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| The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries |
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Posted by: Stone - 1 hour ago - Forum: Resources Online
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The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries
The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries.
With a Preface by His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.
London: Burns and Oates, Limited.
New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger Brothers.
1893.
By Thomas Livius, M.A., Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. Author of "S. Peter, Bishop of Rome," etc.
Dedication
To His Eminence Herbert Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Priest of the Title of San Gregorio on the Caelian Hill.
My Lord Cardinal,
I am very grateful to your Eminence for having permitted me to dedicate this book to you, and that you have so kindly promised to write for it some words of preface.
It struck me as a circumstance of happy omen that the publication of my volume on S. Peter's Roman Episcopate, should, after several years' labour, coincide with the Sacerdotal Jubilee of Our Holy Father Leo XIII., and be dedicated to the illustrious Cardinal Newman. And it now affords me increased encouragement that this Patristic work in testimony of Our Lady's privileges, should, at length, appear in the year of His Episcopal Jubilee, and be dedicated to your Eminence, who has, in conjunction with all the Bishops of the Province of Westminster, so recently made the solemn act of consecrating our country anew to the Blessed Virgin and S. Peter, at the initiation of the Supreme Pontiff, and after his explicit recognition of England's claim to her ancient and glorious Title of "The Dowry of Mary."
I remain,
My Lord Cardinal,
With much respect,
Your devoted Servant,
T. LIVIUS, C.SS.R.
Preface by His Eminence
This work, to which I gladly prefix a few words of preface, will become a standard book of reference. It was much needed. That which its author had already done for S. Peter, he has now successfully accomplished for the Blessed Virgin Mary. And I am not depreciating his former work by saying that his latter is by far the more important — the more important because, whereas many books have been published containing ample reference to the acknowledgment of S. Peter's authority in the primitive Church, none has hitherto been presented to the English public setting forth the copious testimonies of the writers of the first six centuries to the doctrinal position in the Church of the Blessed Mother of God. This is the task fulfilled in the volume, The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries.
This work is destined to render a double service: first, it will deepen and strengthen the devotion of Catholics to the Blessed Virgin, by setting before them the witness to her prerogatives and to her position, afforded by the earliest Fathers of the Church; it will teach them how closely they are united in sentiment as in faith with the Fathers and Christian writers of the first six centuries; it will supply them with spiritual food by opening to them a granary of golden and delicious corn, the door of which had hitherto been in great measure closed to them. Knowledge, instruction, meditation, piety, and love, concerning Mary, are all combined in rich proportions in the abundant harvest which F. Livius has gathered in from the writings of the early Fathers.
The second service rendered is second only in importance to the first. She, whose office it has been to "destroy all heresies," has ever been a stumbling-block in the way of non-Catholics. It could hardly be otherwise than that the Tower of David, the Ark of the Covenant, the Gate of Heaven should present a sensible and formidable obstacle to the progress of error. She, whose foot was destined to crush the serpent's head, must ever stand in her calm beauty and power as an enemy in the path of the seed of the serpent. But there is a vast multitude of non-Catholics whose souls are being drawn back from the errors they have inherited to the Church of Christ. It is not enough to show them the love which the present children of God bear to the Mother of God; it is not enough to point out to them the devotion and faith of England during a period of a thousand years. All this, in their ignorance and prejudice, they explain away as parasitical overgrowth, attributable, they say, to the distinguishing character of the middle ages, and to man's proclivity to corruption and superstition.
What is needed is to remount the stream of testimony to its source — to exhibit without apology or hesitation our own devotion to Mary — to set forth, as in the Dowry of Mary, the history of the devotion of our Catholic English ancestors to her, up to the seventh century — and then to gather together and display before the eyes of all men, who have eyes to see, the teaching of the primitive Church, as attested in the writings of the first six centuries, as to the position and the prerogatives of the Blessed Mother of God.
The obiter dicta and incidental expressions of those ancient writers on such a subject as Mary are as valuable and as clear an indication of the direction taken by the mind and heart of the Church, during its early youth, as the more developed and studied treatises by writers in modern times are of their own belief and of that of their co-religionists. The faith is the same. But the Church is neither a mechanical nor a petrified creation. She is a living Bride, the Bride of the Lamb. She, like Mary in the Gospel, is "ever pondering in her heart over the things she has heard" in the original revelation made to her by the Bridegroom. And as she gives utterance to the thoughts of her heart in the language and expression which become them, she is perpetually testifying to the truth, the fulness, the life and the joy of the things which she originally heard. Thus you will find in the teaching of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, the Gregorys, Ephrem, Ambrose and other writers of the first six centuries on Mary's position as the Second Eve, on her excellence, her sanctity, and her power, the teaching of S. Alphonsus and of Blessed Grignon de Montfort and others, who have in modern days popularised devotion to Mary. The truth is ever the same, all through the centuries, carefully guarded by the authority of the Church; but the language in which it is clothed, in which it is conveyed to the mind of the people, is the language of the day, the language which is spoken and understood. And the more the original seed of truth becomes triturated by the devout mind, generation after generation, the more pervasive becomes its fragrance.
I trust that this most valuable addition to our literature upon the Office of Mary in the work of our Redemption and sanctification, will meet with the cordial reception which it deserves from devout Catholics, on the one hand, and from sincere and earnest inquirers outside the Church, on the other.
It is a pleasing incident to record that it has been granted to two sons of S. Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, to give to the English-speaking peoples two standard works on Mary, one dealing with the Devotion of England to Mary from the sixteenth century up to the time of the primitive Church, in his admirable volume, England, Our Lady's Dowry, and the other, completing the period of testimony, by exhaustively gathering together the witnesses, who still speak with no uncertain sound, as to the teaching of the Church about Mary, "the Second Eve," "the Mother of the living," during the first six centuries of the Christian era.
HERBERT CARD. VAUGHAN,
Archbishop of Westminster.
Octave of the Assumption, 1893.
Author's Preface
No one, I suppose, can entertain any doubt as to the general belief and cultus that prevailed amongst Catholics with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary from the seventh and eighth centuries, through the middle ages, down to the period of the Protestant Reformation. For the numerous works that still survive of men eminent for their sanctity and theological science, as Ildephonsus, John Damascene, Anselm, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and many more, who wrote so profusely in her honour and proclaimed her privileges with such great explicitness — as well as the numberless examples of public and private devotion to her to be found in religious biographies, general literature, and historical records of those times — make it quite evident that the attitude of the faithful to Our Lady was then much the same as that of Catholics in the present day. Those too who may be unacquainted with the works I have alluded to must share the same conviction. For we all have still before our very eyes material monuments which bear visible witness to that past faith and devotion. I mean, we have in our midst, whether yet standing or in ruins, so many old cathedrals and churches, monasteries and abbeys, that were raised to Our Lady's name, with their shrines and other memorials in her honour; whilst in countries abroad there are ancient images and pictures, which are still held in veneration by the faithful, and carry down with them a long record of her miraculous favours, and of the people's devotion. Then again, there are so many religious Orders of men and women that have handed down in unbroken succession the same spirit, belief, and devotional practices regarding Our Lady, as they received in their origin.
Herein is a sensible continuity of the past with the present, which forms in men's minds what we may call a veritable actual memory, and is an argument which brings home the truth more forcibly and distinctly than do any proofs derivable from ancient documents.
If aught more were needed, there is the living witness of the existing generations of Catholics here at home and abroad, that have inherited in direct line, and bear testimony to the belief and practices of their forefathers in the same religious faith. Whilst, on the other hand, the notorious fact of the Reformation, and that so many have followed its tenets even to the present day, serves of itself continually to keep alive the memory of what was held about the Blessed Virgin in those former ages, and of the veneration that was then paid to her; since it was the repudiation of this belief and devotion as superstitious, that formed in great part the very reason of the first origin of the Reformation, and of the continued existence of Protestantism as a religion.
I have thus endeavoured to account for the clear and distinct conviction that is universally held of the Blessed Virgin's prominence in Catholic faith and devotion during the Middle Ages, in order the better to illustrate, by way of contrast, the difference of view that is generally taken as to the place which Our Lady occupied in the minds and hearts of Christians during the first six centuries of the Church's history.
Here there is no unanimity, but great diversity of sentiment; people's opinions are for the most part only half-formed, or formed from very insufficient data, on this side or that, according to their religious bias. Some perhaps will go so far as to maintain that the practical exhibition of devotion to the Blessed Virgin was the same in those earlier centuries as in later times; whilst others persistently assert that there was nothing in the primitive Church at all similar or corresponding to the doctrinal system and cultus of Our Lady which have prevailed from medieval times until the present day. All this, they say, was an after-growth quite unknown to the older Fathers, which first began to show itself in the seventh and eighth centuries. Between these two extremes opinions vary with more or less vagueness.
There are many causes for this general diversity and indefiniteness of view on the matter.
First, in the case of the Early Church, we have none of what, for lack of a better term, I called sensible continuity, which serves so much to give us definite notions, and in some sort an actual memory of the real truth in medieval times. Having lost all the religious surroundings of those first centuries, and having no longer any direct results surviving from them, we can hardly picture them to our minds, and how things then happened — at least with any certainty that our picture rightly corresponds to the reality.
It seems to belong to our intellectual nature, that when we hear or read about something of past or distant occurrence, we at once form in our mind, at any rate implicitly, sensible images derived in some way from our experimental knowledge; and by clothing with this imagery the simple ideas presented to our intelligence, we give to what is abstract a concrete shape, and thus assimilate and bring home to our full consciousness the recorded event, realising it more or less vividly in its circumstances. And so far as the subjective images correspond to their objective realities, so also is our mental view of the occurrence accurate and true.
We are now, however, divided by so great an interval from those early centuries, that our break-off from all their ordinary associations is complete. The learned, no doubt, who have made a special study of the first ages of the Church, and are better acquainted with the circumstances that then surrounded the faith and religious life of Christians, will so far be able to gain a clearer view and to approximate to the truth with regard to the attitude of the faithful in those days towards the Blessed Virgin. But most people are not learned, and their ideas on the subject are very vague; or should they have formed for themselves any definite judgment, it is of no real value, being pretty sure to be wide of the truth.
I may be here allowed to apply to our subject two terms of which Cardinal Newman discourses so largely in his Grammar of Assent, and say that the knowledge generally possessed of the Blessed Virgin's place in Medieval religion is a real knowledge, whilst that obtainable of the same in the first six centuries is of a notional character. In making this distinction I would by no means imply that there is less of objective certainty in the latter than in the former kind of knowledge; or, in other words, that truth is less the object of, and actually attainable by notional knowledge than it is by real knowledge; but the difference, conveyed by the two terms, lies rather, as I conceive, in the mind's subjective conviction of truth, and in the means whereby subjective certainty is arrived at.
What, then, was the doctrine held concerning the Blessed Virgin, both in its nature and extent, together with the actual devotion paid to her during the first six centuries of Christianity, is not now to be learnt by any sensible aids — such as existing monuments of antiquity and surviving traditions — as is our knowledge of the same in later ages, but almost exclusively from contemporaneous documents of that period that are still extant.
But here is no easy task, as is evident from the following considerations:
1. Whilst many works of the early Fathers are lost, and of some we have only fragments; those that remain are in great number and very voluminous, treating of manifold topics with wide diversity, and written for the most part very discursively.
2. The Fathers did not treat of the Blessed Virgin ex professo. No formal treatise on her is to be found amongst their writings. There were other matters of a more pressing nature in those early times to engage their attention. [This clause is badly garbled in the scan and the exact wording can't be fully recovered — the surviving fragments suggest it named the primary truths of Christian revelation the Fathers had to set forth: the Nature of God, His Unity of Being and Trinity of Persons, the Incarnation and Divinity of the Word, the personality of the Holy Ghost, the Unity and Communion of Saints, and the doctrines of original sin and grace.]
They had at the same time to contend against and refute many subtle heresies that endangered the faith on all points, and with which heresiarchs from every quarter were continually assailing the Church. They were occupied in interpreting, and composing commentaries on, the Sacred Scriptures. There are, moreover, many patristic writings of an occasional sort, such as sermons and homilies, exhortations, epistles and poems, and besides these, historical works, and others of a moral and philosophical character.
These are the chief subjects of the writings of the Fathers during the first six centuries. In most of them, perhaps, there is something, more or less, said of the Blessed Virgin; but what mention or treatment is made of her is incidental, and introduced only as bearing upon the principal theme and the matter in hand. There are, indeed, some very few treatises that relate especially to Our Lady, as those of S. Jerome and S. Epiphanius, written in defence of her perpetual virginity, or against a blasphemous excess in showing her honour. These, however, deal only with some particular point regarding her, and are of an apologetic nature. There are too some fugitive pieces, as sermons on her Feasts and hymns and prayers entirely devoted to her, especially in the works of S. Ephrem.
I would not be supposed to deny that much, comparatively speaking, is to be found in the early Fathers on the Blessed Virgin; for some of their treatises are full of her, as for example those of S. Ambrose on virginity, and also many portions of their Scriptural exegesis. My voluminous extracts show this. Still, with the exceptions I have made they are fragmentary, and not written on her ex professo.
Nowhere, then, do the early Fathers treat in a formal and positive manner, or as a whole, of the place of Our Lady in revealed Christian doctrine, and of the mutual relations that exist between her and men in the Divine economy of Redemption. What was their general view on this matter must be gathered from the various passages scattered up and down their writings.
Or perhaps I should express myself otherwise, and say that the earliest Fathers of all, who wrote about Our Blessed Lady, viz., S. Justin, S. Irenaeus, and Tertullian, in their exposition of Mary as the Second Eve, give a very distinct view of what they held concerning her, and make most explicit though very brief statements as to her doctrinal position and relation to mankind, and that these are, in fact, so comprehensive as implicitly to contain whatever else any other Fathers of the first six centuries said afterwards in a desultory way about her.
3. What adds to the general impression of indefiniteness attaching to the Blessed Virgin's place in the early Church, is the frequent allegation that discrepant statements regarding her are found in the patristic works of that age. True it is that some few of the Fathers have said certain things respecting Our Lady contrary to the teaching of the greater number. Such instances, however, are after all, but very rare exceptions. They are to be found chiefly in their comments on those passages of the Gospels which bring her into public notice; and are certainly inconsistent with the idea of her absolute sinlessness, or at least of that entire perfection which the Church has of her, and the general teaching of the Fathers bears out.
Cardinal Newman has discussed this question, and the particular passages that have given rise to it, so ably and fully in his Letter to Dr. Pusey, that I have not thought it necessary to go over his ground again: though I have treated of the difficulty from another point of view, especially as regards S. Chrysostom, in the course of this work.
That there should be some discrepancies in the Fathers regarding Our Lady need not, however, excite surprise or cavil, when we find the same upon still graver matters. Thus certain Fathers of the third century, in high repute for their orthodoxy, express themselves on the Consubstantiality of the Son in terms that would be inadmissible after the definition of Nice. So too S. Athanasius and S. Basil speak of the knowledge of Our Lord's soul in a very different way from what S. Augustine and S. Maximus did, and Catholic theologians would now speak.¹
Great indeed is the authority of the Holy Fathers approved as such by the Church, even when taken individually, and especially of the more eminent amongst them who were Bishops, Saints, and Doctors of the Church.² But their chief authority consists in their being witnesses and expounders of the divine traditions that had come down from Christ and the Apostles, and of the Church's teaching at their own time. Hence it is that their unanimous consent on any doctrine pertaining to the Faith is regarded as tantamount to the infallible utterance of the Church herself. We may, moreover, well believe that the Holy Fathers, properly so called, received as individuals, special gifts of divine wisdom and knowledge to enable them to set forth in their purity and integrity the divine traditions and doctrines that had been handed down to them from the Apostles.
Still we are not to take an exaggerated view of the Fathers, as though they were infallible, and none of them could make a doctrinal misstatement, since it is undeniable, that at least some errors, greater or less, are to be found in the writings of individual Holy Fathers, even of those who have been approved of as such by the Church. But we must at the same time bear in mind that the Church has never on this account charged any Father, whom she has once thus approved, with heterodoxy, nor allowed others to do so.
In reading the Fathers, should one chance to come upon some doubtful or ambiguous statement in any of them, the general rule to be followed is, to explain his words as far as possible according to the common concordant sense of the other Fathers' teaching. But where a real discrepancy from the common teaching is discovered, it will be found on mature examination that such error has resulted from the obscurity of the subject-matter, on which nothing had as yet been defined,³ or which had not been sufficiently thrashed out by more prolonged discussion. On verities that are fundamental no real discrepancy of this kind will have place.⁴
Whilst all revealed truths contained in the divine deposit had their place in the primitive Church, they may be said in a certain sense to have been for a time more or less held in solution. To use a perhaps too homely metaphor, the age of the earlier Fathers was the time of churning. By means of the agitation of heretics, and the doctrinal discussions of the Fathers, the several truths of faith were going through the process of coagulation, that so they might be shaped into dogmas and fixed in conciliary definitions. Formal dogmatic definitions were few at that date. Certain broad lines for general guidance were well known, such as Tertullian's rule of Prescription, and those principles that find their expression in the dicta of S. Augustine and S. Vincent of Lerins, "Securus judicat orbis terrarum," "Roma locuta est, causa finita est," "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus"; or again, what first paved the way for the condemnation of Nestorius, the voice of the ecclesia discens, at Constantinople, whereby the old adage, "Vox populi, vox Dei," is illustrative of the Faithful in the Catholic Church.
But principles such as these, however true, were too broad for immediate practical application to every difficult question that might arise, and hence some divergency of longer or shorter continuance on certain points that were afterwards definitely settled, was the inevitable result.
4. Another difficulty in the works of the early Fathers is, that many of them are held to be spurious and unauthentic, whilst the genuineness of others is disputed. I leave the discussion in all cases to the judgment of learned critics. My general rule has been to make my quotations from writings the authenticity of which is commonly acknowledged. Sometimes, however, I have cited works of doubtful genuineness, or which, at any rate, were not written as we now have them by the Fathers to whom they are attributed, but whose date, as assigned to them by critics, falls within the first six centuries, to which period I confine myself. When I quote from a doubtful or unauthentic work, or depart exceptionally from this general rule, I note the fact.
Some modern writers appear to treat such unauthentic works as of no value at all, and even as though their doubtfulness or spuriousness of itself formed a positive argument against doctrines and practices to the existence of which they bear testimony: whereas the truth is, that regarded simply as witnesses their evidence on these matters is of an authority equal to that of any genuine writings with which they are coeval. But besides this: it is held as highly probable by the learned, that many even of those treatises and sermons, which, from intrinsic evidence of language and style, criticism has justly decided to be certainly unauthentic, were yet substantially the utterances of the Fathers whose names they bear, and were composed in their present form by disciples or admiring auditors from notes or memory. In any case it would be very difficult to account for the early and general acceptance of such writings as genuine, unless they really reflected and were in full accord with what was known to be the teaching of the Fathers who were credited with their authorship.
What has principally led me to compose this work is, because I had heard and read much of late years as to the very different view to be found in the writings of the early Fathers, regarding all that relates to the Blessed Virgin, from that which attaches to her in medieval and modern times; and because I knew well how very difficult it is — as in the preceding pages I have been at pains to show — to give a true, clear, full, and impartial exposition of what those Fathers really taught regarding her, and of the veneration or devotion that was paid to her in their days. I determined therefore to examine in detail what they had written on this subject, and to render into English numerous extracts from their writings, that people generally might read the Fathers' own words, and then judge for themselves.
For myself, endeavouring to be as impartial as possible, I have formed the clear conviction, that, saving a very few differences on points of lesser moment, the Fathers of the first six centuries unanimously held Our Blessed Lady in the same high appreciation, as she has been held in by Catholics of all subsequent ages; and that everything that the Church has at any time defined or sanctioned with regard to her privileges and the honour that is her due — together with all that saints and theologians of medieval and modern days have uttered in her praise — is to be found substantially, and at least in principle or germ, in the writings of the great Fathers and Doctors both of East and West, from the age of S. Justin the Martyr to that of S. Gregory the Great. Nay more, it will appear from passages which I quote from their writings, that many of the Fathers within that period were so explicit and profuse in their eulogies of the holy Mother of God, that they have left little for those who came after them to do, but to repeat their own words, and re-echo their praise.
It is to make this truth better known, and so to win some glory for the Virgin Mother, and to gain an increase of devotion to her from English-speaking people, whether Catholic or otherwise, that I have undertaken the task of translating so many passages in testimony of her greatness from the writings of the earlier Greek and Latin Fathers. For whatever value may be attached to this work is due entirely to the numerous patristic extracts which it contains. It has not been my general aim in it to prove or expound the various points of Catholic doctrine regarding Our Lady, which form the subject-matter of the several Chapters; but rather simply to show what were the views and teachings of the Fathers on them, and to produce their own words in witness. Hence the quotations from the Fathers should be looked upon as the principal part of this work, and what I have written of my own as but accessory, and intended to indicate and explain the drift of the patristic passages gathered under the separate headings. This takes the form of short Prolegomena. A few exceptions are made to this rule, in cases where a particular subject seemed to me to demand a larger treatment. These are the Chapters on Mary the Second Eve, on Intercession and Invocation, and on Our Lady's Assumption. The Introductory Chapters on Doctrinal Development also appeared to me necessary, in order to form a right and adequate view of patristic teaching on the Blessed Virgin during so long a period as the first six centuries.
The passages are generally appended to their several Chapters in the Chronological order of the writers.⁵ As many of them are of considerable length, and given with their full context, they will be sometimes found to contain, besides what is directly pertinent to the subject in hand, matters relating to the Blessed Virgin which more fitly belong to some other Chapter. This was unavoidable: for I often judged it better to present passages to the reader in their entirety, with their whole force and beauty, rather than in a curtailed and piecemeal form; and to refer to whatever was extraneous at the proper place.⁶
The edition which I have generally used is Migne's Patrologiae. My rule has been to give a very literal rather than fluent rendering of the original. This may be thought to have been carried sometimes to excess. I have, however, been led to aim at literalness at the expense of elegance, from the danger I constantly feel there is, especially in cases where the Author's meaning is obscure, or his words admit of more senses than one — and this is of frequent occurrence in the writings of the Fathers — lest a translator who aims much at fluency, should attach to a passage his own sense or colouring, and thus misrepresent the Author's mind, or at any rate deprive the reader of judging himself as to the signification of the original. In some few cases I have availed myself of others' translations.
With regard to the Syriac writings of S. Ephrem, I have followed implicitly the English translation of the Rev. J. B. Morris, and the Latin rendering of Canon Lamy. Whatever other extracts I have given from the Saint, that are not contained in their volumes, have been taken from the Roman edition published under Benedict XIV.
I have to acknowledge my obligation to several modern authors from whose works I have made copious extracts, and especially to learned writers in the Dublin Review, to whose articles on Development of doctrine and the Blessed Virgin I have sometimes been more indebted than appears from my direct quotations.
It will be seen that I have gathered in my pages not a few passages very similar to one another in sentiment and expression. This I have not done without design: since the very reiteration of the same praises of Mary from various parts of Christendom during so long a period is of itself a strong argument in favour of our general thesis, showing as it does, that the Fathers of the first six centuries had in common but one and the same appreciation of the great Mother of God; and also what in the mind of the early Church, and in the devotion of the faithful, was the place of her, concerning whom such things were continually being written.
Though my collection is a large one, and by some may be deemed cumbersome and excessive, it is by no means exhaustive. I have passed over many pages in the Fathers, where it appeared to me that there was nothing new, and which had not been said elsewhere; and very probably several important, and perhaps well-known, passages have escaped my notice. Moreover the recent discoveries of manuscripts of long-lost works of the Fathers lead us to expect with hope that many more hidden treasures will ere long be brought again to light, and that thus plentiful gleanings still remain for a yet richer harvest to Our Lady's praise.
S. Joseph's, Teignmouth,
Feast of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, 1893,
The Day of the Solemn Renewal of England's Dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to S. Peter, Prince of the Apostles.
Footnotes
1. "Even on so fundamental a dogma as the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, S. Gregory Nazianzen says: 'The New Testament did but obscurely indicate the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. . . . For it was not safe . . . when the Son's Divinity was not yet (clearly) admitted, that the Holy Ghost should be imposed on us as a sort of heavy burden, so to speak.' Petavius quotes to the same effect S. Epiphanius, S. Augustine, S. Chrysostom, and other Fathers." Dublin Review, April, 1876, p. 294.
2. Although all early Christian writers conspicuous for their learning or antiquity, as v.g. Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Lactantius and Eusebius, are commonly called Holy Fathers, yet properly speaking, those only can claim the title who have been approved as such by the Church, and whom she has declared to be genuine and well-qualified witnesses, teachers, and judges, from their erudition and sanctity, of her doctrine as handed down to her from Christ and His Apostles. The other early authors are more properly called Christian or ecclesiastical writers.
3. "We must regard it," says Fr. Perrone, "as having happened, not without a special Providence, that very many (plurima) truths do but lie hid implexly and adumbratively in the revealed word: viz., in order that the faithful might thence more feel the necessity of the Church's living and infallible magisterium." Treatise on the definableness of the Immac. Conception of the B. V. M. Part ii., ch. i.
4. See Fessler, Institutiones Patrologiae. Ed. Jungmann. Tom. i., pp. 35-47.
5. Except in the Chapter on Scriptural Exegesis, where in the Old Testament the Biblical order is kept, and in the New that of certain mysteries and events of Our Lord's Life. It will be observed that I have taken the term, Exegesis, in a very wide sense.
6. In the Index at the end of the volume, reference is given under various headings to the pages where particular matters find mention throughout the work.
Contents
Introductory Chapters on Doctrinal Development
Chapter I. General Notions.
Accretive or Objective, and Non-Accretive or Subjective Development. Revealed Truths of the Substance of Faith, and Accessory to its Substance. Explicit and Implicit Faith.
Chapter II. Doctrinal Development (Continued).
The Christian Revelation was given once for all to the Apostles exclusively. All subsequent developments are non-accretive, and contained in the original Deposit.
Appendix: S. Vincent of Lerins; B. Thomas More.
Chapter III. Doctrinal Development (Continued).
Causes of Development of Christian Doctrine in the Church.
Chapter IV. Doctrinal Development (Continued).
Its Process examined.
Appendix: From Rev. J. B. Morris.
The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries
Chapter I.
The Primitive Patristic Idea of Mary as the Second Eve.
Chapter II. The Blessed Virgin in the Scriptural Exegesis of the Fathers of the First Six Centuries.
Prolegomena.
Part I. The Old Testament.
Part II. The New Testament.
§ 1. The Annunciation and Incarnation.
§ 2. The Visitation.
§ 3. The Purification, and Presentation in the Temple.
§ 4. Egypt — The Finding in the Temple — Nazareth.
§ 5. The Marriage Feast at Cana — John ii. 1-11.
§ 6. Mary on Calvary.
§ 7. Mary at the Resurrection.
§ 8. Exegesis on some other passages of the New Testament.
§ 9. Some doctrinal passages.
Chapter III. The Dignity and Sanctity of the Blessed Virgin.
Habitual Grace and Holiness.
Chapter IV. The Sanctity of the Blessed Virgin (Continued). Mary's entire Sinlessness.
Some explanatory Notes. — Appendix.
Chapter V. The Sanctity of the Blessed Virgin (Continued). Mary's acquired Sanctity, Practice of Virtues, Holy Virginity.
Chapter VI. The Blessed Virgin and the Church.
Chapter VII. Intercession and Invocation.
Chapter VIII. Examples of Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the Saints — of invoking them — and of miracles and graces obtained through their Intercession.
Chapter IX. The Assumption.
Appendix: 1. Poem of S. Fortunatus. 2. From S. John Damascene. 3. From the Epistle, under S. Jerome's name, on the Assumption. 4. From the Chronicle of Eusebius. 5. From S. Willibald. 6. Apocryphal Writings.
Chapter X. Devotional.
The Blessed Virgin's place in the Christian life, and as our spiritual Mother.
Chapter XI. Hymns of S. Ephrem.
Prolegomena. — The Feasts of the Annunciation and Purification.
Hymns.
Chapter XII. Hymns and Poems.
Chapter XIII. An Æthiopic Hymn.
Index of Subjects.
Index of Authors.
[Note from The Catacombs - It is our understanding that a formal imprimatur/nihil obstat as a standard requirement for all Catholic books came with the 1917 Code of Canon Law. Before that, many works — especially ones like this, carrying a cardinal’s own dedication and preface, which functioned as a form of implicit episcopal endorsement — were published without a separate censorship notice.]
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| Proving the Impossibilty of Theistic Evolution - Paula Haigh |
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Posted by: Stone - 1 hour ago - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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Outline of Thomistic Principles On Creation: Proving Impossibility of Theistic Evolution1
by Paula Haigh
The Church has taught in ancient, medieval and modern times that God and God alone has created. Some examples of this teaching:
Quote:If anyone does not say that the Father made all things through the Son and His Holy Spirit, that is, the visible and the invisible, he is a heretic.2
If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing... let him be anathema.3
It was Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who most fully elaborated the theological and metaphysical principles that support the above doctrinal pronouncements of the Church. It is no exaggeration to assert that every explanation of Creation by God that is not in agreement with these Thomistic principles is in error. The fact can be seen clearly when certain basic ideas are grasped.
First of all, it is well to understand what Saint Thomas means by the analogy of being. Being, or existence, is what God is, absolutely, but what all creatures only have from Him. Saint Thomas says that to exist is God's very essence or nature. We creatures possess an essence, which is expressed logically in a definition. Thus, man is a rational animal. But our existence is what makes us to be actual, what makes us to be and to be this specific individual person or thing. God is all Act, all actuality, all being; but we and all creatures have our existence from God, and it is an essence or nature that is thus given existence. All creatures are thus a mixture or composite of essence and existence; whereas God is all Being and admits of no such imperfect mixture. The mixture of essence or potency and act is, by its nature, limiting and limited, imperfect. But there can be no such imperfection in God.
The fact that we have our existence from God constitutes the relation of creation. This relation of creation is only in us, the creature, and is not in God the Creator because He is absolutely self-sufficient, self-existing, and depends upon nothing. Thus God as our Creator is utterly transcendent. The relation of creation or our absolute dependence upon God for existence is confused by many philosophers today (most notably Paul Tillich) with Creation itself, with the Creation of the universe that took place "in the beginning." Thus it is necessary to have a very clear appreciation of what it means for God to create.
Only God can create because to create is to bring into total being, that is, to bring into being the whole substance, the entire creature, from nothing (ex nihilo). Ex nihilo simply means from no pre-existing being. The best possible expression of God's Creative Action is to be found in the First Chapter of Genesis. There the Creation of the universe is reduced to certain specific Acts on God's part that correspond to the kinds of creatures brought into being in the first six days of the world. It is to be noted, too, that time itself is a creature, having come into existence or begun, with the first material or corporeal being. Time is, indeed, as Aristotle defined it, the measure of motion and cannot exist apart from some corporeal being in space and in motion. It is thus impossible, in a true cosmology, to conceive of a separation of time from beings in motion or from the space in which they live and move. Einstein's system is fantasy and was made-to~order for the literature of science fiction which builds its other worlds upon this false cosmology.
God's Act of Creation, or as in Genesis 1, His multiple Acts of Creation according to the creatures brought into existence on the different successive days of the first week of the world, is an Act and not a process. It is most important to distinguish carefully between God's Act of Creation or His Creative Activity and any kind of process, because all processes, as Dr. Henry Morris has pointed out, are decayings or un-doings, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. After the conception of a new individual, even the process of cell division by which the animal or human zygote grows into an embryo and is finally born, even this process of coming to a certain state, is ruled by the Second Law written into the DNA code; and biologically all corporeal beings begin to die as soon as they are conceived.
The difference between the human zygote and the animal zygote is worth noting in this context of Creation. The life principle of plants and animals inheres in the material of the DNA code and is passed on by generation not requiring a special act of creation by God. But the human soul is a spiritual immortal substance and as such can only be created directly and immediately for each human person by God Himself. This creation of the human soul which immediately, at conception, informs the zygote and causes it to be a human being, is well illustrative of God's Act of Creation over and against the process of growth, development, aging and dying that leads to biological extinction. The generative and degenerative processes of growth and dying constitute what Saint Thomas terms the order of generation as opposed to the order of creation. The entire order of creation or the universe, the whole natural order which was brought into existence "In the Beginning" with time itself, came to be not by any kind of process but by God's a-temporal Fiat. Processes belong to generation and degeneration, not to Creation.
God did not create from all eternity, however, nor is He creating now except for human souls. Even though His Act of Creation is identical with Himself because He is absolutely simple and contains no potencies, still His Act of Creation, this Act of God's Will, resulted in creatures. The effect of God's creating Will must not be confused or identified in any way with God's Nature. God infinitely transcends all of His creatures and the relation of creation is not in God but in the creatures only. This distinction which is a most real one, is necessary to grasp in order to avoid Pantheism.
The immanence which modern philosophers and theologians so ardently desire is to be found in the relation of creation, in the fact of our absolute dependence upon God for our existence every moment of time. Our being is from Him alone and thus Saint Paul said: "In Him we live and move and have our being." This is in the purely natural order. In the supernatural order of Grace, the Divine intimacy is even more marvelous, and beyond our power to understand. The Grace of God can only be answered with love.
Essence or Nature is the area of secondary or instrumental causality. In the order of generation, creatures give rise to creatures of their own nature and essence; like produces like, in obedience to God's command in Genesis I that every creature reproduce "according to its kind." Saint Thomas says that each creature causes or effects "what is proper to itself." But that any creature should produce something greater, of a higher order of being than itself, which would amount to creating, such hypotheses are absurd and against all the observed laws of nature, of logic, and of Grace. Even Grace only perfects human nature; it does not elevate it to something higher than human nature. Man will never become an angel nor even a "super-man". Should he aspire to be such, he will fulfill the promises of Satan (Genesis 3) rather than the Promises of our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ. The "new man" spoken of by Saint Paul is man conformed to Christ through Divine Grace.
And yet, this is what the theistic evolutionists are telling us to believe and to do! They would have us believe that all beings evolve and have evolved from lower to higher planes of being. This is against both reason and Faith.
Saint Thomas says that matter cannot exist without form, and the form of every creature, of every being, limits and defines its created nature or essence, essence being the principle of potency and limitation as well as of individuation. But if each creature is limited, as it is, by its created essence or nature, according to Genesis 1, then no creature can produce something of which it is not capable, something the potency for which it simply does not possess within itself. It is thus metaphysically, which is to say, philosophically impossible for a sea-creature to give rise to a land-creature, no matter how much time it be allowed, or for an animal to issue into a human being.
The question of time is somewhat irrelevant here, for if the potency were within the creature to evolve into something higher, then it could be done in six or six hundred as well as in six hundred million or billions of years. Nor is the question of life from non-life of any greater import than that of the bird from the dinosaur or that of the man from the ape, or that of the amphibian from the lung-fish. The question that must be asked first of all is this: on the side of reason, is the nature of the being capable of producing something that is not in its nature; and from the side of Biblical Faith, is evolution of any kind, theistic or otherwise, in accordance with Scripture and the teaching of the Church?
In both cases, of course, the answer is a definite NO. Evolution makes of Creation a process; it reduces the Order of Creation by God to the Order of Generation by Secondary Causes, thus placing the Creative Power itself within nature. And this is Pantheism. This heresy of Pantheism, and thus of Evolutionism, militates against and is destructive of the Truth of Faith.
The words of Saint Thomas about instrumental causes are relevant here:
Quote:The proper effect of God creating is what is presupposed to all other effects, and that is Absolute Being (Existence).
In other words, the entire natural order is presupposed to all other talk of creating and/or producing.
Quote:Hence, nothing else can act dispositively and instrumentally in this effect, since creation is not from anything presupposed which can be disposed by the action of the instrumental or secondary agent.
So therefore, it is impossible for any creature to create, either by its own power, or instrumentally, that is, ministerially.
No created being can cause anything unless something is presupposed; which is against the very idea of creation.4
Evolution presupposes that nature possesses truly creative power and has thereby given rise to the entire created order that we observe; which presupposition is blasphemous, an insult to God's unique and supreme creative power. It is also absurd to our God-given reason, God's great gift, with His Grace, to man. Even Divine Grace in us presupposes the created human soul.
Neither is Creation by God rightly termed a miracle since all miracles, whether physical or spiritual, presuppose the natural order of Creation with all its laws and processes.
Endnotes
1 Originally published in Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1979, pp.210-211. Slightly revised March 1979.
2 The Council of Rome (382 A.D.). See Defarrari, Roy J., 1957, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, translation of Henry Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum, B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis & London.
3 Lateran Council IV (1215 A.D.) and Vatican Council I (1870 A.D.). See Denzinger 428 & 1905.
4 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 45, Article 5. The topic of Creation is discussed also in Questions 45-67 & 65-74. Related Questions include 92 on the production of women and 95-102 on the State of Innocence and the Garden of Paradise.
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| The Sect of the Gnostics at the Origin of Freemasonry |
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Posted by: Stone - 1 hour ago - Forum: Resources Online
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The Sect of the Gnostics at the Origin of Freemasonry
Taken from here.
Freemasonry is the modern form of anti-Christianity as it has shown itself from the beginning of the Church and developed in the course of centuries. That it can be related in some ways beyond the Christian era to pagan naturalism, rites and symbols used in the mysteries of the East, Greece and ancient Rome, is a filiation to which we do not want to contradict, leaving the scholars to appreciate the value of these connections.
By the mysterious forms in which she delights, by the secrets she imposes on her adepts, by the ceremonies that accompany her initiations, Freemasonry in fact recalls those secret associations in which the pagan worship of nature sought a veil for his theories and even more for his practices.
No one is unaware, on the other hand, that to give an air of high antiquity, by putting on its doctrines a biblical tint, Freemasonry has woven a whole network of legends and fables that would tend to recede its origins until the construction of the temple of Solomon, through descendants whose history would have completely lost track.
Vain efforts to conceal the anti-Christian character of the sect! It is to other sources that we must go back, when or wants to look for how it could be formed in the Christian world and develop in the Middle Ages an occult society having no other goal than the destruction of the Catholic Church and consequently the doctrine of all Christianity.
This obscure, dark society, which operates in secrecy and mystery against the Catholic Church, its doctrine and its institutions, to restore pagan naturalism in new forms, we find it, Our Very Dear Brothers, from the beginning of the Christian era: it is called the sect of the Gnostics. And it is not only we who point out the perfect analogy between the beliefs, rites and usages of Gnosticism and those of Freemasonry. We only reproduce the confessions of the most accredited writers of the sect that Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII has just condemned following his august predecessors.
Yes, from the very beginning of the Church, we see in the shadows, in opposition to its dogmas, the formation of anti-Christian groups professing most of the ideas of modern Freemasonry: the confusion of God and world under the name of universal nature, denial of the deity of Jesus Christ degraded to the rank of lawmakers and philosophers of antiquity, monopoly of science attributed to a small number of initiates with regard to the faith of Christians treated ignorance and superstition, on the one hand men who aspire to light and on the other those who remain plunged in darkness, all this language and all these claims, with rites and symbols of equal value, we find them in the conventicles of Gnosis as in the Masonic lodges, so that one could say, without abusing the connection, that the Gnostics were Freemasons of the first three centuries of the Church.
- Bishop Freppel - Pastoral Instruction on Freemasonry (1885)
[emphasis in the original]
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| Study of St. Thomas Aquinas as Remedy against Modernism |
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Posted by: Stone - 1 hour ago - Forum: Encyclicals
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Quote:"It is well known," Leo XIII said, "that there have not been wanting heresiarchs who openly said that, if the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas could only be got rid of, they could easily give battle to other Catholic Doctors and overcome them, and so scatter the Church."
Carol Robinson, My Life with Thomas Aquinas, Angelus Press, 1995, p. 12
From Pascendi:
Quote:[...]
REMEDIES
44. Against this host of grave errors, and its secret and open advance, Our Predecessor Leo XIII., of happy memory, worked strenuously especially as regards the Bible, both in his words and his acts. But, as we have seen, the Modernists are not easily deterred by such weapons – with an affectation of submission and respect, they proceeded to twist the words of the Pontiff to their own sense, and his acts they described as directed against others than themselves. And the evil has gone on increasing from day to day. We therefore, Venerable Brethren, have determined to adopt at once the most efficacious measures in Our power, and We beg and conjure you to see to it that in this most grave matter nobody will ever be able to say that you have been in the slightest degree wanting in vigilance, zeal or firmness. And what We ask of you and expect of you, We ask and expect also of all other pastors of souls, of all educators and professors of clerics, and in a very special way of the superiors of religious institutions.
I. – The Study of Scholastic Philosophy
45. In the first place, with regard to studies, We will and ordain that scholastic philosophy be made the basis of the sacred sciences. It goes without saying that if anything is met with among the scholastic doctors which may be regarded as an excess of subtlety, or which is altogether destitute of probability, We have no desire whatever to propose it for the imitation of present generations (Leo XIII. Enc. Aeterni Patris). And let it be clearly understood above all things that the scholastic philosophy We prescribe is that which the Angelic Doctor has bequeathed to us, and We, therefore, declare that all the ordinances of Our Predecessor on this subject continue fully in force, and, as far as may be necessary, We do decree anew, and confirm, and ordain that they be by all strictly observed. In seminaries where they may have been neglected let the Bishops impose them and require their observance, and let this apply also to the Superiors of religious institutions. Further let Professors remember that they cannot set St. Thomas aside, especially in metaphysical questions, without grave detriment.
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| Pope Leo gives top post to feminist who supports gay blessings |
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Posted by: Stone - Yesterday, 12:30 PM - Forum: Pope Leo XIV
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Pope Leo gives top post to feminist who supports gay blessings
Claudia Leal Luna criticized the Vatican's 2021 ruling against blessings for gay unions,
arguing that Catholic sexual morality needs to take 'some steps.'
Nov 6, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV has named Chilean theologian Claudia Leal Luna as undersecretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, placing a vocal critic of the Church’s 2021 rejection of blessings for homosexual unions in a senior Vatican post.
The appointment, announced on Thursday, pairs Leal with Jesuit Father Avelino Chicoma Bundo Chico. Vatican News and the dicastery’s own announcement confirm that Leal, born December 12, 1977, holds a law degree from the University of Chile and a doctorate in moral theology from Rome’s Alphonsian Academy.
Leal’s record on sexual morality has drawn scrutiny, especially concerning her criticism of the Vatican’s traditional position against same-sex union blessings, following the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2021 Responsum stating that the Church considers such blessings “illicit.”
Just days following the release, in a March 17, 2021, interview with Radio Universidad de Chile she countered that the “sexual morality of the Christian tradition still needs to take some steps.”
She called the document’s anthropology “somewhat taxidermic” and objected to its distinction between blessing persons with homosexual inclinations and blessing their relationships.
A personalist approach, she argued, would treat relationships as “constitutive of what we are as persons.” The Responsum, approved by Pope Francis, reaffirmed that God “does not and cannot bless sin” while distinguishing the person from acts the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes as “intrinsically disordered.”
Her 2022 essay “La recepción de Amoris Laetitia en Chile” records further disappointment that Pope Francis’s 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia had not gone far enough. She wrote that the papal letter produced “no innovation whatsoever with regard to the situation of sexual diversities in the ecclesial community.”
Invoking the law of gradualness, she stated that “the good is not the same for everyone” and credited Amoris laetitia with giving “legitimacy to an important group of ‘Pastorales de la Diversidad Sexual,’” i.e., groups that serve those with “dissident sexual identities.”
The same essay notes that the document opened space for Catholic women to examine “the compatibility between Christianity and feminism,” citing Pope Francis’s affirmation that he “values feminism.”
Leal has also identified herself as a feminist without qualification. In a December 23, 2021, interview with El Dínamo, she said: “Anyone who has studied social ethics cannot refuse the cause of feminism. A society where women have the same rights and opportunities as men is a happier world.”
She welcomed political focus on gender equality and “the rights of LGBT+ groups,” recounting that her “hair stood on end” at the inclusive address of Chile’s constitutional convention president Elisa Loncon. She teaches a course on “Sexuality in the Christian tradition” that, in her words, demonstrates the tradition is “much less monolithic than people think.”
Leal taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile from 2012 to 2022 and has served since 2022 as full professor of fundamental theology of the family at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences. She is already a consultor at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and was appointed to the International Theological Commission on October 19, only two weeks prior to this present appointment.
InfoVaticana has highlighted these statements in its coverage of both the October International Theological Commission appointment and the new undersecretary role, noting the absence of any public retraction of her 2021 remarks.
In a statement released by the dicastery, Leal said she received the new post “with gratitude to the Holy Father Leo XIV for the trust he has placed in me” and observed that “every border I have crossed has confirmed for me that human development always has a face and a name, and that no one is a stranger in the Church.”
She entrusted the role to Pope St. John XXIII, asking that he teach her “to serve with his gentleness and trust, in the Church that he wanted to be a Church for all.”
The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, under Prefect Sister Alessandra Smerilli and Pro-Prefect Cardinal Fabio Baggio, addresses migration, care for creation, and related issues of human development. Father Chicoma Bundo Chico, the co-appointee, brings experience in migration policy and described his role in terms of “presence, commitment, and witness.”
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| Vatican promotes climate agenda with Lenten ‘carbon fast’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2026, 08:56 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Vatican promotes climate agenda with Lenten ‘carbon fast’
Vatican officials promoted a 40-day 'carbon fast' during Lent while unveiling plans to utilize AI to monitor global parish eco-commitments.
Nov 5, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Holy See celebrated the expansion of its global ecological platform by showcasing artificial intelligence surveillance tools and promoting an eco-substitute for Lenten penance, urging faithful to replace traditional mortification with a “carbon fast.”
On November 4, the Holy See Press Office hosted a press conference to mark the fifth anniversary of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform (LSAP), a digital framework launched by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Officials announced that over 6,200 Catholic institutions and 13,000 participants enrolled in the centralized system, unveiling a strategic plan for the next five years that integrates a planetary “Digital Atlas” tracking climate data, artificial intelligence algorithms to inspect and verify institutional compliance, and a global network of online “Digital Missionaries.”
“During Lent, we often ask ourselves a familiar question: What am I willing to give up? Perhaps a favorite food, a small comfort, or something that has become too important in our daily lives. Some years ago, in the Archdiocese of Bombay, we began asking another question alongside it: What if our fasting could also teach us to care more deeply for creation? We encouraged what we called a carbon fast. It invited people to examine ordinary choices: the electricity we consume, the water we use, the plastic we discard,” Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Allwyn D’Silva of the Archdiocese of Bombay, India, stated.
“A carbon fast lasts forty days. But the decisions our institutions make can shape people’s lives for decades. If our faith can change what we choose for forty days, why should it not change what our institutions choose for the next forty years?” he continued.
“Ten years are not many in the life of the Church, but they are enough to ask what happens when an Encyclical takes root,” Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said in reference to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’. “I think of the Mass for the Care of Creation, approved by Pope Leo XIV and inserted into the Roman Missal…. Living the vocation to be protectors of God’s handwork is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”
In Traditional Catholic theology, the season of Lent is a sacred time of bodily mortification, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving undertaken to crucify the passions of the flesh, atone for personal sins, and unite the believer with the redemptive Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Program Director Alonso de Llanes announced that the system will monitor participating Catholic institutions worldwide under the “Digital Atlas of Laudato Si’.” The apparatus utilizes an interactive surveillance map that cross-references participating parishes, schools, and monasteries with satellite data on regional carbon emissions, deforestation rates, and extreme weather.
“Let me explain what visitors can do,” Llanes said. “Open the Atlas and select a country or diocese. You can locate participating Catholic institutions and, where they have given permission, view their ecological plans and reflections.”
Llanes then confirmed that the Vatican is preparing AI mechanisms to verify whether Catholic institutions are carrying out their environmental plans, alongside an annual workshop examining AI algorithms: “Through the Atlas, we are bringing together three kinds of information in a single tool: where participating Catholic institutions are present, what their communities are doing, and what environmental data tells us about the places they inhabit.”
“We also want to improve how we evaluate progress,” de Llanes explained. “If an institution reports planting trees, can we learn whether those trees survived? If it adopts an ecological plan, can we understand whether that commitment has changed its decisions or operations? These questions require better data, follow-up, and appropriate verification.”
To enforce this agenda across the digital sphere, the Vatican also instituted a “Digital Missionaries Bootcamp” to deploy trained online activists.
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| Fr. Faber: Meditation on the Sacraments |
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Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2026, 08:51 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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There is something almost indiscriminate in the generosity of the Precious Blood. It appears not to regard the probabilities of its being used, or appreciated, or welcomed. It goes in floods through the seven mighty channels of the sacraments. It lies like a superincumbent ocean of sanctifying grace over the Church.
Truly, the sacraments are an invention of love, yet are thy not also as truly a necessity for our salvation? Would not the divine assurance of our salvation be a very heaven begun on earth? Yet the Sacraments are the nearest approach to such an assurance as the love of our Heavenly Father saw to be expedient for the multitude of His children.
Let us see now the means by which the Precious Blood spreads its empire. These means are the sacraments. It is difficult to describe the sacraments. If an angel were to bear us from this globe which we inhabit and carry us to some distant star, which God may have adorned as a dwelling-place for some other species of reasonable creatures, we should be struck with the novelty and peculiarity of the scenery around us. Some of its features might remind us of the scenery of earth, although with characteristic differences, while other features would be entirely new. This is very much the effect produced upon us when we come to learn the Catholic doctrine about the sacraments. It introduces us into a new world. It amounts to a revelation. The sacraments are a part of the new world introduced into creation by the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, and therefore are an essential part of creation as it was eternally preordained by God. Yet they are quite distinct from any other province in creation. The sacraments of the Old Law were but shadows of the sacraments of the Gospel. The sacraments of the New Law are created things which have been devised by our Blessed Lord Himself. The Eucharist was foreshadowed by the Paschal Lamb; the sacrament of Holy Orders by the consecration of priests and Penance by the legal purification of the tabernacle.
There was no shadow of Confirmation because it is the sacrament of the fullness of grace, and so can belong only to the Gospel dispensation. Neither was there any shadow of Extreme Unction because it is the immediate preparation for the entrance of the soul into glory and there was no entrance into glory for any human soul till Jesus had risen and ascended. Neither could Matrimony be a sacrament under the Old Law, because the Word had not yet wedded our human nature; and the sacramentality of Marriage consists in its being the figure of those transcendent nuptials of the Sacred Humanity.
What then shall we call these sacraments? They are not persons, yet they scarcely seem to be things. I mean that they seem to be more than things. We want another word for them, another name, and we cannot find one. They are powers, lives, shrines, marvels, centers of heavenly power, supernatural magnficences, engraftings of heaven upon earth, fountains of grace, mysterious efficacies, marriages of matter and spirit, beautiful complications of God and man. Each sacrament is a species by itself. Each has some specialty, which is at once its excellence and its mystery. The pre-eminence of Baptism consists in its remission of original sin and the pains due to it. The pre-eminence of Confirmation resides in the vastness of the succors of actual grace which it brings with it, as we see in the fortitude it conferred on the Apostles and which the Eucharist had not conferred. The sacrament of Penance can claim the privilege of the most necessary of all sacraments to those who have been baptized, and of the capability of reiterated remission of mortal sin, which Baptism cannot claim. Extreme Unction excels Penance in the great copiousness of its graces. The excellence of Orders consists in its placing men in the singularly sublime state of being domestic ministers of Christ. Matrimony has a glory of its own in its significance of the union of our Lord with His Church. The preeminence of the Eucharist resides, as St. Thomas says, in the very substance of the sacrament, seeing that it is as it were the sacrament of all the other sacraments, the center of them, the cause of them, the end of them, and the harmony of them. All are because of it and are subordinate to its amazing supremacy.
These sacraments were designed by our Lord Himself and were instituted by Him with varying degrees of details as to matter and form in various sacraments; and yet, saving their substances, He has given His Church very extensive power over them, because they are so intimately connected with its unity. We see the exercise of this power in the bread of the Eucharist, in the impediments of marriage, and in the varieties of Orders in the Latin and Greek Churches. The sacraments are institutions that illustrate at once the magnificence of God’s dominion over His creation, and also the capability of creatures to be elevated by Him to astonishing sublimities far beyond the merit and due of nature; and this elevability of creatures is one of the most glorious manifestations of the liberty of God.
The sacraments are not mere signs of grace, but causes of it. They cause grace in us physically by the omnipotence of God which exists in them as if it were their own proper virtue and energy. The sacraments cause grace physically, just as our Lord’s Blood, shed long ago, cleanses us from our sins physically, not morally only, and just as His Resurrection and Ascension cause our resurrection and ascension physically, by the energy and a force which God has appropriated to them. The sacraments also cause grace in us morally, by representing to the Father the merits of Christ’s Passion actually accomplished and so doing a sort of holy and irresistible violence to God, and thereby procuring for us more abundant, and at the same time, very special succors of grace…
But the sacraments not only confer a sanctifying grace and infuse habits of virtue, both physically and morally, they also confer a certain special sacramental grace which is peculiar and distinct in each sacrament. Moreover, it belongs to the grace of the sacraments that certain of them impress what is called a character or seal on the soul. The nature of this character is involved in mystery; but the most probable interpretation of it is that which describes it as a natural similitude of the soul of Jesus, likening our souls to His, and imparting hiddenly to our souls a resemblance of His, hidden in this life, but to be divulged with exceeding glory hereafter. This is a beautiful thought and fills us full of a peculiar love for the dear human soul of Jesus. Our clearest idea of the Sacraments is that which we gain form Hugh St. Victor and the elder theologians: they are the making visible of invisible grace…The sacraments are the actions of Christ. He instituted them as Man and thus they are the going-on of the thirty-three years upon earth…
The sacraments are the most striking memorials of the love of Jesus and a knowledge of them is most necessary to the right understanding of redemption…They are the inventions of God. No creature could have devised them. I do not believe that without revelation the most magnificent intelligence of angels could have imagined such a thing as a sacrament. It is a peculiar idea of God. It represents a combination of His most wonderful perfections… It conveys to us a distinctive notion of God. We already know God as the unbeginning God. We know Him as the God of nature and the God of grace. These are two different disclosures of Him to us. So the knowledge of Him as the God who devised the sacraments is another disclosure of Him. Moreover, God not only invented them but He invented them for the most magnificent of purposes. He invented them that by their means especially He might impart His Divine Nature to created natures, that He might justify sinners, that He might sanctify souls that he might unite to Himself the race whose nature He had condescended to single out and assume to Himself. If they are His own invention they must be works of unspeakable excellence; but if they were meant also for purposes so dear to Him, and of such an exalted character, who shall be able rightly to imagine the excellence of the sacraments?
The character which some of the sacraments confer also belongs to their grace. Amid the ardors of heaven and in the dazzling splendors of the Beatific Vision, the inexplicable characters of the sacraments, three in number, as if adumbrating the Three Divine Persons, shine forth as distinct beauties and brighten through all eternity. The character of Baptism is, as it were, the finger-mark of the Eternal Father on the soul. The character of Orders glistens like the unfailing unction of the priesthood of the Eternal Son. The character of Confirmation is the deep mark which the fires of the Holy Ghost burned in, the pressure of His tremendous fortitude which was laid upon us and yet we perished not, so tenderly and so gently did He touch us. In the wild fury of the tempestuous fires of hell the same characters glow terribly. They are indestructible even there, fiery shames, intolerable disgraces, distinct fountains of special agony forever and forever…
Now, look out upon the great laboring world, the world of human actions and endurances; it is not possible to measure the influence which is being exercised upon the world at this moment by the sacraments. They are penetrating the great mass of mankind like the network of veins and arteries in a living body. They are being the causes of millions of actions, and they are hindering the consequences of millions of other actions. They are weaving good and unweaving evil incessantly. The influence of a single reception of a sacrament may be handed down for generations; and the making of destinies of thousands may be in its hands., At this instant, by far the greatest amount of the earth’s intercourse with heaven is carried on directly, or indirectly though the sacraments. There is a vast wild world of sorrow upon earth. But over great regions of it the sacraments are distilling dews of heavenly peace….They are drying the widow’s tears, raising up unexpected benefactors for the orphan, nerving the pusillanimous, softening the desperate, rousing the torpid, crowning those who strive, and doing all things for those who die….
Moreover, a devotion to the sacraments is very needful for the times in which we live. The spirit of the age must necessarily affect both our theology and our asceticism. Under its constraints we shall be tempted to sacrifice the supernatural to the natural, the passive to the active, and the infused to the acquired. Theology will be allured to merge into metaphysics. Devotion will be considered a vocation, priests a caste, and theology a private professional training. Men will sneer at perfection in the world. Education will be bidden to throw off what it will be taught to consider the last relics of monastic trammels. Men will chafe at the condemnation of books and indeed at all acts of intellectual authority on the part of the Church. A discontent with the existing Church, or at least a want of cordial forward sympathy with it, will grow up. The sovereignty of the Church, the Pope’s temporal power, and the hallowed truths enshrined in canon law will provoke impatience as obstinate things which will not die although their hour of death has come. The mystical side of the Gospel will become more distasteful while it grows less intelligible. Heroism will have to rank lower than the ordinary attainments of conscientious piety. The privileges of the Church will be less esteemed and heresy less hated. The influence of the Incarnation will be far less recognized and acknowledged in the world. Such is the spirit which will try to waylay souls on their road to Calvary or Thabor. Such, by the blessing of God, will not be ours, if we foster in ourselves a deep, a tender, and an intelligent devotion to the
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| Fr. Michael Muller [1880]: How Catholics lose the Faith |
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Posted by: Stone - 11-05-2026, 08:48 AM - Forum: Articles by Catholic authors
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1. By going to schools forbidden by the Church;
2. by the neglect of their religious duties;
3. by the reading of bad books;
4. by worldliness and a wicked life;
5. by intercourse with scoffers at religion;
6. by mixed marriages;
7. by becoming members of secret societies;
8. by pride and subtle reasoning on the mysteries of religion.
1. There are different causes which lead to apostasy from the faith to infidelity. The most successful means ever employed by Satan to bring about gradually a universal falling-away from Christ and His religion, is the introduction of the present system of public, or state-school, education. This I have sufficiently shown in my book, "Public School Education." In these schools no mention of God and religion is to be made. The best means to abolish religion is not to teach any. Children are to be brought up infidels. But there are some who assert that "there is no sectarian teaching in the public schools, and, consequently, a Catholic may send his children to them without exposing them to any danger." Now, even supposing there really was no sectarian teaching in the common schools, even then a Catholic parent cannot send his children to such a school without exposing them to the greatest danger. Those who approve of the public school, because nothing sectarian is taught there, act like a certain husbandman who wished to transplant a fine young tree to a certain part of his garden. On examining the new place, however, he found that the ground was filled with poisonous ingredients, which would greatly endanger the life of the tree. He therefore transplanted the tree to a sandy hill, where there were, indeed, no poisonous ingredients, but where there was also no nourishment for the tree. Now, will any one assert that the young tree was not in danger of perishing in this new place? And will any one assert that the faith and soul of a child are not in danger of being ruined in those godless common schools? Even if Protestantism is not taught there, infidelity is taught and practised there: and infidelity is even worse than Protestantism.
But is it really true that Protestantism is not taught in many of our public schools? This is unfortunately far from being the case. Napoleon I. introduced the public-school system into France, in order, as he honestly declared, "to possess the means of controlling political and moral opinions." Puritans and Freemasons, in this country, have clearly the same end in view in upholding the present system of public schools.
In the early days of New England, and even of several of the other American States, the Puritans always used the public schools as a powerful means of spreading their peculiar doctrines. When they were stripped of this power by the liberal founders of American independence, they still struggled for many years to accomplish, by indirect means, the injustice which they dared not maintain openly. We all remember how the poor Catholic boys and girls of the public schools were harassed by colporteurs and proselytizers, who carried baskets filled, not with bread for the poor hungry children, no, but with oily tracts, cunningly devised to weaken, or even destroy, the religious faith of those poor little ones. In some schools, even, Catholic children were urged and enticed to go to the sectarian Sunday schools; and pictures, cakes, and sweet meats were liberally promised, in order to induce them to go. Teachers were selected with special regard to their bitter hatred of the Catholic Church, and their zeal for "evangelical " propagandism. Some years ago, in New Orleans, when the school-board was composed of bigoted sectarians; many of them sectarian preachers, all the Catholic teachers, male and female, were turned out of the schools, merely because they were Catholics.
And even if Catholic children are not always expressly taught doctrines opposed to their religion, nevertheless the school-books which they use are, as I have said, frequently tainted with anti-Catholic prejudices and misrepresentations. Nothing can be more evident than the decidedly anti-Catholic spirit of English literature in all its departments. It has grown up, ever since England's apostasy, in an anti-Catholic soil, in an anti-Catholic atmosphere, and from an anti-Catholic stem. It is essentially anti-Catholic, and tends, wherever it comes in contact with Catholic feelings and principles, to sully, infect, and utterly corrupt them. Sound knowledge, a sound head, strong faith, and great grace, all these combined may, indeed, preserve one whom the necessity of his position may lead into un-Catholic schools; but no one will deny that this anti-Catholic literature must exercise a most baneful influence over all those who, without sufficient preparation from nature or grace, plunge into it, in the pursuit of amusement or knowledge. Protestant ideas will not make the Catholic turn Protestant, there is not much danger of that, but they will tend to make him an infidel; they will destroy his principles without putting others in their place; they will relax and deaden the whole spiritual man.
In these schools Catholic children are taught that the Catholic Church is the nursery of ignorance and vice; they are taught that all the knowledge, civilization, and virtue which the world now possesses, are the offspring of the so-called " Reformation." They learn nothing of the true history of Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland, Austria, and the other Catholic countries of Europe; they learn nothing of the true history of Mexico, and the various Catholic countries of North and South America. They never hear of the vast libraries of Catholic learning, the rich endowments of Catholic education, all over the world, for ages; they never hear of the countless universities, colleges, academies, and free schools established by the Catholic Church, and by Catholic governments, throughout Christendom. Where is the common-school book whose author has manly honesty enough to acknowledge that even the famous universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded by Catholics, and plundered from their lawful possessors by an apostate government?
Moreover, Catholic children are often singled out by their school-companions, and sometimes even by their teachers, as objects of ridicule. Now, what is the result of all this training? The consequence is, that either the Catholic children become ashamed of their holy religion, and despise their parents, or, if they have the courage to hold out, their tender minds are subject to numberless petty annoyances: they must endure a species of martyrdom. This is no exaggeration: I have it from good authority. Practically speaking, the present common-school system is but a gigantic scheme for proselytism and infidelity.
Now, we intend that our children shall be taught to love and revere their holy Church. We wish to teach them that that Church has been, for over eighteen hundred years, the faithful guardian of that very Bible of which Protestants prate so loudly, and which they dishonor so much. We wish our children to learn that the Catholic Church has been, in all ages, the friend and supporter of true liberty; i. e., liberty united to order and justice. We wish them to know that the Catholic Church has ever been the jealous guardian of the sanctity of marriage; that she has always defended it against brutal lust and heathen divorce courts. We wish our children, in fine, to regard the Church as the only hope of society, the only salvation of their country, the only means of preserving intact all the blessings of freedom.
The public schools are not only seminaries of infidelity, they are, moreover, in many cases, hotbeds of immorality. In these schools every child is received, no matter how vicious or corrupt he or his parents may be. "One mangy sheep," as the homely proverb says, "infects the whole flock." So one corrupt child in a school is capable of corrupting and ruining all the others. And, in fact, where have our young people learned the shameful habit of self-abuse, and many other foul, unnatural crimes, that are bringing so many thousands to an early grave? Ask those unhappy victims, ask our physicians throughout the country, and they will tell you that, in almost every instance, it was from the evil companions with whom they associated in the common schools. Ah! you will see, only on the day of judgment, how many unnatural crimes have been taught and propagated, from generation to generation, in these very hotbeds of iniquity.
A certain friend of mine a man of great learning and experience wrote to me, one day, that he himself had been, in his youth, subjected to college-training; that, be it by nature or by grace, or both combined, he resisted and escaped. "But," he adds, "from my observation and experience, I would say it did require a miracle for Catholic youth to escape the damnable effects of a non-Catholic education." I have had opportunities, in this line, that many a priest has never had. I assert that a Catholic boy of tender years, and perhaps careless training, can be preserved from moral contamination, in public and mixed schools, by nothing less than a miracle. I will not chop logic with any one about it. It is a matter of fact. I therefore assert it as of ascertained result, that in most cases especially in those cases where there are enough of Catholics together to have a school of their own their frequenting a school without religion will land most of them in utter carelessness of their religion.
2. Many fall away from the faith because their parents neglected giving them any instruction in religion. There is a certain class of parents who have their children instructed in everything but their religion. There are other parents who allow their children to grow up in ignorance of everything except in the manner in which they may make some money. Now, when the time draws near for these children to make their first communion, their parents will take them to the priest to prepare them for this holy action in a week or two. Now, what can children learn in a couple of weeks? Certain it is that what they learn very seldom enters their hearts. Their hearts are not prepared for the Word of God; they are light-minded, and, in many cases, corrupted, and what they do learn is learned from constraint. No sooner are they free from constraint than they throw their religion overboard: they become the worst enemies of the Catholic Church. The young man who set fire to St. Augustine's Church, in Philadelphia, Pa., was a Catholic, and he gloried in being able to burn his name out of the baptismal record. By a just punishment of God, these neglected Catholic children will become our persecutors. Thus is verified in these children what God says through the Prophet Isaias: " Therefore is my people led away captive because they had not knowledge." (Isa. v, 13.)
There are others who do not wish to be instructed in their religious duties, in order that they may more easily dispense themselves from the obligation of complying with these duties. Now, it is this very class of men that easily give ear to the principles of infidelity, because these principles please their corrupt nature better than those of our holy religion. The class of these men is very numerous, and their number is on the increase every day. For, not having any religion themselves, nor wishing to have any, what wonder if their children follow their example? Such as the tree is, such also will be the fruit. A few weeks ago, a Catholic lady of New York asked a little child: "How many Gods are there, and who made you?" The child could not answer these questions. So the Catholic lady said to the child: "Say, 'There is but one God;' say, 'God made me.'" When the mother of the child heard this she flew into a passion, and said: "My child shall never learn such a thing: God has nothing to do with my child." Behold how infidel mothers bring up their children!
There are others who gradually fall away from the faith and become infidels, because they neglect a most essential Christian duty, that of prayer. "The impious," says David, "are corrupt, and they become abominable in their ways . . . They are all gone aside; they are unprofitable together: there is none that does good, no, not one . . . Destruction and unhappiness are in their ways." "Now, the cause of all this wickedness," continues David, "is because they have not called upon the Lord." God is the light of our understanding, the strength of our will, and the life of our heart. Now, the more we neglect to pray to God, the more we shall experience darkness in our understanding, weakness in our will, and deadly coldness in our heart. Our passions, the temptations of the devil, and the allurements of the world, will draw us headlong from one abyss of wickedness to another, until we fall into the deepest of all, into infidelity, and indifference to all religion.
3. There is another special cause of the loss of faith: it is the reading of bad books. Bad books are, 1. idle, useless books which do no good, but distract the mind from what is good. 2. Many novels and romances which do not appear to be so bad, but often are bad. 3. Books which treat professedly of bad subjects. 4. Bad newspapers, journals, miscellanies, sensational magazines, weeklies, illustrated papers, medical works. 5. Superstitious books, books of fate, etc. 6. Protestant and infidel books and tracts.
There are certain idle, useless books, which, though not bad in themselves, are pernicious, because they cause the reader to lose the time which he might and ought to spend in occupations more beneficial to his soul. He who has spent much time in reading such books, and then goes to prayer, to Mass, and to holy communion, instead of thinking of God and of making acts of love and confidence, will be constantly troubled with distractions; for the representations of all the vanities he has read will be constantly present to his mind.
The mill grinds the corn which it receives. If the wheat be bad, how can the mill turn out good flour? How is it possible to think often of God, and offer to him frequent acts of love, of oblation, of petition, and the like, if the mind is constantly filled with the trash read in idle, useless books? In a letter to his disciple Eustochium, St. Jerome stated for her instruction that, in his solitude at Bethlehem, he was attached to, and frequently read, the works of Cicero, and that he felt a certain disgust for pious books, because their style was not polished. Almighty God, foreseeing the harm of this profane reading, and that, without the aid of holy books, the saint would never reach that height of sanctity for which he was destined, administered a remedy, very harsh, no doubt, but well calculated to make him alive to his fault. He sent a grievous sickness on him, which soon brought the solitary to the brink of the grave. As he was lying at the point of death, God called him in spirit before his tribunal. The saint, being there, heard the Judge ask him who he was. He answered unhesitatingly: "I am a Christian; I hold no other faith than thine, my Lord, my Judge." "Thou liest," said the Judge; "thou art a Ciceronian, for, where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." He then ordered him to be severely scourged. The servant of God shrieked with pain as he felt the blows, and begged for mercy, repeating with a loud voice, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord! have mercy upon me." Meanwhile, they who stood round the throne of that angry Judge, falling on their faces before him, began to plead in behalf of the culprit, implored mercy for him, and promised in his name that his fault should be corrected. Then St. Jerome, who, smarting with pain from the hard strokes he had received, would gladly have promised much greater things, began to promise and to swear, with all the ardor of his soul, that never again would he open profane or worldly works, but that he would read pious, edifying books. As he uttered these words he returned to his senses, to the amazement of the bystanders, who had believed him to be already dead.
St. Jerome concludes the narration of this sad history with these words: "Let no one fancy that it was an idle dream, like to those which come to deceive our minds in the dead of night. I call to witness the dread tribunal before which I lay prostrate, that it was no dream, but a true representation of a real occurrence; for, when I returned to myself, I found my eyes swimming with tears, and my shoulders livid and bruised with those cruel blows." He tells us, finally, that, after this warning, he devoted himself to the reading of pious books, with the same diligence and zeal that he had before bestowed upon the works of profane writers. It was thus that Almighty God induced him to that study of divine things which was so essential to his own progress in perfection, and destined to do so much good to the whole Christian world.
It is true that, in works like those of Cicero, we some times find useful sentiments; but the same St. Jerome wisely said, in a letter to another disciple: "What need have you of seeking for a little gold in the midst of so much dross, when you can read pious books, in which you shall find all gold without any dross?" (Epis. ad Furian.) As to novels, they are, in general, pictures, and usually very highly wrought pictures, of human passions. Passion is represented as working out its end successfully, and attaining its objects, even by the sacrifice of duty. These books, as a class, present false views of life; and as it is the error of the young to mistake these for realities, they become the dupes of their own ardent and enthusiastic imaginations, which, instead of trying to control, they actually nourish with the poisonous food of phantoms and chimeras.
When the thirst for novel-reading has become insatiable,--as with indulgence it is sure to do,--they come at last to live in an unreal fairy-land, amidst absurd heroes and heroines of their own creation, thus unfitting themselves for the discharge of the common duties of this every-day world, and for association with every-day mortals. The more strongly works of fiction appeal to the imagination, and the wider the field they afford for its exercise, the greater in general are their perilous attractions; and it is but too true that they cast, at last, a sort of spell over the mind, so completely fascinating the attention, that duty is forgotten and positive obligation laid aside to gratify the desire of unravelling, to its last intricacy, the finely-spun web of some airy creation of fancy. Fictitious feelings are excited, unreal sympathies aroused, unmeaning sensibilities evoked. The mind is weakened; it has lost that laudable thirst after truth which God has imprinted on it; filled with a baneful love of trifles, vanity, and folly, it has no taste for serious reading and profitable occupations; all relish for prayer, for the Word of God, for the reception of the sacraments, is lost; and, at last, conscience and commonsense give place to the dominion of unchecked imagination. Such reading, instead of forming the heart, depraves it. It poisons the morals and excites the passions; it changes all the good inclinations a person has received from nature and a virtuous education ; it chills, by little and little, pious desires, and in a short time banishes out of the soul all that was there of solidity and virtue. By such reading, young girls on a sudden lose a habit of reservedness and modesty, take an air of vanity and frivolity, and make show of no other ardor than for those things which the world esteems, and which God abominates. They espouse the maxims, spirit, conduct, and language of the passions, which are there under various disguises artfully instilled into their minds j and, what is most dangerous, they cloak all this irregularity with the appearances of civility and an easy, complying, gay humor and disposition.
St. Teresa, who fell into this dangerous snare of reading idle books, writes thus of herself: "This fault failed not to cool my good desires, and was the cause of my falling insensibly into other defects. I was so enchanted with the extreme pleasure I took herein, that I thought I could not be content if I had not some new romance in my hands. I began to imitate the mode, to take delight in being well dressed, to take great care of my hands, to make use of perfumes, and to affect all the vain trimmings which my condition admitted. Indeed, my intention was not bad, for I would not for the world, in the immoderate passion which I had to be decent, give any one an occasion of offending God; but I now acknowledge how far these things, which for several years appeared to me innocent, are effectually and really criminal."
Criminal and dangerous, therefore, is the disposition of those who fritter away their time in reading such books as fill the mind with a worldly spirit, with a love of vanity, pleasure, idleness, and trifling; which destroy and lay waste all the generous sentiments of virtue in the heart, and sow there the seeds of every vice. Who seeks nourishment from poisons! Our thoughts and reflections are to the mind what food is to the body; for, by them, the affections of the soul are nourished. The chameleon changes its color as it is affected by pain, anger, or pleasure, or by the color upon which it sits; and we see an insect borrow its lustre and hue from the plant or leaf upon which it feeds. In like manner, what our meditations and affections are, such will our souls become either holy and spiritual, or earthly and carnal.
In addition to their other dangers, many of these books unfortunately teem with maxims subversive of faith in the truths of religion. The current popular literature in our days is penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness, from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and flippant daily newspaper; and the weekly and monthly publications are mostly heathen or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand, stoical, cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or, on the other, empty and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver to caricature the institutions and offices of the Christian religion, and others, to exhibit the grossest forms of vice and the most distressing scenes of crime and suffering. The illustrated press has become to us what the amphitheatre was to the Romans, when men were slain, women were outraged, and Christians were given to the lions, to please a degenerate populace. "The slime of the serpent is over it all." It instils the deadly poison of irreligion and immorality through every pore of the reader. The fatal miasma floats in the whole literary atmosphere, is drawn in with every literary breath, corrupting the very life-blood of religion in the mind and soul. Thus it frequently happens that the habitual perusal of such books soon banishes faith from the soul, and in its stead introduces infidelity. He who often reads bad books will soon be filled with the spirit of the author who wrote them. The first author of pious books is the Spirit of God; but the author of bad books is the devil, who artfully conceals from certain persons the poison which such works contain. Written, as they generally are, in a most attractive, flowery style, the reader becomes enchanted, as it were, by their perusal, not suspecting the poison that lies hidden under that beautiful style, and which he drinks as he reads on.
But it is objected the book is not so bad. Of what do bad books treat? What religion do they teach? Many of them teach either deism, atheism, or pantheism. Others ridicule our holy religion and everything that is sacred. What morals do these books teach? The most lewd! Vice and crime are deified; monsters of humanity are held out as true heroes. Some of these books speak openly and shamelessly of the most obscene things, whilst others do so secretly, hiding their poison under a flowery style. They are only the more dangerous, because their poisonous contents enter the heart unawares.
A person was very sorry to see that a certain bad book was doing so much harm. He thought he would read it, that he might be better able to speak against it. With this object in view, he read the book. The end of it was that, instead of helping others, he ruined himself.
Some say: "I read bad books on account of the style. I wish to improve my own style. I wish to learn something of the world. "This is no sufficient reason for reading such books. The good style of a book does not make its poisonous contents harmless. A fine dress may cover a deformed body, but it cannot take away its deformity. Poisonous serpents and flowers may be very beautiful, but, for all that, they are not the less poisonous. To say that such books are read purely because of their style is not true, because those who allege this as an excuse, sometimes read novels which are written in a bad style. There are plenty of good books, written in excellent style, which are sadly neglected by these lovers of pure English.
To consult those books for a knowledge of the world is another common excuse for their perusal. Well, where shall we find an example of one who became a deeper thinker, a more eloquent speaker, a more expert business man, by reading novels and bad books? They only teach how to sin, as Satan taught Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, under the pretence of attaining real knowledge; and the result was, loss of innocence, peace, and paradise, and the punishment of the human race through all time.
Some profess to skip the bad portions and read only the good. But how are they to know which are the bad portions, unless they read them? The pretext is a false one. He only will leave the bad who hates it. But he who hates the bad things will not read the books at all, unless he be obliged to do so: and no one is obliged to read them, for there are plenty of good, profitable, and entertaining books which can be read without danger.
There is a class of readers who flatter themselves that bad books may hurt others, but not them; they make no impression on them. Happy and superior mortals! Are they gifted with hearts of stone, or of flesh and blood? Have they no passions? Why should these books hurt others and not them? Is it because they are more virtuous than others? Is it not true that the bad, obscene parts of the story remain more vividly and deeply impressed upon their minds than those which are more or less harmless? Did not the perusal of these books sometimes cause those imaginations and desires forbidden by Christian modesty? Did they not sometimes accuse themselves in confession of having read them? If not, they ought to have done so. Who would like to die with such a book in his hand?
Readers of bad books, who say such reading does not affect them, should examine themselves and see whether they are not blinded by their passions, or so far gone in crime that, like an addled egg, they cannot become more corrupt than they already are.
See that infamous young man, that corrupter of innocence! What is the first step often of a young reprobate who wishes to corrupt some poor, innocent girl? He first lends her a bad book. He believes that, if she reads that book, she is lost. A bad book, as he knows, is an agreeable corrupter; for it veils vice under a veil of flowers. It is a shameless corrupter. The most licentious would blush, would hesitate to speak the language that their eyes feed on. But a bad book does not blush, feels no shame, no hesitation. Itself unmoved and silent, it places before the heart and imagination the most shameful obscenities. A bad book is a corrupter to whom the reader listens without shame, because it can be read alone and taken up when one pleases!
Go to the hospitals and brothels: ask that young man who is dying of a shameful disease; ask that young woman who has lost her honor and her happiness; go to the dark grave of the suicide, ask them what was the first step in their downward career, and they will answer, the reading of bad books.
A certain young lady of the State of New York was sent to a convent school, where she received a brilliant education. She spoke seven languages. She wished to enter a convent, but was prevented by her parents. Her parents died, and after their death the young lady took to novel-reading. She soon wished to imitate what she had read: she wished to become a heroine. So she went upon the stage, and danced in the "Black Crook." At last she fell one day on Second Avenue, in New York, and broke her leg in six places. She was taken to a hospital, where a good lady gave her a prayer-book. But she flung it away, and asked for a novel. She would not listen to the priest encouraging her to make her confession and be reconciled to God. She died impenitent, with a novel in her hand.
Assuredly, if we are bound by every principle of our religion to avoid bad company, we are equally bound to avoid bad books; for, of all evil, corrupting company, the worst is a bad book. There can be no doubt that the most pernicious influences at work in the world at this moment come from bad books and bad newspapers. The yellow-covered literature, as it is called, is a pestilence compared with which the yellow fever, and cholera, and small-pox are as nothing: and yet there is no quarantine against it. Never take a book into your hands which you would not be seen reading. Avoid not only notoriously immoral books and papers, but avoid also all those miserable sensational magazines and novels and illustrated papers which are profusely scattered around on every side. The demand which exists for such garbage, speaks badly for the moral sense and intellectual training of those who read them. If you wish to keep your mind pure and your soul in the grace of God, you must make it a firm and steady principle of conduct never to touch them.
Would you be willing to pay a man for poisoning your food? And why should you be fool enough to pay the authors and publishers of bad books, pamphlets, and magazines, and the editors of irreligious newspapers for poisoning your soul with their impious principles and their shameful stories and pictures.
Go, then, and burn all bad books in your possession, even if they do not belong to you, even if they are costly. Two boys in New York bought a bad picture with their pocket-money, and burned it. A young man in Augusta, Ga., spent twenty dollars in buying up bad books and papers, to burn them all. A modern traveller tells us that, when he came to Evora, he there on Sunday morning conversed with, a girl in the kitchen of the inn. He examined some of her books which she showed him, and told her that one of them was written by an infidel, whose sole aim was to bring all religion into contempt. She made no reply to this, but, going into another room, returned with her apron full of dry sticks, all of which she piled upon the fire and produced a blaze. She then took that bad book and placed it upon the flaming pile; then, sitting down, she took her rosary out of her pocket, and told her beads until the book was entirely burned up. (Compitum, book ii, p. 239.) In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that, when St. Paul preached at Ephesus, many of the Jews and Gentiles were converted to the faith: "And many of them that believed, came confessing and declaring their deeds. And many of those who had followed curious arts, brought together their books and burnt them before all. And counting the price of them, they found the money to be fifty thousand pieces of silver." (Acts xix, 18, 19.)
A young nobleman, who was on a sea voyage, began to read an obscene book, in which he took much pleasure. A religious priest, on noticing it, said to him: "Are you disposed to make a present to our Blessed Lady? "The young man replied that he was. "Well," said the priest, "I wish that, for the love of the most holy Virgin, you would give up that book and throw it into the sea." "Here it is, father," answered the young man. "No," replied the priest, "you must yourself make this present to Mary." He did so at once. Mary was not slow in rewarding the nobleman for the great promptness with which he cast the bad book into the sea; for, no sooner had he returned to Genoa, his native place, than the Mother of God so inflamed his heart with divine love, that he entered a religious order. (Nadasi, Ann. Mar. S. J., 1605.)
4. Another cause that leads to the loss of faith is the corruption of the heart, the slavery of the passions. You will find men who deny the immortality of the soul, who deny the eternity of hell, who deny the infallibility of the Church. You will find men who deny the divine origin of confession. But why, my brethren, why? It is because these wholesome truths put a check to their passions. They cannot believe these truths and, at the same time, gratify their criminal desires.
An honest, virtuous man would never think of doubting or contradicting these sacred truths. In spite of its innate pride, the mind is the slave of the heart. If the heart soars to heaven on the wings of divine love, the mind, too, rises with it. But if the heart is buried in the mire of filthy passions, it soon exhales dark, fetid vapors, which obscure the intellect. The infidel's reason is the dupe of his heart.
There is a man who was once a good Catholic, who used formerly to go regularly to Mass and to confession. Now he goes no longer to confession, now he is an infidel. But why? Has he, perhaps, become more enlightened? Has he received some new knowledge? No; the only new knowledge he has received, is the sad knowledge of sin. He believed as long as he was virtuous. He began to doubt only when he began to be immoral; he became an infidel only when he became a libertine. The history of his life is soon told. Wishing to gratify his passions without restraint and without remorse, he tried to rid himself of a religion which would have troubled him in the midst of his unlawful pleasures. Religion appeared to him like the hand on the wall, writing his doom in the very midst of his senseless revelry. Human respect, and the gratification of his passions, are the only causes that induced him to become an infidel.
5. To frequent the society of the wicked, of scoffers at religion, is, for many, another cause of losing the faith. A scoffer at religion is a man without principle, a man sunk in the grossest ignorance of what religion is. He blasphemes what he does not understand. He rails at the doctrines of the Church, without really knowing what these doctrines are. He sneers at the doctrines and practices of religion, because he cannot refute them. He speaks with the utmost gravity of the fine arts, the fashions, and even matters the most trivial, and he turns into ridicule the most sacred subjects. In the midst of his own circle of fops and silly women, he utters his shallow conceits with all the pompous assurance of a pedant.
There is a young man. He was brought up a Catholic. He went every day to a Catholic school until he made his first communion. He learned his catechism well. But his parents complain that he no longer says any morning or night prayers, that he goes no longer to confession, to holy communion, and to Mass on Sundays. Why not? It is because he frequents the society of wicked companions, who ridicule religion and scoff at everything sacred. "Evil communications corrupt good manners." In the company of such wicked young men he soon feels ashamed of his religion, becomes quite indifferent to it, gives up every practice of piety, and finally becomes an infidel, a scoffer at religion himself.
6. Experience has sufficiently shown that mixed marriages are also a cause why many have lost their faith. This is the reason why the Catholic Church has always opposed them. The Catholic party is generally exposed to the danger of losing the faith, or of becoming indifferent to it. The Catholic education of the children is also generally neglected, and often made impossible.
There is a congregation in one of the Middle States, which numbers about two hundred families. There are not fewer than fifty-seven mixed marriages in it. The number of converts is but six, and the number of those who gave up the Catholic religion is twenty-two. As to the children, there are at present found fifty-four who are being instructed in the rudiments of our religion, and it is hoped that they will adhere to the practice of her doctrines. But there are one hundred and thirty-seven who are receiving their religious training in some religious sect, or are left to grow up in utter ignorance. There are thirty-one more whose ultimate end is as yet doubtful. The number of perverted Catholics is nearly four to one in this congregation. There is no reason to believe that mixed marriages are less productive of evil in other congregations. We shall say more on this point in the explanation of the sacrament of matrimony.
7. The state of irreligion and infidelity into which millions of men who were Catholics are plunged at present, is the work of secret societies of Freemasonry. In the first volume of this work, Part I, I have clearly proved that the principal object of Freemasonry is to destroy all revealed religion, and to introduce heathenism in its place. To join any of the secret societies is to give up the Catholic religion; for the Catholic Church has excommunicated all those who have joined a secret society. Nevertheless there are thouands who join these satanic societies, and give up God and his holy religion for Satan and his work of impiety.
8. Pride, and subtle reasoning on the mysteries of faith, is another means which the devil uses to make people lose the faith. There are certain proud men who say that they cannot believe such an article or such a mystery of faith, because it is too obscure, too incomprehensible, and contrary to reason; they wish to believe no more of the truths of religion than they can understand. Hence they bring up ever so many objections to revealed truths, and thus exhibit a lamentable lack of reason. For, to be a man, it is necessary to have reason. Reason is the light of man. But reason tells us that it is necessary to believe what God has revealed, because God cannot reveal anything but truth, and that there is no sense in him who wishes to submit to his reason the very Author of his reason; and that to wish to understand what is above his intelligence, is to be without intelligence. There is a young man. He is a Catholic, who always believed what God teaches us through His Church. He frequently associates with one who, in a subtle manner, reasons on the mysteries of faith. He begins to listen to him with pleasure. The consequence is that he exposes himself to all kinds of temptations against faith. He begins himself to reason on its mysteries, then to doubt them, and at last to lose all faith in them. He dies an infidel.
Alas! how many are there who once were fervent children of the Catholic Church; they lived in the grace of God, in great happiness and peace, but, for the reason just given, are now leading the wicked lives of infidels! Their misfortune should be a warning for us all. Therefore, "Let him that thinketh himself to stand, take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. x, 12.)
(Note: the condemnation of "bad books" also applies to other forms of media, including the internet, movies, television etc. as they are prevalent occasions of sin in society today.)
Act of Faith
O my God, I believe that Thou art one God in Three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; I believe that Thy Divine Son became man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all of the truths which Thy Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived.
Indulgence of 3 years. Raccolta 36.
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