. In the late 1840s the Washington National Monument Society began soliciting help for the construction of a monument to President Washington, asking the American states and world leaders to furnish a memorial stone for its construction.31 Pope Pius IX obliged, commissioning a stone which simply stated “Rome to America” as a diplomatic gesture of good-will. However, before the stone could be installed, a radical band of anti-Catholic Know-Nothings raided the monument and destroyed the stone, refusing to allow it to be installed.

From the foregoing, it is clear that Pope Leo XIII simply praised the natural virtue of Washington, which is not a judgment on his whole person, necessarily. Neither is it a judgement on the legitimacy of the American Revolution, the degree to which the Federal Constitution coheres with Catholic doctrine nor a prohibition on analyzing both.

The Rights of Man vs. the Rights of God

On All Saints’ Day in 1900, Pope Leo XIII promulgated the encyclical Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus “On Christ the Redeemer” in which he criticized the endless, modern clamoring for the so-called “rights of man.” In response, the Vicar of Christ suggested, nay demanded, that the people instead “should hear of the rights of God.”32 These precious, inviolable rights of God so often overlooked by modernity, even scorned.

Examining our American tradition, one searches in vain for a single mention of the rights of God by a prominent political figure, let alone in our legislation. Who among us has ever heard a politician, governor or president — living or dead — talk about God’s rights? The revolutionary founders of our republic were no exception, having passed over in silence the grave duty of civil authorities offering public worship, obedience and honor to God who is Jesus Christ.33 This is the case with the Declaration of Independence and the 1788 Constitution. A government by the people, for the people and of the people has its consequences.

It is as the same Pope Leo XIII observed in his encyclical thunderously condemning freemasonry, Humanum Genus, in which he unmasked those who work towards:

[T]he utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism.34

The American conservative recoils at the thought of this charge being laid at his country — though conceived in revolution and Lockean philosophy, surely our country is an exception, right? Bishop Sheen, and more recently Bishop Barron and Michael Knowles would like to think so, merely following in the footsteps of Edmund Burke, a Protestant Whig who is the father of philosophical and political Conservatism.

Upon scrutiny, however, the American constitution and founding philosophy are the application of the principles of Liberalism and naturalism to government. It is a revolutionary new order for a country, indeed the world. A figure no less authoritative than Thomas Jefferson said as much. If law is to be interpreted according to the legislator,35 who better to relay the meaning of the Declaration of Independence? Here is what he had to say on June 24, 1826, just ten days before he died:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. that form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. all eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. these are grounds of hope for others. for ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them (emphasis added).36

A more explicit confirmation of the significance and intention of the American revolutionaries could hardly be found. Not content with installing the “unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion” in the new republic, Jefferson saw the Declaration to be a signal to the world — indeed it was — to throw off the old order of “monkish ignorance and superstition” while embracing the “rights of man.”

John Adams, whom we have already mentioned, reflected on the America Revolution and its effects in 1818 similarly:

The American Revolution was not a common Event. It’s Effects and Consequences have already been Awful over a great Part of the Globe. And when and Where are they to cease?… The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. A Change in their Religious Sentiments of their Duties and Obligations… This radical Change in the Principles, Opinions Sentiments and Affection of the People, was the real American Revolution. By what means, this great and important Alteration in the religious, Moral, political and Social Character of the People of thirteen Colonies, all distinct, unconnected and independent of each other, was begun, pursued and accomplished, it is surely interesting to Humanity to investigate, and perpetuate to Posterity.37

If the Revolution’s own heroes are to be believed — and who is better to characterize it than those who made, supported and completed it — then America’s founding was not merely a political separation from King George III and Britain but a self-conscious “alteration” in the “religious, Moral, political and Social Character” of a people — precisely the “utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order” that Pope Leo XIII would later condemn. Jefferson, as the author of the revolutionary Declaration of Independence and Adams in the former’s words “the pillar of it’s support on the floor of Congress, it’s ablest advocate and defender”38 surely are to be taken at their word.

For us, as Catholics, it marks the first and deliberate departure from the old Christian order; in favor of a new one built, as Adams said at its inception, “Thirteen governments [of the original states] founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe… gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”3940

May God have mercy on America.

Postscript

In due time at The Journal of American Reform we will delve deeper into the facts of the revolution, as we mostly concerned ourselves with a critique of the founding philosophy in this essay. Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration, has a peculiar background and his well-known cousin John Carroll of Baltimore became America’s first Bishop. Importantly, the fundamental legitimacy — or lack thereof — of the American Revolution will also be examined in light of the principles of established, Catholic political philosophy.

In anticipation, one must therefore ask himself: what side were good Americans really on?

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

1

In 1775, one year before the Declaration of Independence was issued by the American Revolutionaries, King George III decreed a royal proclamation against the rebellion and sedition of his lawful subjects. These subjects, of course, were the American colonists. His decree was a direct response to the outbreak of violence and armed conflict at Lexington and Concord in April earlier that year.

In the proclamation, King George formally declared that the colonies were in a state of “open and avowed Rebellion,” accused colonists of being misled by “dangerous and ill-designing Men,” and ordered all civil and military officers, as well as loyal subjects, to help suppress the rebellion and bring the “Traitors” to justice.

This proclamation marked a major turning point in relations between the King and his subjects — it was the stage at which England officially treated the American rebellion as treason rather than mere political grievance.

“The immanent common good of political society must, accordingly, contain in a perfect manner all these classes of goods: exterior goods (wealth, abundance, and sufficiency of useful goods), interior goods of the body (health, robustness: sufficiency and abundance of means for the perfect development and preservation of the race, with its accompanying bodily well-being — sufficiency of delightful goods), and interior goods of the soul (sufficiency and abundance of resources for the perfect development of the faculties and habits of the soul: arts, sciences, culture, virtue — sufficiency of honorable goods).— Fr. Santiago Ramírez

The Return of the Common Good

Over the course of the past couple of weeks, the on-going civil war in the Republican Party has come into sharper focus with a fierce debate centered on the “common good” and its importance for American politics. The two schools of thought on the question can be broadly distinguished as follows. On one side stands the Republican establishment and Conservative ideologues1 who identify the end of civil society in the protection of individual rights, with the common good to the extent it is even acknowledged, as subordinate to that end.

On the other side stands an ascendant coalition, led mostly by Catholic intellectuals and notably Adrian Vermeule, Chad Pecknold and Patrick Deneen who — following the natural, classical and Catholic conception of politics — see the common good as the end of civil society, with the particular goods of individual men subordinate to it. This latter truth is the common sense principle of totality, expressed simply by St. Thomas and Pope Pius XII, respectively:

The good of the whole takes precedence of the good of the part. It belongs then to a prudent ruler to neglect some defect of goodness in the part for the increase of goodness in the whole.2

We mean the principle of totality. This principle asserts that the part exists for the whole and that, consequently, the good of the part remains subordinated to the good of the whole, that the whole is a determining factor for the part and can dispose of it in its own interest.3

Even more heartening is to see this movement, spurned on by the keen diagnoses of the aforementioned “Post-Liberals”, increasingly attaching the common good to Revealed Religion, of which is it inextricably linked. That is, the common good ought to be ordered with an eye to man’s supernatural end: the beatific vision and eternal union with God who is Jesus Christ. Naturally, in order for this to occur, the indirect subordination of the State to the Catholic Church must be effected, nothing other than what Jesuit master Father Matteo Liberatore highlighted in 1877:

God is one, one is the order of the universe, one is the ultimate end of creation. This end, in relation to the One who orders things, must be the most sublime and the most advantageous for the things that are ordered, which can only be the glorification of God and the eternal beatitude of rational beings. Now, this is precisely the end toward which the Church leads. The Church is therefore not simply a perfect society (how could a society that leads to the most perfect good not be perfect?), but it is also a supreme society above all others, its end being supreme. And every other lower end must be subordinated to this end, if it is true that secondary goods, in relation to the supreme good, have the nature of means, and that means are subordinate to the end. It follows from this with irresistible clarity that every society must submit to the Church and to receive from her both rule and direction. So, however much one may exalt the State and exaggerate its perfection, there is one thing that cannot be denied: its subordination to the Church, unless, of course, one wishes to transform the State itself into the Church and the prince into a Pontiff.

Prior to the American Revolution and constitutional order which it ushered in, tragically admitting the false liberties of worship and conscience, this was the normal ordering for all civil societies, Catholic or otherwise. In fact, the celebrated “Father of the Constitution” James Madison admitted as much in his 1822 letter to Samuel Livingston:

[T]he establishment of Religion by law, was right & necessary; that the true religion ought to be established in exclusion of every other; And that the only question to be decided was which was the true religion.4

With this in mind, the American Catholic State we are striving to inspire at The Journal of American Reform must recognize true religion and worship,5 the corollary of which Father Emannuel Barbier summarized thusly:

If it is true that politics is and can only be the application of morality to the government of the country, in Christian states, and if morality is essentially linked to religion, it clearly follows that the Church, the Pope, guardian of morality and religion, has, as such, a right to intervene in politics.

Returning to the two schools and the original question, that of the common good, this debate has enormous implications for the future of the Republican Party after President Trump leaves office. Will the pre-Trump status quo prevail, focused on individual rights, religious “pluralism” and laissez faire economics, or perhaps will the restoration finally begin? A restoration by which our governments — federal, state and local — will finally acknowledge the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ and derive their civil authority, not from the people and their consent, but in the sublime, eternal Authority of God.

The root of all our political problems can be traced to the common good, where citizens and most importantly leaders have forgotten their duties towards our common community motivated first by love of God and then our fellow man (Matt. XXII, 37-39). The latter has the right to honor, respect and, depending on the office, obedience. The former has the right to safety, care and to be led toward the objective good.

Time will tell for this restoration — it will only occur if God wills it. Until then, following the quote oft attributed to the founder of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, we must “Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on us.”

Father Ramirez’s Biography

Father Santiago Ramírez, O.P.,6 was one of the foremost scholastic philosophers and commentators of the twentieth century. Born in 1891 to a family of farmers in Spain, Ramírez would later enter the Dominican order in 1911 after receiving a solid, Catholic education in his youth.

In 1914, he graduated from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum. Ramírez was ordained two years later in 1916, celebrating his first Mass in the chapel of Saint Dominic’s convent of Santa Sabina in Rome. For the next several decades he would spend his time teaching philosophy and theology. In 1949, he travelled to the United States where he gave several lectures in Cincinnati, OH. Father Ramírez played a role as a peritus, theological expert, at the Second Vatican Council for the Theological Commission headed by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani.

In 1967, Father Ramírez died in his cell at San Esteban’s convent of Salamanca and went to his eternal reward

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present this treatment of the “common good” from Father Santiago Ramírez, based on the thought of Saint Thomas.

IV. THE COMMON GOOD

1. THE TERM COMMON GOOD IS AN ANALOGATE WITH TWO DIVERSE AND GRADATED MEANINGS.

But what is the natural common good of the perfect society of the natural order, that is, of political society? For it is precisely this that we treat in these lessons.

To answer this question we must bear in mind this rule of St. Thomas: when the formal and direct term of a question has diverse meanings, the first thing necessary is to distinguish them, and then answer successively according to each one.

This is what happens with equivocal and analogical terms, with the difference that the meanings or significations of the equivocal term are arbitrary, incoherent, disordered; whereas in the analogical term they are rational, coherent, ordered: only in the univocal term is its own signification unique and uniform.

The word pez, for example, signifies an aquatic animal (the fish), a resinous substance (pitch), a constellation (Pisces), a Spanish, Italian, or German surname (Pesch), a quality or state of the individual (it is a fish, this fish). Diverse meanings that give rise to jokes and plays on words.

In contrast, the word saint, which can signify a holy man, holy customs, a holy word, a rite, a holy ceremony, a holy habit, a holy place, is an analogical term, because these diverse meanings depend on or are related to a primary one, that is, to the holiness of a person.

The same is true of the word royal. Royal refers to the person of the king, the royal family, the royal escort, the royal decree, the royal order, the royal palace, the royal site, the royal street, the royal carriage, the Royal Academy, the royal armory. But it is equivocal when we speak of royal rights or royal taxes (royal, from res, thing; or royal from rex, king).

In times of royal phobias, at the beginning of the Republic, there were ridiculous and ignorant dupes who saw in royal taxes or rights remnants of the overthrown monarchy, and tried to abolish them.

Man, on the contrary, is a univocal term, because it always means the same thing, that is, rational animal, which is the essence of man, and applies equally to all men as such. It is the name of the human species.

Now then: the term common good does not signify a species or a genus, as man or animal do, but rather an analogate with two diverse and gradated meanings, which are the immanent common good and the transcendent common good. The immanent common good is within the political society itself and is dependent on it; the transcendent common good is outside political society and is independent of it.

A. Transcendent common good.

The transcendent common good of society is the ultimate end of society itself and of the human persons who constitute it, that is, God himself, the first cause and ultimate objective end of all things, essentially distinct from creatures and independent of them all.7

It is good because it is the end. Good is predicated of means and of ends, but properly and primarily of ends; means have no character of good except by relation to their ends.

It is common good because it is the ultimate end, that is, the universal end of all beings, particularly of rational beings, whether constituted in society or not. God alone is the cause of the angel and of the human soul, because they cannot be produced except by creation, and God alone can create. The ultimate perfection of a caused being cannot be anywhere but there, where its first principle is (cf. I, q. 12, a. 1).

The ultimate end has, with respect to all the other proximate and intermediate ends and to all means, the same proportion that the first cause has with respect to all the other secondary and intermediate causes and to all effects: it is the common or universal cause of everything, since it is the cause not only of the pure effects, which are not causes, but also of the secondary causes, which are not pure causes, being themselves causes that are in turn caused; and likewise the ultimate end is the common and universal end of everything, because it is the end not only of the pure means, which are not ends, but also of the proximate and intermediate ends, which are themselves ends that are in turn made to serve a further end.

Good or common and universal end in its function as ultimate final cause, in finalizing; but at the same time one and unique and personal in its innermost character of being, infinitely perfect, in being. God is a being, one and unique and personal, essentially distinct from the world and from each of its parts; but He is at the same time the most universal cause of everything and the most universal and most common end of everything. Common good by essence, by being subsistent Goodness itself; and universal end by essence, not made to serve any other end nor capable of being made to serve one. He is the first and supreme analogate of the concept of common good, to whom both the concept of good as the concept of common or universal apply primordially and in their fullest plenitude and perfection.

B. Immanent common good: its nature as human good.

But the principal difficulty lies in determining the nature of the immanent common good of political society. It is evident that this good must be a human good. Since it is a human society, composed of men, the immanent common or social good must necessarily be a human good, a good perfective of man, a good in conformity with the very nature of man.

a) The human good comprises:

α) Integral parts (external goods, goods of the body, goods of the soul). — But what is the human good? What does this good comprise? It comprises, as integral parts, three classes of goods: external or exterior goods, movable and immovable, such as wealth and possessions; goods of the body, such as health, the integrity, and the robustness of its members; and goods of the soul, such as knowledge and virtue. Every human good reduces to exterior goods, to interior goods of the body, and to interior goods of the soul. The sum of all of these together gives the complete human good.

β) Analogous or perfective parts (honorable, delightful, and useful goods). — But as analogous or perfective parts, the human good comprises just as many other classes of goods: honorable goods, such as virtue; delightful or pleasing goods, such as joy and contentment; useful goods, such as strength, skill, and wealth. Useful goods are predicated of means; delightful and honorable goods, of ends — with the difference that honorable goods are predicated of ends in themselves, while delightful goods are predicated of ends insofar as their satisfying effects on the subject who attains and possesses them. The first and supreme analogate is the honorable good; then comes the delightful good; and last, the merely useful good (cf. I, q. 5, a. 6).

b) The immanent common good of political society must contain all these goods in a perfect manner, and it will be the more perfect the greater the sufficiency with which it possesses them.

The immanent common good of political society must, accordingly, contain in a perfect manner all these classes of goods: exterior goods (wealth, abundance, and sufficiency of useful goods), interior goods of the body (health, robustness: sufficiency and abundance of means for the perfect development and preservation of the race, with its accompanying bodily well-being — sufficiency of delightful goods), and interior goods of the soul (sufficiency and abundance of resources for the perfect development of the faculties and habits of the soul: arts, sciences, culture, virtue — sufficiency of honorable goods).

For the life of the body, for health, for the development of human activities, for the custody and defense of the social order, material riches are needed in abundance, along with arms and power — all of this contained under the character of useful good, since these things have no character of end in themselves, but of means to higher goods.

That same prosperity and material security of society is a necessary condition, not only for the culture of the arts and sciences, but also for virtue itself: the higher goods of the soul in their superlative degree as honorable goods. It is a well-known fact that the common run of men is, as such, incapable of leading a heroic life full of renunciations and poverty, in the style of a St. Francis of Assisi or a St. John of the Cross: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. It ordinarily needs abundant material goods (sufficient, not superfluous) in order to develop its higher activities and not be forever preoccupied with our daily bread, devoting all its energies to procuring it. He who has not resolved the problem of bodily life will scarcely be able to live a higher and spiritual life: first live, then philosophize, as the Greeks already said and as St. Thomas records.

And political society will be the more perfect the greater the sufficiency with which it “possesses” all these goods, and the “better ordered” it keeps them, in such a way that useful and exterior goods are ordered toward contentment and social well-being — delightful goods rightly ordered — and all of these, in turn, toward the honorable good, that is, toward the fully moral and virtuous life of the associated men; and the more it fosters, favors, and procures these human goods of intellectual and moral culture, whether in their qualitative aspect of intensive perfection, or in their quantitative aspect of extensive perfection reaching the greatest possible number of its members. “Since man needs to live in society in order to provide for his needs, it is evident that a society will be the more perfect the more capable it is of meeting those needs” (De Regno, l. 1, c. 2, n. 7, ed. cit., p. 225).

c) The perfection of the common good: order, tranquility, peace. Texts of St. Thomas, Pius XI, and Pius XII.

Now then, a people, a political society that is rich, prosperous, secure, powerful, cultured, and virtuous, by the mere fact of being virtuous does not abuse its riches or its power, but rather is content and satisfied (delightful good) according to the norms of right reason and of morality — this contentment and satisfaction is an effect of its virtues and its prosperity, and a condition for further progress in both orders; for man, by his very nature, is essentially progressive in the arts, in science, in culture, in virtue. It is a condition of intellectual and moral habits that they be susceptible of indefinite growth and perfection: the more they grow and are perfected, the more they enable the powers of the soul to produce better and more sublime works.

The abundance of bodily goods, and the power to preserve and defend them, removes the motives for quarrels and discontent and prepares the ground so that, together with moral and cultural virtues, the men who make up political society will respect one another, unite more intimately, esteem and love one another with genuine affection; from which there naturally follows concord, order, peace, and social tranquility, each man being content in his own place and office, cooperating according to his strength for the good of all and sharing proportionally in the common well-being (cf. 2-2, q. 47, a. 10 c and ad 2).

St. Thomas calls this good order, tranquility, peace, unity, friendship, well-being, public health8 — aspects, properties, or conditions of the common good. Characteristic of his doctrine on this point is the following text: three things are required for the common good of political society. First, the union of all the members of society in true and sincere friendship, whose proper fruit is social peace, public peace. Second, the union of the forces of all and of each of these members in order to cooperate toward the common good; because just as a particular man cannot work at full capacity unless he unites all his energies, dispersing none of them, and still less letting them impede one another, as happens in a sick man, an idler, or a vicious man — so too political society does not achieve the common good unless all its members are united and in concord, without hindering or contradicting one another, but rather concentrating all their energies to attain it. It is a well-known fact that union makes strength: vis unita, fortior. Third, the sufficiency and fullness of human goods, corporal and spiritual, exterior and interior, physical, intellectual, and moral, which follow naturally from the first two conditions (De regno, l. 1, c. 15, n. 49, p. 262). This common good must be sought after, not in just any manner, but with the greatest possible energy and in the best possible way (Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, c. 1, n. 26, ed. cit., p. 11).

This doctrine of St. Thomas has been adopted and consecrated by the supreme authority of Leo XIII, of Pius XI, and of Pius XII, gloriously reigning. Allow me to cite a few brief words from the last two Pontiffs. Pius XI, in the encyclical Divini Illius Magistri, says: “The common good of political society consists in the peace and security by which families and individuals can fully enjoy the exercise of their rights, and, at the same time, in the greatest possible well-being, material and spiritual, of the present life, through the union and determined cooperation of all. Peace and full security in the free exercise of family and individual rights: the greatest possible abundance of goods of soul and body, thanks to the union and cooperation of all. Commune bonum temporalis ordinis in pace ac securitate consistit, quibus familiae singulique cives in suis exercendis iuribus fruantur, simulque in maxima quae in mortali hac vita esse potest spiritualium fluxarumque rerum copia, omnium quidem opera atque consensione assequenda” (AAS 22 [1929], p. 62).

And Pius XII, in his Christmas message of 1942, broadcast to the entire world, spoke these words: “The common good of political society is social coexistence in peace, tranquil coexistence in order; coexistence in order and in tranquility. In the juridical order, and in the operative tranquility needed to bring it about. The common good implies the gathering together of all those exterior conditions necessary for the body of citizens to develop their qualities, offices, and duties, that is, their material, intellectual, and religious life” (AAS 35 [1943], pp. 10 and 13), of their complete personality.

All this is what emerges from the analysis we have just made of the human common good.

2. HOW THE IMMANENT COMMON GOOD OF POLITICAL SOCIETY RELATES TO OTHER GOODS. IT IS LIKE A MEANS BETWEEN THE PROPER AND PERSONAL GOOD AND THE TRANSCENDENT COMMON GOOD OF THE NATURAL ORDER.

On the other hand, upon a little reflection, it becomes apparent that this common good has intimate relations with the transcendent natural common good, with the natural proper good of each individual, with the immanent common good of imperfect natural societies, and with the immanent common good of the perfect supernatural society, which is the Church of Christ — and yet it is essentially distinct from all of them.

At first glance one sees that this common good is like a means between the proper and personal good and the transcendent common good of the natural order.

A. Looking toward the individuals who compose society.

a) It is distinct from and superior to the proper, personal, and particularized good.

The immanent common good is a common good, not a proper one; universal, not particular; social, not personal; public, not private.

It is superior to the proper and personal good.

b) It is distinct from and superior to the collective common good.

But it is not a merely collective good, that is, a mere sum of proper, particular, and personal goods, as the capital of an industrial or commercial company is a collective good — that is, the sum of the contributions of its shareholders. Perfect political society is not a sum of individuals, is not an amorphous, inorganic mass of men, as we saw earlier (II, 1). Consequently, neither can the immanent common good of such a society be a mere sum of particular goods.

The collective good is equal to the sum of the particular goods that make it up, just as the quantity of the total sum is equal to that of its addends taken collectively, neither more nor less: it is an integral whole that stands above what is merely well-distributed and particularized.

c) It is distinct from and superior to the univocal universal good.

c) It is a universal good, but universal or common with an analogical community, or a proportional community, not with univocal community or absolute equality.9

The analogical common good surpasses the merely universal or univocal good. A universal or univocal whole is superior to the sum of its particular goods, as the species is superior to the sum of all its individuals — past, present, and future — since it also embraces the possible ones, not with mere physical possibility, but with logical and metaphysical possibility. But the analogical common good which, as we have said, is the immanent common good of perfect political society, comprises not only all the actual particular goods of all the members who in fact compose it at a given time, but also all those of its history (past ones) and all those of its future, and even all the possible ones within human contingencies: it embraces all the particular goods of all times and of all possibilities, but still surpasses them, because it contains them in an eminent manner.

d) It is a total good, with a virtual or potential totality.

It is a virtual or potential whole, essentially distinct from its potential parts and incomparably superior to them: as the intellective soul is essentially distinct from, and incomparably superior to, the sensitive soul and the vegetative soul; as the power of the king or of the pope differs essentially from the other subordinate and particular powers of the State or of the Church, and is incomparably superior to them; as the presbyterate differs essentially from the diaconate and the subdiaconate, and surpasses them beyond comparison. The potential whole comprises within itself, in an eminent manner, each and every one of the perfections of each and every one of its potential parts, as their source and principle; it is a whole of order, essentially superior to all and each of its parts. That is why the immanent common good of political society is a good of order, essentially superior to all and each of the particular goods of its members.

As St. Thomas says, “the common good of perfect society and the particular good of a person are not distinguished merely quantitatively, as much and little, but formally and essentially, because the formal and essential character of good is different in the one and in the other” (2-2, q. 58, a. 7, together with q. 50, a. 2 ad 3).

e) It belongs to all and to each one, but not with absolute equality.

It belongs to all and to each one, but not totally, nor equally, with absolute equality. It is like the soul, which is wholly present in the whole body and in each of its parts with totality of essence, but not with totality of power — rather, in each organ it is present according to that organ’s capacity and functional aptitude; and in the whole human organism taken together it is present with totality of power, as soul, though not as spirit, since as spirit it transcends the capacity of the body and turns its face toward incorporeal things and goods. These are the two well-known faces of the human soul: one lower, as soul that animates the body and looks toward it; and one higher, as spirit that transcends the body and looks toward God (cf. in Psalm. 10, ed. Piana, fol. 12 ra of vol. 13).

In a similar way, the immanent common good of political society belongs to all and to each of its members according to the totality of its essence, but not according to the totality of its power and its worth, which are measured according to the capacity and functional aptitude of a social kind proper to each of them.

f) It is essentially communicable and communicative.

A good essentially communicable and communicative to all and to each of its component members, by the mere fact of being common and being immanent. It is not, nor can it be, outside man, outside the human person, but within him.

It is an analogate essentially embedded and enveloped in its participant members, and not perfectly abstractable or separable from them, to whom it communicates itself in act and not merely in potency, though in a graduated manner, in proportion to the condition of each one within the social body. It is something implicit, not merely potential, but rather in the manner of a confused and undistinguished global whole, which is explicated and distinguished according to the modes of actual participation in its members or parts.

It is like being in common, essentially bound up in the diverse particular modes of being of substance and of accident, of act and of potency. It descends and communicates itself to them of itself, without the mediation of extrinsic differences, just as a genus communicates itself to its species. The common good spreads and communicates itself to all and to each of the members of society, just as being does to its particular modes, as health and well-being do to all the members of an organism, as the vivifying virtue of the soul does to all the parts of the body.

g) It is the Supreme Law of Political Society, after God.

It is the supreme law of political society, after God, say Leo XIII and Benedict XV (encyclical Au milieu, of February 16, 1892; Acta Leonis XIII, ed. cit., vol. 3, p. 118; epistle Celeberrima, of December 18, 1919: AAS 12 [1920], p. 33).

B. Looking toward the Transcendent Common Good, toward God.

But besides that lower face which looks toward the individuals who compose society in this earthly life, it has a higher face, which looks toward God, transcendent common good and objective happiness of men in their life beyond this world.

It is a superior analogate with respect to individual and particular goods, but at the same time it is an inferior analogate with respect to the transcendent common good: just as created substance is a superior analogate with respect to accidents, but is an inferior analogate with respect to God. The immanent common good is not a good enclosed and self-contained within itself, but is essentially open toward the transcendent common good, and essentially diffused and participated in among the members of society.

The transcendent common good is a good by essence, uncreated, unparticipated, infinite, indestructible. The immanent common good is a created good, participated, finite, corruptible. This latter is made and produced by the associated men through their acts; the former is merely merited by their actions, not produced by them. The first is common or universal in causando, that is, in a causal and dynamic sense, as First Cause and Ultimate End of all the goods of man and of society; the second is universal or common in essendo, that is, in a formal, logical, or metaphysical sense.

C. Looking toward other societies.

a) It is like an analogate or likeness of the immanent common good of imperfect natural societies.

But it is, besides, an analogate of other lower and higher immanent common goods: inferior, such as those of imperfect natural societies; and higher, such as that of ecclesiastical society, which is a perfect supernatural society.

In domestic or family society, which supposes and includes conjugal society and parental society, the common good comprises the family patrimony and the household arts and trades needed to exploit and defend it, as a useful good necessary for family well-being; and particularly the virtues and the discipline proper to the home — exemplarity on the part of the parents, learning on the part of the children — and all of this within a spirit of respect, of trust, of sincere mutual love, with its natural sequels of harmony, of concord, of peace, of order, of tranquility, and of contentment. All of us, more or less, have seen or have lived within such happy families, which are an anticipated heaven, an imitation of the family of Nazareth; and all of us have also seen the reverse in other unhappy families — true images and foretastes of hell, with their quarrels and discord, with their mortal hatreds, with their bodily and spiritual miseries, in which each one does whatever he pleases, yet suffers and endures what he never would have imagined.

Now this human common good of domestic society is preserved, in its own way, in political society — that is, in a more perfect, more vast, more effective manner, complementing the family common good and making of the various families, villages, municipalities, cities, provinces, and regions so many members of perfect society, fraternally united in that higher community. The sufficiency of material goods corresponding to family needs, which must be amply satisfied, together with the other human goods of body and soul, in the ordered peace and tranquility of all, in intimate union of love and mutual respect, are preserved more amply — but in a proportional way, in political society, which must be like an amplified family, in which the Head of State plays the role of father, and the subjects conduct themselves with the respect and love of free children — with the freedom that virtue gives.

Proportion, analogy — not absorption nor suppression of the family common good and of the personal good of each individual. All, individuals and families alike, must cooperate toward the common good of political society and, at the same time, share in it; society must respect these goods and increase them as far as possible, causing this common good to intensify and to spread as widely as possible among its members (2-2, q. 47, a. 10).

b) And of the immanent common good of perfect supernatural society, which is the Church of Christ.

However, far more illustrative is the analogy with the immanent common good of perfect supernatural society, which is the Church. In her there are superabundant supernatural riches — the divine graces of every kind — available to all and to each, without ever being exhausted or diminished; an intimate union of the members among themselves and with their visible head, who is the Pope, founded on one same faith, one same hope, one same charity, one same sanctifying grace, one same divine filiation, one same redemption, one same unity of destiny: order, hierarchy, respect, harmony, continuity, uninterrupted progress, and astonishing fruitfulness in every kind of good. Communication and diffusion, in torrents, of the infinite treasures of divine grace to all and to each of her members; and openness, longing, yearning, rapture toward the transcendent supernatural common good, which is God Himself as He is in Himself.

Charity, queen of all human and Christian virtues and the distinguishing mark of the disciples of Christ, is the bond of perfection of all of them in society perfect, the sap, the health, the soul of the mystical body of Christ; a virtue eminently social and communicative of all the divine treasures to all men, without exclusion of anyone and without acceptance of persons or classes, and sovereignly active and yearning toward God under the supreme character of transcendent good, of goodness by essence.

A magnificent example, to be imitated in its own sphere by perfect political society.

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

“But it will always remain true in general: there is nothing more unnatural and repulsive than when men become effeminate and women play men’s roles. And the reason lies in their different natures, which are the measure of their different activities and tasks… What Aristotle confirms about those Spartan women is also instructive for our time: that times of women’s emancipation have always also been times of the moral decline of women and, quite logically, of the disintegration of the family and the state!” - Fr. Gallus Maria Manser

Fr. Manser’s Biography

Born in 1866 in Brülisau, Switzerland, an alpine village located in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, Gallus Maria Manser was a Dominican theologian, neo-scholastic philosopher and professor at the Collegium Canisianum.1

Manser attended a Benedictine grammar school in Einsideln, after which he studied philosophy in Monza and theology in Milan (1888–90). Once he deepened his study of St. Thomas, he detached himself from Molinism which he had previously espoused. In 1892, he was ordained to the priesthood and five years later admitted to the Dominican order.

In 1899, he was appointed Professor of Logic, Ontology and the History of Medieval Philosophy at the Collegium Canisianum. In addition to holding the chair for forty-three years, Manser twice served as Dean of the Faculty of Theology and four times as Rector of the University (1914–18). In 1941, he was appointed President of the newly founded Freiburg Philosophical Society.

Father Manser is known for the following three works:

• Das Wesen des Thomismus “The Essence of Thomism”, (1932)

• Das Naturrecht in thomist “Natural Law in Thomism”, (1944)

• Angewandtes Naturrecht “Applied Natural Law”, (1947)

In 1950, Manser died and went to his eternal reward, leaving behind an impressive body of work.

Editors’ Note

The following translation is as faithful to the original German text as possible, maintaining the original emphases and style. With that said, this is by no means the official and final English translation of the text, although we believe it to be a credible and respectable one.

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present Father Gallus Maria Manser’s 1919 overview of the views of Saint Thomas on the woman question.

The Woman Question According to Thomas Aquinas by Dr. G. M. Manser, O.P.

Introduction

Lay friends have asked me to explain St. Thomas’s teaching on the position of women. I have attempted to fulfill this request in the following brief lines. These are written without polemical intent, but not without the intention of correcting some views erroneously attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the woman question, taking them from the context of his teaching. They are not written with the immodest intention of effectively opposing the prevailing trend of the times, which seeks to thrust women everywhere into public and political life and activity. It is too late for that anyway. They only intend to provide some orientation and to make it easier for some in our camp to form their personal opinions on the pressing questions to come. Let us salvage what can still be salvaged in the present confusion. Without and against our will, the exalted priestess of the house will be torn from her ancestral sanctuary. The mighty storm of upheaval, ignited by Europe’s defection from Christ, which is raging against us from all sides and will likely shatter the last pillars of Christian marriage, family, and school, may overwhelm us Catholics. But it should not sweep us away and make us complicit in the impending ruin. Then, if the dawn of a new age seeking Christ ever breaks again, it will judge us not as “apostates,” but only as “downtrodden” and as valiant fighters who remained unwaveringly loyal to their banner. In any case, we will have done our duty!

The history of woman is more than any other a long history of suffering. It tells us of two equally extreme positions that women occupied among different peoples at different times, two positions that often merged into one another as reactions, and which, despite their opposition, nevertheless both repeatedly led down the same path of unbearable suffering and led to humiliations. This is proof that both positions are unnatural and can never give woman what is rightfully hers and what is capable of making her happy.

a) Often enough, woman was nothing more than the common, despised slave of the house, entirely at the mercy of the tyrannical man, the victim of his whims and passions. It was the position in which woman, as Weiss says,2 had only duties towards man, but no rights, and man had no duties, only rights. With human dignity, the source of all natural respect, she was also denied all moral power, all right to trust and moral reliability. What the Greek poet Menander said about woman: “Never give a woman good advice, for she herself always advises evil deeds.”3 was perhaps the bitterest thing that could be said about her. It was not only barbaric peoples who imposed this dishonorable servitude on women, but also, at times, Sparta, Athens, and Rome. Aristotle, the greatest political theorist of antiquity, did attempt to grant women a more dignified position. For him, she is by nature a “free person” (I. Pol. 1), whom men should treat with love and kindness (VIII. Eth. Nic. 12). But this remained largely theoretical. And in the end, with him as with the Romans and even the ancient Germanic peoples, reason of state had the final word in all dispositions concerning woman and whatever had to be dear and precious to her. It is also telling enough that a Jew influenced by Philo of Alexandria, who was quite familiar with the Old Testament, still considered woman the source of sensuality and evil at the time of Christ’s birth.4

b) A second, no less one-sided view assigned to women the position of ruler, along with the rights and duties of men. Since a woman’s little finger often means as much as her whole hand, even the absolute equality with men that the Sociologists had voluntarily offered her was not enough. She wanted to rule, in the home and more than once in politics as well.5 This misguided path of women was not entirely self-inflicted. Men’s passions contributed to it, not only the false gallantry of Romanticism, which idolized women for less than honorable reasons, but even earlier.6 More often than not, this unbridled lust for power was an exaggerated, but explainable reaction to the pitiful oppression on the part of the man, or at least to his reprehensible neglect. As is well known, Rome experienced such a women’s emancipation during the imperial period, and the lament of the poet Horace: “Now the woman is master, but the man sighs in silence and grumbles in the circle of his friends, yet he obeys,”7 was bitter enough. Not only in the home and in society did women call the shots, as Tacitus reports, but also in politics.8 Women in Sparta had won a similar position for themselves in the 5th century BC.9 There, too, women’s emancipation was partly a consequence of earlier subjugation and partly the effect of protracted wars, which kept men away from the hearth for extended periods. Aristotle and Plutarch ironically recount how the brazen, exuberant Spartan women of that time boasted of masculine heroic virtues, accused men of cowardice, and then, at the first sign of trouble, when they scarcely caught sight of the enemy campfires, lost their minds in fear.10 However, women have not always been so cowardly in war! But it will always remain true in general: there is nothing more unnatural and repulsive than when men become effeminate and women play men’s roles. And the reason lies in their different natures, which are the measure of their different activities and tasks. Here, natural law emerges in all its starkness! What Aristotle confirms about those Spartan women is also instructive for our time:11 that times of women’s emancipation have always also been times of the moral decline of women and, quite logically, of the disintegration of the family and the state!

Thomas Aquinas does not grant woman either of these two extreme positions. He is too sober, too serious, too far-sighted, too Christian for that. He considers woman neither an “angel” nor a “slave.” To him, she is a human being, like man, fallen like him and earlier than he, but with less responsibility than he, because he is her head, not his “slave,” but his “friend” and companion, just like him: called to eternal happiness. Let us define Aquinas’s position even more precisely: his standpoint on the woman question is the Christian one, which he maintains and defends for woman: I. with regard to her origin, II. as wife and companion, III. in her civic and social life, and finally IV. as a child of God.

I. The Origin of Woman

The origin of woman can be spoken of in a twofold sense: the creation of the first woman and the generation of those that follow.

We know the creation of the first woman only from the original revelation. True to his Christian standpoint, Thomas Aquinas therefore develops his understanding of the first woman created from Holy Scripture. The immediate premises on which he bases his conclusions are those verses from the first book of Genesis: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (1:27). “It is not good for man to be alone. Let us make a helper for him in his likeness” (2:18). “And the Lord God made a woman from the rib that he had taken from Adam” (2:22). Expressed in thesis form, Aquinas’s doctrine concerning the first woman created is as follows:

1. Just as Adam was the first man, so too God created Eve, the first woman, immediately and directly himself (S. Th. I. 92. 4).

2. By creating the first woman from man, He created her of the same essence as him, “idem secundum speciem,” that is, with the same human nature that Adam possessed (I. 92. 2 ad 2). Woman belongs neither to a higher level of being than he does, nor to a lower one; she is a human being, just as he is.

3. Man is the principle and end of woman. “vir est principium mulieris et finis” (I. 93. 4 ad 1). The principle: for this reason God created woman from Adam, so that man might be the principle of the entire human race, and so that he might love woman all the more intimately, remaining united with her in indissoluble fidelity and domestic cooperation. As Christ is the head of the Church, so man is the head of woman (1. 92. 2). But the end of woman is man because, for his sake, she was created by God the Lord as his helper for the propagation of the human race (I. 92. 1).

4. Consequently, even in the original state, before sin, before God spoke to the sinful woman: “Thou shalt be under the power of the man” (Gen. 3:16), there was a subordination of woman to man, her head and principle; he surpassed woman in intellectual acuity even in the original state. This submission, however, was not a “servile” one, but a “domestic” one, which serves woman’s own benefit and welfare, and which is grounded in the differently participated human nature of the two sexes: “naturaliter femina subjecta est viro, quia naturaliter in homine magis abundat discretio rationis” (I. 92. 1 ad 2).

5. But both, man and woman, are the special image of God, for woman too possesses a spiritual soul, “intellectualem naturam.” Only insofar as the image of God is particularly pronounced in man — insofar as he is the principle and goal of woman, just as God is the principle and goal of the universe (I. 93. 4. ad 1) — is the image of God more especially pronounced in man.

These doctrines make little impression on Christian thinkers. We have long known them and grown accustomed to them. But viewed in the light of cultural history, in the light of all that ancient and modern paganism said about the nature and position of women — all that was base and vile — these statements suddenly acquire a monumental significance. And Thomas Aquinas even stands in contrast to some ecclesiastical writers of the patristic period. According to him, all the aforementioned statements are valid even independently of original sin. Even without original sin, man and woman would have had sexual relations with one another and begotten children, albeit without being subject to the consequences of the first sin (II. Sent. D. 20. g. 2. a. 2.); for all this is good in itself, lies in human nature, which could not be altered by original sin (ibid. a. 1). The opposing view of Gregory of Nyssa and other Platonizing early Christian writers, who considered everything sexual to be contemptible in itself and consequently attributed it to the first sin — a view initially even embraced by the great Augustine —12 Thomas rejects as unnatural (1. 98. 2). Clearly, his position is more natural, healthier, and more humane!

Serious reproaches have been leveled against Thomas because of his view on the generation of women.

He is said to have called the woman born in marriage a “mutilated” or “misbegotten” man! And indeed, following Aristotle’s De Animal generatum, I. II. c. 3, and elsewhere, he speaks of woman as a “vir occasionatus”!

This expression might elicit a mocking smile from some. Others, to be sure, took it more seriously. They found in this view the deepest denigration of women. They could not conceive that the prince of the Scholastics could simply regard the birth of a female being as something “accidental”, as a kind of “deformity”. They had the dark suspicion that Thomas, misled by the pagan Aristotle — who in any case did not think clearly about providence — might have considered woman as a being that was not, or would not be, part of the intention of divine providence.

Let us also make a confession here. If Thomas had really taught anything of the kind, one would, in our view, have to be not merely outraged at him but astonished. Obviously, such a theory would be in direct contradiction with what he teaches about the creation of the first woman. Surely he could not call monstrosities special images of God! And if, according to him, the birth of every female human being were a “deformity,” or something “accidental” not willed by God, a “misfortune,” how could Thomas then maintain the view that even without sin, in a state of innocence, where deformities and misfortunes could not possibly exist, there would have been human procreation, and indeed an equal number of males and females (I. 99. 2.)? And remarkably, even where he calls woman a “vir occasionatus,” he raises this very objection we have made and most decisively rejects the idea that “vir occasionatus” meant anything “defective” (I. 99. 2. ad 1) or “unnatural” for woman (II. Sent. D. 20. q. 2. a. 1). Therefore, something must be wrong with the above interpretation given to the famous “vir occasionatus.”

And indeed, it is not true! Anyone who has read St. Thomas himself knows why it is not true! His view has a completely different meaning. Let us outline it briefly.

In the interacting natural causes, there is a twofold distinct order: the causal activity of an individual being, “naturae particularis,” on another, and the causal activity of the universe, “naturae universalis” (II. Sent. D. 20. g. II. a. 1 ad 1):

1. The first category includes the reproductive activity of man and woman. Man and woman behave as active and passive principles (I. 98. 2; III. 67. 4 ad 3). It is characteristic of every active principle to produce an effect similar to itself (II. Sent. D. 20. q. II. a. 1); hence the famous axiom “omne agens agit sibi simile” (I. 19. 2), upon which, according to Christian philosophy, not only all creative and created activity is based, but also the Trinitarian generation in God (I. 27. 4). From this, however, it logically follows that the more powerful and perfect an active principle is, the more similar its effect will be to itself, that is, the more perfect it will imprint its own form upon the effect, by virtue of which it is active (De Verit. 25. 5). Thus, if man is the active principle in generation, and he is the only active principle (III. 67. 4 ad 3), then his human-masculine nature or form, which participates in him, always tends in itself to the generation of a male being (De Verit. 5. 9 ad 9; 1. 92. 2. ad 1). If, nevertheless, a female being is generated, this lies outside the natural tendency of the active principle — praeter intentionem naturae particularis — ; thus, for the active principle in question, it is something “accidental”, a “vir occasionatus”. This effect must therefore be attributed to other causes, be they external or internal: such as the weakness of the active principle, or the extraordinary influence of the imagination, which, being strongly impressed and shaken, is capable of producing profound bodily changes (II. Sent. D. 20. g. II. a. 1 ad 2). With the latter, Thomas invokes a principle to explain the question that, as is well known, has been glorified by great modern poets in the same field and that plays a major role in the extraordinary phenomena of hypnotism.

2. The origin of woman is different in the order of universal causality. There, woman is in no way something “accidental,” “femina non est aliquid occasionatum” (I. 92. 2. ad 1), nor is woman to be considered something “defective,” “nec corruptio.” Rather, her origin is an effect of general natural causality, which depends on God (ibid.). Since she is necessary for the propagation of mankind and the preservation of the species, she is ordained for this purpose by divine providence “per providentiam divinam” (II. Sent. D. 20. g. II. a. 1. ad 1), which is why God created her in the beginning, just as he created man (I. 92. 2. ad 1).

Thomas, therefore, no more removes the development of woman from divine providence than that of man, nor is woman in any way “accidental” in the plan of divine providence, or even a “monstrosity.”

The problem of “sex determination” remains unresolved to this day. Even modern physiology has not solved it. Perhaps it never will be solved. We do not consider ourselves called upon to go further into this question, although the theory of St. Thomas indeed contains promising points of comparison with modern hypotheses. In any case, even the hypothesis which Landois considers the most probable13 does not save us from the “game of chance” unless the higher providential governance of God is also invoked — and that is precisely what Thomas Aquinas did. This, too, was a “Christian” thought!

II. The Wife and Mother

Marriage, says Thomas, is the union of man and woman with the intention of bearing and raising children for the glory of God (IV. C. G. 78). A good woman recently wrote: “The most sacred thing to us is the family, and those who kindle and tend the embers of the holy hearth should not be torn from their and our sanctuary.” This is not only a perfectly sound but also a glorious statement. This agrees completely with Thomas Aquinas (I. 92. 1). The family circle is the center of women’s activity. Motherhood is a woman’s first and main vocation. And even virginity, praised to God and considered more exalted than marriage (II-II. 152. 4), is only so on the condition that provision is made for the propagation of the human race (ibid. 2. ad 1). But motherhood, according to Thomas, consists not merely in bearing children, but above all in raising them to the glorification of God (II-II. 102. 1). The more frivolous use of the words “father” and “mother” today for the animal kingdom would hardly have the approval of Aquinas. “Father” and “mother,” in the truly strict sense of the word, can only be rational beings who know the goal and the means to that end and can guide the child, through instruction and guidance, to the goal, that is, to the glory of God. Thus, the family circle is truly a “sanctuary.” A high conception of the names “father” and “mother,” so dear and fierce to us!

This conception of the family already sheds light on the legal and social position that Thomas accords to the wife and mother in the family, even after the Fall. Certainly, the wife and mistress is subject to her husband, “vir est caput mulieris” (I. 92. 2). He teaches this on the authority of Holy Scripture (Com. in I. Cor. 11. 3). He derives this from the nature of both. In agreement with Augustine,14 he considers man more perfect in body and soul than woman (II. Sent. D. 21. g. II. a. 1; III. C. G. 123), because he is the active principle, and she the passive one (in I. Cor. 11. 3). Since woman is inherently weaker, she was first tempted in Paradise (II-II. 165. 2 ad 1). He also derives the same submission from the relationship between Christ and the Church, the model of Christian marriage. As the Church is subject to Christ, her Head, so the wife is to her husband (III. C. G. 123). — However, this subordination is not servile — servilis — , where the dominant party exploits the dominated for its own benefit, but a domestic one, for the benefit of the subordinate itself (I. 92. 1. ad 2). And since man and woman possess the same human nature and only participate in it to different degrees, this inequality is merely one of degree — inequalitas quantitatis (IV. Sent. D. 32. g. I. a. 3).

In addition, there is also a certain equality between husband and wife. Just as two friends, each according to their own nature, are active in one and the same friendship, and yet are equal to one another, for otherwise they would not be friends (III. Sent. D. 28. g. I. a. 3 ad 3), so too are wife and husband. The principle of equality of proportion applies to them, meaning that although they are unequal in nature and sex, they are equal to each other with regard to what corresponds to the nature of each spouse and therefore to their different sexes, and thus both have the same rights and duties towards each other (IV. Sent. D. 32. g. I. a. 3). Thus, Thomas succeeds in proclaiming complete legal equality between spouses — precisely in the area where, in antiquity, the woman lacked rights vis-à-vis the man: namely, with regard to sexual relations. (II-II. 32. 8 ad 2).

This equality allows him to further understand the relationship between father and mother, husband and wife, in a much higher, nobler sense. The marital bond is a bond of friendship. It signifies perfect friendship, “perfecta amicitia” (Com. in Is. c. 4), indeed, it seems to be the highest friendship, “maxima amicitia,” on earth (III. C. G. 123). Anyone who knows how ideally and sublimely Thomas constructed the concept of friendship also knows what this means for the position of woman as wife and mother. Friendship is the most perfect benevolence, that is, the most perfect love (III. Sent. D. 27. g. 2. a. 1). Five things are characteristic of a friend: he desires that his friend exist and live; he wishes him only good things; he does him only good things; he interacts with him lovingly and lives peacefully with him (II-II 25. 7). Above all, however, he is his comforting refuge in fearful hours of grief (I-II 28. 1 ad 2) and the confidant of his secrets (IV. C. G. 21). This, according to Thomas, is how the relationship between husband and wife should be!

But the highest thing that can be said of the Christian woman as wife and mother, he said following the words of Ephesians verse 32, “Marriage is a great sacrament, but I speak of Christ and the Church.” St. Thomas, when speaking about our question, does not express any thought so frequently as that Pauline saying.15 As the Church is to Christ, so is woman to man! What a sublime conception of woman’s dignity! How can there still be talk of degradation and humiliation in her position as wife and mother? Where is the slave of antiquity? What fruitful, tender, noble, and pure love, and what unbreakable fidelity and mutual support, should not bind the two spouses together?

In a time that has already frequently discarded the indissolubility of marriage and threatens monogamy, the unity of marriage, with outright attacks, it is perhaps appropriate to point out with what mastery Thomas, in his Summa contra Gentiles, defends these two pillars of the domestic sanctuary. And this seems all the more justified here since both theses are essentially nothing other than a vigorous defense of woman. We will, however, only briefly outline the evidence.

The dissolution of marriage, says Thomas, is detrimental to: 1) the preservation of private property within one and the same family; 2) it violates the equality of women, who, having lost their beauty and fertility, find it more difficult to establish a new household than a divorced man; 3) it is against the welfare of children; 4) it is against the friendship that should bind spouses; 5) it is contrary not only to natural law but also to divine law, and above all to the indissoluble union of Christ and the Church; 6) finally, it endangers domestic peace, the maintenance of orderly household affairs, and is a source of strife and enmity among relatives, not infrequently the cause of marital infidelity (III. C. G. 123).

The situation is similar with polygamy. While it is not, like polyandry (multiple husbands), contrary to the primary purpose of marriage, procreation, which is why it was occasionally permitted by dispensation in the Old Testament (III. C. G. 125), polygamy is: 1) contrary to the equality of women with men; 2) contrary to friendship between spouses. Here, the woman is reduced again to the role of servant and maid; 3) contrary to the care for children; and finally, 4) a source of bitter domestic disputes (III. C. G. 124).

These brief remarks demonstrate how concerned Thomas was with the dignified position of women in the family. The unity, equality, and indissolubility of marriage are, for him, the three pillars upon which the happiness of the domestic hearth, the family, rests.

Educators have often argued amongst themselves about whether the father or the mother is more important in rearing children. The influence of the mother — her deeply feminine nature, her kindness, gentleness, concern for even the smallest child’s needs, and her religious depth — usually only becomes clear to us when we are dealing with children whose mothers have been taken from them early by a harsh fate. They are withered flowers, deprived of the necessary sunshine of youth. Thomas Aquinas unhesitatingly assigns the primary task of raising children to the mother, “feminis maxime incumbit officium educandae prolis” (IV. Sent. D. 27. g. I. a. 1. g. II). And he makes the insightful observation: “guamvis pater sit dignior, guam mater, tamen circa prolem magis officiosa est mater guam pater” (IV. Sent. D. 27. g. I. a. 1).

But he, too, was aware of the gap that fatherless child-rearing leaves for later life, not only because of the frequently lacking strength of character and will, but also because of a certain narrowness and limitation of the intellectual horizon. The father’s intellect sees further than the mother’s, and therefore the stricter, punitive, restraining, guiding authority of the father is just as necessary for the successful upbringing of children as his influence on instruction (III. C. G. 122 and 123).

III. The Civil Status of Women

After what has been said, hardly anyone would expect Thomas Aquinas to advocate the civil equality of women with men.

According to him, as the creation account demonstrates, God created woman, the most sacred and venerable source of humanity, with her subordination to man. This subordination according to him is anchored in the nature of woman, “naturaliter femina subjecta est viro” (I. 92. 1 ad 2). It is thus grounded in divine decrees and in the order of natural law. If woman is by nature more imperfect than man and therefore subject to him under natural law, this subordination cannot refer solely to marriage and domestic life, for nature always remains the same, but must also extend to civil, public, and political life. However, if she is civilly subject to man, then there can be no talk of civil equality between the two. Hence the curious phenomenon in Thomas Aquinas that, where he speaks of the “domestic submission” (subjectio oeconomica) of women, he also simply calls them “civil” (civilis) (I. 92. 1 ad 2). For him, they are one and the same.

This conception of the civic-public position of women is so self-evident to Thomas Aquinas that, to our knowledge, he never addressed the question of the civic equality of women with men ex professo. However, he touches upon this matter — particularly in the context of public ecclesiastical offices and functions, to which he flatly denies women any right or eligibility — consistently basing his position on Holy Scripture and the subordination of woman to man under natural law.

The words of the Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14:34: “Women should remain silent in the churches,” and 1 Timothy 2:12, “but not to teach as a woman should, nor to exalt herself above a man,” constitute the scriptural proofs on which Thomas relies. The natural subordination of woman to man as head serves him as a rational basis for his view. Because woman is subject to man, “quia mulier statum subjectionis habet,” she is absolutely unfit to receive ecclesiastical ordination and even if such powers were conferred upon her, they would be invalid (IV Sent. D. 25. g. II. a. 1.). For the same reason, she cannot receive the power of the keys, neither consecration nor jurisdictional authority (IV Sent. D. 19. g. I. a. 1. g. III. ad 4.). He decides no differently with regard to the office of public teaching. Privately, she may teach (Com. in I Timoth. II. 11.). Publicly, however learned and holy she may be, is forbidden to her, as a synod of Carthage already decided (III. 67. 4 ad 1). Aquinas even sees women exercising their public teaching office a moral danger, a point of view that may seem narrow-minded, but which will be completely clear to those who look deeper and take life according to its inner difficulties. The main reason, however, why he denies women the right to public teaching within the Church is and always remains the same: their subordination to men, “principaliter propter conditionem feminei sexus, qui debet esse subditus viro” (II-II. 177. 2.). This is also the reason why it was fitting that Christ assumed the nature of man, and not that of the weaker sex, for He came as head of the Church, as teacher, leader, and defender of humankind (III. Sent. D. 12. g. III. a. 1).

Even though Thomas, in the passages above, speaks only of public-ecclesiastical offices and positions, it is nevertheless clear to everyone that the motives which he adduces speak against any civil equality of the woman with the man. Moreover, he explicitly denies women the title of “full citizen,” stating, “mulieres, quibus non competiter simpliciter esse cives” (I-II. 105. 3. ad 1).

Without a doubt, our time will raise many objections to St. Thomas’s theory. People will point to the changed circumstances and the hardships of the age, to the multitudes of politically well-trained working women whom we need to prevent the revolution. It will be said that the political equality of women with men will come without us. It can unfortunately be rightly pointed out that large numbers of working-class women have already become estranged from the domestic hearth, and that they were torn from their ancestral sanctuary without being protected. There are also not a few among our stalwart Catholic working women who hope, despite the public and political activity into which they will be thrown with political equality, to preserve the noble feminine virtues ​​and to protect the Christian spirit of the family, the nucleus of the state and the common good.

And indeed, much can be said for these worthy working women, who have often been true heroines of faith and virtue even before. But heroic lineages generally do not last many decades, and heroic deeds can be expected of individuals, not of the general public. Once introduced, however, misguided political principles persist and have an effect for centuries. And what then, when circumstances are stronger than people, and the Christian family is lost to us through the entanglement of housewives with political squabbles? And should we, because unfortunately a large number of working-class mothers have been torn from the sanctuary of the family and bear the superhuman, double-burden of housewife and factory worker on their shoulders, also abandon the rest and deprive them of domestic peace and happiness? Should we therefore expose the family to further dangers? And all this simply because of the highly dubious political successes that are expected from the political equality of women? Won’t the leaders of the coup simply mobilize just as many, or even more, new troops? And when the wife and mother one day goes to the polls herself, and is embroiled in political squabbles at home, in the streets, and at election rallies, or even holds political office, will she still exert the same moral influence on her husband and voting sons as before? Will she still play the role of the wise counselor behind the throne? Will she still have the same interest in charitable works? Will she still accomplish the great things she has done so far?

However, all these considerations, interesting in themselves, miss the point. They amount to purely utilitarian considerations. There is something in women’s political equality and their involvement in the passionate political arena that contradicts the noblest aspect of their high calling as women and mothers, something that violates the divinely created nature of womanhood. We Catholics are strong by nothing but our principles. Therein lie the roots of our strength. The changing times do not alter these principles. What is contrary to the divine and natural laws will always have its consequences. The history of women clearly demonstrates this. Let others stray from the paths of the natural order; that is their business. We should not be complicit in this transgression!

IV. Woman as a Child of God

After the humiliation, contempt, and disgrace that women had to endure in antiquity, only Christianity could restore her rights and dignity. Christianity alone will continue to protect them. Neo-paganism will not treat them any more nobly than the old paganism. All the hymns and praise of women’s rights, women’s freedom, and civic equality will ultimately throw women back into their old misery when the spirit of Christianity fades more and more from society, and this world sun withdraws its life-giving, radiant, and transfiguring rays from women’s domestic and social activities. The de-Christianized man will once again exploit the de-Christianized woman for his own purposes. Ultimately, he is always the stronger sex, however one may deny any natural-law subordination; that changes nothing about reality, and where power reigns over law and honor, the weaker party will have to ask for slave chains!

According to Thomas Aquinas, Christianity truly bestowed the most sublime dignity upon woman. It first restored her natural rights. Then, however, it added a higher, supernatural dignity to her natural one.

Indeed, woman fell first, and not only did she drag man down with her, but her pride against God was greater than Adam’s. But man also fell, and his responsibility was greater, because he was her head and therefore more perfect than she (II-II. 163. 4). In the life of grace acquired through holy Baptism, however, the woman is fully equal in rank to the man; there is no difference between man and woman (Comm. in I Cor. c. 11), according to the words of the Apostle to the Gentiles: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, neither man nor woman, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Comm. on Gal. 3:28). Also, God can bestow the gift of prophecy upon the woman, as upon the man (II-II. 177. 2 ad 2), and at times the woman surpasses many men with regard to supernatural gifts and illuminations: “cum quandoque mulier inveniatur melior quantum ad animam multis viris” (IV Sent. D. 25. q. II. a. 1 ad 1).

The dignity of women was given particular prominence in Mary. As the mother of the Redeemer, she possessed the highest degree of purity and grace that could befall any creature in heaven or on earth (III. Sent. D. 12. g. III. a. 2). She has glorified the entire female sex (III. 31. 4). Just as it is to the glory of the male race that Christ assumed male nature, so it is to the great glorification of the female race that he assumed human nature from a woman (ibid. ad 1). Thus, both sexes received their glorification in the Incarnation of Christ (III. Sent. D. 12. g. III. a. 2). The first man was brought forth by God without male and female; the first woman came from the man without female; It was fitting for Christ, the Redeemer, to come as a man from woman without man, so that the female sex would not be despised, “ne tamen sexus femineus contemneretur” (III. 31. 4).

Here, as everywhere in his pronouncements on woman and in his entire position on the woman question, Aquinas relies on the great Aurelius Augustine. The prince of Scholasticism stands on the shoulders of the prince of the Church Fathers!

At the outset, we called St. Thomas’s view of woman “Christian.” We hope to have provided brief evidence that it truly is. Therein lies the greatness and powerful strength of this view. In this alone also lies our strength amidst the surging storms that are currently raging over the unfortunate European family of nations and that threaten Christian marriage and family, the venerable sanctuary of woman, more than ever. Here too, the Word applies, and nowhere more so than here: There is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

Yesterday, I published a new essay at Integrity Magazine critically reviewing Bishop Fulton Sheen’s views on Church-State relations.

As is well known, Sheen was a prelate beloved for his charismatic delivery, breadth of knowledge and embodiment of American exceptionalism. However, these qualities risk obscuring the grave and documented problems with his ecclesiastical career.

In fact, in an essay published last month, I laid out the case for objectively and reasonably questioning his orthodoxy after the promulgation of Vatican II:

• There are good reasons why Fulton Sheen should not be considered for beatification — Integrity Magazine (6.9.26)

This time, I am examining his views before the Council, specifically when it comes to Church-State relations.

TAKE ME TO THE NEW ESSAY ON BISHOP SHEEN

Please take a look at the new essay and check out the counter-revolutionary work we are doing at Integrity Magazine!

Post-Script

Rest-assured, the essay on “The Woman Question According to St. Thomas” will be coming out later today. The author whose writing we are featuring is the Dominican Fr. Gallus Maria Manser, a neo-scholastic theologian active in the first half of the 20th century.

“But in any case nobody could accuse the Church of not having denounced and exposed in time the true nation of the National Socialist movement and the danger to which it exposed Christian civilization.” — Pope Pius XII

Brief Introduction to the 1945 Address and its Authority

As promised, on the heels of our official defense published last week at the Journal, which included clarifications and retractions, we now present the full 1945 address of Pope Pius XII in which he explicitly condemned the ideology of National Socialism.1

This address, Nell’accorgliere, was issued on June 2 to the College of Cardinals, less than one month after Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945.

It should be noted that this address engaged the ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church, having been entered into the official acts of the Apostolic See2 and having satisfied the requisite criteria laid out by theologians — namely, Pius XII teaching on matters of faith and morals as Supreme Teacher and Supreme Pastor of the Church.

These criteria are discussed in detail below:

• “The Weight and Significance of Papal Allocutions” by Fr. Franz Hürth, S.J., (1952), vol. XL, pp. 245-493

• “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Allocutions” by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, The American Ecclesiastical Review, (1956), vol. CXXXIV, no. 2, pp. 109-17

Taken together with other addresses,4 this document stands as evidence of the Catholic Church’s formal condemnation of National Socialism.

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present the full 1945 address.

Nell’accorgliere

As we very gratefully acknowledge, venerable brethren, the good wishes which the venerable and beloved dean of the Sacred College has offered to us on your behalf, our thoughts bring us back to this day six years ago when you offered your congratulations on our feast day for the first time after we, though unworthy, had been raised to the See of Peter.

The world was then still at peace: but what a peace and how very precarious!

With a heart full of anguish, perplexed, praying, we bent over that peace like one that assists a dying man and fights obstinately to save him from death even when all hope is gone.

The message which we then addressed to you reflected our sorrowful apprehension that the conflict which was ever growing more menacing would break out — a conflict whose extent and duration nobody could foresee. The subsequent march of events has not only justified all too clearly our saddest premonitions but has far surpassed them.

Today, after six years, the fratricidal struggle has ended, at least in one section of this war-torn world. It is a peace if you can call it such — as yet very fragile, which cannot endure or be consolidated except by expanding on it the most assiduous care; a peace whose maintenance imposes on the whole church, both pastor and faithful, grave and very delicate duties: patient prudence, courageous fidelity, the spirit of sacrifice!

All are called upon to devote themselves to it, each in his own office and at his own place. Nobody can bring to this task too much anxiety or zeal. As to us and our apostolic ministry, we well know, venerable brethren, that we can safely count on your sage collaboration, your unceasing prayers, your steadfast devotion.

I. The Church and National Socialism

In Europe the war is over: but what wounds has it not inflicted! Our Divine Master has said: “All that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew xxvi, 52).

Now what do you see? You see what is the result of a concept of the State reduced to practice which takes no heed of the most sacred ideals of mankind, which overthrows the inviolable principles of the Christian faith. The whole world today contemplates with stupefaction the ruins that it has left behind it. These ruins we had seen when they were still in the distant future, and few, we believe, have followed with greater anxiety the process leading to the inevitable crash.

For over twelve years-twelve of the best years of our mature age-we had lived in the midst of the German people, fulfilling the duties of the office committed to us. During that time, in the atmosphere of liberty which the political and social conditions of that time allowed, we worked for consolidation of the status of the Catholic Church in Germany.

We thus had occasion to learn the great qualities of the people and we were personally in close contact with its most representative men. For that reason we cherish the hope that it can rise to the new dignity and new life when once it has laid the satanic specter raised by National Socialism and the guilty (as we have already at other times had occasion to expound) have expiated the crimes they have committed.

While there was still some faint glimmer of hope that that movement could take another and less disastrous course either through the disillusionment of its more moderate members or through effective opposition from that section of the German people which opposed it, the Church did everything possible to set up a formidable barrier to the spread of ideas at once subversive and violent.

In the spring of 1933 the German Government asked the Holy See to conclude a concordat with the Reich: the proposal had the approval of the Episcopate and of at least the greater number of the German Catholics.

In fact, they thought that neither the concordats up to then negotiated with some individual German states nor the Weimar Constitution gave adequate guarantee or assurance of respect for their convictions, for their faith, rights or liberty of action.

In such conditions the guarantees could not be secured except through a settlement having the solemn form of a concordat with the Central Government of the Reich.

It should be added that, since it was the Government that made the proposal, the responsibility for all regrettable consequences would have fallen on the Holy See if it had refused the proposed concordat.

It was not that the church, for her part, had any illusions built on excessive optimism or that, in concluding the concordat, she had the intention of giving any form of approval to the teachings or tendencies of National Socialism; this was expressly declared and explained at the time (Cfr L’Osservatore Romano, No. 174, July 2, 1933). It must, however, be recognized that the concordat in the years that followed brought some advantages or at least prevented worse evils.

In fact, in spite of all the violations to which it was subjected, it gave Catholics a juridical basis for their defense, a stronghold behind which to shield themselves in their opposition — as long as this was possible — to the ever growing campaign of religious persecution.

The struggle against the Church did, in fact, become ever more bitter: there was the dissolution of Catholic organizations; the gradual suppression of the flourishing Catholic schools, both public and private; the enforced weaning of youth from family and Church; the pressure brought to bear on the conscience of citizens and especially of civil servants; the systematic defamation, by means of a clever, closely organized propaganda, of the Church, the clergy, the faithful, the Church’s institutions, teaching and history; the closing, dissolution and confiscation of religious houses and other ecclesiastical institutions; the complete suppression of the Catholic press and publishing houses.

To resist such attacks millions of courageous Catholics, men and women, closed their ranks around their Bishops, whose valiant and severe pronouncements never failed to resound even in these last years of war. These Catholics gathered around their priests to help them adapt their ministry to the ever changing needs and conditions. And right up to the end they set up against the forces of impiety and pride their forces of faith, prayer and openly Catholic behavior and education.

In the meantime, the Holy See itself multiplied its representations and protests to governing authorities in Germany, reminding them in clear and energetic language of their duty to respect and fulfill the obligations of the natural law itself that were confirmed by the concordat.

In those critical years, joining the alert vigilance of a pastor to the long suffering patience of a father, our great predecessor, Pius XI, fulfilled his mission as Supreme Pontiff with intrepid courage. But when, after he had tried all means of persuasion in vain, he saw himself clearly faced with deliberate violations of a solemn pact, with a religious persecution masked or open but always rigorously organized, he proclaimed to the world on Passion Sunday, 1937, in his encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge“ what National Socialism really was: the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and dignity.

Like a clarion call that sounds the alarm, the Papal document with its vigorous terms — too vigorous, thought more than one at the time-startled the minds and hearts of men. Many-even beyond the frontiers of Germany — who up to then had closed their eyes to the incompatibility of the national socialist viewpoint with the teachings of Christ had to recognize and confess their mistake. Many — but not all! Some even among the faithful themselves were too blinded by their prejudices or allured by political advantage.

The evidence of the facts brought forward by our predecessor did not convince them, much less induce them to change their ways. Is it mere chance that some regions, which later suffered more from the national socialist system, were precisely those where the encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge“ was less or not at all heeded?

Would it then have been possible, by opportune and timely political action, to block once and for all the outbreak of brutal violence and to put the German people in the position to shake off the tentacles that were strangling it? Would it have been possible thus to have saved Europe and the world from this immense inundation of blood? Nobody would dare to give an unqualified judgment.

But in any case nobody could accuse the Church of not having denounced and exposed in time the true nation of the National Socialist movement and the danger to which it exposed Christian civilization.

“Whoever sets up race or the people or the state or a particular form of state or the depositaries’ power or any other fundamental value of the human community to be the supreme norm of all, even of religious values, and divinizes them to an idolatrous level distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.” (Cfr Acta Apostolica Sedis, Vol. XXIX, 1937, pages 149 and 171.)

The radical opposition of the National Socialist State to the Catholic Church is summed up in this declaration of the encyclical. When things had reached this point the Church could not without foregoing her mission any longer refuse to take her stand before the whole world.

But by doing so she became once again “a sign which shall be contradicted” (Luke ii, 34), in the presence of which contrasting opinions divided off into two opposed camps.

German Catholics were, one may say, as one in recognizing that the encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge“ had brought light, direction, consolation and comfort to all those who seriously meditated and conscientiously practiced the religion of Christ. But the reaction of those who had been inculpated was inevitable, and, in fact, that very year, 1937, was for the Catholic Church in Germany a year of indescribable bitterness and terrible outbreaks.

The important political events which marked the two following years and then the war did not bring an attenuation to the hostility of National Socialism toward the Church, a hostility which was manifest up to these last months, when National Socialists still flattered themselves with the idea that once they had secured victory in arms they could do away with the Church forever.

Authoritative and absolutely trustworthy witnesses kept us informed of these plans — they unfolded themselves actually in the reiterated and ever more intense activity against the Church in Austria, Alsace Lorraine and, above all, in those parts of Poland which had already been incorporated in the old Reich during the war: there everything was attacked and destroyed; that is, everything that could be reached by external violence.

Continuing the work of our predecessor, we ourselves have during the war and especially in our radio messages constantly set forth the demands and perennial laws of humanity and of the Christian faith in contrast with the ruinous and inexorable applications of National Socialist teachings, which even went so far as to use the most exquisite scientific methods to torture or eliminate people who were often innocent.

This was for us the most opportune — and we might even say the only-efficacious way of proclaiming before the world the immutable principles of the moral law and of confirming, in the midst of so much error and violence, the minds and hearts of German Catholics in the higher ideals of truth and justice. And our solicitude was not without its effect. Indeed, we know that our messages and especially that of Christmas, 1942, despite every prohibition and obstacle, were studied in the diocesan clergy conferences in Germany and then expounded and explained to the Catholic population.

If the rulers of Germany had decided to destroy the Catholic Church even in the old Reich, Providence had decided otherwise. The tribulations inflicted on the church by National Socialism have been brought to an end through the sudden and tragic end of the persecution! From the prisons, concentration camps and fortresses are now pouring out, together with the political prisoners, also the crowds of those, whether clergy or laymen, whose only crime was their fidelity to Christ and to the faith of their fathers or the dauntless fulfillment of their duties as priests.

For them all of us have prayed and have seized every opportunity, whenever the occasion offered, to send them a word of comfort and blessing from our paternal heart.

Indeed, the more the veils are drawn which up to now hid the sorrowful passion of the Church under the National Socialist regime, the more apparent becomes the strength, often steadfast unto death, of numberless Catholics and the glorious share in that noble contest which belonged to the clergy.

Although as yet not in possession of the complete statistics, we cannot refrain from recalling here, by way of example, some details from the abundant accounts which have reached us from priests and laymen who were interned in the concentration camp of Dachau and were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. (Acts v, 41.)

In the forefront, for the number and harshness of the treatment meted out to them, are the Polish priests. From 1940 to 1945 2,800 Polish ecclesiastics and religious were imprisoned in that camp; among them was a Polish auxiliary bishop who died there of typhus. In April last there were left only 816, all the others being dead except for two or three transferred to another camp.

In the summer of 1942 480 German-speaking ministers of religion were known to be gathered there; of these, forty-five were Protestants, all the others Catholic priests. In spite of the continuous inflow of new internees, especially from some dioceses of Bavaria, the Rhineland and Westphalia, their number, as a result of the high rate of mortality, at the beginning of this year did not surpass 350.

Nor should we pass over in silence those belonging to occupied territories, Holland, Belgium, France (among whom the Bishop of Clermont), Luxembourg, Slovenia, Italy.

Many of those priests and laymen endured indescribable sufferings for their faith and for their vocation.

In one case the hatred of the impious against Christ reached the point of parodying on the person of an interned priest, with barbed wire, the scourging and the crowning with thorns of our Redeemer.

The generous victims who during the twelve years since 1933 have in Germany scarified for Christ and his Church their possessions, their freedom, their lives, are raising their hands to God in expiatory sacrifice. May the just Judge accept it in reparation for the many crimes committed against mankind no less than against the present and future generation and especially against the unfortunate youth of Germany, and may He at last stay the arm of the exterminating angel!

With ever-increasing persistence National Socialism strove to denounce the Church as the enemy of the German people. The manifest injustice of the accusation would have deeply offended the sentiment of German Catholics and our own if it had come from other lips. But on the lips of such accusers, so far from being a grievance, the accusation is the clearest and most honorable testimony to the strong, incessant opposition maintained by the Church to such disastrous doctrines and methods in the interest of true civilization and of the German people; to that people we offer the wish that, freed now from the error which plunged it into chaos, it may find again its own salvation at the pure fountains of true peace and true happiness, at the fountains of truth, humility and charity flowing with the Church from the heart of Christ.

II. Looking to the Future

A hard-learnt lesson surely, that of these past years! God grant at least that it may have been understood and be profitable to other nations!

“Receive instruction, you that judge the earth!” (Psalm ii, 10.)

That is the most ardent wish of all who sincerely love mankind. For mankind, now the victim of an impious process of exhaustion, of cynical disregard for the life and rights of men, has but one aspiration: to lead a tranquil and pacific life in dignity and honest toil. And to this purpose it hopes that an end will be put to that insolence with which the family and the domestic hearth have been abused and profaned during the war years.

For that insolence cries to heaven and has evolved into one of the gravest perils not only for religion and morality but also for harmonious relations between men. It has, above all, created those mobs of dispossessed, disillusioned, disappointed and hopeless men who are going to swell the ranks of revolution and disorder, in the pay of a tyranny no less despotic than those for whose overthrow men planned.

The nations, and notably the medium and small nations, claim the right to take their destinies into their own hands. They can be led to assume, with their full and willing consent, in the interest of common progress, obligations which will modify their sovereign rights.

But after having sustained their share — their large share — of suffering in order to overthrow a system of brutal violence, they are entitled to refuse to accept a new political or cultural system which is decisively rejected by the great majority of their people. They maintain, and with reason, that the primary task of the peace-framers is to put an end to the criminal war game and to safeguard vital rights and mutual obligations as between the great and small, powerful and weak.

Deep in their hearts the peoples feel that their rule would be discredited if they did not succeed in supplanting the mad folly of the rule of violence by the victory of the right.

The thought of a new peace organization is inspired — nobody could doubt it — by the most sincere and loyal good will. The whole of mankind follows the progress of this noble enterprise with anxious interest. What a bitter disillusionment it would be if it were to fail, if so many years of suffering and self-sacrifice were to be made vain, by permitting again to prevail that spirit of oppression from which the world hoped to see itself at last freed once and for all!

Poor world, to which then might be applied the words of Christ: “And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” (Luke xi, 24-26):

The present political and social situation suggests these words of warning to us. We have had, alas, to deplore in more than one region the murder of priests, deportations of civilians, the killing of citizens without trial or in personal vendetta. No less sad is the news that has reached us from Slovenia and Croatia.

But we will not lose heart. The speeches made by competent and responsible men in the course of the last few weeks made it clear that they are aiming at the triumph of right, not merely as a political goal but even more as a moral duty.

Accordingly, we confidently issue an ardent appeal for prayers to our sons and daughters of the whole world. May it reach all those who recognize in God the beloved Father of all men created to his image and likeness, to all who know that in the breast of Christ there beats a divine heart rich in mercy, deep and inexhaustible fountain of all good and all love, of all peace and all reconciliation.

From the cessation of hostilities to true and genuine peace, as we warned not long ago, the road will be long and arduous, too long for the pent-up aspiration of mankind starving for order and calm. But it is inevitable that it should be so.

It is even perhaps better thus. It is essential that the tempest of overexcited passions be first let subside: Motos praestate componere fluctus (Virgil, Aeneid 1, 135).

It is essential that the hate, the diffidence, the stimuli of an extreme nationalism should give way to the growth of wise counsels, the flowering of peaceful designs, to serenity in the interchange of views and to mutual brotherly comprehension.

May the Holy Spirit, light of intellects, gentle ruler of hearts, deign to hear the prayers of His Church and guide in their arduous work those who in accordance with their mandate are striving sincerely despite obstacles and contradictions to reach the goal so universally, so ardently, desired: peace, a peace worthy of the name; a peace built and consolidated in sincerity and loyalty, in justice and reality; a peace of loyal and resolute force to overcome or preclude those economic and social conditions which might, as they did in the past, easily lead to new conflicts; a peace that can be approved by all right-minded men of every people and every nation; a peace which future generations may regard gratefully as the happy outcome of a sad period; a peace that may stand out in the centuries as a resolute advance in the affirmation of human dignity and of ordered liberty; a peace that may be like the Magna Carta which closed the dark age of violence; a peace that under the merciful guidance of God may let us so pass through temporal prosperity that we may not lose eternal happiness (cfr collect third Sunday after Pentecost).

But before reaching this peace it still remains true that millions of men at their own fireside or in battle, in prison or in exile must still drink their bitter chalice. How we long to see the end of their sufferings and anguish, the realization of their hopes! For them, too, and for all mankind that suffers with them and in them may our humble and ardent prayer ascend to Almighty God.

Meanwhile, venerable brethren, we are immensely comforted by the thought that you share our anxieties, our prayers, our hopes; and that throughout the world Bishops, priests and faithful are joining their supplications to ours in the great chorus of the universal Church.

In testimony of our deep gratitude and as a pledge of infinite mercies and Divine favors, with sincere affection we impart to you, to them, to all who join us in desiring and working for peace our apostolic benediction.

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

The Controversy

Over the past 14 days, I have been at the center of a controversy that began when I criticized President George Washington for being a “committed Freemason, indifferentist and Liberal.” This prompted a priest who had been following me for some time, Father Gabriel Lavery, to respond after which I doubled-down and provided additional context. This was in keeping with my analysis earlier this year, featured at The Journal of American Reform:

• The Godless Constitution: America’s Original Sin

Along with the eminent Cardinal Pie of Poiters — renowned for his commitment to sound doctrine, which necessarily entails anti-Liberalism — I hope Father Lavery can join me in echoing this prelate’s judgment, “The American and Belgian system, that system of philosophical-political indifference, will forever be a bastard system”.1 Of course, this is true despite the fact that tolerating our American system of separation as a lesser evil2 is both a practical necessity and the most expedient way to vindicate the social rights of God and His Church.3

Since this initial dispute, Father Lavery and I went back-and-forth over several topics, perhaps among the most contentious in our modern American paradigm: slavery, “curse of Cham”, National Socialism and many aspects of the “Race Question”. Throughout these exchanges, I have made it clear that, despite our disagreements, he is a priest and owed the respect due to his vocation.

Given that Father Lavery previously followed my account, I still do not understand why he chose not to reach out privately, first, before raising his grave concerns in a public and unexpected way. I would welcome a direct answer to that question:

On June 30, he blocked my account. Since then, he has continued to criticize my positions energetically on X, which regrettably has descended into — as will be made clear below — psychologizing, mischaracterization, false accusations and smears.

Because of the block, I have been unable to respond to him directly, make further distinctions or clarify my views.

Preliminary Reflection

As I have said before, I only want to be defended when I am in the right or when I have been falsely accused. With that in mind, I am deeply grateful for the outpouring of support I have received from fellow Catholics — regardless of their background, social standing, race, country of origin, positions on the current Crisis, etc. — and from my followers more generally.

During this difficult period, you have given me much-needed encouragement. Most importantly, many of you have prayed for peace, for the victory of Truth and my spiritual well-being.

Thank you, sincerely, to everyone who has reached out, offered words of support or kept me in your prayers.

Clarification Regarding Slavery and My 1st Retraction

On the specific issue of slavery and the servile state, I maintain — in keeping with Scripture, Tradition, Popes, the Holy Office Ruling of 1866, etc. — they are both per se lawful;4 that is, not opposed by their very nature to Divine or Natural Law.5 To claim that the Church has condemned slavery as such, or without qualifications, is a grave error and further gives ammunition to enemies of the Church, confirming them in their prejudice.

This is not to say, however, that the state of servitude is the ideal condition of man or consistent with the first intention of nature. In fact, that is directly contrary to the teaching of Pope Leo XIII in his 1888 encyclical In Plurimis “On the Abolition of Slavery”.6 The Catholic Church, animated by a true humanism and spirit of the Gospel, has always worked to ameliorate the condition of slaves and to abolish the institution where prudent — even universally. She has always rejected the idea of race-based slavery,7 which I also reject, and rightly maintained as Pope Pius XI taught, “The Church founded by the Redeemer is one, the same for all races and all nations.”8

With this in mind, it is in the spirit of prudence that I am retracting (now-deleted) my translation of Archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick’s 1861 treatment of slavery in his Theologia Moralis, which bore an imprimatur from Cardinal Engelbert Sterckx. Archbishop Kenrick’s writing outlined sound principles but also touched upon the status of American domestic slavery in relation to Pope Gregory XVI’s In Supremo Apostolatus; a question later addressed by a 1864 ruling from the Index of which Pope Pius IX was prefect. The status of domestic slavery for Catholics in the United States remains, as a result, a complicated subject.

What is not disputed is that the Atlantic Slave Trade was absolutely condemned9 and the enslavement and purchase of African slaves without a just title must be considered abhorrent “man-stealing”. However, the domestic question for Catholic slaveholders10 in the 19th century is a separate — albeit related — matter, and here the opinion of Archbishop Kenrick was not without merit. The merit was substantial enough that it became the subject of an entire dissertation at the Catholic University of America, written by Rev. Joseph D. Brokhage, S.T.L., under the direction of Rev. Francis J. Connell, C.SS.R. On pages 163-4 of the dissertation the reader finds:11

In hindsight, introducing this highly contentious issue into my coverage of current events by way of reference was a mistake. I apologize to anyone who was scandalized as a result. Going forward, I will work to avoid other instances of this imprudence and present a more balanced view of the issue, more careful to avoid the impression I am doing anything other than witnessing to Catholic teaching and sound philosophical principles.

False Accusations from Father Lavery and His Ugly Campaign

What I want to make clear is that I am not accusing (nor have I been) Father Lavery of smears, misrepresentation or false accusations because of my past sympathy for, or qualified support of, National Socialism. That is what he imputed to me, but they are not my motivations.

Father Lavery was right to take issue with the aforementioned and correct me, albeit in a way I do not believe was without serious problems. Good men, perhaps, may disagree and consider his method appropriate: I am content with that.

However, what I am taking issue with — made more difficult owing to his blocking of my account on June 30 — are the following list of objective offenses; a list which is not comprehensive but representative:

• June 30

  • (link) — “There is no such thing as ‘healthy racism,’ nor did Pius XI ever use that phrase or teach it.” | Response I & II

  • (link) — Fr. Lavery blocks my account “@AmericanReform_”

• July 1

  • (link) — “Probably AR would have moved out of the state if he [a mixed-race Bishop] lived here then.” | Response

  • (link) — “He is a Nazi/Fascist sympathizer who applies their evil principles to justify his hatred of Blacks (emphasis added).” | Response

• July 4

  • (link) — “It doesn’t matter how he explains this ‘inferiority’ of other races which he clearly teaches is also a genetic inferiority; it is a fact that in his mind they are inferior, and this is merely an obvious symptom of his underlying dislike of other races no matter how much he protests otherwise.” | Response I, II, III & IV

  • (link) — “AR knew about this quote at least a year or two ago and continues to hide it from everyone—deliberately!” | Response

  • (link) — “[AR] teaches that the United States is only for ‘whites’…. There’s something mentally wrong with this obsession of his.” | Response

• July 5

  • (link) — “AR is pure evil.” | Response: then why am I doing this?

  • (link) — “AR is disgusting, and I am disgusted with anyone who supports him.” | Response: “ ”

  • (link) — “AR is not a reasonable man.” | Response: “ ”

  • (link) — “It’s no surprise that American Reform jumped in to dispute Father, but to no avail.” — Response

• July 7

  • (link) — “At this point if people can’t see ARs total blindness, arrogance, and self-deceit caused by his addiction to white national socialist ideology, then they are purposely trying not to see it (emphasis added).” | Response: then why am I doing this?

  • (link) — “[AR] said that Nazis sending Catholic priests to concentration camps in Dachau is ‘understandable.’” — Response

After reviewing the full context and responses, I believe any objective third party will see that these examples go well beyond spirited disagreement. They are rather repeated examples of psychologizing, mischaracterization and personal attacks.

A Catholic priest should elevate the public conversation, not descend into an ugly campaign of this kind. I invite Father Lavery to meet a higher standard than the one he has shown the past 14 days. Further, I believe he owes me a public apology, and the same to those he has misled — wittingly or unwittingly.

Regarding National Socialism, the Addresses of Pope Pius XII and My 2nd Retraction

Throughout our exchange and with lots of reflection, I have come to realize Father Lavery was right about my errant sympathies and qualified support for National Socialism, attempting to distinguish between “good and bad” elements in the movement and ideology. Up until very recently, my position was substantially the same as outlined publicly on my Journal in a (now-deleted) post last autumn, October 1st, to be exact.12

My conscience has been pricked. I thank God for the grace to see this, and Father Lavery for publicly correcting me.

To my longtime followers, the news of my qualified support and sympathy for certain aspects of National Socialism will not come as a shock. While I have never been a doctrinaire National Socialist, nor presently wanted the political-social system resurrected in our American circumstances, I must acknowledge that — until recently — it was not clear that my views fully aligned with the teaching and explicit condemnation of National Socialism13 by Pope Pius XII. This is the same Pope who authoritatively interpreted Pope Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical on the situation of the Catholic Church in the German Reich, Mit brennender Sorge.

This misalignment was further illustrated by my imprudent decision to publish (now-deleted) a study on this Journal by an author who will remain nameless, along with my promotion of his work. Specifically, in the third installment, I erroneously and scandalously said — following the author — that Pius XII’s 1945 address was “historically reckless and devoid of magisterial authority.” While I did say this, it was never my intention to impugn the Magisterium as such, which is why the above argument was given.

I therefore publicly and wholeheartedly subscribe to the following magisterial pronouncements of the Vicars of Jesus Christ, giving them the required assent14 demanded by the respective Popes:

• Mit brennender Sorge by Pope Pius XI (March 14, 1937)

• Address by Pope Pius XII in St. Peter’s Square (March 18,1945)

• Address by Pope Pius XII to the College of Cardinals (June 2, 1945)

I maintain that National Socialist ideology is incompatible with Christianity — the very ideology which Pope Pius XII described as “the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, [and] the overthrow of human liberty and dignity.”15

I also recognize and apologize for the foreseeable scandal caused by two things in particular:

1. Critically reviewing or appearing to soften the judgement on an ideology (National Socialism) and regime (German Third Reich and its leader, Adolf Hitler) that has been condemned in various ways by the Popes (even if doing the same for Soviet Russia, modern-day China, etc. would not cause any scandal).

2. Publishing something that criticized Pope Pius XII as sharply as it did.

Going forward, I will be actively working to distance myself from National Socialist ideology, the socio-political movement it animated and any inappropriate or scandalous jokes — such as calling for an “American Hitler”. Father Lavery has rightly drawn public attention to other instances of my mistakes [1], [2], which I recently deleted. I will continue reviewing my body of work for any further corrections or removals that may be necessary.

As a further witness to my sincerity, I will by publishing the full 1945 address of Pope Pius XII’s condemnation of National Socialism next week at my Journal. This will double as a clear alert to any of my followers, hopefully pricking their consciences (if necessary), and making sure they are not being steered into a failed and naturalistic ideology.

Finally, with this error of mine, I do not want an opposite error to be advanced, whereby it becomes impossible to critically examine — in a dispassionate and respectful way — the pre-conciliar Popes, especially Pius XII, excepting St. Pius X, whose reigns preceded the revolution of Vatican II and the dire Crisis every Catholic now finds himself in. What I am referring to, of course, is the discussion of historical policies, actions or inactions in the practical order, along with an unhealthy accommodation to the modern world, all of which are distinct from the exercise of the Sacred Magisterium and do not compromise the indefectibility or infallibility of the Catholic Church.

Final Reflection

In all of this, I do not want anyone to think that my desire for fundamental political and social change has been affected. I remain committed to the project of “American Integralism”, which is to say the application of Catholic political philosophy to the present circumstances of my country. With this, it will involve the energetic and healthy defense of our people, our race, something which I wrote about last year and stand by to this day:

• Contra Hall: Is Racialism Incompatible with Catholicism?

For White Americans, we are seeing our country being overrun with mass immigration and its causes maintained, legal (Republicans) or illegal (Democrats), both of which threaten to destroy the unity of our people and the racial character of our country. This is not about hating other races, or denying their natural or civil rights, but behaving as they would if they were in our shoes. What would African people do in Nigeria if their populations were being systematically replaced with immigration? Would Nigeria still be the same country if half of its population were comprised of Indians and Chinese? It’s worth thinking about… Would they be sinning, necessarily, or treated as fanatics or “bigots” by engaging in activism and promoting public policy to reverse this existential threat? Necessarily would their motives be questioned and subjected to the deepest pathologizing? For all these things, of course not…

This is made worse when laity, and especially misguided Catholic clergy, do not appear to publicly recognize and affirm that “race is a fundamental value of the human community”, which has a “necessary and honorable function” in worldly things.16 Yes, this holds for every race of men, as the universality of the Catholic Church does not negate, rather it perfects, the particularity within the human family.

“If Christ the God-man is the ideal image of the Christian, this does not mean that there are no ties of blood and affinity, from nation to nation, from race to race, from government and subjects, from citizens to the dear soil of the fatherland. On the contrary, all these individual and collective relations find their higher perfection through the Christian experience of the virtues of the individual, race, nation and state, and which all have their ideal image in the human and divine perfections of the God-man Jesus Christ.” — Fr. Constantinus, O.F.M., 1933

White races (those with European ancestry, united in a physiological union)17 are no exception:

Along with many other young Catholic men — coming from various backgrounds, social standings, races, countries, positions on the current Crisis, etc. — we do not have the emotionalism that surrounds the post-World War II consensus nor believe in the power of its taboos. While it is true many among the older generations are laden down by this “baggage”, our generation is certainly not without its grave problems which, by the grace of God, I want to help ameliorate.

For any young man, including myself, we must be respectful to our elders and their wisdom, own up to our mistakes and continue fighting for the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, using His means — the sacraments — to achieve this.

I pray and hope this essay will be well-received by anyone who has read this far. Again, I want to thank Father Lavery for publicly correcting me. I apologize to anyone who has been scandalized by what I have previously published, and I hope I can be an example and warning to at least a few souls.

Please continue praying for peace and true reconciliation between myself, Father Lavery and any affected parties.

END.

10

Cf. Kenneth J. Zanca, Ph.D, American Catholics and Slavery: 1789-1866, (1994), pp. 220-1

“Since the Catholic religion is the only divine one, it is also the only religion that can lead humanity to its final and divine destiny; therefore, by full natural right, and consequently also by full social right, it must be the religion of every state, of every government that knows its truth. But, above all, it must be the state religion of every nation, the majority of which is Catholic…That this protection of the true religion should be the primary aim and principal duty of every government, the Holy Spirit teaches us first through the Apostle St. Paul, and then through the divine authority of the Church.” - Msgr. F.L.M. Maupied

The Syllabus of Pius IX: An Introduction to Maupied's Commentary

Continuing our study of the relations between Church and State at The Journal of American Reform, it is only natural to turn to the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX. In fact, this document ought to serve as the lodestar for Catholic thinking on the matter, coupled with the positive doctrine outlined in Pope Leo XIII’s Immortale Dei “On the Christian Constitution of States”.

Promulgated in 1864, the Syllabus contains a list of eighty condemned propositions the modern, revolutionary paradigm — ushered in by the American and French revolutions — embraced as shining ideals. It was attached to the Quanta Cura “Condemning Current Errors” of the same Pontiff, in which the right to religious freedom was infallibly condemned.

The portion of the Syllabus we will focus on is the tenth chapter, on the errors of modern Liberalism. Our guide will be Monsignor François-Louis-Michel Maupied.

Born in 1848 in La Poterie, France,1 Maupied became a gifted theologian whose commentary on the Syllabus is, in our humble view, invaluable. Maupied draws on Catholic theology, philosophy and canon law, as well as the historical circumstances in which Pius IX’s condemnations were issued. We will examine the doctrinal authority of the Syllabus more fully at a later time; it suffices to say that its errors were and remain condemned.2 While every error proscribed by the authority of Pius IX should not be considered as heretical, no Catholic may defend any of its theses without endangering his eternal salvation.3

To our knowledge, this commentary is unknown to the English-speaking world, and we are pleased to bring it to light, however modestly.

As a testament to Monsignor Maupied’s fidelity to the Holy See and his zeal in combatting doctrinal error, we reproduce below the translated 1877 letter written in the name of Pope Pius IX by His Excellency Monsignor Charles Nocella:4

In addition to the above letter, many other documents testify to the orthodoxy and acclaim of Monsignor Maupied.5

Catholic Doctrine on Church-State Relations and True Tolerance

In this commentary from Monsignor Maupied, we will find further confirmation of the perennially valid and unalterable Catholic doctrine concerning relations between the Catholic Church and Catholic State, to which all States are objectively and universally obliged to conform.6

As Monsignor George Shea proved in his 1950 study, drawing principally from the ecclesiastical magisterium, the Catholic State as such, not merely civil society considered distinct from public authority, must:

To satisfy its religious obligations... worship God not only indirectly, virtually, administratively, but also directly and formally. That is to say, not only, for example, by abstaining from whatever is contrary to divine law, not only by positive furtherance of public religion, not only by legislation, ex motivo religionis, against perjury, public blasphemy, writings inimical to public religion and morality, etc., but also by official participation in acts of worship properly so-called—of adoration, thanksgiving, supplication, and the like.

This was the same conclusion reached by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. and, at risk of repeating ourselves, outlined by Father Anton Straub, S.J.:

The Church per se cannot approve political tolerance, in which false religions are not prevented from spreading by civil power, or are even to some extent encouraged by civil law, or are considered to have the same number of civil rights as the true Church of Jesus Christ, but for its sacred function the Church by itself must absolutely want, corrupters of the only legitimate cult, such as men who are rebellious or certainly enemies both of the ultimate end of humanity and of the temporal peace it is seeking to obtain, to be avoided or justly coerced, but that cult, both accepted by individuals and by entire cities, as far as it is in them, to be retained, defended, and promoted.

Now, further distinct from the political tolerance of above is another concept: civil tolerance.7 With civil tolerance, it is a matter of tolerating erring individuals and only for the sake of the common good;8 this is the only legitimate reason and does not establish correlative rights for heterodox citizens in their commission of error. There is also no “right” to protection — which is sometimes referred to as a “negative right” — from the State in professing public error,9 no matter how sincere its exponent.

Unlike with political tolerance, the Church is not opposed, in principle, to civil tolerance but rather demands her members practice it in imitation of Our Lord. As Monsignor Maupied will explain “Indeed, the Catholic Church, instructed by its divine founder, has always desired civil tolerance for those who are in error, protecting them in all their temporal rights while preventing them from harming the state and religion of the majority of Catholic citizens.”

A good example of this is permitting, in a Catholic State, non-Catholics to practice their religion in private, provided it can be done without scandal and the appearance of indifference.10

With all these principles in mind, we will now turn to a few highlights from the study:

Highlights

This gives us the strict meaning of the condemned proposition, whose true contradiction is this: “In our time, it is still useful that, wherever possible, the Catholic religion be considered the sole religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other cults.”

These ignorant multitudes have an absolute need to be protected by ecclesiastical and civil laws against the seductions of error, against the corruption of perverse doctrines, and against their own concupiscence. Now, the so-called civil liberty of all religions and the full power given to all to openly and publicly manifest all their thoughts and opinions inevitably plunge peoples, as experience proves, into the corruption of morals and spirit, and spread the plague of indifferentism—that is to say, the greatest of misfortunes for time and for eternity.

Here, finally, is the last word of the anti-Christian sect, the long-considered grand goal of the Masonic lodges: the destruction of the Church of Jesus Christ by its own Vicar. It is now common knowledge that Freemasonry dreamed of having a Pope of its own choosing, a Pope who belonged to them, who was their follower and their blind instrument to destroy the reign of God and Christ on earth and establish the sole reign of Satan with its train of errors, iniquities, injustices, and corruptions…

This means that the Roman Pontiff reconcile himself and compromise with all the errors and heresies that the syllabus has condemned; that he admit, with the Freemasons, that all religions are equal and indifferent, and that, consequently, the Church of Jesus Christ have nothing more or superior to all the heretical and diabolical sects, than the idolatry of paganism; that he admit, with liberalism, the best ally of Freemasonry, that the civil liberty of all religions and the full license granted to all to publish their thoughts and opinions, even the most abominable, corrupting, and impious, is a good and a step forward;

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present Monsignor F.M.L. Maupied’s 1877 commentary on the Syllabus of Errors, specifically the propositions associated with modern Liberalism.

Proposition 77.

LXXVII. — “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.”

This proposition summarizes what is refuted by the address of Pius IX, Nemo Vestrum of July 26, 1855, concerning Spain and condemning “all that the secular power then did against the Church, against its freedom and its rights, against the authority of the Holy See, whose solemn convention was violated, against the law of nations; the pontiff deplores that the authority of the bishops in the exercise of their ministry was hindered, that violence was used against these same bishops, and that finally the patrimony of the Church was usurped, against all divine and human rights.”

This gives us the strict meaning of the condemned proposition, whose true contradiction is this: “In our time, it is still useful that, wherever possible, the Catholic religion be considered the sole religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other cults.”

The Pope is declaring by this that wherever the Catholic religion is the religion of the state or of the greater part of the nation, as in Spain, it should always be considered as such so as not to encourage the dangerous progress of error.

It would nevertheless be a grave error to conclude from this that a state religion is that which the state imposes on its subjects solely for political reasons, which it teaches, governs, and administers, as in all Protestant and schismatic countries. Such a religion, which is the enslavement of consciences to the tyrannical will of the state, may be called national; but it is the very opposite of the Catholic religion which recognizes no other law of conscience, no other supreme authority than that of God, represented by his Vicar, to whom Jesus Christ promised his assistance and that of his Holy Spirit to ensure the infallibility of his teachings and judgments.

This is why the Catholic religion cannot recognize the supremacy of kings, emperors, or queens, of presidents of republics, of national, constituent or legislative assemblies, of any parliaments whatsoever, etc. But it submits all men, rulers and ruled, legislators, constituents, as well as the humblest subjects, to the divine authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ in all that concerns their salvation, that is to say, the truth to be believed, the justice and morality to be practiced. Thus the Catholic religion, the only one that can be the religion of the state and not a national institution, nor a law of a human assembly, of parliament etc., guarantees equality and gives freedom to all consciences, both those of subjects and those of kings and any rulers whatsoever; by submitting the former and the others to the one divine truth, veritas liberabit vos “the Truth will set you free”, it delivers them from all injustice and all human tyranny; it delivers them from the bondage of error and sin. When it is thus professed by governments, which give the example of submission to its dogmas and precepts, and when they protect it out of duty, to the exclusion of all other so-called worship, to which they grant only civil tolerance, it is called the religion of the state.

Such is the strict meaning and primary purpose of the condemnation of this 77th proposition. But there is a broader meaning and other points of focus in this condemnation. Indeed, it targets liberalism, which prides itself on demanding and proclaiming in all things and everywhere the common law for error and truth, for Jesus Christ and Belial, which is nothing but religious indifference invented in Masonic lodges, which received it as Cromwell’s law, of which liberal Catholics are the most useful disciples, without realizing it.

The simplest arguments refute this grave error and justify its condemnation. And first, as there is only one God; there can be only one divine truth, revealed by God. Two contrary revelations would destroy each other and find the revealer in opposition to himself, deceiving and deceiving, and consequently not being the infinitely perfect God, whose existence and supreme perfection human reason alone is sufficient to demonstrate. Just as there can only be one revealed religion, there can only be one that conforms to the true destiny of humankind, that is, to the end for which God created us. This religion is the only one that can lead humanity to this final destiny willed by its Creator, and for this very reason, it is the only religion revealed by God.

Therefore, on God’s side, as on humankind’s side, there can only exist one divine religion, one positively revealed religion, one true religion.

Now, of all possible religions, this one is the truest, containing the greatest number of truths recognized by all others and demonstrable, without accepting their contradictions and errors. But the truest religion is obviously the only true one, and consequently the only divinely revealed one.

No one can deny that the Catholic religion contains all truths, of which the others retain only diverse and isolated fragments within each; that it offers reason only truths demonstrable by human reason, and then by that reason guided by the divine and infallible authority which certainly exists in the Church, and whose divine institution is easy to demonstrate.

The Catholic religion is therefore the only true one, the only divine and positively revealed one.

But besides this simple, irrefutable argument, the truth of the Catholic religion is supported by a multitude of proofs, a single one of which no other religion could produce. This is not the place to enumerate these proofs, the mere enumeration of which would require a large book. We have set them forth in our six-volume work, unpublished due to the difficulties of the times.

Since the Catholic religion is the only divine one, it is also the only religion that can lead humanity to its final and divine destiny; therefore, by full natural right, and consequently also by full social right, it must be the religion of every state, of every government that knows its truth. But, above all, it must be the state religion of every nation, the majority of which is Catholic. This majority, in fact, has the natural right to be governed in accordance with the dogmas and precepts of its religion, to be protected in the practice of this religion, and not to be hindered in it by any regulation, by any so-called law; it has the right not to be confused with, nor assimilated to, a minority that professes error, because that would expose it to falling into error itself and thus incurring the greatest of misfortunes, its eternal damnation. That this protection of the true religion should be the primary aim and principal duty of every government, the Holy Spirit teaches us first through the Apostle St. Paul, and then through the divine authority of the Church.

In his first letter to Timothy, chapter II, St. Paul implores us first of all to pray for all people, but particularly, “For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, this to be a testimony at the proper time.”

The apostle wants us to pray for kings, even pagan ones, since there were no others in his time, and for their ministers; so that these kings may provide the Church and its faithful with a peaceful and tranquil life that allows them to practice all the virtues that religion commands; but also so that all people may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, which is Jesus Christ. For since there is only one God and one mediator, one can only be saved through him. Now, all this must be fostered by the peace and tranquility that the governments must provide to the apostles, preachers, and all the faithful.

In his Epistle to the Romans, chapter XIII, the apostle teaches that all legitimate power comes from God, and that the prince is God’s minister for the good of his subjects, to protect those who do good deeds and to execute God’s vengeance against those who do evil. Now, what better actions are there than those commanded by God himself in the Catholic religion? Therefore, all princes and all governments have as their first duty the protection of the Catholic religion, according to the teaching of the Holy Spirit; this is why those who persecute it act tyrannically, and they cannot be obeyed in this matter even if they were legitimate sovereigns. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 95, Art. IV, Q. 96, A. IV.)

Catholic tradition is no less explicit; Pope St. Marcellus wrote to the tyrant Maxentius: “It is the duty of a good prince and king to restore ruined churches, to build new ones, to honor and defend God’s priests.” Isidor. Mercat. patrolog. Lat. Migne, vol. 130, p. 222.

Pope St. Leo the Great wrote to Emperor Leo: “Recognize, therefore, august and venerable Emperor, how that you are called by Divine providence to the guardianship of the whole world, and understand what aid you owe to your Mother, the Church, who makes special boast of you.” In another letter, he told him “that for the peace of the world he is the guardian of the Council of Chalcedon.” Epist. 164, etc. ibid., vol. 54, pp. 1117 and 1148.

The Sixth Council of Toledo in the year 680, under King Chintila, gave thanks to God that this king had undertaken to eradicate superstitions and that he did not allow anyone who was not Catholic to reside in his kingdom, ibid. vol. 130, p. 488.

St. Peter Damian, in his third letter to Emperor Henry II, shows him that the first duty of the emperor and king is to defend and protect the Church. ibid. vol. 144, p. 437, etc.

St. Bernard wrote to Conrad, King of the Romans, that it was in Caesar’s twofold interest to protect his own crown and to defend the Church... ibid. vol. 182, p. 442, epistle 244.

Canons 2, 3, and 4 of case 23, question 3 of the decree of Gratian, drawing from St. Augustine, establishes that emperors and kings must come to the aid of the Church against heretics and the powerful.

The dogmatic constitution of Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, confirmed by the Fifth Lateran Council, teaches that the two swords are in the power of the Church, the spiritual and the material. They must be exercised: the material for the Church and the spiritual by the Church, extravag. com. 1. I Title. VIII. cap I.

Pope Pius VII, in his encyclical Diu Satis of May 15, 1800, expressed himself thus: “There is no greater benefit or boast for kings and political leaders, as another wise and brave predecessor, St. Felix, wrote to Emperor Zeno, than ‘to allow the Catholic Church to enjoy its own laws and not to let anyone interfere with its liberty….For it is certain that it is beneficial for their own affairs, as God has laid down, for kings to submit their will to the priests of Christ when God’s business is in question, rather than imposing it.’”

Leo XII, in his apostolic letter, Quo Graviora, of March 13, 1826, puts his finger on the problem of the present proposition. 77. “Catholic princes, our dearest sons in Jesus Christ, for whom we have a special affection, we earnestly ask you to come to our aid. We remind you of these words that Leo the Great, our predecessor and whose name we bear, though unworthy to be compared to him, addressed to Emperor Leo: “You must constantly remember that royal power was not only conferred upon you to govern the world, but also and principally to lend a hand to the Church, by courageously suppressing the wicked, by protecting the good laws, by restoring order in all things where it has been disturbed.”

“Current circumstances are such that you must suppress these secret societies not only to defend the Catholic religion but also for your own safety and that of your subjects.”

“The cause of religion is today so closely linked to that of society, that they can no longer be separated; for those who belong to these associations are no less enemies of your power than of religion. They attack both and equally desire to see them overthrown; and if they could, they would allow neither religion nor royal authority to remain.”

Gregory XVI, in his famous encyclical Mirari Vos of August 15, 1832, which condemned the first champions of Catholic liberalism, editors of the newspaper L’Avenir, F. de la Mennais, Ph. Gerbet, C. de Coux, Count Ch. de Montalembert, and H. Lacordaire, expressed himself in these terms: “May Our dear sons in Christ, the princes, support these Our desires for the welfare of Church and State with their resources and authority. May they understand that they received their authority not only for the government of the world, but especially for the defense of the Church. They should diligently consider that whatever work they do for the welfare of the Church accrues to their rule and peace. Indeed let them persuade themselves that they owe more to the cause of the faith than to their kingdom. Let them consider it something very great for themselves as We say with Pope St. Leo, ‘if in addition to their royal diadem the crown of faith may be added.’ Placed as if they were parents and teachers of the people, they will bring them true peace and tranquility, if they take special care that religion and piety remain safe. God, after all, calls Himself ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’”

Pius IX, finally, in his encyclical Qui Pluribus of November 9, 1846, confirms the teachings of his predecessors: “We love to strengthen ourselves in the hope that our dearest sons in Jesus Christ, the princes, guided by their piety and religion, will remember: ‘That royal power was not only given to them for the government of the world, but that this power was chiefly entrusted to them for the protection of the Church, and we ourselves not forgetting that, in giving all our care to the cause of the Church, we must work effectively for the happiness of their reign, for their own preservation, and in such a way as to procure for these princes a peaceful exercise of their rights over the provinces of their empire; we can trust, we say, in the hope that all princes will, by the support of their authority and the aid of their power, favor the wishes, designs, and cares for the good of all that we share with them. Let them therefore defend the freedom and fullness of life of this Catholic Church, so that ‘Jesus Christ, with his mighty hand, may also uphold their empire.’”

The same Pontiff preaches the same duties to the people as to kings toward the Church. He recalls it in these terms in his address, Quibus Quantisque, of April 20, 1849: “The political revolutions which everyone knows having arrived in Italy and in Europe, We raised again Our apostolic voice on March 30 of this year, and We took care to exhort more earnestly than ever all peoples to respect the freedom of the Catholic Church, to defend order in civil society, to protect all rights, to follow the precepts of Our most holy religion, and above all to exercise Christian charity towards all, since if they neglected to act in this way, they should be assured that God would show that he is the master of the peoples.” — and further on: “In the great and bitter sorrow that overwhelmed Us at the sight of the calamities afflicting the Church and our States, convinced that Our duty compels Us to employ every means to prevent or avert so many misfortunes, We already, as early as December 4th of last year, asked for and solicited the assistance of all princes and all nations…” and further on: “Here We also adjure in the Lord the princes and leaders of peoples and ask them to reflect seriously on all the evils that the impure accumulation of errors and vices produces in society; this will suffice to make them understand the necessity of dedicating all their care, all their study, all their efforts to ensuring everywhere and increasing the dominion of virtue, justice, and religion. Let all peoples, let those who govern them, bear this in mind, let this truth always be present to them: all good lies in the practice of justice, all evils come from iniquity: for ‘justice’ elevates a nation, but sin makes people miserable.”

In his address, Singulari Quadam of December 9, 1854, after noting a return to religion, Pius IX points out and condemns the usurping actions of the so-called Catholic liberals, when they are in power; “There still remain,” he said, “many obstacles that prevent men from fully embracing the truth, or at least delay them. Indeed, among those charged with directing public affairs, there are many who claim to favor and profess religion, who lavish praise upon it, who proclaim it useful and perfectly suited to human society; but who nonetheless wish to regulate its discipline, govern its ministers, interfere in the administration of sacred things; in short, they strive to confine the Church within the limits of the State, to dominate it, even though it is independent, and according to divine order, cannot be contained within the boundaries of any empire, but must extend to the ends of the earth and embrace all peoples and all nations to show them the path to eternal happiness... may those who fight against the freedom of the Catholic religion, finally recognizing how useful this religion is to the public good, since, in the name of the doctrine it received from heaven, it proposes and instills in each citizen the duties he must fulfill; may they finally be persuaded of what our predecessor, Saint Felix, once wrote to the Emperor Zeno, ‘that there is nothing more useful to princes than to allow the Church to follow its laws, for this is beneficial to them,’ in that, in matters of God, they strive to subordinate their royal will to the priests of Christ and not to place it above them.”

From all these teachings of the Roman Pontiffs, infallible instruments of the Holy Spirit, we conclude that civil governments and Christian peoples must protect and defend the Catholic religion and Church, without, however, interfering in the governance of spiritual matters and ministers of religion; they must defend the Catholic religion against all kinds of attacks and protect the divine freedom and independence of the Church. They cannot, therefore, without committing a crime and without injustice towards God and His truth, to place heretical or schismatic sects on the same footing as the Church.

This is why Pius IX, in his address, Nemo Vestrum, of July 26, 1855, concerning the corcordat of Spain, expressed himself in these terms: “We have above all established that this holy religion will continue to be the sole religion of the Spanish nation, to the exclusion of all other cults...”

Must we conclude from this that the Catholic Church calls for the persecution and oppression of all those who do not recognize its faith, its divine authority, its discipline, and its laws—in other words, idolaters, Jews, heretics, schismatics, or the unfortunate souls afflicted with the folly of atheism? Such a conclusion would be an injurious and blasphemous calumny against the Church and against Jesus Christ, its head.

Indeed, the Catholic Church, instructed by its divine founder, has always desired civil tolerance for those who are in error, protecting them in all their temporal rights while preventing them from harming the state and religion of the majority of Catholic citizens. Jesus Christ and his Church could never have wanted error to be protected and encouraged, thus providing it with the means to destroy the truth, overthrow the reign of God, and expose a multitude of weak souls to seduction and their eternal damnation.

That Jesus Christ and his Church preached and desired civil tolerance, as we have just indicated, is undeniable to anyone who has simply read the Gospel and knows a few notions of the history and laws of the Church.

First, God has, throughout history, tolerated pagan, heretical, and schismatic nations; he has enabled them to preach the truth through various means according to the times; he has awaited their repentance and conversion. He only exterminated them when the measure of their iniquities, having reached its peak, no longer left their members with sufficient means to attain truth and salvation.

The Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, teaches and establishes this law of tolerance in chapter XIII of St. Matthew, in the parable of the weeds and the wheat. While the head of the household’s servants were sleeping, his enemy sowed weeds among the wheat. The servants asked to pull up the weeds, but the father of the household forbade them, lest in pulling up the weeds they might uproot the wheat also. But at harvest time he will tell the reapers to gather the weeds first, bind them in bundles, and burn them. The Lord explains this parable: The field is the world. The good seed is the children of the Kingdom of God, the Church. The weeds are the children of the wicked. The enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest will be the end of the ages. The reapers will be the angels; by God’s command they will gather from his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the fire.

In chapter V of St. Matthew, the Savior gives this law and its reason to his church: v. 44-48: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you, and persecute you; That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love them who love you, what reward have you? do not even the tax collectors the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you more than others? do not even the tax collectors so? Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”

Finally, did not Jesus Christ suffer Judas among his apostles until the very end?

The Church, faithful to the teachings of its divine Master, preaches and practices tolerance toward its enemies. We have just heard the Apostle St. Paul instruct Timothy (1 Ep. II) to pray for the pagan emperors who persecute the Church. The same Apostle (Rom. XIII) and St. Peter (1 Ep. II) command Christians to be subject to human powers, even when they persecute them. Following apostolic precepts, St. Maurice and his Theban Legion preferred death to killing. And Tertullian told the persecuting emperors that at that time the Christians “were not lacking in number or strength, if they had wished to show themselves the enemies of their pagan persecutors” (Apology, ch. 37).

St. Augustine devoted the twenty-two books of his admirable City of God to expounding the history of the tolerance of God and his Church toward the city of the devil, which is that of paganism, falsehood, error, heresy, and schism.

When the Church became civilly dominant, through the conversion of Constantine, this emperor did not persecute the pagans. He no longer supported their worship, but he tolerated it. Julian the Apostate, on the contrary, enriched and funded the worship of paganism, and he plundered and persecuted the Church.

St. Augustine, in several of his sermons, letters, etc., extracts of which are canons of the body of ecclesiastical law (cause 23 q. 4º), teaches how the wicked, the heretics, etc., should be tolerated for the sake of the peace of the Church, and how one should separate oneself from them, while still tolerating them. And he gives this rule, in canon XL, writing against Petilian: “We do not persecute you, except in the same way that truth persecutes falsehood.” “The spiritual man”, says St. Jerome in canon XIII of the same question, “never persecutes the carnal man, but on the contrary, the carnal always persecutes the spiritual.”

Book V of the authentic decretals, title VI, forbids Jews to have Christians as servants, and to keep their doors and windows open on Good Friday; And he excommunicates Christians who serve in the homes of Jews, Saracens, and pagans (chapters 1, 2, 5). But while forbidding them to build new synagogues, he allows them to maintain and repair the old ones without interference (chapters 3 and 7). In chapter 11, Clement III, in the year 1190, forbids baptizing Jews against their will, punishing them without trial, depriving them of their property, harassing them during their festivals, and violating their cemeteries. Chapters 16 and 18 forbid Christian nations to entrust public offices and positions to Jews or pagans, and if royal rights are sold to them, he orders that an unimpeachable Christian be appointed to receive them. Finally, the Church forbids Christians, under severe penalties, to baptize Jewish children without the formal consent of the parents. (Book VII, Decretal Book V, Title I).

Any upright person will recognize the wisdom of these church laws, which, on the one hand, protect Christians from the corruption, oppression, and rapacity of their enemies, whether Jewish or pagan, and on the other hand, prevent Christians from unjustly vexing and dispossessing these same Jews and forcing them to receive baptism. This is the tolerance of justice and equity, which defines the duties of Christian nations and their governments.

But there is a long way to go beyond the blatant injustice that strips and shackles the Catholic Church, subjects it to the oppression of heretics and Jews, and forces Catholics to provide for the existence of heretical and Jewish cults and their ministers. Thus, the Revolution of 1790 stripped the Catholic Church in France, but it took nothing from either the Protestants or the Jews. However, the Organic Articles of the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 place Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis not only on the same footing as ministers of the Catholic Church, to whom the confiscated property is owed, but in a much more advantageous position with far superior salaries. Now, it is this iniquity that secret societies want to perpetuate throughout the world, just as they have established and maintained it in France. And this is what is fundamentally condemned in Proposition 77.

Proposition 78.

LXXVIII. — “Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship.”

This proposition and its implementation had already been condemned in the Acerbissimum allocution of Pius IX of September 27, 1852, concerning the Masonic laws of New Granada against the Church.

It is refuted in the preceding proposition. But moreover, the practice of this proposition is an outrage against God and His truth, a danger and a scandal for Catholic populations, whom it would inevitably lead to conflating all religions in a single indifference. It is consequently a violation of natural law and an obstacle to the supernatural and eternal ends of these populations. Such a law, far from being a law, is a flagrant injustice.11 — That foreigners are free to practice their particular religion in their homes and without scandalizing the nation that welcomes them falls within the bounds of civil tolerance, which the Church does not condemn.

Proposition 79.

LXXIX. — “Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.”

In the address of Pius IX, Nunquam Fore, of December 15 1856, concerning the Masonic constitution of Mexico against the Catholic religion, we read: “Among other provisions contained in this new draft constitution,...... to more easily corrupt the morals and minds of the people, to spread the abominable and disastrous plague of indifferentism and to finish destroying our holy religion, the free exercise of all forms of worship is permitted, and everyone is granted the full and complete faculty to manifest openly and publicly every kind of opinion and thought....”

Pius IX, in his address Singulari Quadam of December 9 1854, on the occasion of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, gives us the refutation of this proposition. “This class of partisans, or rather of worshippers of human reason (and the license to error), has forgotten what a grave and cruel wound the fault of the first father inflicted upon human nature, since at once the mind was filled with darkness and the will inclined toward evil. This is why the most celebrated philosophers of the most remote era, although they wrote excellently a great many things, nevertheless tainted their doctrines with very grave errors; hence also this continual struggle that we experience within ourselves, and of which the apostle speaks: ‘I feel in my members a law which is contrary to the law of my spirit.’ Now that it is certain that the stain of original sin, propagated to all the descendants of Adam, has weakened the light of reason, and humankind has suffered a most unfortunate fall from its original state of justice and innocence. Who will find sufficient reason to arrive at the truth? Who will deny that, amidst such pressing dangers and such great infirmity that has befallen its strength, in order not to fall and be overthrown, it needs, for its salvation, the help of divine religion and heavenly grace? Now, God, in his great goodness, gives this help to those who ask for it through humble prayer, as it is written: ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ This is why Christ Our Lord, addressing His Father one day, declared that the deepest mysteries of truth had not been revealed to the prudent and wise of this age, who pride themselves on their genius and their knowledge and do not admit that the obedience of faith is superior, but on the contrary to humble and simple men who rely and rest on the oracle of divine faith. It is important that you instill this salutary teaching in the minds of those who exaggerate the power of human reason to the point that they dare, with its aid, to scrutinize and explain these mysteries themselves, the most inept and senseless undertaking of all; strive to turn them away from such great perversity of mind, by making them see that providence has given nothing more excellent to men than the authority of divine faith, that it is in it that they will find, like a torch in the darkness, a guide to follow to arrive at life; that it is of absolute necessity for salvation, since ‘without faith it is impossible to please God, and whoever does not believe will be condemned.’”

“We have learned with sorrow that another, no less pernicious error has spread in some parts of the Catholic world and has taken hold of the minds of a great number of Catholics who imagine that eternal salvation can be hoped for by those who are not part of the true Church of Christ. Hence, they frequently ask what will be, after death, the fate and condition of those who have not been at all attached to the Catholic faith, and, after offering the most futile arguments, they expect an answer that will support this erroneous opinion. Far be it from us to dare to place limits on divine mercy, which is infinite; far be it from us to wish to fathom the hidden counsels and judgments of God, an immense abyss into which human thought cannot penetrate. But, according to the duty of our apostolic office, we wish to rouse your episcopal solicitude and vigilance, so that, to the full extent of your powers, you may banish from the minds of men this impious and pernicious opinion that the path to eternal salvation can be found in all religions. Demonstrate, with that skill and knowledge by which you excel, to the people entrusted to your care, that the dogmas of the Catholic faith are in no way contrary to the mercy and justice of God. It must indeed be admitted with faith that outside the Roman Apostolic Church no one can be saved, that it is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever has not entered it will perish in the flood; however, it must also be recognized with certainty that those who are in a state of invincible ignorance regarding the true religion bear no blame in the eyes of the Lord. Now, who would presume to define the limits of this ignorance, according to the character and diversity of peoples, countries, minds, and so many other things? Yes, undoubtedly, when freed from these bodily constraints, we see God as He is, we will understand what a close and beautiful bond unites mercy and justice in God; But as long as we remain in this earthly abode, weighed down by this mortal burden that crushes the soul, let us firmly believe, according to Catholic doctrine, that there is one God, one faith, one baptism; to go further in these inquiries is no longer permissible… these kinds of truths must be engraved very deeply in the minds of the faithful, so that they may not be corrupted by false doctrines that only serve to foster the indifference that we see spreading more and more.”

Faced with these teachings from the infallible authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, who would still dare to support the presumptuous errors of this proposition 79. Let us summarize them however in their essential and dogmatic points, and consequently revealed by God.

1. Through the fall of the first father, the mind of man was filled with darkness, condemned to ignorance; the light of his reason was weakened and became incapable of arriving, by itself, without the aid of the divine authority of faith, at the knowledge of the truths necessary for his salvation. His will was inclined toward evil from childhood, says the Holy Spirit (Gen. VIII, 21); his free will was corrupted, diminished, became infirm, and bowed under the burden of concupiscence, to the point that no man can either believe in God, love Him as he ought, or do good for God, unless he is forewarned and assisted by the grace of divine mercy. (Council of Orange, 529 AD, can. 8, 13, 25. Council of Trent, sess. 5 and 6, ch. 1.)

2. It follows that there are no other means of salvation than through grace, which leads to the authority of faith, to justification by the divine sacraments and charity. Therefore, it must be admitted by faith that outside the Roman Apostolic Church no one can be saved, while recognizing that invincible ignorance of the true religion cannot be a fault in the eyes of God.

3. It is therefore necessary that the mind and reason of every person be healed of their darkness, ignorance, and infirmity by the light of faith, and that their will and free will be strengthened and sustained by the power of divine grace, and that this twofold healing of mind and will be effected by the sanctifying grace of the sacraments, which exist only in the Church.

4. Given the original vices of the mind, reason, will, and free will of all Adam’s descendants, it is a crime to openly and publicly present them with error, perverse opinions, and corrupting doctrines, which are always eagerly embraced by the concupiscence of the flesh. This is to continue the murderous work by which Satan seduced our first parents; and if they succumbed to temptation despite the strength and light of original grace, despite their state of full vigor, how can their descendants, stripped of all these divine privileges, be expected to resist the countless and perpetual temptations that the license of all errors and corruptions casts around their weak and evil-prone souls, given the divine state in which God had created them, free from ignorance and all concupiscence? If privileged souls, protected by rigorous instruction and a more Christian upbringing, manage to triumph in this daily struggle, it can only be a small number. The ignorant multitude quickly abandons not only all Christian education but also despises it and becomes saturated with the errors and corruption of indifference. And thus the paths to eternal salvation are closed to them.

These ignorant multitudes have an absolute need to be protected by ecclesiastical and civil laws against the seductions of error, against the corruption of perverse doctrines, and against their own concupiscence. Now, the so-called civil liberty of all religions and the full power given to all to openly and publicly manifest all their thoughts and opinions inevitably plunge peoples, as experience proves, into the corruption of morals and spirit, and spread the plague of indifferentism—that is to say, the greatest of misfortunes for time and for eternity.

Proposition 80.

Proposition LXXX. — “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.”

Here, finally, is the last word of the anti-Christian sect, the long-considered grand goal of the Masonic lodges: the destruction of the Church of Jesus Christ by its own Vicar. It is now common knowledge that Freemasonry dreamed of having a Pope of its own choosing, a Pope who belonged to them, who was their follower and their blind instrument to destroy the reign of God and Christ on earth and establish the sole reign of Satan with its train of errors, iniquities, injustices, and corruptions. If anyone had doubted this Masonic plan, its existence would have been revealed by the death of Pius VI in exile; by the obstacles placed in the way of the election of Pius VII, which only God could thwart; by the long imprisonment and poisoning of Pius VII at Savona and Fantaine-bleau;12 by the pretensions of the greatest persecutor of the Church, Napoleon I, who oppressed these two Pontiffs and who had the ambition to make the Pope his instrument and the Church a mere cog in his absolute domination of the world. If there could still be any doubt about this Masonic plan, it would be brought to light by the impious agitation produced around the Vatican Council by the machinations of Napoleon III and his government in concert with the Bismarcks, the d’Armims, and the traitors they had bought; it would finally be revealed by the pretensions of the Grand Freemason Bismarck and his accomplices to dominate at will the succession of the holy pontiff Pius IX, whom God keeps and will keep for the salvation of his Church, until the enemies of Jesus Christ have become a footstool for his feet. (Ps. CIX).

All this agrees with the purpose of the proposition we are exposing. This document demands, in effect, “that the Roman Pontiff reconcile himself and compromise with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.” This means that the Roman Pontiff reconcile himself and compromise with all the errors and heresies that the syllabus has condemned; that he admit, with the Freemasons, that all religions are equal and indifferent, and that, consequently, the Church of Jesus Christ have nothing more or superior to all the heretical and diabolical sects, than the idolatry of paganism; that he admit, with liberalism, the best ally of Freemasonry, that the civil liberty of all religions and the full license granted to all to publish their thoughts and opinions, even the most abominable, corrupting, and impious, is a good and a step forward; that he recognize that the Holy See has been stripped of its possessions and its civil sovereignty by a legitimate power and for the greater liberty and happiness of the Church, that the spiritual and divine power of the Church must be subject to the civil power of the governments of each nation, and that, consequently, the abolition of the Catholic Church and of the papacy, which is its necessary foundation, is a worthy advance of modern civilization. And as a consequence, the Roman Pontiff can and should leave the sacraments, their validity and administration, especially with regard to marriage, to the judgment and laws of civil governments, and thereby recognize that the sacraments are not divine, nor instituted by God in His Church alone, but that they are purely human institutions, and of no more value than the regulations of fairs and markets.

To reconcile himself with the progress of modern civilization, the Pope should recognize that perjury, that the violation of eternal law, are holy things when inspired by love of country; He should recognize that there is no moral law other than the satisfaction of even the most shameful and odious passions, those most destructive to society’s existence; he should recognize that not only are those who govern exempt from the jurisdiction of the Church, but that the Church, and consequently Jesus Christ its head and the Holy Spirit, who preside over the Church’s government, are subject to secular powers. This is the height of folly: to subject God to men, the Creator to his creatures. Only Satan could have invented such an absurdity and made the state, of which he is the master, the origin and source of all rights. The Pope must, therefore, agree that the Catholic Church, of which he is the head, and he himself, have no rights, no authority, and are useless; and that governments can do better by establishing national churches.

The Pope must compromise and acknowledge that all religions are indifferent and that, consequently, Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit were mistaken when they taught and defined that outside the Church there is no salvation. The Pope must recognize the rights of reason as equal to, and even superior to, the divine authority of faith. To compromise with the philosophy of progress and modern civilization, the Pope must declare that the prophecies and miracles of Holy Scripture are poetic fiction, that the mysteries of the Christian faith are the result of philosophical investigations, that the Old and New Testaments contain only fables, and that Jesus Christ himself is a myth—it must finally be admitted that there is no God, no creator, but that everything is God, that the world is eternal, and that only matter exists. Such, in short, is the series of absurdities, errors, and blasphemies that the Roman Pontiff, the infallible Vicar of God, is asked to admit in order to reconcile himself and compromise with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization, of which all these are inseparable prerogatives.

We wonder with astonishment where the unprecedented madness of demanding such a reconciliation, such a transaction, from the Roman pontiff could have come from, if not from the one who said, from the beginning, I shall be like the Most High, from the one who had himself worshipped in place of God by all the centuries of paganism, and who is the only God of the lodges; indeed this madness surpasses the scope of human reason, it is equaled only by the pride and insatiable hatred of Satan, the father of the modern world as he was of the world whose flood purged the earth.

Let us now listen to the words of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, confirming our deductions in his address, Jandundum, of March 18, 1861: “For a long time now we have witnessed the turmoil into which civil society is thrown, especially in our unfortunate era, by the violent struggle between opposing principles: truth and error, virtue and vice, light and darkness. For some men, on the one hand, favor what they call modern civilization; others, on the contrary, defend the rights of justice and of our holy religion. The former demand that the Roman Pontiff reconcile himself and come to terms with Progress, with Liberalism (these are their expressions), in short, with modern civilization. But the latter rightly demand that the immutable and unshakeable principles of eternal justice be preserved without alteration; they demand that the saving power of our divine religion, which alone can extend the glory of God, bring salutary remedies to the ills that afflict humanity, and which is the only and the true rule by which the children of men may, in this mortal life, acquire all virtue and journey toward the harbor of blessed eternity. But the defenders of modern civilization do not understand this opposition, although they call themselves the true and sincere friends of religion. We would like to believe their words, if the sad events that unfold daily before everyone’s eyes did not clearly prove the contrary. Indeed, there is on earth only one true and holy religion, founded and established by Our Lord Jesus Christ himself. This religion, which is the fruitful mother and nurturer of all virtues, the enemy of vices, the liberator of souls, and the mistress of true happiness, is called Catholic, Roman Apostolic. What we must think of those who live outside this ark of salvation, we already declared in our consistorial address of December 9, 1854, and we confirm this same doctrine here. Now, to those who, for the good of religion, invite us to extend a hand to present-day civilization, we will ask whether the facts are such that the Vicar of Christ, divinely established by Him to maintain the purity of His heavenly doctrine, can, without a very grave danger of conscience and a very great scandal for all, associate himself with contemporary civilization, through which so many evils occur, which can never be sufficiently deplored, and so many pernicious opinions, so many errors and principles are proclaimed that are extremely opposed to the Catholic religion and its doctrine. No one is unaware, among other things, of how the solemn concordats, regularly concluded between the Apostolic See and sovereigns, are completely abolished, as recently happened in Naples. This is what we complain about again in this august assembly, venerable brothers, and we loudly protest, in the same way that, on other occasions, we have protested against similar and audacious violations.”

“While this modern civilization favors all non-Catholic cults, while it opens access to public office to infidels themselves, and Catholic schools to their children, it grows resentful of religious congregations and of the institutes founded to run Catholic schools, against a great number of ecclesiastical persons of every rank, even those holding the highest dignities, many of whom drag out their lives miserably in exile or prisons, and even against distinguished laymen who, devoted to us and to this Holy See, have courageously defended the cause of religion and justice. While it grants subsidies to non-Catholic institutions and individuals, this civilization deprives the Catholic Church of its most legitimate possessions and employs all its efforts to diminish the saving authority of this Church. Finally, while it grants complete freedom to all speeches and writings that attack the Church and all those devoted to it wholeheartedly, while it incites, nourishes, and fosters license, at the same time it shows itself reserved and unwilling to repress the attacks, sometimes violent, leveled against those who publish excellent works, and it punishes, even with the utmost severity, the authors of these works when they appear in the least to overstep the bounds of moderation.”

“Could the Sovereign Pontiff then extend a friendly hand to such a civilization and sincerely form an alliance with it? Let things be called by their true names, and the Holy See will always appear consistent with itself. Indeed, it was perpetually the protector and initiator of true civilization; the monuments of history eloquently attest to this throughout the ages: it was the Holy See that brought true humanity, true discipline, and true wisdom to the most distant and barbaric regions of the world. But if, by the name of civilization, we are to understand a system invented precisely to weaken and perhaps even overthrow the Church, then no, the Holy See and the Roman Pontiff can never ally themselves with such a civilization. ‘What fellowship,’ the Apostle wisely asks, ‘what fellowship can righteousness have with lawlessness? What association can light have with darkness? What agreement can exist between Jesus Christ and Belial?’ (2 Corinthians VI, 14-15).”

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

Again, I want to sincerely thank Anthony and Rob for the opportunity to come on their program.

In this episode, I drew on a number of essays previously published at The Journal:

• Contra Horn: Insufficient Opposition to Jewish Zionism and its Ambitions

• The Dispersion of Israel in the Modern World — Ballerini, 1897

• The Precursor Signs of the Antichrist — Ballerini, 1881

This was a wide-ranging, theologically rich conversation you will not want to miss!

*NEW* The Official Journal Mug

The Journal of American Reform — White Glossy Mug

— Embrace the radically progressive vision of American Reform with this heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe ceramic mug.

— Featuring our striking emblem which incorporates American patriotism, Roman order and imperial authority all under the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.

Show your support for our work and journal today!

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

The highly attentive reader may have noticed, perhaps, a new section on the front-page of The Journal of American Reform. It is entitled “Catholic Race Theory”, a phrase originally coined a few years ago by Stephen Kokx and Daniel Vasko. With the kind permission of both men, I am using the term and presenting my findings on race.

For my formulation, “Catholic Race Theory” is a modern, general framework of principles concerning race and its relationship to true philosophy and Catholic theology, drawn from the writings of Popes, neo-scholastic philosophers and Church-approved theologians.

This presentation is the fruit of nearly two years of intense research, countless hours refining arguments and lots of hard work. It will be the first iteration (certainly not the last!) of my general theory of race in the modern world.

For the next couple of weeks, while I finish — among other things — refining the arguments and adding answers to objections, the page will not be publicly accessible — though it will be in short time, totally free and for everyone.

For paying subscribers, however, this is a chance for a “sneak peek”, doubling as a “thank you” for your financial support to the Journal. I am proud to have earned your support and grateful for your trust in me, as editor. For those of you have been following and supporting this project from its inception, I cannot thank you enough.

This will also mark the time for soliciting constructive and critical feedback, along with receiving formal review from a trusted Priest-friend and, perhaps, a Bishop too.

I cannot wait to get this into the hands of more Catholics!

Action Steps

• Alert your clergy, family and friends to this new page

• Bookmark the following (link)

• Stay tuned for the full, public release in mid-July (targeting Tuesday, July 14th)

TAKE ME TO THE LIVE PAGE FOR “CATHOLIC RACE THEORY”

Structure

General — Catholic Race Theory

- Introduction (finished)

- What is a Race? (finished)

- What Value has the Church Assigned to Race? (finished)

- The Church’s Condemnation of Racial Radicalism (finished)

- Universality and Particularity (coming soon)

Special Considerations — Catholic Race Theory

- Nationalism (later date)

- Racial Intermarriage (coming soon)

- Race and Culture (later date)

- The Racial Aspect of Mass Immigration and its Effects (coming soon)

- Moderate and Moral Eugenics (later date)

- The Possibility for Peaceable and Separate Racial Development Within a State or Empire (coming soon)

Common Objections and Answers — Catholic Race Theory

- Why Should Skin Color Matter? (coming soon)

- Should We Not Love Everyone Equally? (coming soon)

- Galatians 3:28 (finished)

- Moses and Sephora (finished)

- This Sounds Like Racial Supremacy, Which is Absolutely un-Christian (coming soon)

- You Should Care About Your Nation and Nationality, Not Your Race (coming soon)

Further Reading (finished)

References (in-progress)

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

In order to cover what was an action-packed week, I joined Stephen Kokx to discuss three major events within the Church and State.

In addition to this conversation, I have been busy writing at Integrity Magazine. So far, the bombshell essay on Bishop Fulton Sheen has garnered the most attention, while my other essays will surely be of interest to loyal readers of The Journal of American Reform:

• There are good reasons why Fulton Sheen should not be considered for beatification

• Meet the ultra-Zionist feminist Leo just put in charge of the Vatican’s media arm

• Magnifica Humanitas distorts Church teaching on slavery

Leave a comment down below with what you would like to see next at the Journal. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

*NEW* The Official Journal Mug

The Journal of American Reform — White Glossy Mug

— Embrace the radically progressive vision of American Reform with this heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe ceramic mug.

— Featuring our striking emblem which incorporates American patriotism, Roman order and imperial authority all under the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.

Show your support for our work and journal today!

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

“So this is the order for the family which God has established. And the inversion of this order which we largely see today is something truly satanic… Where God has set the husband over the wife, women seek to manipulate and rule their husbands. And they have no peace. They have no peace because peace is the tranquility of order. And when she acts in this way, she is out of order with her husband and with God.” - Fr. Christian Ingham

Perversion of Order in the Modern Family

The breakdown of order in the modern home, not excepting Catholics, is one of the most visible effects of the anti-Christian conspiracy. A conspiracy largely advanced by Liberalism. Women run most households, usurping the place of its chief, while the husband is relegated to second-in-command. Quoting Aristotle, Saint Thomas affirmed: the dominion of women is the death of a family, as tyrants of a commonwealth.1

Today, some are brave enough to state this truth plainly. More necessary — and more daring, we wager — is to state its true cause: weak and wicked men. Men, possessed of greater intelligence, strength and natural authority, have the greater blame for this condition, among other modern evils. Unlike in times past, it is the husband who fears his wife in practice, while she ensures her “authority over him” is duly reverenced. This is the exact opposite of Christian order, which Saint Chrysostom explains:

However not for the husband’s sake alone it is thus said, but for the wife’s sake also, that he cherish her as his own flesh, as Christ also the Church, and, that the wife fear her husband. He is no longer setting down the duties of love only, but what? That she fear her husband. The wife is a second authority; let not her then demand equality, for she is under the head; nor let him despise her as being in subjection, for she is the body; and if the head despise the body, it will itself also perish. But let him bring in love on his part as a counterpoise to obedience on her part (emphasis added).2

Emphasizing that husbands must love their wives in imitation of Our Lord’s perfect love for His Church, the golden-tongued doctor of the Church continues:

And yet how can there ever be love, one may say, where there is fear? It will exist there, I say, preeminently. For she that fears and reverences, loves also; and she that loves, fears and reverences him as being the head, and loves him as being a member, since the head itself is a member of the body at large. Hence he places the one in subjection, and the other in authority, that there may be peace; for where there is equal authority there can never be peace; neither where a house is a democracy, nor where all are rulers; but the ruling power must of necessity be one (emphasis added).3

A beautiful picture has emerged: the sublimity of Christian order. A wife is not her husband’s equal,4 but rather is a submissive helpmate5 working to support the mission of her head. The husband, while occupying the role of head, naturally bears a greater responsibility and must love his wife for her sake and, most importantly, for the sake of God. The husband must not despise the “bone of his bones” and “flesh of his flesh”.6

The Siren Call of Servant Leadership

Admitting the authority of the husband over his wife and children in theory, it is often denied to him in practice under the guise of “servant leadership”. A notion which admits of an orthodox understanding,7 but all too often devolves into a purely verbal confession of authority emptied of its prerogatives. Prerogatives that include the right to obedience from the wife and children, along with the right to judge, punish and grant mercy.

All authority exists to secure the common good. More specifically, “[M]oral authority… is a relation according to which one person directs, and another (or others) is directed to an end; and it may be formally defined: the relation between one person as ruler and another person as subject.”8 In this context, the end would be the happiness and supernatural good of the family, distinct from the private good of the Father.

But the modern idea of “servant-leaders” or “service-leadership” is distorted, seeking to subordinate the common good of the family — of which the father has the ultimate right to procure — to one of its individual members, often the mother. Again, this is a practical denial of the prerogatives of the father. Further, it amounts to forbidding the Father to select the good means by which to ensure the happiness of his family.

When we hear the term “servant leader”, we should be reminded of the mission of the leader — who is the visible sign of authority — to direct others to a common end. What could be worse than a leader who refuses to act and speak like one? How could a subject respect him?

The Sermon from Father Ingham

We now turn to a timely sermon from Father Christian Ingham on “Liberalism in the Home”, which bears directly on our remarks above. For background, Father Ingham is a Catholic priest belonging to the Roman Catholic Institute founded in 1993 by Bishop Donald Sanborn.

In this skillful sermon, Father Ingham presents truths — importantly without equivocation — drawn from the Arcanum of Pope Leo XIII and the Casti Connubi of Pope Pius XII, both concerned with Christian marriage. First tracing modern disorder to the fall of man, he then explains the prerogatives of the husband as head of the Christian home and the dignity of his wife as a regal queen. Unlike nearly all other modern treatments of the subject, wives are here enjoined to obedience and reminded to remain submissive to their husbands. Particular attention is also drawn to the effect that the conduct of the mother — in her relation to her husband — has upon their children.

With his kind permission, we now present the transcript of the sermon, to which we have added only two things: 1) headers to organize the main ideas, and 2) links and references to further enrich the text.

Learn about the Roman Catholic Institute

Support Most Holy Trinity Seminary

Sermon on Our Lady as a Remedy for Liberalism

Being that we are still within the octave of the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, and that this octave concludes with the Feast of the Immaculate Heart, I would like to speak today again about Our Lady and in particular how she is a remedy for one of the greatest evils that we face today, which is liberalism — and in particular, liberalism in the home.

The Fundamental Principle of Liberalism

The most fundamental principle of liberalism is unrestrained freedom: unrestrained freedom of thought, religion, conscience, speech, press, and politics. The liberal would say, “It is contrary to my natural and inalienable right and liberty and dignity to subject myself to any authority which is not myself.”

And this is contrary to the very nature of the creature. The creature is dependent on God and therefore must be obedient to God and to those to whom God has given authority.

The Fall of Our First Parents

On Friday, I mentioned the fall of our first parents. In the garden, God provided a paradise of pleasure for man. We read, “And the Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure to dress it and to keep it. And he commanded him, saying, ‘Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat.’”

So man was free. He was free to enjoy the good things which God had given him. But this freedom was not unrestrained. “Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what days soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.”

So God imposed this restriction on man’s freedom, and he did this as a test. It’s as if God had said to Adam:

“All of the fruits in the garden, all of these animals, everything I have given to you, Adam. Use them as you will, govern them as you will. But I am the Lord your God, and you were created to love me, and you show this love by obedience. Your obedience to me does not take away your freedom. It perfects your freedom because your will was created to choose the good. And all of these fruits and creatures which I have given to you are only particular and limited goods, whereas I am the highest and the infinite good. So obey me in this, Adam. And if you do, you will have proven that you love me above all things. And you will be confirmed in grace, and you will merit the place in heaven which I have prepared for you.”

Lucifer’s Rebellion and the Temptation of Eve

A test like this was also given to Lucifer, and his response to this test was non serviam— “I will not serve. I will not be subject to an authority outside of myself.”

And he tempted Eve with this same non serviam: “If you eat this fruit, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil. You will be as gods. You will not have to obey a moral law outside of yourself. You will create your own moral law. You will decide what’s right and wrong. You will be unrestrained.”

And Eve followed these allurements. And that’s when the will of the creature was broken off from the will of the Creator in disobedience. It has a terrible effect.

The Consequences of Rebellion

We see this in Genesis: when one rebels against a legitimate power and authority above him, then one suffers from something beneath him. Adam and Eve, they turn their souls from obedience to the Creator — and what happens? Their own bodies turned against their souls. They begin to suffer rebellion from their passions.

Before they fell, Adam and Eve were both naked and were not ashamed. We read this in Genesis. They were not ashamed because they had perfect control over their concupiscence by a special gift of God. After they turned from God, they lost this gift and their passions turned on them, and they began to suffer from temptations to lust.

We read that after they disobeyed, they perceived themselves to be naked and they sewed together fig leaves to cover themselves up. For the first time, they began to experience a disorder in themselves, a lack of control over their bodies and a rebellion of the flesh. And they tried to fix these temptations by covering themselves up.

Whereas before they were in a state of peace — peace of soul, peace of body — now turmoil erupts inside of them because of their disobedience, and they have to do violence to themselves. “I feel a law in my members fighting against the law in my mind,” St. Paul says, speaking of this rebellion of the flesh.

The Pattern of Rebellion in All Orders

And we see this verified in all orders:

• When governments rebel against the authority of the Church, the citizens are corrupted.

• When Martin Luther rebelled against the authority of the Pope, his own followers very quickly rebelled against him.

• When the mother rebels against the authority of the father, then the children rebel against both parents.

• And when the children are rebellious, they become impure because they’re rebellious. The rebellious little souls become enslaved to rebellious passions.

The Mother’s Particular Influence

And I mentioned the example of the mother in particular. The father, he must also practice obedience. Fatherhood does not dispense from this. He must obey the natural law and the divine law, the laws of the Church, civil laws, and the will of God manifested by his duties of state.

But his submission or non-submission to these things is a little more abstract and is difficult for children to see because he’s in the position of authority in the home. He’s in the position of being obeyed. So it’s difficult to see how the father himself obeys.

But kids see a concrete, up-close example every day of submission or non-submission in the relation of the mother to the father. And so it’s the mother’s influence that has a particular power to corrupt or correct the wills of her children.

The True, Catholic Order of the Family

Pope Pius XI gives the true order of the family in the encyclical Casti Connubii (no. 26) when he says:

“This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children and the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: ‘Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.’”

And he goes on to explain that this subjection does not mean that the wife has to obey her husband’s every request if they are not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to the wife.

So obviously if the husband commands the wife to do something sinful, she cannot obey him in this. The Apostle said, “We must obey God rather than men.” Or if the husband commands her to do something degrading, like eat her meals off the floor, she doesn’t have to obey him in this because this is insane.

But the tendency, especially in this day and age, is for women to rebel and not submit to their husbands when in fact they should.

Pope Pius XI goes on (no 27): “If the man is the head, the woman is the heart. And as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.”

So in the family, the man is the head and the woman is the heart. This is the order established by God. And what God hath joined, let no man tear asunder.

And then he quotes Pope Leo XIII, who said (Arcanum, no. 11): “Because she is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, let her be subject and obedient to the man, not as a servant, but as a companion, so that nothing be lacking of honor or of dignity in the obedience which she pays.”

Obedience does not degrade a person.

The Inversion of God’s Order

So this is the order for the family which God has established. And the inversion of this order which we largely see today is something truly satanic.

Fatherly virtues are considered by the world to be vices — “toxic masculinity”. And men have become weak, feminine, and submissive. And very often they submit to the will of their wives at the price of the obedience which they owe to the will of God, which is exactly what Adam did.

And feminism has destroyed the most beautiful virtues of a woman, those which we see exemplified most in Our Lady: humility, modesty, obedience. And instead it has made women domineering.

Where God has set the husband over the wife, women seek to manipulate and rule their husbands. And they have no peace. They have no peace because peace is the tranquility of order. And when she acts in this way, she is out of order with her husband and with God.

So just as Adam and Eve brought ruin upon themselves and upon their children by their disobedience, so also husbands and wives bring ruin upon themselves and their children when the order of the family is inverted.

And we particularly have to watch out for this nowadays because it’s almost the norm in the world. It is the norm in the world. And so we become desensitized to it.

Our Antidote: The Immaculate Heart of Mary

Our antidote to this satanic poison is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and this for two reasons.

1. She Is the Example of Perfect Obedience

Our Lord gives us the most perfect example of obedience. But Our Lady is a pure creature, and so in that sense, she’s closer to us. In that sense, Our Lord is a divine person — He’s both God and man — whereas Our Lady, she is a pure creature. So she gives us a particular example of the obedience of a pure creature to the Creator.

We saw that Satan’s motto is non serviam. Our Lady expressed the interior of her soul, her fundamental attitude towards God when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

And in the Psalms, we see Our Lord’s fundamental attitude of soul — the relation of His human soul towards God — in the Psalms when it says, “Behold, I come to do thy will, O God.”

Look at the similarity between those two expressions.

2. She Forms the Virtue of Obedience in Our Souls

Because as I said on Friday, she is our spiritual mother and the Mediatrix of all graces.

St. Augustine says that all of the predestinate, while they are in this world, are in a certain sense hidden in the womb of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, where they are guarded, nourished, brought up and made to grow by that good mother in order to be conformed to the image of her Son.

And the reason for this is very simple. The Holy Ghost uses Mary to bring forth both the head and the members. So Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ and His Mystical Body — the totus Christus in the words of St. Augustine.

So she is the model of obedience and she’s the channel through which we receive graces of obedience.

Praying the Rosary

And we can avail ourselves of both of these aspects of Our Lady especially by praying her Rosary.

Saints and spiritual writers tell us that it’s not so much by reading about virtues in the abstract that we learn how to practice them, although this can be helpful. Rather, it is by seeing them practiced in a person.

And in the fifteen decades, we find the example of every virtue in the lives of Our Lord, Our Lady, and St. Joseph. We find the order of the home perfectly observed in the hidden life of the Holy Family.

So everything Pope Pius XI said about the order of the family is shown in the Joyful Mysteries, where Our Lord and Our Lady are submitted to St. Joseph.

And everything he said about husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the Church is shown in the Sorrowful Mysteries, where Christ sacrificed Himself for His Church.

And in the Glorious Mysteries, fathers and mothers will be reminded that they are raising children to populate the Kingdom of Heaven, and that they are not alone in this struggle since they are assisted by our Mother and Mediatrix of all graces, and that your own children are especially her children.

God bless you — in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

Mr. Theo Howard of had me on his program to discuss an “under-appreciated” body of doctrinal and attitudinal errors, namely Americanism. For nearly two hours we unmasked this movement and those men sympathetic to it — including the historical origins of the “Americanizing school”. Finally, we examined its relation to the present Crisis in the Church.

Again, many thanks to Theo and we hope you enjoyed the discussion!

Recommended Reading

*NEW* The Official Journal Mug

The Journal of American Reform — White Glossy Mug

— Embrace the radically progressive vision of American Reform with this heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe ceramic mug.

— Featuring our striking emblem which incorporates American patriotism, Roman order and imperial authority all under the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.

Show your support for our work and journal today!

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

“But the Jews’ fault and their misfortune is that they do not open their eyes to the cause of these age-old and unprecedented persecutions. Throughout history, we have seen many peoples fall prey to other peoples. […] The persecutions of the Jews have had this twofold characteristic: perpetuity and universality. It is a unique phenomenon — one that cannot be explained humanly; it is too vast to be traced back to a limited cause. If you attribute it to intolerance, you would have to go back to the cause of this intolerance, and not blame Catholicism alone; for the same persecutions have been incessant among pagans, among Protestants, among Greeks, among Muslims, at all times, in all places, under all forms of government.”

The Tragedy of the Jewish Race

There is a famous Latin maxim corruptio optimi pessima “the corruption of the best is the worst.” It perfectly applies to the Jewish race, a singularly unique people who Monsignor Léon Meurin observed in 1893:

What a strange figure in humanity is this people of Israel! How great and majestic it is in its history, as long as it walks with the Lord! How great it is also and above all terrible in its hatred against its Messiah, whom it misunderstood and killed on the cross!

In the pages of The Journal of American Reform we have observed the latter reality; the extreme corruption of the Jews, the evil of Talmudism and the universal conspiracy of the Synagogue against true Israel. However, the inverse of the maxim is no less true and it must be said with Monsignor Meurin that, “How great and majestic it is in its history, as long as [Israel] walks with the Lord!” The greatest saints of the Catholic Church, Our Blessed Lady first among them, have been of Jewish extraction. The apostles were no different.

The King of the Universe, Our Divine Lord, belonged to the line of David and Abraham (Matt. I, 1, 16). Jesus Christ lived as a Jew and is the God-man. This profound truth should not discomfort Catholics, even when it is weaponized by “neo-Judaizers” or “neo-pagans,” as happens with increasing frequency today. Any misguided antisemitism that seeks to deny this reality about Our Lord is not only a grave error but an affront to Catholic dogma. At the same time, the circumstances of Our Lord’s conception were utterly unique, to say nothing of His Divinity.

Father Ludwig Ruland explained this well in his 1942 work on social questions:

Christ had a human mother of the house of David, but no human father, so that our Lord is not biologically the descendant of one particular race in the same sense as all other men are of theirs. By His supernatural origin and incarnation Christ belongs to no race at all, and it is only those that deny Christ’s divinity who find any difficulty on this point.1

Further, as Catholics, we do not celebrate the Great Patriarchs of the Old Testament, all of whom looked forward to the coming of the true Messias, because of the eminent characteristics of the Jewish-Semitic race. Rather, as Father Constantinus, O.F.M., noted in his illuminating Catholicism and the Race Question, it was:

Because of their free, personal, heroic cooperation with the supernatural graces of salvation, because of their personal supernatural (and not because of their racial) merits and their faith in the coming Redeemer, not as (and insofar as He was) a Jew, a Semite, but the Son of God, the Redeemer of all races.

This is the true meaning of Saint Paul’s admonition to the early Church (Rom. X, 12), “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.” How badly this has been obscured today.

Forgotten Jewish Converts

The nineteenth century saw a number of Hebrew converts enter the bosom of the Catholic Church, notably among their intellectual, social and religious elite. Father Edgardo Mortara, devoted servant to Pope Pius IX, and Father Augustin Lémann, tireless missionary to the Jewish people, stand out as examples, to say nothing of David Paul Drach. To this list we are obliged to add Father Marie-Théodore Ratisbonne, the saintly focus of this essay.

Born Marie-Théodore Ratisbonne in 1802 to a wealthy Jewish family in Paris,2 after the conversion of his friends and careful study, a young Ratisbonne was moved by the grace of God to seek baptism in 1826. Ordained in 1830, now Father Ratisbonne served in his home diocese before moving to Paris in 1840, where the miraculous conversion of his fiercely anti-Christian brother Alphonse in 1842 inspired him to devote himself to the education and conversion of Jews.3 With the backing of Pope Gregory XVI, he founded the houses of Our Lady of Sion for the Christian education of Jewish children, a mission that earned him the continued favor of Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII. Father Ratisbonne died in 1884 having received the last sacraments from the Archbishop of Paris and the final blessing of Leo XIII who had by then made him an Apostolic Protonotary. He left behind a substantial body of written work covering many topics, most of which remains untranslated into English today:

• 1828 — Essai sur l’Éducation Morale (Essay on Moral Education)

• 1841 — Histoire de Saint-Bernard (The Life and Times of Saint Bernard)

• 1853 — Méditations de Saint-Bernard sur le Présent et Futur (Saint Bernard’s Meditations on the Present and Future)

• 1860 — Le Manuel de la Mère Chrétienne (The Manual of the Christian Mother)

• 1870 — Nouveau Manuel des Mères Chrétiennes (New Manual for Christian Mothers)

• 1870 — Le Pape (The Pope)

• 1872 — Miettes Évangéliques (Evangelical Crumbs)

• 1878 — Réponse aux Questions d’un Israélite de Notre Temps (Reply to the Questions of an Israelite of Our Time)

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present Father Marie-Théodore Ratisbonne’s 1868 treatment of “The Jewish Question.”

Key Passages

France must have sunk very low into the darkness of unbelief to suddenly find itself at the level of Jewish infidelity. But Providence, which makes everything work together for its impenetrable designs, seems to have chosen the moment when the social edifice was collapsing with a crash to shake the age-old walls that separated the Jews from Christian society.

A prophetic people, put on display before the world and destined to serve as an example to all other nations, their influence upon society can never be a matter of indifference; indeed, in our own day, it has acquired an unprecedented power. Naturally skillful and ingenious, and possessed by the instinct for domination, the Jews have gradually invaded all the avenues that lead to wealth, honors, and power; their spirit has gradually infiltrated modern civilization; they control the stock market, the press, the theater, literature, government offices, and the major communication routes on land and sea; and by the ascendancy of their wealth and their shrewdness, they have at present taken, as in a hidden snare, all of Christian society.

They no longer want Judaism; that much is certain; but they do not yet want Christianity; and the proof is that, while rejecting the Revelation of Moses wholesale, they relentlessly pursue those among them who embrace the Catholic faith. The latter, as we have already said, do not renounce any point of the Old Testament; those, on the contrary, who accuse them, deny all the teachings of the faith and all the traditions of their fathers. To whom, then, does the epithet of apostate logically apply?

The children of Israel who have the immense good fortune of embracing the Christian faith do, it is true, disavow the Talmudic superstitions of those among their fathers who fell into the darkness of unbelief; but thanks be to God, they count other ancestors among the Israelites who remained faithful, and through them they attach themselves to the faith of the most worthy and most illustrious of their fathers.

The Jews in general do not read the Holy Scriptures; or else they defer to the interpretations of their rabbis, who refuse to open their eyes. But how could one fail to be struck by these testimonies, when one hears them with an upright heart?

THE JEWISH QUESTION

I.

From a social standpoint, as from a religious one, the Jews have always occupied a unique position; and it is with good reason that today, more than ever, they attract the world’s attention. When one considers the static state in which they remained for nearly 2,000 years, one is astonished by the unusual movement that suddenly spread among them; and one wonders what the tendency of this movement is, and what end it will reach. Until recently, iron barriers separated this imperishable race from all the peoples among whom it languished; and contrary to the law of assimilation, which blends together in a single society the various elements of subjugated nations, the Jews alone persisted in their isolation, inaccessible to the light of the Gospel and the progress of Christian civilization.

This state of drowsiness lasted until the beginning of our century; and during this long course of events, the Jews, turned inward and visibly rejected, show in their lamentable history no vitality, no change, no point of contact with Christians. They are stagnant water that does not mingle with any of the rivers that surround them.

The purpose of this writing is not to recall the cause of this dazzling decline; it is written in the Old and New Testaments; it is the mystery of God’s justice, the most memorable and significant of all historical phenomena.

Nothing less than a social upheaval, the most terrible recorded in history, was needed to give the Israelite people the first sign of awakening.

An astonishing thing, and yet very little noticed! Of all the acts that emanated, like thunderbolts, from the heart of the French Revolution, only one survived in all its consequences; and it is precisely this one to which the least attention was paid. On September 28, 1791, the Constituent Assembly, intoxicated by its omnipotence, decreed the emancipation of the Jews and admitted them to the exercise of all the civil and political rights of French citizens. This initiative was imposed successively, but not without resistance, first on all the Catholic states, then on the Protestant and schismatic states, even in Turkish and Arab countries.

Editors’ Note: interestingly, it was our revolution and 1788 Constitution which first emancipated the Jews, a striking departure from the constant practice of Catholic states and even Protestant regimes. Until then, the civil equality of Hebrews had always been denied: chiefly on religious grounds and in the name of the common good, though also — secondarily — by the resistance of the latter to assimilate among gentile nations.

In the newly created liberal, masonic republic, the very first president, George Washington, boasted that the American project rejected the European practice of religious “toleration,” embracing instead the “enlarged and liberal policy” of religious liberty in which all citizens are equally free to exercise. He noted in 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation of Rhode Island, approvingly, that the “Government of the United States… gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

France must have sunk very low into the darkness of unbelief to suddenly find itself at the level of Jewish infidelity. But Providence, which makes everything work together for its impenetrable designs, seems to have chosen the moment when the social edifice was collapsing with a crash to shake the age-old walls that separated the Jews from Christian society. Beneath the thick clouds of dust that so many ruins had heaped up everywhere, the emancipation of the Jews was accomplished in an almost unnoticed manner. And indeed, when, after the dark night, Israelites and Christians found themselves facing one another, living the same social life, they remained surprised and for a long time embarrassed by this impromptu fraternity. The dividing line, legally abolished, persisted in habits, in customs, in instincts; and the Jews, always rejected, kept themselves apart for some time, not using their freedom except to increase the opportunities of their trade. Fifteen years of hesitation passed after the famous act of emancipation; and during this period, no significant change can be noted in the actual situation of the Jews. A principle had been promulgated; the consequences were to follow later. It was Napoleon, the powerful architect of the new era, who conceived the idea of ​​making the merging of Jewish nationality into French nationality possible. By a decree of May 30, 1806, he convened an assembly of Jews from France, Italy, and Holland in Paris to address a series of issues, all aimed at reconciling the teachings of Moses with the requirements of French law. The Jewish deputies had too much to gain from preserving their titles and rights as citizens not to carefully consider the terms of their profession of faith. More concerned with their own well-being than with the law of Sinai, they concealed the inflexible conditions of their religious beliefs and sacrificed several fundamental tenets so as not to alienate the Emperor’s favor. Thus, in their declaration of August 1806, they began by stating as a principle that their religion commanded them to regard as: “supreme law, the law of the prince in civil and political matters; that, consequently, even if their religious code, or the interpretations given to it, contained civil or political provisions that were not in harmony with the French code, these provisions would cease to govern them, since they must above all recognize the law of the prince and obey it.”

This strange preamble placed the Napoleonic Code above the Code of Moses in a single stroke. We see in it, first of all, the intentions that motivated the Jewish deputies charged with resolving, in the name of their coreligionists, the questions submitted to them. The declaration containing their official answers must have fully satisfied the Emperor; and the latter, wishing to give the doctrine of this new Judaism a sanction and an authority it did not possess, conceived of transforming the assembly of Israelite deputies into a kind of council, under the name of the Great Sanhedrin.

The Hebrew council convened in Paris in the first days of February 1807 confirmed the previous decisions and formulated nine articles relating to marriage, divorce, polygamy, and the civil and political relations of Jews with Christians.

We will speak later of the article concerning rabbinism. Let us simply note that the decisions of the Great Sanhedrin, despite the support given to them by the Emperor’s government, never gained any credence among Orthodox Jews.

Napoleon, unwittingly pursuing the plan of Providence, persisted in increasingly dissolving Jewish nationality in the French Empire; and to this end, he decreed several measures that were organized on new grounds the ancient remnants of the cult of Moses. On May 17, 1808, he established consistories, appointed rabbis, sanctioned the decisions of the Great Sanhedrin, and broadly regulated the affairs of the synagogue. On July 20 of the same year, another decree ordered Jews to adopt, within three months, a given name and a surname that were not derived from the Old Testament. While imperial power did not succeed in changing the characters and physical appearances of the Jews, it nevertheless produced undeniable results in the long run; for all these innovations, stripping the Jews of their distinctive form and introducing heterogeneous elements into their religion, gradually led to the total disintegration of the old Judaism.

Other causes contributed to this crisis. The Jews, having entered a licentious society, soon adopted its doctrines and customs. The philosophy of the 18th century became the guide for those among them who wished to educate themselves and pass for enlightened men; life in the camps caused many others to forget religious practices; finally, the example of bad Christians and the almost general indifference to religion that then prevailed in France, completed the extinguishing, in the vast majority of Jews, of the sparks of faith they had inherited from their fathers.

At the time we are speaking of, the corrosive influence of unbelief was undermining the faith of both Jews and Christians; it seemed to have produced a general leveling. But on this blank slate, Providence was opening new means of salvation to human frailty; and one could sense the fulfillment of a mysterious saying of Saint Paul: “Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitale, ut omnium miserealur.”

“God let them all fall into unbelief, so that He might exercise His mercy toward all.”4

From then on, the influence of Christianity began to be felt; it did not yet prevail, but it became irresistible. Judaism, which had remained motionless through the centuries, like a corpse reduced to a mummy, hardened and invulnerable under the hammer of persecution, crumbled to pieces as it drew closer to the Christian atmosphere; and from that moment appeared the first signs of regeneration. Like the seeds of ancient Egypt rediscovered in our time, which have yielded a new harvest, the seeds of Judaism sprouted in various countries, flowers full of hope. These first fruits were not shown in the mass of the people, but one could already observe a few rare fruits of the mysterious work of grace. The transformation was taking place slowly within people’s minds, while outwardly, nothing was yet visible but chaos — the dismal entourage of license and irreligion. The Jewish generation that vanished with the passing century carried away with it the traditions, the inveterate prejudices, and the obscure practices of the Talmud; the generation that followed it — and which grew old under the Restoration — thought only of enjoying earthly life, without concerning itself with the conditions of future happiness; and finally, the Israelites of later times — most of whom were educated in Christian schools or entirely devoid of religious instruction — seem to have become strangers even to the very memories of the antiquated worship of the synagogue.

Hence a situation that inaugurates a new phase, obviously abnormal and transitory. The Jews are no longer Jews; they are not yet Christians. They float aimlessly between the past and the future. Could it be possible that this situation could befit the descendants of Abraham, the father of believers? A prophetic people, put on display before the world and destined to serve as an example to all other nations, their influence upon society can never be a matter of indifference; indeed, in our own day, it has acquired an unprecedented power. Naturally skillful and ingenious, and possessed by the instinct for domination, the Jews have gradually invaded all the avenues that lead to wealth, honors, and power; their spirit has gradually infiltrated modern civilization; they control the stock market, the press, the theater, literature, government offices, and the major communication routes on land and sea; and by the ascendancy of their wealth and their shrewdness, they have at present taken, as in a hidden snare, all of Christian society. The government of 1830 gave the synagogue an impetus that has never ceased. One of his first acts, on February 8, 1831, was to place the rabbis on the same footing as ministers of other faiths and to assign them a salary from the public treasury. This innovation created a kind of Israelite clergy from a legal standpoint; but in the eyes of religion, the rabbis have never been and could never be ministers of the Old Testament. It is known that, according to the Law of Moses, only the sons of Aaron and the descendants of the tribe of Levi had the authority to perform priestly functions; so much so that, after the dispersion and the mixing of the tribes, the Jews no longer had priests or sacrifices. This is the literal fulfillment of the prophecy of Hosea: “For many days Israel will be without king, without prince, without sacrifice, without altar, without ephod, and without teraphim.”5 The rabbis, whose name means masters or preceptors were merely scribes, more or less learned in the Law; or casuists versed in the Talmud, who taught commentaries on religion; later, they received a small salary from the synagogue for rendering rulings on doubtful cases of Talmudic morality. Such were their only attributes; and they never presented themselves as pastors or ministers of their religion. An interesting note on French rabbinism can be found in the June 1846 issue of a Jewish publication entitled The Archives of the Israelites. The current institution of rabbis as ministers of their faith dates only from 1808. It is due to the Jewish deputies, who, ashamed to proclaim to France the nullity and uselessness of rabbinical functions, attributed to the rabbis of that time a fictitious character contradicting the formal law of the Old Testament.6

The royal decree of 1831 sanctioned this singular anomaly by endowing the synagogue with an impossible priesthood. But in fact, the rabbis, transformed into priests by civil law, and although salaried by the State, remained without authority among the Jews; and they found themselves the target of sarcasm from both their friends and their enemies. It had been hoped that the creation of the rabbinate would breathe some life back into the dying synagogue; changes in ceremonies, modifications in services, and progress in interpretations were expected; some wanted reforms, others opposed them; all pretended to regenerate, by various means, the affairs of religion. But the rabbis, vested with an illusory power, incapable moreover of fulfilling the role assigned to them, and perfectly content with their lot, offered only inertia to the discordant demands of their coreligionists.

Then the Jews divided into several very distinct parties. Some, whom we can call the Indifferent, and they are the vast majority, abandoned the synagogue and religious practices. These are the men of the day who know no other life than that of this world, and devote their entire activity to the pursuit of pleasures and interests. Others are the Reformers, belated disciples of the school of Voltaire; and yet still attached by instinct rather than by conviction to the faith of their ancestors. They would like, as they say, to bring religion up to the level of the age; That is to say, a Judaism dressed in modern fashion, with a dogma that does not offend the senses, and a form of worship that does not disrupt customs. The reformers are distinguished from the indifferent in that the latter, no longer even possessing religious feeling, are in no way concerned with the decline or rehabilitation of the synagogue; while the former cling to beliefs they do not practice and seek to harmonize them with human systems. Too preoccupied with earthly matters to rise to the divine idea of ​​religion, they would like to bring it down to themselves, thus satisfying both their unreflective pride and their blinded conscience.

The third party, called Orthodox or Conservative, consists of a fairly large number of obstinate Jews who, either out of conviction or a spirit of opposition, reject all reform projects and loudly demand the maintenance of Talmudic customs and precepts. The men of this category are diminishing every day; for they are scarcely recruited from among the young; and there is much ignorance and hypocrisy among them.

There is another party called by the Jews themselves the party of the Christianizers.7 These Israelites, who repudiate the name of Jews, admire the Catholic faith; but most stop at the threshold of the Church. Nourished by futile or erroneous readings, they imagine that the God of the Christians is a different God from the God of Israel, and dare not embrace the serious study of Christianity, for fear of being led to abandon the religion of their fathers. As if modern Judaism were the religion of Moses! As if they had not long ago broken the chain that bound them to the faith of the patriarchs! As if the Christian faith did not contain the entirety of the Jewish faith! Moreover, mysteriously drawn to the Church, they reverently pronounce the name of Jesus Christ; they praise evangelical morality; they associate with priests and attend sermons; they openly express the wish and the hope of soon seeing all of Israel within Christianity. Many of them have indeed received the sacrament of regeneration: some publicly, others in secret; and today there are Christian members in all the principal Israelite families of Europe.

Finally, the party that prevails today over all other shades, both in the number of its adherents and in their distinction, is the one that openly denies the Bible and the Hebrew cult, to devote themselves to the pursuit of a progress they call the Idea. By this word, we recognize the more or less disillusioned disciples of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and other inventors of religions, who, as we know, made their first conquests among the most eminent Israelites. This party, which calls itself the Progressive Party, has noble aspirations: it foresees a universal fusion; and to achieve this goal, it earnestly demands the convocation of a synod composed of representatives from all the synagogues of the world. And what will be the mission of this new great Sanhedrin? Heavens, hear, and you, earth, lend an ear! Its mission will be to proclaim to the world the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. Whoever accepts these two dogmas, they say, will thereby be recognized as an Israelite.

This, verbatim, is the sum of their theology. It is certainly to reduce religion to its simplest expression; and one would have to suppose a great deal of ill will on the part of unbelievers in all countries to doubt their acquiescence to such an easy religion. However, it is not new; and it is not necessary for a synod of rabbis to come and reveal it to us. Already paganism, weary of idols, had risen to the level of this vague deism. Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, spoke of the unity of God. Cicero, among others, wrote these words: “Although God is one, he is designated by various names; to deny his existence would be an absurdity.”8 And without dwelling on the pagans, let us simply recall that monotheism also found an apostle in Robespierre, who, in the midst of the Synod of the Convention, deigned to grant the supreme being a patent of existence and a certificate of life.

We know the influence this abstract dogma has exerted on the morality and prosperity of France.

Is this the idea of ​​progress contained in what is strangely called liberal Judaism? I cannot believe it; I have too high an opinion of progressives; but I wonder how men of good faith and talent can be satisfied with such a vague and vain theory. Do they not sense that if there is a God, creator and father of humankind, there must be a living relationship between humankind and its Creator? What is this relationship? Why was it broken? How can it be restored? These are the vital questions of religion that concern our future destiny; they have not been left to the disputes of men; they have been resolved by the Old and New Testaments To reject these sacred books is to condemn oneself to eternal doubt, even if one were to adorn this doubt with the titles of science, progress, idea, monotheism, or liberal Judaism.

Let us be frank. These men know what they do not want; but they do not know what they do want. They no longer want Judaism; that much is certain; but they do not yet want Christianity; and the proof is that, while rejecting the Revelation of Moses wholesale, they relentlessly pursue those among them who embrace the Catholic faith. The latter, as we have already said, do not renounce any point of the Old Testament; those, on the contrary, who accuse them, deny all the teachings of the faith and all the traditions of their fathers. To whom, then, does the epithet of apostate logically apply?

The various parties we have identified, despite their profound differences, nevertheless have one point of contact. All retain the bitter memory of the persecutions to which the Jews have been subjected for eighteen centuries; for the shadow of these calamities still haunts them. Indeed, it would take a virtue more than magnanimous to erase with generous oblivion the bloody testimonies of their history. But the Jews’ fault and their misfortune is that they do not open their eyes to the cause of these age-old and unprecedented persecutions. Throughout history, we have seen many peoples fall prey to other peoples. But these unjust aggressions had limits; they only stained certain periods and certain regions; they lasted only a time; they were not carried out simultaneously or alternately in all the countries of the world. The persecutions of the Jews have had this twofold characteristic: perpetuity and universality. It is a unique phenomenon — one that cannot be explained humanly; it is too vast to be traced back to a limited cause. If you attribute it to intolerance, you would have to go back to the cause of this intolerance, and not blame Catholicism alone; for the same persecutions have been incessant among pagans, among Protestants, among Greeks, among Muslims, at all times, in all places, under all forms of government.

Editors’ Note: Notice how similar the above observation of the Jewish nation is to Father Ballerini’s — “[Of] those who do not believe in the divinity of the Scriptures and reject the prophecies of the two Testaments, it must seem inexplicably strange to see the fact, unique in the history of mankind, of a people, for more than nineteen centuries, dispersed and wandering, without a king, without a temple, without a priesthood, without a homeland; and yet always subsisting, mingled with the nations of the globe, with none of which it has ever been related, and always by all the same nations, sometimes more sometimes less, disliked, hostile or rejected.”

If one does not wish to open the Gospel to penetrate this somber mystery, let one read the prophets of Israel. We will quote only Moses: If you render my covenant void and useless, I will break the hardness of your pride; the heavens will be like iron to you, and the earth like bronze. I will ravage your land; I will make it a horror even to your enemies; I will scatter you among the nations... And if a few of you remain, they will wither in the midst of their iniquities, in the land of their enemies, and they will be overwhelmed with afflictions because of the sins of their fathers and their own sins, until they confess their iniquities and those of their ancestors...9

We will not continue with these quotations; they are terrible; and they are found even more frightening in the other prophetic books. But by comparing them with the history of the Jews, could one fail to recognize the intervention of God’s hand in the explosion of a catastrophe that lasted nearly two thousand years?

Does this mean that the Catholic Church was the sword of divine justice? No, that was not its mission. On the contrary, it moderated the spontaneous furies of the people; it energetically condemned, through the pontiffs, the instigators of these cruel enmities, even when they were acts of reprisal. It sheltered the trembling Jews under its aegis; and it did not merely rescue them from popular passions; it opened inviolable sanctuaries for them where they found security. It was Rome that set the example of this protective charity; it granted the Jews a separate quarter; and several other cities imitated the initiative of the Roman pontiffs. Thanks to these places of refuge, the Jews lived together around their synagogue, in accordance with their laws, under the authority of their spiritual leaders; and they had the full and complete enjoyment of the practice of their religion. Hence the Ghettos, whose origin is linked to a hospitable spirit, too often forgotten and too often maligned today. Philanthropy paints a grim picture of them and rightly deplores their dilapidation and filth. But it is forgotten that they date from a time when generally all cities had the same appearance. In the Middle Ages, Christian civilization did not pride itself on transforming the palaces, the fragile dwellings of this world. Christians, sojourners on earth, aspired only to the splendors of the heavenly Jerusalem. If, with the progress of the century, the cities of the earthly city have been singularly embellished, it should not be surprising that the Jews did not follow this movement. The Ghettos remained stationary, like the populations who dwelt there. It is the Jews who have maintained them in their present state; and it even seems that these dilapidated dwellings did not displease them; for even today they prefer them to others. Since the beginning of his reign, Pius IX has placed all the districts of Rome at their disposal; and yet they persist in not leaving the Ghetto, and they remain voluntarily attached to it.

The Israelites are obviously committing an injustice and an act of ingratitude when they rebel today against an institution that once saved them.

II.

The digressions we felt compelled to make concerning the various parties that divide the Jews have not led us astray from our subject; for they clarify what remains for us to say about the crisis that results from the confusion of so many disparate elements.

The supporters of reform, as well as the orthodox, have their mouthpieces in the press. But in general, Jewish publications do not reveal the internal turmoil of the synagogue; and they avoid, as much as possible, confiding in the Christian world. What is remarkable is the care with which they shun all serious and dogmatic discussion. Above all, they avoid the great question of the Messiah, the only one that stands between Jews and Christians! For once this question is resolved, and Jesus Christ is recognized as the Holy One of Israel promised to the patriarchs and foretold by the prophets, the wall of separation would instantly fall, and the word of the Messiah would be the light of the Jews as it is the law of the Christians. This is what those among them who concern themselves with religious matters fear; and it seems that the fear of being enlightened leads them not only to distort the meaning of their sacred prophecies, but also to deny, against the very text of the Old Testament, the dogma of the Messiah and the Redemption of the world. Today, Jews no longer accept this fundamental point of the religion of their fathers; they reject both the mystery of original sin and the promise of the Redeemer. Or, if they still invoke the Messiah in the obligatory recitation of the psalms and prophetic books read every Saturday at synagogue services, they attach no meaning to their words; they regard them as outdated formulas; they even declare that one should no longer expect anything from the Messiah, nor ask for any other liberation than that which they have obtained in their political situation. The Messiah came for us on February 28, 1790, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Thus spoke one of the most authoritative voices of modern Jews, Mr. Calien, the translator of the Bible.10

In this state of decadence of Judaism, influential Israelites turned to the July Monarchy to solicit support that they no longer found in their faith.

Thanks to the sympathy they enjoyed, they obtained a constitution which, in the form of a royal decree, was a true civil constitution for the Jewish faith. This document, dated May 25, 1844, attracted very little public attention; few seemed to grasp the immense significance of an organization that placed Judaism under the direct and immediate authority of the Christian minister in charge of religious affairs in France. The Bishop of Langres was the only one at that time to point out its consequences in a famous pamphlet entitled The Tendencies. A glance at the main provisions of this royal decree is enough to reveal the profound attacks it dealt on the traditions and hierarchy of the synagogue. Thus, it was decreed that the religion of French Jews would henceforth have its center in Paris. A central consistory composed of laymen, and placed, like the Holy Synod of Russia, under the control of the government, directs the spiritual and temporal aspects of worship; it can be dissolved by decree; and in that case, the reins of the synagogue are entrusted to a provisional administration formed by the minister. Below this supreme consistory are departmental consistories which report on their administration to the prefects.

This organization, so contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Old Testament, resulted in the complete secularization of the Jewish religion. Judaism, absorbed into the political sphere, now found itself governed as a mere branch of civil administration. But the Israelites, increasingly fascinated by the official protection they found themselves receiving, applauded this strange situation, which they called progress; and they refused to understand that human support is a very fragile foundation, all in a time when the whole of society is prey to perpetual vicissitudes.

The same constitution, with some changes, was applied soon after, by a new ordinance dated November 9, 1845, to the Israelites of Algeria; and what is strange about this last act is that Algeria, being placed under military rule, the administration of the Mosaic faith was in fact found to fall within the purview of the Minister of War; and thus, it is an army general who exercises over the Algerian synagogue the supremacy that the high priest exercised in Jerusalem

However, the consistories themselves eliminate rabbis as much as possible. They recruit from among merchants, lawyers, artists, and the wealthy — whoever they may be, all undoubtedly very honorable, and we grant that they are versed in the study of the humanities; but in general, they are completely unfamiliar with theological studies and synagogue services. Is it from there that enlightenment will come?

Let us also note that these upheavals are not unique to France; they are occurring with greater fervor in other countries; and if the scope of this writing allowed it, we would mention here the rabbinical schisms already fully realized in England, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Poland. Everywhere a new spirit is stirring the remnants of Israel; everywhere, across the entire surface of the globe where they are scattered, they are restless and yearn for a new order of things. The present time is evidently a transition between the state of immobility of the past eighteen centuries and a future regeneration that will only be brought about by the Gospel. The civil and political emancipation of the Jews was only the prelude of a higher and more complete liberation. Beneath the ruins of the synagogue, the materials for a new edifice are taking shape, and it is already beginning to rise; and although scarcely risen from the ground, it is visible to all.

What will be the consequences of this crisis? On the one hand, the inevitable contact of the Israelites with the Christians is causing the old repugnance to fall away day by day. The Jews now find themselves mingled with civilization, with religious discussions, with the general life of Christian society; so that, despite themselves, they are enveloped and as if invaded by the breath of Christianity, which is constantly at work, penetrating, enriching, and enlivening all social elements. On the other hand, Providence, having cleared the way, has brought forth on the soil of the Church works destined to meet the new needs. It has chosen instruments even from among the children of Israel; And today, one could no longer count the number of those who have sought and found in the Church light, peace, and happiness. The apostolic zeal that so earnestly urged Saint Peter and Saint Paul has been reawakened to set to work; immense charity is being shown to the Jews. Everything leads one to believe that, with the blessing of the common Father of the faithful, with the help of prayer, divine grace will bring the lost sheep back to the paths of truth. The time of the mercies promised to Zion has come; it is the signal of the consolations announced to the Church. “Thou shalt arise and have mercy on Sion: for it is time to have mercy on it, for the time is come.”11

III.

We have said that the principal obstacle which distances the Jews from the great Catholic family is the fear of renouncing the faith of their fathers, and the instinctive horror they feel at the thought of worshipping a God other than the God of Abraham. This obstacle arises from nothing but a lack of study; for they imagine that Christianity is a different religion from Judaism — a notion entirely contrary to the truth. The Gospel, far from abolishing the doctrines of the Old Testament, has spread them among all the nations of the earth; and Christianity is in reality nothing other than the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham and to the patriarchs of Israel: “All the nations of the earth shall be blessed in Him who shall come forth from your race.”12 It is therefore a grave error to believe that in embracing the Christian faith, the child of Israel renounces the God of his ancestors. On the contrary, he acknowledges and proclaims that this God of goodness is faithful to His promises, and that what He solemnly announced has been magnificently fulfilled.

An institution,” says Cardinal Gousset, “can develop and grow according to the plan of its author without ceasing to be substantially the same. Such is the Christian religion. We see it always the same from the origin of the world; always the same God has been recognized as its author, the same Christ as its mediator; the same end, the same means, the same truths — in figure or in reality, according to the reach of the human mind. God has never taught men one thing at one time and the contrary at another. The belief of the patriarchs was not changed by the teachings of Moses; the creed of Christians, though more expansive, is in no way opposed to that of the Hebrews; but the primitive teachings given to the patriarchs were renewed and developed under the Written Law, explained and completed by Jesus Christ, who came not to destroy but to fulfill the law and the prophets: “Non veni solvere legem aut prophetas, sed adimplere.”13

Bossuet explains this same truth in different terms: “The Catholic Church fills all the preceding centuries by a succession that cannot be contested. The Law comes before the Gospel. The succession of Moses and the patriarchs forms but one continuous line with that of Jesus Christ. To be awaited, to come, to be recognized by a posterity that endures as long as the world — this is the character of the Messiah in whom we believe. Jesus Christ is the same today as He was yesterday, and He is so for ages upon ages.”14

Thus the Israelites, in entering the Church, find themselves again within their own family. It is through the Jews that the Gospel was spread throughout the world; the Apostles of Jesus Christ, messengers of the divine word, were all Jews; the primitive church of Jerusalem was composed only of Jews; and even today, what is most great, most honored, most beloved in Rome and in the Catholic world is the Immaculate Virgin Mary, daughter of Israel; it is the Holy Pontiff, seated upon the supreme throne of the Church, successor of Simon Peter, the first of the popes, descended from the race of Jacob; it is the Apostle Saint Paul, who carried the light of the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and who, speaking of the Jews, wrote the following words: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they of the race of Abraham? I am of the same race.”15

The children of Israel who have the immense good fortune of embracing the Christian faith do, it is true, disavow the Talmudic superstitions of those among their fathers who fell into the darkness of unbelief; but thanks be to God, they count other ancestors among the Israelites who remained faithful, and through them they attach themselves to the faith of the most worthy and most illustrious of their fathers.

There is another very common objection, which can be attributed only to culpable ignorance: it is the one that reproaches Christians with worshipping three gods. We place it on the same level as the accusation of adoring the Blessed Virgin. The Catholic Church adores but one single God — the thrice-holy God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. It is the Christian apostolate which, overturning idols and polytheism in its path, has carried everywhere the knowledge of the God of Israel. The dogma of the unity of God had to remain in its mysterious simplicity until such time as a more mature humanity became capable of a higher initiation. Yet even in the very text of the promulgation of this sacred dogma, Moses employs three terms: Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Always, and even today, the Jews invoke the name of the one God by a triple invocation: “Holy, holy, holy is the God of hosts.” We do not propose here to cite the passages of the Old Testament which veil in sacred mystery the doctrine of the Trinity; for our purpose is not to publish a theological treatise. We content ourselves with saying that this unfathomable dogma in no way alters the dogma of the Unity of God, and that it has been manifestly revealed in the Holy Scriptures. It does not belong to the human mind to penetrate it. If the intimate nature of visible things escapes the investigations of reason, who then should wonder at finding himself before an august mystery when it concerns the Invisible, the Incomprehensible, the Eternal Being?

Yet those among the Israelites who have shed many of their prejudices still stumble before another truth they do not comprehend. They acknowledge that Jesus Christ was the wisest of philosophers and the holiest of men; they admire the sublimity of his moral teaching; but they do not admit his divinity. This denial contains a glaring contradiction; for if one truly pays homage to the holiness of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, how can one suppose that he could have authorized the adoration of his own person? That would have been an idolatry more ruinous than the one he came to abolish. And if he taught the world a wholly divine morality, how can one believe that he founded that morality upon illusion and falsehood? There is no middle ground: Jesus Christ is what he revealed himself to be — he is the Son of God incarnate in human nature, the truth upon which all of Christianity rests; or else he is nothing but an impostor, and the Gospel must be torn apart. Moreover, the Old Testament manifestly attests to the divinity of the Messiah. Relevant passages abound in the Psalms of David and in the prophets. It is of him that Isaiah said in chapter VII: “A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son who shall be called Emmanuel, that is to say, God with us. This prophecy accords with those that follow: “God himself will come to save you.”16 “A voice cries in the desert: say to Jerusalem, say to the cities of Judah: behold your God.”17 “On that day,“ continues the same prophet, “my people shall know my name, for I myself shall be present, I who spoke to them in former times.”18 And the prophet Zechariah expresses himself in these terms: “Daughters of Zion, sing canticles of praise and be joyful, for I myself am coming to dwell in your midst, saith the Lord.”19

The Jews in general do not read the Holy Scriptures; or else they defer to the interpretations of their rabbis, who refuse to open their eyes. But how could one fail to be struck by these testimonies, when one hears them with an upright heart? It is probable that at the time when Jesus Christ came upon the earth, the doctors of the Law did not misapprehend the divine character which the Scriptures attribute to the Messiah; their blindness consisted in denying that character to Jesus Christ. This is so true that the high priest, addressing Christ, said to him: “I adjure you by the living God to tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.” And on another occasion, Jesus Christ himself asked his Apostles what men thought of him; and when Simon Peter answered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,“ this profession of faith caused no surprise among the disciples, among whom was widespread the tradition concerning the divinity of the Messiah.

The true reason this mystery is hidden from the Jews is that they have no conception of the immense love that is in God. For God himself is nothing but love; and that love poured itself forth, was incarnated, in order to unite itself to man. Union is the end of love. All of Christian doctrine flows from this initial truth.

Let us address yet another objection. The Jews who read their prophecies maintain that these have not been fulfilled. What! they say — our sacred books announce that the Messiah would bring peace to the world, that he would abolish all war, all division, and that he would unite all peoples under his peaceable scepter! At what epoch, in what country, have these wonders been witnessed? Never has peace, any more than virtue, reigned in the world.

So speak, with an appearance of reason, the adversaries of Christianity. Their error is an ancient one; it springs from the false idea they had formed of the messianic work. They hoped for an earthly triumph, and asked of their Messiah nothing but the goods of this world; whereas his divine mission consists in rehabilitating man, reconciling him with God his Father, and bringing him back to the heavenly homeland. The Old Testament, no less than the Gospel, moreover makes mention of two very distinct comings of the Messiah. The first was to be accomplished in the humblest of circumstances: it is the birth of the God-man who, by his abasements, his sufferings, and his death, expiates the sins of the world. The second coming will take place with great splendor and great majesty. It is no longer as Savior and as victim of expiation that Jesus Christ will appear in the world; but he will manifest himself as Judge of the living and the dead. Only then will we see the full and complete fulfillment of the magnificent words that proclaim the glory of the Church. The Jews attach themselves to the prophecies concerning the second coming, and take no account of those that precede it. It is this confusion that clouds their eyes and shelters their unbelief.

One will understand, I repeat, that we have no intention of peremptorily refuting in these brief pages all the objections which prejudice, ignorance, or bad faith have accumulated against the Catholic faith. Our sole desire is to call the attention of serious minds to a vital question. We are not, needless to say, addressing those frivolous men who regard life as nothing but a game. We have in view those upright hearts who would embrace the truth with joy, were it clearly set before them. Those people have often put to us an argument to which we wish to respond in closing. They say to us: Christians are no better than Jews; their way of life does not differ from ours, and so why not remain what we are? I concede that there is some truth in this assertion, and I grant even more; for assuredly, there exists a good number of Christians who are worth less than the Jews. But what does this argument signify? Do the clouds that veil the sun contest its light and its fruitfulness? Can the holiness of a religion be compromised by those who reject its precepts and transgress its moral teaching? Doubtless, if the Israelites of our day had the good fortune to live in a truly Christian society, they would judge the tree by its fruits; they would not resist the attractions of the Christian spirit; they would savor with delight the teachings that produce an inexhaustible flowering of holy works; they would depart without effort from a hollow and sterile Judaism, to taste the peace and the life-giving consolations which piety pours into souls.

It must be acknowledged that the conduct of degenerate Christians, more than all other contradictions, distances the Israelites from Christianity. Those who read the Gospel have intelligence enough to grasp its import; and when they perceive on all sides, in their social relations, realities that contrast with its teachings; when they observe devotion allied with disorder, frivolity, and worldly vanity, they lose confidence and are scandalized by the very ones who ought to be drawing them to God. How edified they would be if they were to encounter along their path some few of those truly faithful souls whose entire lives are like a blossoming of the evangelical word! The apostolate of example would make upon them an irresistible impression.

Yet, despite all obstacles, Israel will be converted. Such is the faith of the Church. “The day will come,” says the prophet, “when they shall seek the Lord their God and David their king; and in the last days, they shall receive with reverent fear the Lord and the blessings he shall bestow upon them.”20 An infinite number of other passages from the Old and New Testaments clearly announce this return which will renew the world; and the unanimous teaching of the doctors points to the blessed consequences of this great act of the Mercy of God. “Have the Jews fallen in such a way that their fall is without remedy?“ cries the great Apostle. “God forbid! But their fall has become the occasion of the salvation of the Gentiles; so that the example of the Gentiles might in turn inspire them with a salutary emulation. And if their fall has enriched the world, how much more shall their restoration enrich it still! And if their loss has become the reconciliation of the world, what shall their recall be, if not a return from death to life? For since the first-fruits of the Jews have been holy, the mass is holy also; and if the root is holy, so likewise are the branches... Now, if some of the branches have been cut off, and if you, who were but a wild olive tree, have been grafted among those that remained on the cultivated olive tree; if you have been made partakers of the sap and substance that flows from the root, do not presume to exalt yourself above the natural branches. Know that it is not you who bear the root, but the root that bears you.”

“But you will say, those natural branches were cut off so that I might be grafted in their place. That is true; they fell because of their unbelief; and you have remained firm in the faith. Nevertheless, take heed lest you exalt yourself, and be vigilant; for if God did not spare the natural branches, you must fear that he will not spare you either. But if they themselves do not persist in their unbelief, they shall be grafted again upon their own stock; for God is all-powerful to graft them on once more. And if you yourself have been cut from the wild olive tree, your natural stock, to be grafted contrary to nature upon the cultivated olive tree, how much more shall the natural branches of the olive tree be grafted upon their own stock!”

The Apostle continues:

“I would have you know, my brethren, this mystery and this secret, lest you be wise in your own eyes: that a part of the Jews has fallen into blindness, until the multitude of nations shall have entered into the Church; and that then all Israel shall be saved, according as it is written: there shall come out of Zion a deliverer, who shall banish impiety from Jacob.

Such is the covenant I will make with them, when I shall have blotted out their sins. Thus, as regards the Gospel, they are now enemies, for your sake; but as regards election, they are still beloved, for the sake of their fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.”21

Yes, we shall repeat here what we have said elsewhere: the time draws near when God, emerging from his impenetrable mystery, as Jacob once from his troubled sleep, will remember the prodigal child: “He has received Israel his child, remembering his mercy.” He will arise, and with a mother’s voice he will say to the children of the Church: This son was lost, and he is found again! He was dead, and he is risen! And the humbled bones of Israel shall thrill with new life. “And the humbled bones will rejoice.” Then the ancient people of God, hastening from the south and from the north, shall fall at the foot of the cross; and the Savior of the world shall wipe from their brow the stain of blood.

And since, according to the Apostle, the callings of God are irrevocable, the people of Israel, having furnished the first stones of the Church, shall reappear in the last days as the crowning of that immortal edifice.

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

Happy Feast of the Ascension of Our Blessed Lord!

News broke yesterday of a new Catholic publication, Integrity Magazine, dedicated to waging counter-revolution within the Catholic Church and State. I am pleased to say that I am among its contributors, specifically holding a position as Editor. , whom many are familiar with, is the Editor-in-Chief and kindly asked me to join the endeavor. Truly, I am honored to join the staff he is leading including other writers such as , , and .

All content on Integrity will remain freely available.

Rest assured, however, things will continue as usual at The Journal of American Reform. The regularly published translations, commentary and original work will keep being posted — hopefully with ever-increasingly quality which has always been our goal.

As for Integrity Magazine, you will want to watch the below video for the overall mission and principles of the project, featuring yours truly in a segment.

In short, this publication is for all Catholics who recognize something is gravely wrong with the Second Vatican Council and subsequent reforms, irrespective of their position on the Crisis in the Church. It its pages, the “thinking Catholic” will find many pressing issues — Americanism, Jewish Question, liberalism, race, feminism, errors of Vatican II, Biblical modernism and vacancy in the Apostolic See — discussed that are otherwise taboo among the mainstream intelligentsia and commentariat.

In this same vein, my first essay on Bishop Fulton Sheen is set to publish soon, offering a much-needed, critical reevaluation of this giant in the American church. You will not want to miss it!

As always, if you have benefited from my work in any way and would like to show your support, consider upgrading your Subscription or make a one-time donation:

Subscribe now

Donate to The Journal of American Reform

“Nor would we think it necessary to insist upon this point were we not living in a time when the art of working metals, of refining plants, and of improving breeds is by many placed above that of forming one’s fellow men, and when a wealthy industrialist who raises silkworms is held in greater honor than a wise educator who cultivates the young.”

The Theory of Education: Outline

PREAMBLE — Whether it is expedient for Catholics to write about education, and what purpose they should pursue. Three caveats are made.

Chapter I. — On the method with which we enter upon the discussion of this subject, and the parts into which it will be divided.

Chapter II. — How man was constituted by God as the educator of nature.

Chapter III. — That education differs according to the beings around which it is handled.

Chapter IV. — How much more excellent is the education that perfects man than that which perfects other creatures.

Chapter V. — How the various parts of education are interwoven and mutually supportive, and how moral education must never be separated from its sisters.

Chapter VI. — We are talking about the noble ministry of educating men.

Chapter VII. — On the efficacy of education for children.

Chapter VIII. — On the need for man to educate himself well from his earliest years.

Chapter IX. — Of the factors of education, which are science and authority: and before science.

Chapter X. — How authority that comes from virtue and knowledge contributes to education.

Chapter XI. — Of the general principles that govern the art of education: they are reduced to four and the first is set forth.

Chapter XII. — Some corollaries that follow from the first principle are mentioned.

Chapter XIII. — The second principle is set forth, that is, the proper function of education to dwell on growing, invigorating, and supporting the faculties it cultivates.

Chapter XIV. — Three corollaries can be inferred from the previous doctrine.

Chapter XV. — The third principle is explained, that education must proceed according to the laws of order in progress and regularity.

Chapter XVI. — This principle applies to the teaching of mathematics.

Chapter XVII. — Fourth principle: education should assist nature and not violate it. This truth is clarified by applying it first to physical education.

Chapter XVIII. — The same principle applies to intellectual education.

Chapter XIX. — The importance of this doctrine is demonstrated in religious education.

Chapter XX. — Of some corollaries contained in the fourth principle.

Chapter XXI. — Epilogue and Conclusion of this theory.

Share

Make a One-time Donation

Upgrade to Founding Club

CHAPTER THREE

That education differs according to the beings around which it is handled.

Indeed, if we delve for a moment into the meaning of the word Education, tracing back the universal idea underlying this term, it will become clear that the ministry exercised by man over all the creatures that surround him is truly that of educator. For Educare, in the mother tongue from which it was drawn to enrich our own, means substantially the same as educere, though it seems to contain some indication of a continued and frequent operation, resembling in its ending the form called frequentative by grammarians. And yet the finest writers in Latin used indifferently eductus or educatus, taking the word in its most obvious sense, as it is still commonly used among us. Thus, for example, Cicero wrote: homo ingenuus liberaliterque educatus,1 and the very Latin Terence said by contrast: adolescentulos eductos libere,2 and Tacitus likewise writes of Cassius that he was severa patris disciplina eductus.3 Now educere, for which our language has no equivalent other than to extract, denotes the operation whereby one draws out from a subject a merit, a quality, a reality of any kind that lies hidden within it and does not appear — which accords perfectly with what was said concerning the mission assigned by God to the first man and in him to his descendants, when He made them not only guardians but cultivators and educators of all the beings of the young world.

Read more

“Concerning the doctrinal force of the Encyclicals, the ‘Humani generis’ teaches us that they are interventions of the Magisterium of the Church itself, by means of which the living Magisterium exercises its ordinary office of sole authentic interpreter of the sources of revelation, to which theologians must adhere as a norm in their investigations, abandoning in particular those methods of exegesis foreign to the principles and norms of hermeneutics proposed in the Encyclicals, and endeavoring to confirm their teachings with theological arguments.”

Brief Introduction

Beyond the singularly lucid exposition of Father Salaverri, S.J., which follows, interested Catholics will find helpful the treatments gathered below from other approved theologians. These essays address the Catholic Magisterium as such — its criteria for engagement and the forms by which it is exercised. Of particular interest, both Monsignor Fenton and Father Hürth give attention to the Papal Allocution, a form which many Catholics do not realize can, in certain circumstances, engage the Magisterium.

A special thank you is to be awarded to Mario Derksen and for bringing the majority of these texts to the attention of the English-speaking public. For decades, these theological essays have been “lost to history,” yet they are invaluable for making sense of the present Crisis in the Catholic Church.

• “Must I Believe It?” by Can. George Smith, The Clergy Review, (1935), vol. IX, issue 4, pp. 297-309

• “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals — Pt. 1” by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, (1949), vol. CXXI, no. 2, pp. 136-50

• “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals — Pt. 2” by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, (1949), vol. CXXI, no. 3, pp. 210-20

• “The Religious Assent Due to the Teachings of Papal Encyclicals” by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, (1950), The American Ecclesiastical Review, vol. CXXIII, no. 1, pp. 59-67

• “The Doctrinal Value of the Ordinary Teaching of the Holy Father in View of Humani Generis” by Fr. Edmond D. Benard, (1951), Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, vol. 6, pp. 78-107

• “The Weight and Significance of Papal Allocutions” by Fr. Franz Hürth, S.J., (1952), vol. XL, pp. 245-491

• “The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Allocutions” by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, The American Ecclesiastical Review, (1956), vol. CXXXIV, no. 2, pp. 109-17

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present Father Salaverri’s comprehensive study of Papal Encyclicals in light of the 1950 Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII.

THE FORCE OF ENCYCLICALS IN LIGHT OF “HUMANI GENERIS”

JOAQUÍN SALAVERRI DE LA TORRE, S.J.

Professor of Theology at the Pontifical University of Comillas

Pius XII devotes a section of his Encyclical2 to instilling the necessity and obligation of adhering to the teachings of the Ecclesiastical Magisterium in general, and in particular dedicates a precious paragraph to the Magisterium of the Encyclicals, in which he says:3

Nor should it be thought that the matters proposed in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves demand assent, on the grounds that in them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For such matters are taught by the ordinary Magisterium, of which this also holds true: He who hears you, hears me (Lk. 10; 16); and most often the things which are proposed and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already belong to Catholic doctrine for other reasons. And if the Supreme Pontiffs in their Acts expressly pass judgment on a matter previously controverted, it is obvious to all that such a matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, can no longer be considered a question open to free discussion among theologians.

These words of Pius XII suggest to us, regarding our subject, the following principal questions:

1.ª What are the Encyclicals?
2.ª The force or authority of the Encyclicals.
3.ª Do they attain the supreme category of infallible definitions?
4.ª The assent of the mind that is owed to the Encyclicals.

I. WHAT ARE THE ENCYCLICALS?

In the Acts of the Supreme Pontiffs the titles of Epistola Encyclica, Litterae Encyclicae, and simply Encyclica occur frequently. In the “Humani generis” Pius XII mentions explicitly only the designation Litterae Encyclicae, and does so up to eight times.4

What, then, are the Encyclicals?

Ἐγκύκλιος Ἐπιστολή = Epistola Encyclica, and Ἐγκύκλια Γράμματα = Litterae Encyclicae, are the names most commonly used to designate Letters in Greek and Latin, which translated into English mean: Circular Letters.5 The specific character of Circulars is expressed already at the outset, in the greeting to the recipients: “To the Venerable Brothers Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops.” Thus begin the first Encyclical of Benedict XIV in 1740 and the last of Pius XII in 1951.6 In a similar fashion, the Encyclical of Martin I of the year 649: “To the Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Abbots, Monks, Continents, and to the universal and holy fullness of the Catholic Church.”7

Saint Basil has aptly defined the epistle by saying that it is “the means by which people converse with those who are absent.”8 This conversational character between those absent is highlighted by Pius VII in his inaugural Encyclical of 1800, when he says that “nothing is sweeter and more agreeable to Us than to converse with You at least by means of this letter.”9

Saint Basil’s definition fits well the three principal classes of letters which Cicero distinguished within the epistolary genre: informative, familiar, and serious.10 The official letters of the Supreme Pontiffs are best understood under the category of serious epistles, by reason of the great resemblance they bear to those of a doctrinal character, proper to the philosophers in classical literature, and above all by reason of the authority that so greatly likens them to what the annals of the Roman Empire call “Epistolae Principis.” The classicist Brassloff tells us of these that they were a special and most frequent form of imperial Constitutions, and that jurists placed them on a par with the edicts and decrees of the Princes.11 Something similar may be said of the letters of the Roman Pontiffs, within the very broad scope of their threefold power — doctrinal, sacramental, and disciplinary — which by divine right belongs to them in the highest degree.

In the pontifical Acts the division of the Pontiff’s letters into classes is not consistent. In the treatise-writers of Canon Law, one may observe a variety of designations by which pontifical letters were known in ancient times.12 In the Middle Ages, with the Decree of Gratian, the common designation of Epistolae decretales was imposed to denote in general the letters of the Pontiff. In modern times, judging by the designations of the Bullarium Romanum and of the Acts of the Holy See, we observe a great variety, which canonists endeavor to reduce to several classes or principal groups.13

After the erudite work of Abbot Bencini, De Litteris Encyclicis dissertatio, published in 1728, the history of the Encyclicals that would satisfy the critical demands of our times has yet to be written. Mangenot, summarizing the history of the pontifical Encyclicals, affirms that “although it is true that the Popes from time immemorial used to address some of their apostolic letters to all of Christendom, they did not however call them Encyclicals. The first to bear that title is that of Benedict XIV at the beginning of his Pontificate in 1740.”14

It is true that before that date it is not so easy to find the express designation of Encyclical in ecclesiastical epistolary literature. Nevertheless, already in the first third of the fourth century (ca. 320), Alexander, Patriarch of Alexandria, wrote to all the other Bishops against Arius, and Saint Epiphanius calls those letters Encyclicals (Ἐπιστολὰς Ἐγκυκλίους) and tells us that some 70 of them were preserved in his time.15 In the middle of that same fourth century, the two “encyclical epistles” of Saint Athanasius are celebrated: one of 340 to all the Bishops of the World, protesting against the injustice of his deposition, and the other of 356 to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya combating Arianism.16

In the middle of the fifth century the so-called “Codex encyclicus” was very notable, of which Cassiodorus (ca. 544), Liberatus (ca. 563), and Evagrius (ca. 594) speak to us.17 It is a collection of 41 letters: one from Emperor Leo, another from Pope Saint Leo the Great, eight from particular Prelates, and thirty each signed by the Bishops of as many ecclesiastical provinces, in defense of the Council of Chalcedon.18 Concerning the Emperor’s letter, Evagrius tells us that “with these Encyclical Letters (Ἐγκυκλίοις Γράμμασιν), addressed to all the Bishops of the Roman World, he consulted them concerning the Council of Chalcedon.” And concerning that of Pope Saint Leo and the remaining 39, he attests that they were counted “among those called Encyclicals” (ἐν τοῖς καλουμένοις Ἐγκυκλίοις).19 On the same subject and in the last third of that same fifth century, Evagrius tells us how Timothy Aelurus counseled the usurping Emperor Basiliscus “to write Encyclical Letters (Ἐγκυκλίους Συλλαβάς) to all the Bishops of the world, condemning the Chalcedonian and the letter of Saint Leo.20 And Liberius attests that he did indeed write it and that he called it an Encyclical (quam appellavit Encyclicam).21

At the end of late antiquity or the beginning of the Middle Ages, of capital importance was the Encyclical Letter (Ἐπιστολὴ Ἐγκύκλιος) of Pope Saint Martin I, addressed “to the Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Abbots, Monks, Continents, and to the universal and holy fullness of the Catholic Church,” solemnly condemning the heresies known up to that time.22 It is preserved in Greek and Latin, and Saint Martin I himself mentions it in a letter to the Church of Carthage, calling it “Encyclica Nostra Epistola” (μετὰ τῆς Ἐγκυκλίω ἡμῶν Ἐπιστολῆς).23

We do not pretend to trace the full history of the origins and use of the Encyclicals; but let the foregoing data suffice to convince us that their use in the affairs of the Church, especially in the East, is very ancient.24

We have mentioned only some of those that expressly bear the title of Encyclicals. If, in accordance with the notion of Benedict XIV, accepted by all, we were to enumerate among the Encyclicals all the letters of the Popes addressed to all or part of the Catholic Episcopate, we would never finish counting them. To mention only those that had singular resonance in ancient times, the following could very well be called Encyclicals: the one that Saint Victor I wrote or proposed to write in the second century on the day of Easter;25 those of Saint Cornelius to the Bishops of Africa26 and those of Saint Stephen I against the re-baptizers27 in the third century; that of Saint Innocent I to the African Bishops against Pelagius;28 the most celebrated tractoria of Pope Saint Zosimus “per totum orbem missa” condemning Pelagianism;29 that of Saint Celestine against Nestorius;30 the two of Saint Leo the Great, with which he successively condemned Priscillianism and Eutychianism;31 that of Saint Gelasius I to the Bishops of Illyricum;32 of Pope Saint Hormisdas to all the Bishops of the East;33 that of Pelagius I addressed to the “universo populo Dei”;34 that of Saint Agatho to the Bishops congregated in Constantinople, against the Monothelites;35 that of Saint Gregory the Great to the four Patriarchs of the East,36 written “according to the ancient custom of his predecessors,” as his biographer John the Deacon advises us.37

In the modern era, let us note straightaway a certain coincidence with Saint Gregory the Great. The inaugural Encyclical of Benedict XIV deals with the obligations of the pastoral office, just as that of Saint Gregory;38 and in their inaugural Encyclicals Pius VII and Gregory XVI tell us that they write them following “a custom dating from the most ancient times,” which is the same as what we have just heard concerning Pope Saint Gregory.39

However, going through the Bullarium Romanum, we have not found the express designation of Encyclical in the pontifical letters of the modern era, up until Benedict XIV, in his already cited “Epistola Encyclica,” from the beginning of his pontificate in 1740.40 The reason for such an omission is given to us by Benedict XIV himself, in the preface he dedicates his Bullarium to the Doctors and students of Bologna. He says thus: “It was the perpetual custom of the Roman Pontiffs to write Encyclical Letters (Litteras Encyclicas) now to all the Bishops, now to those of some province, exhorting them to safeguard the Catholic faith and the observance or restoration of good customs. But in these latter times they did so by means of the Roman Congregations... Elevated to the Supreme Pontificate we have addressed Our Encyclical Letters (Litteras Encyclicas) to all the Bishops or to those of some Province... and in writing them we have sought to restore an ancient custom of Our Predecessors.”41 This unequivocal testimony confirms us in our opinion, that it is not Benedict XIV who is the introducer of the Encyclicals, as Mangenot leads one to believe, but rather the restorer of a usage that dates from the most remote times of the Church.42

Benedict XIV in his long Pontificate addressed himself many times by letter to the Bishops, whether of the whole world or of some province or nation, but in his Bullarium the title of Encyclicals is given explicitly only to seven: five of them addressed to all the Bishops of the world and the other two, one to the Bishops of Italy and another to those of France.43 In the preface to his Bullarium he encompasses all of them, as we have seen, under the designation of Litterae Encyclicae; yet in the Bullarium itself all are called “Epistola Encyclica,” except the one addressed to the Bishops of Italy which is called “Encyclicae Litterae.”44

The restorative impulse of Benedict XIV does not appear to have taken effective hold in his six immediate successors; given that the Acts of their Pontificates, in the 73 years during which they governed the Church, published only seven Epistles bearing the designation of Encyclicals.45

With Gregory XVI, from 1831 onwards, the designation of Encyclical appears frequently and as a matter of course. Of those thus expressly designated, the following are known to us: from Gregory XVI, 16; from Pius IX, 33; from Leo XIII, 48; from Pius X, 10; from Benedict XV, 12; from Pius XI, 30; and Pius XII has published 22. There are, then, 185 letters from the 14 Pontiffs, from Benedict XIV to our own days, that are expressly designated with the title of Encyclicals. All except two are addressed primarily, and most often exclusively, to the Bishops. The two curious exceptions are: one of Pius IX, which is addressed to the Superiors General of the religious Orders,46 and the other of Benedict XV to the Doctors and students of Letters and Arts on the occasion of the Dante Centenary.47

Of the 63 prior to Leo XIII, all are titled “Epistola Encyclica,” except two “Litterae Encyclicae:” one to the Bishops of Italy, by Benedict XIV,48 and the other to the entire Episcopate by Pius VII.49 Of those of Leo XIII, 39 are called Epistolae and only 9 Litterae Encyclicae. In contrast to those of Pius XI, 23 are Litterae and only 7 Epistolae Encyclicae. Of Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XII, one half are Epistolae and the other Litterae Encyclicae. In Leo XIII the designation of Epistola still prevails, yet he also made considerable use of that of Litterae Encyclicae; however, no reason for such a distinction appears in his usage, since his great doctrinal Encyclicals, addressed to the entire Episcopate, are found equally in one group as in the other. Thus, for example, among the Epistolae Encyclicae are found the “Aeterni Patris,” the “Immortale Dei,” the “Satis cognitum,” etc.; and among the Litterae Encyclicae we find the “Libertas,” the “Rerum novarum.” the “Providentissimus Deus,” etc.

After Leo XIII and especially from Pius XI onwards, a clear distinction already appears between the Epistolae and the Litterae Encyclicae, since those destined to all the Bishops of the world and dealing with dogmatic or pastoral themes of greater importance are called Litterae, while the title of Epistola Encyclica is given to those addressed to part of the Episcopate, such as the Mit brennender Sorge to the German Episcopate, or to those dealing with matters of lesser importance or of a transitory character, such as the eleven Epistolae Encyclicae that Pius XII addressed to the entire Episcopate, ordering prayers for some need of the Church.

The Encyclicals addressed to all the Bishops of the Catholic world are called universal, and they may be disciplinary or doctrinal, according to whether they develop as their principal intent a theme of discipline or of doctrine. What Pius XII tells us in the “Humani generis” concerning the Encyclicals, we note that he says it expressly and without exception of the Litterae Encyclicae,50 and therefore it is to be understood above all of those Encyclicals which in our own days bear that specific designation, that is to say, of those which are universal and develop a theme pertaining either to the faith or to good morals.

II. THE DOCTRINAL FORCE OF THE ENCYCLICALS

Concerning the doctrinal force of the Encyclicals, the “Humani generis” teaches us that they are interventions of the Magisterium of the Church itself, by means of which the living Magisterium exercises its ordinary office of sole authentic interpreter of the sources of revelation, to which theologians must adhere as a norm in their investigations, abandoning in particular those methods of exegesis foreign to the principles and norms of hermeneutics proposed in the Encyclicals, and endeavoring to confirm their teachings with theological arguments.51

Concerning itself in particular, the “Humani generis” tells us that it is an intervention of the Magisterium of the Church to warn of and ward off the danger, in which philosophers and theologians presently find themselves, of departing from revealed truth and of drawing others along with them into error. And for this reason it gravely warns that only those who religiously accept and scrupulously observe the norms of doctrine set forth in the same Encyclical, taking care not to transgress the limits established therein, can exercise the office of teaching in ecclesiastical institutions with a good conscience.52

Having before us the historical panorama of the Encyclicals which we have just sketched, we may now enter as onto familiar ground to examine the doctrinal force that belongs to the Encyclicals. We cannot proceed a priori, but rather we must ascertain what the mind of the Supreme Pontiffs is concerning these their doctrinal documents.53

A not insignificant indication of the force of the Encyclicals is found in the prominent place they are constantly assigned in the Collections of pontifical documents. Setting aside Collections lacking in authenticity, we shall focus solely on the authentic collection of the Pontifical Acts, which beginning in 1909 started to be published during the Pontificate of Pius X.54 We observe in it that under the general heading of Acta Summi Pontificis, these classes and in this order of documents are comprised: Litterae Encyclicae, Epistolae Encyclicae, Litterae Apostolicae, Constitutiones Apostolicae, Motu proprio, Litterae Apostolicae and Epistolae. Of these, those that have the characteristic epistolary form, with the salutation to the recipients at the beginning and the closing blessing at the end, are the Litterae Encyclicae, the Epistolae Encyclicae, the Epistolae Apostolicae, and the Epistolae. The rest have, rather, the peculiar form of decrees.

Among all pontifical documents, first place is therefore accorded to the Litterae Encyclicae and second to the Epistolae Encyclicae. This is the norm, because on a few occasions, owing to the particular nature of the subject matter, this order was altered: as in the first four years of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, years 1909 to 1912, the Apostolic Constitutions were placed before the Encyclicals, and in volumes 36, 40, and 41, corresponding to the years 1944, 48, and 49, the decretal Letters of canonization of Saints were placed before the Encyclicals. But in volume 42, of the year 1950, the decretal Letters of Canonizations have once again been placed after the Encyclicals. Only by reason of its singularly paramount importance, the Apostolic Constitution “Munificentissimus Deus,” in which the Assumption was defined, is placed in this last volume before the Encyclical “Humani generis.”

Benedict XIV, whose merits as the restorer of the Encyclicals we have highlighted, points out the principal characteristics from which the force of the Encyclicals may be deduced. Fixing upon the author, the recipients, the purpose, and the subject matter, he tells us that “the Encyclical Letters have been the means of which the Roman Pontiffs have perpetually availed themselves to urge the Bishops of the world, or those of some Province, to the maintenance of the Catholic Faith and to the observance or restoration of good customs”55 ... “In the conviction that the letters which the Pope himself writes to the Bishops must carry greater weight than those written by others, even with the authority of the Pontiff, by reason of the greater pontifical benevolence that the epistles of the Pope himself to the Bishops, united to him by the bond of fraternity, signify.”56

Benedict XIV tells us, then, of the Encyclicals, that their author is the Supreme Pontiff as such, the recipients are the Bishops united to him by the bonds of fraternity, the subject matter is the sacred deposit of dogma and morality, the purpose is the inviolable maintenance of the faith and Christian customs, their authority is greater than that of the other documents of the Holy See, their significance is one of singular benevolence of the Pope towards the Bishops. From which we may conclude concerning the force of the Encyclicals, that they are documents of the supreme and universal Magisterium of the Church, on grave matters, of singular authority among the ordinary magisterial acts of the Holy See.

This conclusion is further explained and completed by the teachings of other Pontiffs. Thus, considering in the first place the relationship that necessarily exists between the author and the recipients of the Encyclicals, we note that by means of them the Supreme Pontiffs purpose to fulfill that mandate received by Christ in Saint Peter, of “Confirming the Brethren” (Lk. 22, 32). Pius VII states this expressly in his inaugural Encyclical: “To write you this letter, Venerable Brothers, the obligation of that office which is Our proper and principal duty, entrusted and declared by those words: ‘Confirm thy Brethren,’ vehemently exhorts and urges Us; since in this most wretched and turbulent age, as never more so, Satan combats us all to sift us as wheat” (Lk. 22, 32).57

The first Encyclical of Gregory XVI abounds in the same ideas, when it woefully affirms: “We can truly say, Venerable Brothers, that in this hour the power of darkness prevails to sift as wheat the children of election... For this reason the principal aim of our efforts and of our assiduous vigilance is to safeguard the sacred deposit amidst so great a conspiracy of perverse men, who strive to combat and destroy the faith... We write to you, therefore, Venerable Brothers, so that, clad in the shield of faith, you may strive to fight strenuously the battles of the Lord; since it falls to You principally to stand firm, as a bulwark, against every haughtiness that rises up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10, 5).58

The same purpose, of confirming the Brethren in the Episcopate, is expressed by Saint Prosper of Aquitaine. Referring to the tractoria of Pope Zosimus against the Pelagians, a true Encyclical, since he tells us it was written “ad totius orbis Episcopos” (D. 134), he characterizes it by affirming that with it the Pope “ad impiorum detruncationem, gladio Petri dexteras omnium armavit Antistitum.”59

This power of confirming his Brethren, of which the Encyclicals are an exercise, makes manifest to us plainly that the Encyclicals are acts of supreme authority of the Magisterium, of that primatial power which Christ granted exclusively to Peter over the other Apostles when He said to him: “Confirm thy Brethren” (Lk. 22, 32). Or expressing the same thought in the words of Benedict XIV, the Encyclicals are magisterial acts of the supreme power proper and exclusive to “the Vicar of Christ on earth,” “the Prince of the Apostles,” “the Pastor of Pastors,” that is to say, “of him to whom Christ entrusted the charge of feeding, not only the lambs of his flock, but also the sheep, that is, the Bishops of the world, called to share in the solicitudes of that pastoral office, the fullness of which has been entrusted by God to the Pope in those words: Pasce agnos meos, pasce oves meas” (Jo. 21, 15-17).60 The same sentiment concerning the Encyclicals is expressed at every turn by the Roman Pontiffs in their own up to our own days, as Pius IX in the “Amantissimus humani generis,” Pius XI in the “Casti connubii,” and Pius XII in the “Summi Pontificatus.”61

The Encyclicals of which we speak are not, therefore, mere doctrinal expositions addressed to the Bishops of the world, with the sole, albeit most noble, purpose of spreading and defending Christian truth and morality, as were, for example, the Encyclicals of Saint Alexander and Saint Athanasius;62 but rather acts of true and strict supreme power of the universal Magisterium, which personally belongs to him who, as successor of Saint Peter in the Primacy, is the sole Vicar of Christ on earth.

The conclusion we have just reached in view of the relationship in which the Author and the recipients of the Encyclicals are presented to us, is confirmed and grounded upon examining the primordial purpose for which the Popes write them. That purpose is expressed in clarifying terms by Saint Leo the Great, when he gives us the reason why he wrote his celebrated epistle to Flavian and the other Bishops of the Synod of Chalcedon, and it is, “ut per totum mundum una sit fides et una eademque confessio.”63 Such is, in a word, the primordial purpose of the doctrinal Encyclicals: the unity of faith and doctrine throughout the entire Church.

After a careful examination of the deepest motives that have led the Popes to communicate their thought to all the Bishops of the world, one arrives at the conviction that apostolic zeal for the unity of doctrine throughout the entire Church is the most powerful reason that has inspired the great doctrinal Encyclicals, from those of Saint Leo the Great in the middle of the fifth century up to the “Humani generis” of Pius XII in 1950 and the “Sempiternus Rex” just recently published.

To mention only a few from the modern era, we shall content ourselves with recalling the “Mirari vos” and “Singulari Nos” of Gregory XVI on the religious indifferentism of his time,64 the “Qui pluribus” and “Quanta cura” of Pius IX on the rationalism, naturalism, and secularism of the contemporary age,65 the “Aeterni Patris,” “Diuturnum Illud,” “Immortale Dei,” “Satis cognitum,” “Libertas,” “Rerum novarum,” “Providentissimus Deus” and others of Leo XIII, in which with admirable depth and elegance he addressed all the great problems affecting the faith and Christian customs of our century;66 the “Pascendi” of Pius X, uncovering the deepest roots of that true cancer of our faith which we call Modernism;67 the “Spiritus Paraclitus” of Benedict XV on the Sacred Scriptures;68 the “Studiorum ducem,” “Divini illius Magistri,” “Casti connubii,” “Quadragesimo anno,” “Ad Catholici sacerdotii” and “Divini Redemptoris” of Pius XI, comparable to those of Leo XIII by reason of the depth and gravity of the problems of our times that are addressed and illuminated therein;69 the “Summi Pontificatus,” “Mystici Corporis,” “Divino afflante Spiritu,” “Mediator Dei,” “Humani generis” and “Sempiternus Rex” of Pius XII, which develop themes of burning relevance affecting the most intimate aspects of the life of the Church in our own days.70

This rapid survey makes manifest the apostolic solicitude with which the Vicars of Christ, faithful to their sacred duty as guardians of the faith, have raised their august voice in timely fashion to guide all the Bishops and faithful of the world in all doctrinal questions of some importance that arise for the believer in the course of the ages.

And they have done so thus, conscious of the duty incumbent upon them to procure above all and before all else the most perfect unity of doctrine in the Church, as Gregory XVI beautifully explains to us when he says: “You must work and watch assiduously, Venerable Brothers, so that the deposit of the faith may be kept inviolate... The judgment of sound doctrine and the governance and administration of the universal Church belong to the Roman Pontiff... Proper to each Bishop is most faithful adherence to the Chair of Peter, in order to religiously safeguard the sacred deposit... Our duty it is, Venerable Brothers, to lead our sheep only to those pastures that are wholesome for them and are immune from even the faintest shadow of infection.” And burning with zeal for unity, he breaks forth into this exhortation: “Agamus idcirco in unitate spiritus communem nostram, seu verius, Dei causam, et contra communes hostes pro totius populi salute, una omnium sit vigilantia, una contentio.”71 It is not easy to find phrases that more fervently express the most noble aspiration to doctrinal unity which the Pontiffs purpose to obtain by means of their Encyclicals.

Nor is it to be wondered at that the Popes show themselves so zealous in obtaining that unity, given that, according to what the Vatican Council teaches us, the unity of the Episcopate and, through it, the unity of all believers, are precisely the entire raison d’être of the Primacy instituted by Christ: “So that the Episcopate itself might be one and undivided, the Vatican tells us, and so that through the Priests united mutually among themselves, the multitude of all believers might be preserved in unity of faith and communion, the eternal Pastor and Bishop of our souls, making Peter Superior of the other Apostles, established in him the perpetual and visible foundation of both unities” (D. 1821). Unity is therefore the most essential, proper, and characteristic function of the Primacy; it is the primordial and central purpose of the very primatial constitution of the Church. It is therefore not surprising that after the Vatican, Leo XIII should have dedicated exclusively one of his finest Encyclicals, the “Satis cognitum,” to explaining and articulating in all its details the rationale and the foundations of that unity.72

This being so, it is understandable that the Popes through their Encyclicals strive to guide the Bishops doctrinally and require of them that they abide by the doctrines proposed to them in those Encyclicals: “We have written these Encyclical Letters so that as often as you celebrate your Synods and instruct your diocesans in the sacred doctrines, you may propose nothing that is foreign to Our thinking — nihil omnino alienum proferatur ab iis sententiis quas superius recensuimus —, and We earnestly admonish you to ensure with all diligence that no one in your Dioceses dare to teach otherwise by word or by writing.”73 And for identical reasons, Pius XI, in his Encyclical “Mortalium animos,” after proposing the immutable principles of the true unity of the Church, admonishes the Bishops to guard against the fallacies of the so-called “Ecumenical Movement,” and counsels them that “by word or in writing each one of them should bring to the faithful people the principles and reasons proposed in the Encyclical, so that Catholics may know what they ought to think and do in a matter of such capital importance as that of those who attempt in some way to obtain the union of all Christians in a single body.”74 The Popes do not limit themselves to exhorting to unity in any manner whatsoever, but rather require that that unity be made effective, with the Bishops accepting and following, as a norm, the teachings given to them in their Encyclicals; and this they do, as Pius XI advises in the cited passage, “conscious of their apostolic office.”

From all of which the true doctrinal force of the Encyclicals of the Popes is immediately deduced. For if the Encyclicals, as we have seen, are acts of the Pontiff by which he purposes to fulfill his obligation of making effective the unity of doctrine throughout the entire Church, and if, on the other hand, the charge of realizing that unity is proper, characteristic, and exclusive to him who in the Church holds the supreme primatial power; it necessarily follows that the Encyclicals, in the intention of the Popes, are acts proper and characteristic of their supreme doctrinal power, as Leo XIII has expressed it in dense and clear language in these words: “Cum regendae Ecclesiae Catholicae, doctrinarum Christi custodi et interpreti, Dei beneficio praepositi simus, auctoritatis Nostrae esse iudicamus, Venerabiles Fratres, publice commemorare quid a quoquam in hoc genere oficii catholica veritas exigat:” a phrase in which the saying of Saint Augustine lives in its full meaning: “Deus in Cathedra unitatis doctrinam posuit veritatis.”75

In accordance with the thinking on the unity of doctrine which we have expounded up to this point, and briefly expressing the sense of the words of Benedict XIV and Pius XI which we have just cited, we may well affirm that the Encyclicals are organs of doctrinal cohesion among the members of the Episcopal College and its Head, since by means of them the Popes promote, orient, and unify the ordinary Magisterium of all the Bishops of the world.

This idea suggests to us another aspect of interest for deepening our knowledge of the doctrinal force of the Encyclicals, namely their relationship with the universal and ordinary Magisterium of the Church. Well known is the doctrine proposed by Pius IX and defined by the Vatican on the supreme authority that corresponds to that universal and ordinary Magisterium.76 The foundation of such high authority is the formal promise of divine assistance to the apostolic College and to its successor the Episcopal College until the consummation of the ages.77 The act of magisterium of the College as such is the expression of a formal consent of the members of the College among themselves and with the Head. The formal adherence of the other Bishops to what the successor of Peter teaches is so essential that without it the magisterial act of the College as such cannot even be conceived. Now, for that consent and adherence to exist formally, it is required above all that the Bishops know the mind of the Pope. And since the most usual means by which the Pope expounds his thinking on matters pertaining to faith and morality are precisely the Encyclicals, hence their doctrinal force, inasmuch as they are the key and the most reliable exponent of what the Bishops of the entire world teach unanimously, in formal consonance with the teachings of the Pope.

Apart from this relationship, which links them to the universal and ordinary Magisterium of which the Vatican speaks,78 the Encyclicals, considered in themselves, are moreover formal acts of the universal and ordinary Magisterium of the Pope himself. They are acts of the universal Magisterium, because they are expressly addressed to all the Bishops of the Catholic world. They are acts of the ordinary Magisterium, because the “Humani generis” tells us so explicitly in these words: “The matters proposed in the Encyclical Letters are teachings of the ordinary Magisterium, of which this also holds true: He who hears you, hears me.”79

They are in truth acts of the ordinary Magisterium both by the form and by the intention with which the Encyclicals are written. The form is that of a true pastoral letter, by which the Pope, as Pius XII pointed out, “exercises the ministry of the word, which is the foremost of his duties as successor of the Apostles.”80 Hence the style of true letters, or written conversations, proper both to the Encyclicals and to the Pastoral Letters of the Bishops to their diocesans.

Comparing the form of the Encyclicals with that of conciliar decrees and constitutions or with that of ex Cathedra definitions, one readily perceives the difference in tone that exists between the acts of the ordinary Magisterium and those of the solemn Magisterium. The form of conciliar decrees and ex Cathedra definitions is that proper to the “solemne iudicium”: concise, incisive, definitive, in which every word is precisely measured, and ordered to settle, with an unappealable verdict, the question they decide. The Encyclicals, by contrast, being quite sparing in concise definitions and strict condemnations, employ rather the fuller form of one who proposes a doctrine or analyzes an error, with an exposition of principles, the marshaling of evidence, a detailed presentation of causes, a deduction of consequences, and an indication of remedies — all of it interwoven, as occasion demands, with fatherly exhortations to perseverance in traditional truth and to wariness against dangerous novelties.

In solemn definitions the form is more properly that of a judicial sentence; in Encyclicals, on the contrary, it is that of a doctrinal exposition. It suffices, for example, to compare the Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei of Pius VI with the Encyclical Pascendi of Pius X,81 to perceive most clearly the difference we are speaking of — even though both documents share the aim of refuting a large number of dogmatic errors: the Auctorem fidei those of the Synod of Pistoia, and the Pascendi those of Modernism. Encyclicals are not properly speaking sentences of the Judge, but rather the instructions of the Father, who sets forth his thought, illuminates, guides, grounds in truth and guards against error, with the spirit and the hope of persuading and moving all to follow him.

This characteristic form of the ordinary Magisterium is what the Pontiffs deliberately seek and intend in their Encyclicals. Their authors very frequently give us notice of this within them, but it is made unequivocally manifest by Pius XI in Casti connubii,82 when he says: “By reason of Our office as Christ’s Vicar on earth, and supreme Pastor and Teacher of souls, We believe Ourselves obliged to raise Our apostolic voice, in order to ward off, insofar as lies within Us, and to preserve the flock entrusted to Us from poisoned pastures. And so, Venerable Brethren, and through you to the universal Church of Christ, We have decided to speak to you of the nature of Christian marriage, of its dignity, of the advantages and benefits that flow from it to the family and to human society itself, of the errors contrary to this most important chapter of evangelical doctrine, of the vices adverse to conjugal life, and finally, of the principal remedies to be employed.”

In these words of Pius XI we also find clearly expressed the two essential and characteristic marks of Encyclicals, which are as it were the summary of all we have set forth regarding their doctrinal force: the first is the fullness of authority from which they proceed and which they bear — which is what Pius XI means when he says that he writes his as “Vicar of Christ on earth, supreme Pastor and Teacher of souls”; the second is the expository and hortatory form proper to the ordinary Magisterium. With which is sufficiently explained by what Humani generis says of Encyclicals, when it notes that “although through them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium, nevertheless the things proposed in Encyclicals are teachings of the ordinary Magisterium, to which the saying of the Master also applies: He who hears you hears me“ (Lk. 10:16).83 That is to say, Encyclicals are not of themselves definitions ex Cathedra of the supreme Pastor and Teacher of the Church, but rather acts of the ordinary Magisterium of that same supreme Pastor and Teacher.

III. THE ENCYCLICALS AND INFALLIBILITY

What we have just concluded raises for us a further unavoidable question: Are Encyclicals infallible or not?

First of all, we must acknowledge the facts that historical research compels us to accept. Among the letters that are truly encyclical in character from the Popes of the early and early medieval periods, there are some that bear all the marks of infallibility. After the diligent and thorough study of the most reliable sources carried out by Fr. Carlos Silva-Tarouca, professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Gregorian University,84 we must admit as infallible at least the following Encyclicals: the celebrated tractoria of St. Zosimus, written “to the Bishops of the entire world”85 in which he defined against Pelagius and Caelestius the Catholic dogma on the necessity of divine grace;86 that of St. Celestine I, addressed to the Eastern Bishops assembled at Ephesus, condemning Nestorius;87 the two of St. Leo the Great, successively condemning Priscillianism and Monophysitism;88 the two of St. Gelasius, one to the Eastern Bishops on the two natures of Christ, and the other to the Bishops of Illyricum on the faith to be professed;89 that of Pope St. Hormisdas, sent for all the Bishops of the East to subscribe;90 that of Pelagius I, addressed “Universo populo Dei,” containing the profession of faith of the Catholic Church;91 that of St. Gregory the Great, on the obligations of the pastoral office and on the faith to be professed, addressed to the Patriarchs of the East;92 the great “Epistola Encyclica” of St. Martin I, addressed to all the bishops and to “the universal and holy fullness of the Catholic Church” against all heresies and especially against the Monothelites;93 that of St. Agatho, to the Emperor and to the Bishops gathered in Constantinople, defining the Catholic faith likewise against the Monothelites;94 that of Adrian II to the Bishops of the Eighth Ecumenical Council, asking them to subscribe to it, as they indeed did, condemning all heresies and in particular the Iconoclasts and Photius.95 We have mentioned no fewer than twelve Encyclicals from among those published by the Popes in the early and early medieval periods, up to the beginnings of the Schism of the Eastern Churches initiated by Photius, all of which we believe must be held as truly infallible.

Regarding pontifical Encyclicals in general, and those of the modern and contemporary period in particular, two extreme opinions emerged and were debated at the beginning of the present century. Some authors, stressing above all the marked difference of form — which we have noted — between ex Cathedra definitions and Encyclicals, the former being concise and definitive, the latter broad and expository, concluded that only ex Cathedra definitions were infallible. Others, on the contrary, laying greater emphasis on the testimonies by which the Popes declare that they write their Encyclicals in the exercise of the “fullness of their apostolic authority,”96 maintain that Encyclicals are likewise infallible.

Fr. Choupin, one of the principal proponents of the restrictive view, tenaciously defended the position that the Pope was infallible only in the solemn or extraordinary exercise of his Magisterium, that is, when he defines ex Cathedra, deciding and settling absolutely some question of faith or morals with a definitive judicial sentence.97

The other extreme opinion, defended principally by Monsignor Perriot,98 affirmed at the outset that all doctrinal encyclicals — such as many of those of Leo XIII and the Pascendi of Pius X — were true ex Cathedra definitions. Subsequently, sheltering himself above all behind the authority of Cardinal Billot,99 he conceded that, strictly speaking, Encyclicals were not ex Cathedra definitions, but that, nevertheless, they were certainly infallible in everything they directly and principally teach.100

The Common Opinion of Theologians. First of all, they agree in affirming that the infallible act of the Pope is not of itself tied to any particular form; and so, for example, Clement VI defined infallibly the doctrine that the Armenians were to believe in a simple Epistle;101 Pius VI condemned infallibly the Pistoians in an Apostolic Constitution;102 Pius IX defined infallibly the privilege of the Immaculate Conception in an Apostolic Letter;103 and Pius XII solemnly proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption in an Apostolic Constitution.104 The accessory character of a Bull does not affect the internal nature of the document. It is a canonical formality with which some documents of singular importance are clothed, both those that are merely disciplinary and those that are doctrinal.105

The second point on which theologians agree is a necessary consequence of what we have just set forth. It is that the Popes may freely make use of Encyclicals for their ex Cathedra definitions, as did St. Leo the Great and St. Martin I in the definitive Encyclicals we have already mentioned.106 The disputes among theologians over the supreme force of certain Encyclicals, for example, over the “Quanta cura” of Pius IX, do not bear upon this question of principle or of right, which all consider settled; they bear solely upon the question of fact: whether that Encyclical, together with the celebrated Syllabus that accompanies it, is or is not — in fact — an infallible definition?107 Likewise it could be admitted that there are ex Cathedra definitions interspersed within Encyclicals: the condemnation of Lamennais by Gregory XVI in his “Singulari Nos;”108 the proscription of Modernism as a compendium of all heresies, made by Pius X and confirmed as a “solemn” judgment by Benedict XV;109 and the condemnation of the abuses of matrimony made by Pius XI in “Casti Connubii,” which Fr. Vermeersch defended as a true ex Cathedra definition.110

The third point, finally, on which the authors also agree, is that Encyclicals are not usually in fact the means directly employed to propose solemn judgments or definitions ex Cathedra; but rather to set forth the teachings of the universal and ordinary Magisterium of the Popes. And this view is made his own and expressly confirmed by “Humani generis”, when it says: “Although the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium through Encyclicals, nevertheless the things proposed in them are teachings of the ordinary Magisterium.”111 From this it follows that the ordinary Magisterium as such is not the solemn or extraordinary Magisterium proper to Ecumenical Councils and to definitions ex Cathedra. Does it further follow from this that the ordinary Magisterium thereby excludes infallibility? Here is a further question that has not hitherto been decided, although it is without doubt of particular interest.

The words of “Humani generis” just cited offer us a good basis for what we believe to be the solution of the problem. As recently as 1905, Bainvel, in his valuable treatise on the Magisterium, wrote: “It is not established whether Encyclicals are acts of the ordinary or extraordinary Magisterium.”112 In our own day, theologians commonly regard Encyclicals as documents of the ordinary Magisterium,113 and the authentic declaration of Pius XII confirms with his authority the same doctrine. Given this solid foundation, can we simply apply to the Encyclicals the teachings of the Vatican Council regarding the ordinary Magisterium?

The Vatican definition, introduced into the schema de Fide catholica at the proposal of the Bishop of Ratisbon,114 reads as follows: “Fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt, quae in verbo Dei scripto vel tradito continentur et ab Ecclesia, sive solemni judicio sive ordinario et universali Magisterio tamquam divinitus revelata credenda proponuntur.”115 As its two Relators, the Primate of Hungary and the Bishop of Paderborn, expressly pointed out on behalf of the Deputation of the Faith, this paragraph deals directly with determining what is the material object of the faith that the faithful must profess, and is directed against those theologians who restrict what must be believed with divine faith solely to the truths openly defined by Ecumenical Councils, to the exclusion of all other truths which the teaching Church unanimously preaches and proposes as revealed by God.116

Now then, the Fathers of the Vatican introduced this paragraph into the Constitution de Fide, defined in Session III, before treating of the infallibility of the Pope, which they discussed in the Constitution de Ecclesia and defined in Session IV. They did not therefore intend to touch upon, either directly or indirectly, the question of the personal Magisterium of the Pope, as became evident on the occasion of an amendment proposed by the Bishop of Havana. He wished to clarify what was to be understood by ordinary Magisterium, and said: “What is that ordinary Magisterium of the Church, mentioned in the proposed paragraph, if not the Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, head of the Church and Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ?”117

This interpretation alarmed other Fathers of the Council, who rightly observed that, if it were understood in that way, the paragraph could not be admitted into the Constitution de Fide, because it would mean smuggling in obliquely and without discussion the principal question of papal infallibility, which had been reserved to be treated subsequently in the Constitution de Ecclesia.118 To dispel all ambiguity, the Bishop of Paderborn, on behalf of the Deputation of the Faith, declared: “I declare that it was in no way the intention of the drafting commission to touch upon the question of pontifical infallibility in this paragraph, either directly or indirectly.”119 And when the discussion resumed some days later, he repeated the same declaration, emphasizing that no one should think that this passage concerned the infallible Magisterium of the Apostolic See, but that it was to be understood of the “ordinary Magisterium of the whole Church dispersed throughout the world,” in accordance with the Apostolic Letter “Tuas libenter” of Pius IX.120

According to these testimonies, it is manifest that the Vatican expressly equates with the solemn and infallible judgment of Ecumenical Councils the proposition of the universal and ordinary Magisterium of the Church, when it attributes to it the same supreme force of imposing an absolute obligation of Catholic faith. It merely sets aside the question of the authority of the ordinary Magisterium of the Popes, so as not to prejudge a question that was to be treated subsequently, but it neither denies nor prejudices it. Now then, Pius XII tells us without any qualification of pontifical Encyclicals that they are acts of the ordinary Magisterium and that they of themselves demand the assent of the mind; we may legitimately conclude, therefore, that in them all those affirmations which impose an absolute obligation of Catholic faith are to be held as infallible teachings of the ordinary Magisterium.

The analysis of the Vatican definition of pontifical infallibility leads us necessarily to an identical conclusion. What the Vatican most properly defined was that the infallibility of the Pope is the same as that of the Church: “ea infallibilitate pollere qua divinus Redemptor Ecclesiam instructam esse voluit.”121 The Relator Vicente Gasser, Bishop of Brixen, explained very carefully to the Fathers of the Council the meaning of the definition, which is to proclaim the complete equality of the infallibility of the Pope and the infallibility of the Church. Equality of nature, in that both are immune from error, not only in fact but also by right, that is, with the impossibility of erring. Equality of cause, in that in both it is the guardianship of Christ and the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Equality of force, in that in both it is supreme and in the highest degree. Equality with respect to the object, so that the infallibility of the Pope extends entirely to the same range of truths, neither more nor less than the infallibility of the Church.122

Now if the Council primarily and directly set out to define the entire equality of the infallibility of the Church and that of the Pope, we must legitimately conclude that they are also equal in the manner in which they are exercised. If therefore the Church exercises her infallibility in two ways, one extraordinary and the other ordinary, we must admit that the Pope too can exercise it in those same two ways. Otherwise it would follow that the Pope’s power was, at least in the manner of its exercise, more restricted than that of the Church; which cannot be reconciled with the fact that the Pope is the one who holds in the Church the fullness of supreme power in all orders.123

It is true that the Vatican directly defined only the infallibility of the Pope in the solemn and extraordinary exercise of his supreme magisterium, by defining that he was infallible when speaking ex Cathedra; for the Church in her Code of Canon Law, after citing the Vatican definition, which commands us to believe what the Church proposes as revealed “sive solemni iudicio sive ordinario et universali magisterio,” adds: “Solemne huismodi iudicium pronuntiare proprium est tum Oecumenici Concilii tum Romani Pontificis ex Cathedra loquentis.”124 The ex Cathedra definition, therefore, just like that of a Council, is a solemn judgment of the extraordinary Magisterium and as such stands in contrast to the ordinary Magisterium. But although the Vatican directly defined no more than the infallibility of the solemn ex Cathedra judgment of the Pope, we nonetheless believe, as we have indicated, that from the Vatican itself we can conclude the infallibility also of his ordinary Magisterium.

We disagree, therefore, with those authors who with Choupin restrict the infallibility of the Pope to the solemn judgments of his extraordinary Magisterium when speaking ex Cathedra. Nevertheless, our doctrine also differs from that of the other authors who, together with Billot and Vacant, defend the infallibility of all the direct and principal assertions of the universal and ordinary Magisterium of the Popes.125

We believe that Encyclicals do in fact contain infallible assertions and condemnations, but that they are not such by the mere fact of being affirmations or condemnations of the universal and ordinary Magisterium, but rather by virtue of the manifested intention of infallibility with which the Pope particularly proposes them.

Whether a teaching of the Pope or of the Church is or is not infallible depends in the final analysis on the intention of the authentic Teacher who proposes it. In the case of the solemn or extraordinary Magisterium, the intention to teach infallibly is patent and pervades the entire magisterial act, because it is the solemn dictum or judgment of the Teacher in the extraordinary exercise of his supreme doctrinal authority. Thus act the Ecumenical Councils in their decrees and canons, and the Pope when he defines ex Cathedra. In this case all the direct and principal assertions of the definitive decrees are infallible, and as such are recognized by all theologians,126 for being included under the preponderant intention of infallibility. And we say that all the direct and principal assertions are infallible, because what in such decrees “is inserted as a parenthetical clause, what is affirmed indirectly, what is adduced as illustration, explanation, or mere proof of the principal assertions, although it is true that it has great doctrinal force, is nevertheless not considered an infallible teaching,” in accordance with what Bellarmine and the common opinion of theologians teach.127

In the case of the Ordinary Magisterium, the prevailing intention is not to issue a peremptory judicial sentence with supreme authority in its highest degree; but rather that of instructing, guiding, confirming in the truth possessed and guarding against threatening error, in conformity with the normal and ordinary requirements that frequently arise. One who intends such things cannot be said to propose to have recourse to the exercise of his authority in its highest degree; and therefore the ordinary Magisterium does not of itself include the intention to teach infallibly, not even in all its direct and principal assertions, nor even when there is a continual repetition of the same teachings (¹²⁶ bis).

From this the difference that exists between the chapters of Councils and Encyclicals becomes evident; a difference which derives from the diverse magisterial intention that distinguishes the extraordinary Magisterium from the ordinary. For this reason we do not consider acceptable the procedure of Vacant and Billot, when they apply to papal encyclicals the criterion followed for interpreting the force of conciliar chapters, because this amounts to confusing or equating the documents of the Ordinary Magisterium with those of the Extraordinary Magisterium.

What, then, is the criterion that could be adopted for discerning in Encyclicals the infallible assertions from those that are not? We sincerely acknowledge the difficulty we have encountered in answering this question, due above all to the silence that authors generally observe on this particular point. It may well be that we do not hit upon the satisfactory answer, but we do not believe this diminishes the force of the reasons adduced in favor of our thesis: how many times in Theology and in the other sciences does this situation arise, which does not diminish the certainty of the demonstrated truths, but only serves to make manifest the limitation of human faculties or investigations!

In order to answer the question posed, we must first attend to the criterion which the Church proposes for discerning solemn definitions (CIC 1223,3). According to it, we may assume that no teaching is to be held as infallible unless it is openly established as such. In our case we venture to say in general that the criterion we are seeking must be the same as that which serves to discern in the ordinary Magisterium of the Episcopate its infallible affirmations from those that are not. But for this case theologians are no less sparing in their pronouncements. Nevertheless, Vacant proposes some criteria128 which might perhaps be applied, with the necessary modifications, to the documents of the ordinary Magisterium of the Popes.

The most secure and most universal criterion, to which we believe the others can be reduced, is in our judgment the following. In the Encyclicals, just as in the other monuments of the ordinary universal Magisterium, those assertions are infallible in which, at one and the same time, the obligation of absolute assent with which they must be received by all the faithful is unequivocally recalled, inculcated, urged, or simply announced. Affirmations thus proposed we say must be held as infallible, because it cannot be conceived that the supreme Magisterium of Christendom should affirm that obligation of absolute assent for the whole Church, without at the same time affirming, at least implicitly, with infallible authority, the very truth of the assertions it proposes.

Those who maintain that the Pope is infallible only in his ex Cathedra definitions may perhaps say, with Choupin, that assertions enunciated with the universal obligation of absolute assent are true ex Cathedra definitions. To avoid reducing the problem to a question of words, one could reply with Bellamy that if they wish to call so, it will be necessary to distinguish two classes of ex Cathedra definitions: some which are pronounced by solemn sentence of the extraordinary Magisterium and others which are enunciated simply in the proper form of the ordinary Magisterium.129 Or one can also reply with Billot, denying that in the second case there occurs properly what the Vatican calls an ex Cathedra definition, since no new doctrinal judgment intervenes, but rather what takes place is an instruction to the faithful on matters of faith or morals which are within reach of the common preaching of the Church.130

This observation of Billot seems to us very just, for to tell the truth, the ordinary Magisterium of the Church has been disposed by God to guard, defend, declare, and propose those things of faith and morals which are necessary or convenient for the common and ordinary moral and religious instruction of the faithful. For cases of exceptional difficulty and for those in which controversies of greater gravity intersect, it is rather the extraordinary Magisterium of Ecumenical Councils and the solemn ex Cathedra definitions of the Roman Pontiff that are called for.

In this assessment we are confirmed by the Vatican itself, when it points out the resources employed by the Roman Pontiffs in order to proceed to an ex Cathedra definition. It tells us that they “employ the most fitting means that the condition of the times and circumstances suggest to them, such as the convocation of Ecumenical Councils, the sounding out of the mind of the universal Church, the work of particular Synods and other expedients which divine providence affords them, in order to know with God’s help what doctrine is most in conformity with the Scriptures and the Apostolic Traditions, so as thus to define it.”131

All the preparation which must according to this precede an ex Cathedra definition presupposes that the doctrine in question is one of exceptional difficulty and importance, or one on which grave divergences exist. And for this reason the ex Cathedra definition, as the Relator on the faith explained at the Council itself, “is a direct and clear sentence by which it is intended to make known to all unequivocally what the mind of the Pope is on some doctrine, in such a way that all may know with certainty whether the Supreme Pontiff holds that doctrine as revealed or as heretical, as certain or as erroneous, etc.”132 Or as the same Relator on the faith explained on another occasion: “For an ex Cathedra definition there is required the manifested intention of defining a doctrine, that is, of putting an end to the fluctuation regarding it, by giving a definitive sentence and proposing it to be held by the universal Church. And this latter point is something intrinsic to every dogmatic definition.”133 To define according to this is to pronounce sentence, or to resolve a controversy, or to determine the degree of supernatural certainty of a doctrine of which this was not previously established.

The ordinary Magisterium, by contrast, is not for those exceptional and difficult cases, but for those in which the authentic teachers need to remind the faithful of the doctrines which are found in the common profession of faith of the Church. And thus there are attributed to the infallible ordinary Magisterium the Creeds of the faith which are prescribed for those who are to receive baptism; the catechisms in which a synthesis of the common doctrine of the Church is placed within the reach of all the faithful; the refutations of the grave and evident errors in matters of faith and morals which, through the ignorance of many or through the malice of some, occur at every turn; the declarations in which the grave obligation of embracing the doctrines solemnly defined by Councils or by the Popes is recalled.134 All these teachings require no special study nor present difficulty for the authentic Teachers, and yet, being the most fundamental doctrines of the Church, the ordinary Magisterium needs to propose and urge them upon the faithful with fullness of authority, that is, infallibly.

Nor does it constitute an obstacle that those doctrines may already be solemnly defined or evidently contained in the sources of revelation, for the ordinary Magisterium to propose them again also infallibly;135 just as it constitutes no obstacle that a doctrine may already have been defined by one Council for another Council to define it solemnly once more, should it be necessary. On the contrary, this very fact facilitates for the ordinary authentic teachers the fulfillment of their duty, of adapting with fullness of authority to the ordinary needs of the faithful the doctrines of the Church, whenever circumstances require it. And thus we believe one can understand what is said in “Humani generis”: “Most of the time the things that are proposed and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons belong to catholic doctrine.”136 If there is no difficulty in Encyclicals authentically proposing and inculcating a teaching which for other reasons belongs to Catholic doctrine, neither can there be any difficulty in their proposing it infallibly.

IV. THE ASSENT OF THE MIND THAT IS OWED TO ENCYCLICALS

On this point the teachings of Pius XII are clear, and he expresses them in “Humani generis” in these words: “Nor should it be thought that the things proposed in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves demand assent;” and for this reason “if the Supreme Pontiffs in their Acts expressly pass judgment (data opera) on a matter previously controverted, it is manifest to all that such matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, can no longer be held as a subject of free discussion among theologians.”137 Hence the Pontiffs, in matters which in some way pertain to faith or to morals, of themselves demand the assent of the mind to the teachings of their Encyclicals, in such a way that the doctrines which they therein expressly propose cease to be a matter of free discussion.

This doctrine presents no difficulty after what we have set forth regarding the doctrinal force and the infallibility that belong to Encyclicals. In them, according to what has been expounded, four principal classes of magisterial affirmations can be distinguished: the first, those which by their content and form are true “solemn judgments” or ex Cathedra “definitions;” the second, those which, without having properly the solemn form of ex Cathedra definitions, are nevertheless truly infallible; the third, those which the authentic Magisterium of Encyclicals proposes directly and principally, though without the intention of imposing them infallibly; the fourth, finally, are those which are enunciated only indirectly and secondarily.

An example of an ex Cathedra definition included in an Encyclical and of the obligation of absolute assent it imposes may be the “Singulari Vos” of Gregory XVI, condemning the Indifferentism of Lamennais, when it says: “Of our own accord and with certain knowledge and using the fullness of apostolic power... we reprobate, condemn, and by reprobation and condemnation perpetually decree that this book (Paroles d’un croyant), which contains propositions respectively false, calumnious, rash, contrary to the word of God, impious, scandalous, erroneous, and already condemned by the Church principally against the Waldensians, Wycliffites, Hussites and other similar heretics, be held as such.”138 The Pontiff also claimed the corresponding absolute assent, expecting first from Lamennais “a declaration by which it would be made manifest to the Catholic world that he firmly and seriously accepted and professed the sound doctrine which We in our Letters proposed to all the Bishops,” and requiring afterwards “conclusive proofs that he followed solely and absolutely (unice et absolute) the doctrine of Our Encyclical Letters.”139

As an example of an infallible assertion of the ordinary Magisterium of Encyclicals there could serve that of the “Quanta cura” of Pius IX, in which it says: “We, conscious of our apostolic charge, and filled with solicitude for our most holy religion, for sound doctrine and the salvation of souls entrusted to us by God... once more raise our apostolic voice, and with Our apostolic authority, we reprobate, proscribe and condemn each and every one of the perverse opinions and doctrines singularly mentioned in these Letters, and we wish and command that they be held by all the children of the Catholic Church as entirely reprobated, proscribed and condemned.”140

The mental assent owed to the affirmations of these first two classes is equally absolute and irrevocable, as befits a truth offered to the intellect without any possibility of error. It is the assent which infallibility, by its very nature, directly and immediately demands of right from those to whom those assertions are proposed.

What kind of assent do the affirmations of the third class claim? They are not assertions of the infallible Magisterium, therefore it cannot be said that they demand the absolute assent that is owed to infallibility alone; but they are direct and principal teachings of the universal and ordinary Magisterium, simply authentic, yet truly authentic, that is, possessed of true and strict, though not supreme, doctrinal authority. Consequently, the assent they demand is precisely that which strictly corresponds to the degree of authenticity or doctrinal authority with which they are proposed.

That the Popes claim a true mental assent for such teachings is certified to us clearly and conclusively by Pius XII in the words of the Encyclical we are commenting upon; lamenting in particular that some Catholics “neglect what the Roman Pontiffs set forth in their Encyclical Letters on the nature and constitution of the Church,” and that they “think that the doctrine, expounded a few years ago in the Encyclical ‘Mystici Corporis,’ which teaches that the Mystical Body and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing, does not oblige them.”141

With which the Pope does no more than inculcate anew the doctrine repeatedly proposed by his predecessors, and in particular by Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius X. Pius IX goes so far as to say that it is necessary that “Catholics submit to the doctrinal decisions of the Pontifical Congregations, and accept those chapters of doctrine which, by the common and constant consent of theologians, are held as certain theological truths and conclusions.”142 Leo XIII above all emphasizes the firmness of judgment of the assent, when he says: “Catholics, if as is their duty they listen to Us, will easily see what their obligations are, both theoretical and practical. In their doctrinal opinions it is necessary that they maintain a stable judgment (iudicio stabili) and, when circumstances require it, openly profess also all the things that the Roman Pontiffs have taught or will teach in the future... abiding by the judgment of the Apostolic See and thinking as it thinks on each and every matter.”143 And in the most unequivocal manner Pius X affirms: “We proclaim above all that it is the obligation of all Catholics — an obligation which they must fulfill sacredly and inviolably in all circumstances of their life, both private and public — to hold firmly and to profess without fear the principles of Christian truth, proposed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, those above all which our most wise predecessor expounded in his Encyclical Letters ‘Rerum novarum.’”144 It is well known how Pius X himself urged under grave penalties the assent to his Encyclical “Pascendi.”145

There can be no doubt, therefore, about the fact that the Pontiffs demand the internal assent of the mind to all the teachings which they directly and principally propose in their Encyclicals, an obligation which Pius XII most opportunely confirms, adducing that grave admonition which the Vatican Council placed at the end of its dogmatic Constitution on the catholic faith: “We admonish all of the obligation they have to observe likewise the Constitutions and Decrees by which this Holy See has proscribed and prohibited perverse opinions and errors which more or less approach heresy.”146

Taking it then as established that the assent of the mind owed to the truths which infallible authority as such proposes is absolute and irrevocable, let us consider in particular the nature of the assent claimed by those assertions which the universal, simply authentic Magisterium of Encyclicals teaches directly and principally.

Since the intellect is a necessary faculty and it is not possible for it to move to absolute assent except by the metaphysical evidence of the known object or by the infallible authority of the teacher, the authors ask: of what nature is the assent that is in fact required with respect to the doctrines which the authentic Teacher proposes with true doctrinal authority, but not with infallible authority?

The authors to whom “Humani generis” refers are of the opinion that, since the mysteries of the faith cannot be reached by us with adequately true notions, but only with merely approximative and therefore always changeable ones; and since in particular the notions of scholastic Philosophy have a purely relative force with respect to the system from which they have been taken; it follows that the Pontiffs cannot in any way claim to incline the opinion of the faithful toward one or another conception in matters where theologians hold divergent views. This opinion is expressly rejected by Pius XII; and therefore he claims for his Magisterium the right to impose as true in themselves and immutable the conceptions relating to the truths of the faith, and to decide between controverted opinions.147

The other authors, after the Vatican, unanimously maintain that to the doctrines directly and principally taught in Encyclicals there is owed not only the reverence of the so-called “obsequious silence,” but the true internal adhesion of the judgment.148 In the further determination of the conditions of that judgment some variety is noted.

The renowned theologian Schiffini, at the beginning of the present century, maintained that this judgment was merely a matter of opinion. According to this view, it would seem that it is both required and sufficient for the faithful to adopt as their own opinions those statements that the Pontiff sets forth in his Encyclicals. The same view we believe is expressed most recently, in July of 1951, by Fenton, of the Catholic University of Washington, in an article on the Ordinary Magisterium in “Humani generis.”149

Authors such as Franzelin, Billot, Choupin and others, following the doctrine which Franzelin calls “authority of ordinary doctrinal providence,” maintain that the Pope, in non-infallible teachings, does not claim to impose a doctrine as true or false, certain or erroneous, but only as safe or unsafe. Let us hear Choupin: “The meaning of a doctrinal decision, emanating from the authority of the supreme but non-infallible Magisterium, is the following: Given the circumstances of the present state of knowledge, it is prudent and safe to consider this proposition as true or certain... and on the contrary it is prudent and safe to consider this other proposition as false or erroneous.”150

The other authors, such as for example Palmieri, de Groot, Ch. Pesch and many others, teach that the judgment of adhesion that is required must be “firm and certain with certainty that is not metaphysical or absolute, but with true moral certainty;” and that the object of the assent is the very truth of the assertion, just as the Magisterium directly proposes it, namely, as true or false, as certain or erroneous, as safe or unsafe (tuta vel non tuta) etc.151

Some authors, such as Wilmers, Maroto, Lercher and others, refining this same doctrine further, add that the internal assent that is required is indeed firm and certain with moral certainty; but since it does not exclude the possibility of the contrary, because the authority demanding it is not infallible, it must be said that it is conditioned, namely, that it includes, at least implicitly, this condition: unless the contrary be decided by the competent authority of the Church, or demonstrated scientifically with evidence.152

To say a word about these opinions of Catholic doctors, we believe in the first place that to say the Pope in his Encyclicals intends no more than that the faithful adopt as their own the opinions he enunciates, would be to equate the authentic Magisterium of the Church with that of the various schools, which are accustomed to impose some opinions on their followers. But this is not the practice of the Church, which in doctrines that are truly matters of opinion among Catholics leaves its children full freedom of choice, as Pius XI emphasized in his Encyclical “Studiorum ducem” and as Pius XII repeats in “Humani generis.”153 On the other hand, that which is proposed in Encyclicals “data opera,” as “Humani generis” observes, ceases already to be a freely disputable question among theologians.154

In the second place, to say that the Pope in the direct, non-infallible affirmations of Encyclicals only claims that they be accepted, not precisely as true or false, but merely as safe or unsafe, does not seem sufficient to us, except for those cases in which the Magisterium expressly states that a doctrine is safe or unsafe. In such cases, since what the Magisterium formally teaches is precisely that, namely, that such a doctrine is safe or unsafe, the mental assent it thereby demands of the faithful cannot extend to more than that very thing which it authentically affirms.155

But the Magisterium of the Popes is not limited to proposing doctrines in their Encyclicals as safe or unsafe, but can also propose them and in fact frequently does propose them, as true or false, as certain or erroneous, as included in the deposit of faith or as necessary for the defense of the divine deposit, as dogmas of divine and Catholic faith, or as theological doctrines taught by the universal Church. The reading of doctrinal Encyclicals persuades us instantly of what we are saying. To go no further, it suffices to read the Encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi” of Pius XII,156 to find multiple examples of this formal variety with which the ordinary Magisterium of the Popes proposes its teachings to the assent of the faithful.

This being so, we see no reason that could justify that restriction of the scope of our assent, such that when the Pontiff teaches us for example that a doctrine is certain, we limit ourselves to affirming only that “given the present state of knowledge it is prudent and safe to consider that doctrine as certain.”157 To be consistent, those who defend this would also have to maintain that when the ordinary Magisterium proposes a doctrine as safe, we should affirm, not simply that it is safe, but that “given the present state of knowledge it is prudent and safe to consider such doctrine as safe” — which seems an incongruity.

The act of assent owed to the teachings of the Pope is no more than a judgment in which the truth of a proposition is affirmed by virtue of the doctrinal authority of the Magisterium that proposes it. If the proposition says: such a doctrine is certain, the assent demanded by the Church, if it is to be true assent, cannot but be a judgment in which it is affirmed that such doctrine is, not merely safe, but positively certain. And consequently when Pius XII in “Humani generis” tells us that “by the natural light of reason alone the divine origin of the Christian religion can be proved with certainty,”158 the assent owed to that teaching must be a judgment in which what the Pope tells us is directly affirmed, and it would not be true assent if we were to restrict its content to affirming only that “given the present state of knowledge, it is prudent and safe to consider as true what the Pontiff affirms,” as the authors to whom we have been referring say is sufficient.159

When the Popes authoritatively propose a doctrine to the whole Church in their Encyclicals, it is because they wish that all the faithful think about it what they themselves think. This we believe follows unequivocally from what Clement XI taught, when, in reproving the Jansenist subterfuge of the so-called “obsequious silence,” he lamented and said: “They pronounce the words that the Church pronounces, but what the Church thinks they do not think.”160 Hence in authentically proposing a proposition, the Magisterium of the Church intends that the faithful simply accept what that proposition signifies.

The authority which the Pontiff holds over the minds of the faithful is properly magisterial authority, to which directly and properly belongs the right to demand of us that we make our own, not only the terms of his propositions, but the very meaning which they directly enunciate. And therefore we believe that to the principal teachings which the Encyclicals propose to us expressly and deliberately (data opera), there is owed an internal assent of the mind, consisting in an intellectual judgment that is morally certain, though not absolute but conditioned, by which we accept and make our own the very mind of the Pope.161 It is that sincere “sentire cum Ecclesia” which Saint Ignatius of Loyola explains in his Spiritual Exercises.162

This assent, lacking the supreme guarantee that belongs to infallibility, and being as we have said only morally certain and conditioned, may sometimes happen to be suspended. Under what conditions can this occur? Following the opinion of Straub and Schultes,163 we say that, if per accidens it should happen that an assertion of the ordinary Magisterium appears either certainly false, or contrary to an argument so solid that its force outweighs the weight of magisterial authority, then above all one must look carefully, lest anyone, preoccupied by love of his own opinion, deceive himself, for he is no less, but of himself more fallible than the authority from which such teaching emanates. But if, in spite of everything, the reasons against it are confirmed, leading to a true conviction, in such a case, since what is demanded of the mind is rational assent, it will be licit not only to doubt, but even to cease to consider the assertion in question as certain. Nevertheless, the presumption lies in favor of authority, and consequently its teachings must continue to be held as at least probable; but it will be possible and even necessary to represent respectfully to the Holy See the reasons that have arisen to the contrary, observing in the meantime a respectful silence, awaiting its decision on what it judges most fitting.

The formal reason or motive that specifies this assent is the true and genuinely doctrinal authority of the Pope. That the Pope possesses true doctrinal authority is evident to anyone who considers that the Pope holds the supreme and full authority of the Church, and that the authority instituted by Christ in the Church is, not merely for governing and sanctifying, but also for teaching the truth to the faithful. That this magisterial authority of the Pope is truly doctrinal is established for us by the fact that it has moral force to obtain the assent of the mind itself.

The merely human teacher, all the moral force he can have for imposing his doctrine on his disciples derives from the reasons with which he makes it accessible to the intelligence of his listeners; he does not have, therefore, of himself the moral force to oblige the disciple to intellectually assent to what he teaches. The Teacher instituted by Christ in his Church has of himself the moral force to oblige the disciple to submit his intelligence and give his intellectual assent to what the teacher teaches him, even without setting before him the reasons by which the doctrine taught might impose itself on the understanding by itself.

This is the truly doctrinal authority of the Pope, to which there corresponds the correlative obligation of the faithful, an authority and obligation that only he can give and impose who is the absolute master of all power and sovereign Lord even over the intelligence itself. The category of such authority is not formally divine, because it is truly participated, nor is it purely human, because it transcends the capacity and demands of pure nature; but it belongs to the supernatural order. Of it we can say, with due proportion, what the Vatican Council says of infallibility, namely, that it is “that perennial charism of truth and faith granted by God to Peter and to his successors in the primatial Chair.”164

To that supernatural category of the doctrinal authority of the Pope there corresponds on God’s part a proportionate protection, which sustains and guarantees it. It is what the Vatican calls “divine assistance,” promised by God so that he may holily guard and faithfully expound the deposit of faith, that is, the doctrine revealed by God and received by tradition from the Apostles themselves. That assistance of the Holy Spirit, as the Vatican also warns us, is not the revelation which positively discloses to man in some way new truths, nor is it the inspiration which makes man a true instrument through which God positively communicates his ideas; but it is rather a divine and watchful providence, of itself only negative, yet always disposed so that the Pope, availing himself of the means that circumstances afford him, may come to know those doctrines that are in conformity with revealed truth, and once known, may propose them fittingly for the obligatory acceptance of the faithful.165

The category of the magisterial authority of the Pope being so elevated, it is easily understood why he has been given the power to demand of rational man so great a sacrifice as the submission of his very intelligence.

Examining the doctrine of theologians concerning the virtue by which this act of assent pertains, we have found with surprising unanimity that it is the virtue of obedience.166 The same answer has been given to us formally or equivalently by the monuments of the Magisterium of the Church itself. According to this we can take it as common doctrine in the Church, that the internal assent to the teachings of the ecclesiastical Magisterium is an act of intellectual obedience, in which out of reverence for God we submit ourselves to the doctrinal authority of the Church, and for this reason the theologians are also accustomed to call it religious assent, because as Saint Thomas teaches: “ad religionem pertinet exhibere reverentiam Deo, in quantum est principium creationis et gubernationis rerum.”167

CONCLUSION

Summarizing the doctrine of “Humani generis” on Encyclicals, we believe it can be reduced to the following:

Doctrinal Encyclicals, in matters that in some way pertain to faith or morals, are authentic documents of the universal and ordinary Magisterium of the Church which largely propose what for other reasons is usually called Catholic doctrine, and although they are not of themselves ex Cathedra definitions, they nevertheless demand of all the faithful a true internal assent of the mind.168

Encyclicals frequently contain unavoidable teachings, such as for example those relative to the nature and constitution of the Church, and when they deliberately (data opera) enunciate the Pope’s view on some controverted point, that doctrine ceases already to be a matter of free discussion among theologians, as for example the doctrine proposed in “Mystici Corporis” on the identity of the Mystical Body with the Roman Catholic Church.169

With Encyclicals the Popes draw the attention of the Episcopate to those points of doctrine that call for its special vigilance, warn the faithful against the errors that threaten faith or morals, propose those doctrines which theologians must take as criterion and orientation for rightly interpreting the sources of revelation and for cultivating theological science with sound judgment.170

Hierarchically arranging these teachings, we can say that the Supreme Pontiff clearly formulates a fundamental principle, of great theological importance; from it he immediately deduces a conclusion, fruitful in practical applications; from these the Pope himself finally draws the two most important applications.

The basic principle refers to the magisterial authority that belongs to Encyclicals, and it is that they are an authentic expression of the ordinary Magisterium of the supreme Pontiff, of those to which that saying of the Master also applies: “He who hears you, hears me” (Lk. 10, 16).

The immediate conclusion which he deduces from this principle declares the correlative obligation to the authority enunciated, and it is that Encyclicals of themselves demand the assent of the faithful, even when the Pontiff does not exercise through them the Magisterium in its degree of supreme power.

The applications bear upon the objective scope or extension of the said authority and obligation. The 1st, more general, is made by the Pope by drawing attention to an important fact, which can serve as a criterion for evaluating the content of Encyclicals, and it is that most of the teachings proposed in them are already for other reasons among those that belong to Catholic doctrine, and therefore it is obvious that to them there extends before all else the full authority and obligation of Encyclicals.

The 2nd, more particular application, is that the authority and obligation of which we have been speaking extend furthermore to all those matters, relating to faith or morals, which the Pontiffs treat deliberately in their Encyclicals, even when they concern matters on which the views of authors differ; in such a way that if “data opera” the Pope enunciates his view on some question hitherto controverted, henceforth that doctrine ceases already to be a matter of free discussion among theologians.

The other things which “Humani generis” teaches us about Encyclicals, it may be said, are no more than concrete applications or obvious deductions from the teachings that precede.

In the light of all that we have set forth in our study, we believe it follows with sufficient clarity that what the Pope teaches in “Humani generis” on the doctrinal force of Encyclicals coincides with what was common doctrine among Catholic authors, thereby elevating to the category of authentic teachings the certain results of theological investigations. For the rest, it leaves open and free the field to the labor of researchers in all other points, in which the science of theologians has not yet reached full maturity and sufficient certainty.171

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform

“This shamelessness, which is everywhere today, doesn’t have to be! It spread through people, and so people can eradicate it, especially young people themselves and their parents. Otherwise, the Catholic revival among Poland’s youth will be in vain, and in vain do we, parents, diligently guard our children, when terrible scandal awaits them among the people.” - Walenty Majdański

Into the Moral Abyss

“[O]ne cannot sufficiently deplore the blindness of so many women of every age and condition,” lamented Pope Benedict XV in 1921, that “made foolish by desire to please, they do not see to what a degree the indecency of their clothing shocks every honest man, and offends God.”1 After which he observed, “Most of them would formerly have blushed for those toilettes [adornments] as for a grave fault against Christian modesty; now it does not suffice for them to exhibit them on the public thoroughfares; they do not fear to cross the threshold of the churches, to assist at the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, and even to bear the seducing food of shameful passions to the Eucharistic Table where one receives the heavenly Author of purity.” What would the same Pope say today? ... one shudders at his answer.

Such is the present state of debauchery that has consumed all Western societies. America, never being converted, and apostate Europe are firmly trapped in this moral abyss. In these places, upon leaving home, a Catholic is immediately confronted with grave offenses against modesty — particularly with women, though not exclusively — which in previous times would have been unthinkable, much less countenanced in public. In warmer months, merely walking around your neighborhood can be an occasion of sin. Step into a grocery store, a restaurant or a department store and you will similarly find no relief. As the August Pontiff mentioned above, gone is the influence of Catholic standards of modesty and the shame by which the former was enforced, both individually and socially. Further, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the prostitute of old would blush at the way modern, self-styled Christian women dress.

Feminism: A Big Problem but not THE Problem

Increasingly, women are being blamed for this crisis in modesty and public morals — rightly so, as they are the most flagrant offenders. Worse, they actively encourage their daughters to follow their example and shield them from correction. This criticism is just, and long overdue. For decades women have been allowed to liberate themselves from their duties towards God, the Church and their husbands. Put succinctly, it is that deadly feminism, nothing other than a socio-political movement dedicated to the rationalization of female sin and the overthrow of Christian patriarchy (rule by men). Ignoring the example of Our Blessed Lady, modern women are puffed up with pride, regularly cross-dress,2 no longer wear head coverings at Church, use obscenities, vulgar language and boast of their promiscuity, among other things. These are indisputable facts.

Yet this analysis is lacking, simultaneously laying too much blame on women, which not to be confused with the proper amount. The careful reader will have noticed that the above mentioned “women have been allowed,” implying some other culpable party, namely men. It is men who bear the greater share of blame, for we possess superior intelligence,3 a natural disposition to leadership4 and considerably greater physical strength, and therefore far greater responsibility. The question then becomes: how did we allow ourselves to be overpowered?

The answer lies with weak and wicked men among our recent ancestors. Specifically, those in positions of domestic and civil authority who permitted women to emancipate themselves from the moral law and from the obedience they owe to their husbands and fathers. These are the same men who would never repeat the charge of St. Paul — “Wives, be subject to your husbands in all things”5 — and who, if by some miracle found the courage to say so publicly, would immediately equivocate: insisting that the exercise of authority is more or less tyrannical, and that a wife need only comply with what she herself agrees with. The implication, of course, is that a wife risks nothing (including her soul?)6 by refusing obedience and honor to her husband.

Women do bear their share of blame, but it is men, possessed of greater intelligence, strength and natural authority, who will answer for having surrendered all three. May God save the patriarchy.

A Short Preface to the Exhortation

With all this in mind, we can now turn to the focus of this essay: what we believe is a long overdue moral exhortation to Catholic men and women, alike. While the preponderance of responsibility falls on men, the presentation that follows, drawn from the work of Walenty Majdański, a Polish author writing in 1939 and published in Fr. Maximilian Kolbe’s Militia Immaculata, is directed toward women and mothers in particular. Nevertheless, it will be up to men, specifically fathers, to lovingly enforce these standards and provide a good example for the gentler sex.

By way of background, in 1938 Kolbe had commissioned Mr. Majdański7 to prick the conscience of the struggling Polish nation. A lifelong teacher and tutor, his preferred weapon was the pen.8 Naturally, he was also a dedicated fighter in anti-abortion campaigning. His writing style, not unlike our own, tended toward the polemical, though given the circumstances both then and especially now, this is better understood as urgency. The softer methods have not worked for decades.. dare we say, for centuries.

Now, without further ado, The Journal of American Reform is pleased to present Mr. Walenty Majdański’s 1939 moral exhortation, preparing his readers for the onslaught of immodesty in the warmer months. His advice was needed as much then as it is today.

Stripping Away Shame During Summer in Fashion and Sport

To be best prepared for marriage, one must spend one’s youth chastely. Anyone who observes the sixth commandment in their youth introduces spiritual rule into their life, and even if they are a simple person, they live at a very high moral level. When such a young man marries, it is very easy for him to introduce and continue the rule of the soul over the senses into his married life. Therefore, it is not at all impossible for him to maintain either marital integrity or periodic abstinence. Why? Because he was able to maintain purity of morals throughout his youth, always and everywhere.

How easy it is for these spouses to adapt to the Church’s demands these days! From their earliest youth, they never made a tragedy... out of the dictates of the Sixth Commandment. In other words, they were always cultured people, for in them, the spirit ruled the flesh.

If today you see so many married couples complaining that the Church demands too much of them, then know that even when they were young, they also thought that the Church... “demands too much of them.”

God does not demand more from man than he is capable of — if he demands something, it does not mean that he demands “too much,” but that the person who claims so is a moral failure. For “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” Instead of calling himself an incompetent, such a person calls the Church “overly demanding.”

WHOEVER IS NOT PURE, IS NOT YOUNG!

This control over the senses, which comes from keeping the Sixth Commandment, plays a major role in keeping the other Commandments; for keeping the Sixth Commandment is often the most difficult in youth. And it is known that whoever knows what is hardest will also know what is easier.

If so many young people today shun the Holy Sacraments and say all sorts of nonsense about the Church, they are usually slobs who can’t keep the Sixth Commandment. If these young boys and girls knew just one thing: keeping the Sixth Commandment, they would never shun the Church. Because what does the Church want? “For you, young man, to be brave enough and able to take control of your senses so that you are pure. THE CHURCH WANTS TO UNITE YOU WITH CHRIST, AND YOU COWER BEFORE CHRIST AND FROM HIM... YOU FLEE.”

And what else does keeping the sixth commandment give you? — It gives you the art of self-control, which can always be useful to you, because “what eyesight is to a bird and claws to a lion, self-control is to a man.”

Maintaining moral purity also brings great health, to such an extent that the basis of a young man’s physical fitness is the maintenance of complete moral purity. If you compare two young men who were born in the same health and who were raised in the same conditions, the one who spent his youth more purer will be much healthier, firmer, and stronger in adulthood.

Cleanliness in youth is the foundation of lifelong health. In Poland, every year, 300,000 seriously ill people from rural areas cannot be admitted to hospitals because there is no room, or because they lack the money. For the same reason, every year, 60,000 patients cannot have surgeries. We lack hospitals, doctors, or money for treatment; many children lack bread; we lack hygienic housing. Therefore, we must be even more concerned about the health that every young person brings with them throughout their lives, provided they maintain chastity. We must remember that as early as 1920, 1.2 million people were rotting in Poland from various diseases stemming from debauchery. And how many such people are there today? How many diseases are spread because of them? How much misery? How much money is spent on treating such patients. (For example: in 1920, the United States suffered losses of $628 million due to venereal diseases...). How many die shamefully, for they have nothing to boast about? And is it consistent with the honor of Poles to soil themselves with debauchery? That is why we must establish the principle that EVERYTHING THAT WEAKENS THE PURITY OF CUSTOMS MUST BE REMOVED FROM POLAND. This principle implies that everything that weakens the sense of shame in youth must be removed from physical exercise and sports.

EASY AND DIFFICULT CONDITIONS FOR MAINTAINING PURITY

As we can see, keeping the Sixth Commandment brings enormous benefits: it prepares one for marriage, protects vocations to the priesthood and monastic life, teaches self-control, brings one closer to Jesus Christ from early youth, introduces the rule of the spirit over the body into the life of a young person, it protects against disease, provides a great supply of health for life, and develops a sense of honor, dignity, and the awareness of oneself as a courageous person. Maintaining chastity is therefore a great act of mastery over life, and chastity is the chief virtue of youth, so that no one is young who is not chaste. This is why we must strive at all costs to ensure that our youth are courageous enough to maintain purity of morals.

But to this end, we must facilitate conditions for youth to maintain moral purity, as they can be both difficult and easy. When conditions are too difficult, few youth will maintain this moral purity, perhaps only heroic individuals. Today, youth encounter public lack of shame and public scandal of all kinds at almost every turn. If we do not put an end to this disgusting state of affairs, it may soon be that only the exceptionally strong among young people will maintain moral purity. For just as parents with numerous children must be given better conditions than they have today to raise their children, SO MUCH MUST YOUNG PEOPLE BE GIVEN BETTER CONDITIONS SO THAT THEY ARE NOT TOO TEMPTED TO IMPURITY BY ALL THAT SURROUNDS THEM!

This shamelessness, which is everywhere today, doesn’t have to be! It spread through people, and so people can eradicate it, especially young people themselves and their parents. Otherwise, the Catholic revival among Poland’s youth will be in vain, and in vain do we, parents, diligently guard our children, when terrible scandal awaits them among the people.

So what should we do? What better conditions should we provide for young people to help them maintain their moral purity? We will devote some attention to this in our summer issues, because the most difficult conditions for maintaining moral purity are faced by our young people right now: during the summer.

A MOTHER WHO STRIPS HER DAUGHTERS OF SHAME

Creating better conditions so that young people can more easily preserve purity of morals is not at all difficult. One need only have a little sense and a little courage. This applies especially to women.

Why, for example, would a mother dress her little daughter so badly that she’d be deprived of her sense of shame from infancy? Who ordered the Polish mother to dress her little ones so appallingly short? After all, mothers today dress their little daughters in dresses so short that there’s no room left for a... skirt. It’s not really a dress, but a kind of tunic. Anyone who dresses their daughter fashionably no longer dresses her in a... dress, but rather just this... tunic. The child goes without a dress in summer and winter: a tunic is enough, which will be called a “dress” in the “old-fashioned” way for some time. And so mother herself wears an ever shorter dress, while she no longer requires her little daughter to wear... a dress at all.

Then, when the little girl has grown into a young woman and goes to her first dance or ball, how does the “fashionable” mother dress her? The dress must be long at the bottom, but cut almost to the waist at the top.

And how does the “fashionable” mother dress her daughter when summer comes? Again, wherever she can, she cuts the girl’s dress shorter, and it “must” be more or less... transparent. And that same mother complains that there is such corruption today, yet does not see that she has done everything in her power to strip her daughter of modesty — if only through her clothing — and that her daughter, by her dress alone, is stripping those around her of their modesty as well.

It’s true that the more undressed a daughter is, the more “fashionable,” the more shameless she is, the more “successful” she is. But somehow she can’t get married, or when she does, “marry” usually means “to hell.” Is that not so?

One must understand what today’s fashion is for. It exists so that the married woman will not want to be a mother — that is why fashion is so form-fitting. It exists to accustom little girls from their earliest years to never developing a sense of modesty. It exists to strip grown girls of their sense of shame and to inflame the passions of men. Do you know this, Polish mother? Have you thought about what to do so that women’s fashion in Poland might be beautiful, healthy, and at once Polish and Catholic?

WHAT DOES A GOOD CATHOLIC MOTHER DO IN THE SUMMER?

What does a bold and wise mother do now in the summer season? She gives her little daughter a proper skirt. She dresses her daughter in a frock that is both beautiful and does not strip her daughter of modesty. Under the more or less transparent dress she puts a slip, she adds short elasticated sleeves, she gives her a dress that falls well below the knee — not by just a few millimeters. When her daughter goes to the baths or to the beach, she does not allow her to walk around the vicinity of the beach or baths in a swimsuit — not alone, not with other girls, and certainly not in mixed company. At the beach and in the water she requires her to stay only where women bathe and sunbathe on their own.

At home, when sons and daughters are present together, she does not allow any child to walk about in a swimsuit. In the yard she likewise does not permit even a small child to go about in a swimsuit. Sunbathing at home, on the veranda, near the house, or in the garden she allows only to boys alone or girls alone, and only where, nearby, there are at that time only boys or only girls.

The mother herself sews — if she cannot buy them — special swimsuits for her children that are more in keeping with Catholic principles of modesty, whenever they take part in sports or sunbathe.

In this way the children of that mother enjoy in summer the benefits of sun and water bathing, take part in sports, and at the same time give no one cause for scandal; while they themselves preserve their dignity and modesty.

To be sure, this mother was very afraid at first to dress her children this way, but because she was a courageous woman she took her courage in hand: she began to dress her daughters in a Catholic manner, she began to dress her sons and daughters for sport and for the beach in a Catholic manner, she required her children to conduct themselves there in a Catholic manner. It was hard for the mother and hard for the children, for they were mocked at every turn for not being “fashionable,” for being “backward” — the children sometimes came home in tears, and so on. But the mother encouraged her children to boldness every day, during their evening prayers together, SO THAT THEY WOULD BE BRAVE, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT FEAR PEOPLE, but God — so that they would BOLDLY AND PUBLICLY set an example to others of how one ought to dress and how one ought to behave. This went on for three years. Today that bold and wise mother sees how other mothers are beginning to follow in her footsteps.

WHAT DO BRAVE CATHOLIC ATHLETES DO IN THE SUMMER?

What are summer sunbaths for, what are water sports for, what indeed are all sports and physical education for? — So that the nation may be healthier. But we must remember what we wrote at the outset: that the foundation of health is the preservation of purity of morals. And purity of morals is the greater, the greater the sense of modesty. MODESTY IS A GREAT SHIELD AGAINST IMPURITY. The trouble is that in sport and physical education such customs have taken hold as strip the athlete, the one exercising, and all those who watch of their modesty. What are these harmful customs? One is immodest dress; the other, and the greatest, is that boys and girls, men and women, spend time together or train TOGETHER in those same outfits.

The whole point is to arrange things in physical education, in sports, on beaches, and so forth, so that people benefit in health without at the same time losing their modesty. Young Catholic athletes of Poland can do this! It only takes courage!

Among young people there are many who are themselves ashamed of that nakedness, even though they take part in it themselves in the summer. But they stay silent and wait to see if anyone will speak up... And so our whole nation, when summer comes, strips itself ever more of... modesty.

Will this go on much longer? — Young Catholic athletes, where are you? Where is Catholic youth? Where are the parent associations at schools? Where are the fathers, the mothers? Where are the teachers? Where are the authorities?

We must have sport, we must have physical education — and ever more widespread and ever better — but we must also have health of body and soul, and therefore we must have purity of morals, and therefore we must have MODESTY! Otherwise the vitality of our youth will fall apart. Is that not so?

LEGAL MEASURES - NECESSARY AND IMMEDIATE

It has come to the point that this nakedness, brought in by summer vacationers from the cities, is now spreading even in the countryside: it has come to the point that “cultured” parents send small children outside completely naked so they may “benefit” from the sun. It has come to the point that an honest person, when he goes to a summer resort, has nowhere to rest. Naked bodies everywhere. No restraint, no protest.

An uncompromising battle must be waged against this, wherever and however one can. That means: drawing attention to it, shaming, boycotting, not allowing it for one’s own children, not allowing it in one’s own homes, yards, fields, gardens, waters, villages, and towns — working against it in village and city councils, in legislative bodies, in newspapers, at meetings — influencing one another. Do not fear shameless people! Every organization has a voice: rowing clubs, sports clubs, city councils, village councils, members of parliament, the government, priests, youth, prefect-priests, MOTHERS, FATHERS!

The law should establish as soon as possible:

1. that beaches and bathing areas should be separate for men and separate for women.

2. that swimsuits may be worn only at the beach and in bathing areas.

3. that in all other water and land sports, swimsuits may not be used.

4. that in public sporting displays, both sexes may not appear together.

5. that in individual sports and physical exercises intended for adults and requiring an exposing costume, both sexes may not appear together.

6. that girls and boys may not participate in physical education together, from preschool through university.

7. that coeducation should not exist, wherever possible, in primary schools or in any secondary schools.

8. that short bloomers-style uniforms are required in all schools during gymnastics and sports lessons.

Until these laws are put into effect, let each person on his own initiative do what he can so that both he himself and others conduct themselves morally in summer. One must oneself dress in proper attire for sport; one must oneself avoid beaches shared by both sexes and go only to separate ones; one must oneself behave morally in physical exercise. Fathers and Mothers should dress morally themselves, and they should dress their children accordingly. Each person must regard himself and his family as an apostle who will be the first to begin living summer life in a Catholic manner.

To put all of this into practice requires extraordinary courage. NOTHING DEMANDS MORE COURAGE AND STRENGTH THAN INTRODUCING PURITY OF MORALS AND MODEST DRESS INTO ONE’S OWN LIFE AND INTO THE LIVES OF OTHERS. Whoever fears people will not dare to do what we have written of here. And so this article is intended only for courageous people ready to follow the voice of God’s grace.

END.

CONSIDER SUPPORTING THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REFORM!

As I intend to devote more and more time to this political project, I want to continue to provide free, educational material, whether visual (graphics) or written (essays, translations and a forthcoming book) content. If you have benefited from my work in any way, kindly consider supporting The Journal financially. On a personal note, I am married and duty-bound to provide for my family, so any help, big or small, is appreciated. Subscribe or make a one-time donation.

Regardless, the production of free material will continue, hopefully with ever-increasing quality, and I will keep all my subscribers notified of my plans.

In addition to Substack, the home of The Journal, my work, graphics and commentary can be found on the following platforms:

X: @AmericanReform_

Telegram: @American_Reform