Rebuild My Church - An Interview with Brother Alexis Bugnolo

The Radical Catholic is pleased to present the following exclusive interview with Brother Alexis Bugnolo, author of the From Rome blog and editor of The Franciscan Archive.

Br. Alexis Bugnolo

RC: Br. Alexis, what initially drew you to the Order of St. Francis?

Br. A: When I was but a lad, I had the habit of watching TV. I played a game with my brother to see who could identify the good guy and the bad guy first. To win this game, I observed many characters in many movies and tried to synthesize the most accurate criterion to make such a judgement. I determined that it was this: that good guys always told the truth, but bad guys did not always tell the truth. That enabled me to win the game with my brother. After some time, I came to the conclusion that the most noble thing to do was always tell the truth. And I began to love truth for its own sake.

When I heard the Gospel one Sunday at Mass: "I have come to give witness to the truth and all who are on the side of truth, harken to My Voice!" I realized that I must take Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom I already knew as God, to be my leader and teacher. It was months later when I heard the Gospel again, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life", that I felt a terribly strong desire to follow Him and remain loyal to Him forever. But I did not know how. I knew of no religious. I only wanted to imitate the Apostles in a general sort of way.

In college, a member of the Third Order of St. Francis put the Little Flowers of St. Francis in my hands. I was taken by St Francis' example, his love for Christ Crucified and most of all with his logical argument: for St. Francis had said, "If a great king were to offer you a globe-sized lump of gold in exchange for a lump of gold in your hand, would you refuse him? How much more, if Our Lord Jesus Christ would offer you eternal life if you sacrificed your own life to follow after Him?" I found the poverello's logic perfect and indisputable. From then on, I wanted to be a Franciscan.  But I did not know of any who were faithful and not Modernists. So when a Carmelite Hermit told me about the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, I joined them.

RC: You recently announced your intention to found a Franciscan monastery of the Ancient Observance, and that you are currently accepting applications from men who desire to live a life of prayer and penance with special dedication to the ancient form of the Roman Rite, i.e. the traditional Latin Mass. What role do you see the Latin Mass playing in the restoration of religious life in the Church?

Br. A: There is only one true Faith, and God has preserved in the Church only one form of the Latin Rite throughout all the ages, which embodies that faith. St. Francis, desiring to be faithful to the Lord Jesus, desired to have this ancient liturgy which comes from St. Peter as the rite of his own order. He obtained this from Pope Innocent III, who was delighted with this inspiration, since that rite had fallen into disuse and remained extant in only three copies of liturgical books, one of which was unusable, one of which was kept in the private chapel of the Pope, and one of which he gave to St. Francis to be copied.  His order copied this and spread it to the whole world. It was the Franciscan Order which compiled these books into one tome, and termed it the Missale Regulare, the Missal required by the Rule of St. Francis.  When St. Pius V, 300 years later, in his Apostolic Constitution of 1570 made the Ancient Roman Rite the liturgical norm for the dioceses of the Latin Rite, he took the Franciscan Missale and renamed it the Missale Romanum. This Missale God the Holy Spirit, by His Divine providence, chose to spread the Faith to the whole world, from East to West. What better tool for evangelization and conversion can anyone propose, but that which God Himself and His Saints have chosen? There is absolutely no argument against such facts.

RC: Everyone is familiar with the harrowing repression suffered by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate for what has been labelled a "traditionalist drift." Given that you are seeking to found a monastic community dedicated to the traditional Latin Mass and a strict observance of the Rule of St. Francis, are you expecting and/or prepared to undergo similar trials?

Br. A: You have to be.

RC: Br. Alexis, your blog From Rome has devoted substantial space to uncovering and documenting the "Team Bergoglio" Affair, and maintains a detailed chronology of events beginning with the release of Austen Ivereigh's biography of Pope Francis in November of last year. Could you give a brief summary of the key points in the "Team Bergoglio" Affair for our readers, explaining what is at stake and why it is important?

Br. A: Austin Ivereigh alleges that 9 Cardinals collaborated to garnish 25 votes for Cardinal Bergoglio in the first ballot of the 2013 Conclave on March 12 of that year. Their mutually shared intention and collaboration is morally equivalent to an agreement or pact to vote for Bergoglio and not to vote for anyone else. Those who participated by soliciting or promising votes were excommunicated in virtue of the papal law Universi Dominici Gregis of Pope John Paul II, paragraph 81, with ipso facto excommunication. Since that law does not exempt the papal election from the general norms of canon law, and since the 1983 Code does not exempt papal laws from its own norms, unless specified, any irregularity must be judged according to the 1983 Code, which declares invalidly elected those who were excommunicated at the time of the election and/or won their election by counting votes of excommunicated electors. It is highly morally improbable that Cardinal Bergoglio did not collaborate in the work of this group of Cardinals, whom Ivereigh names "Team Bergoglio". Thus, because, as Bergoglio admitted in March of this year, he was elected by no more than 80 votes, 76 being the necessary - thus of the approx 20 cardinals who did promise their votes - it is highly morally improbable that less than 4 met the conditions for excommunication. Thus, it is highly probable that the election was canonically invalid. Thus, the Cardinals should move an investigation and hold a trial, in virtue of the authority granted them in the papal law, paragraphs 4-5.

RC: How would you describe the reactions you have received to your reporting on the affair?

Br. A: Silence from the hierarchy. Consternation from the faithful.

RC: Br. Alexis, you were the initiator of the #Y4Tc (A Year for True Conversion) campaign, offered as a counter-measure to Pope Francis' Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy. Why were you compelled to launch this campaign?

Br. A: There is nothing more disgusting to my soul than to use religion for the sake of political goals, for it denigrates the Divine Majesty and makes of God a tool for men, which is an abomination.

RC: Now that the Papal Bull Misericordiae Vultus has been issued, do you see your initial concerns confirmed?

Br. A: Yes, as in that Bull there is no call for repentance for sinners, only for mafia, pilgrims and confessors. There is a radical absence of proper theology in it, and it looks like a number of hands attempted to rewrite it to pull it away as much as possible from patent heretical statements. It remains silly, nevertheless, to laud Vatican II with anything, let alone a year of mercy without repentance and recognition of sin which must be repented of.

St. Bonaventure's Commentaries
on the Four Books of Sentences of
Master Peter Lombard

RC: Br. Alexis, you are also the editor and publisher of The Franciscan Archive, a web-based resource dedicated to St. Francis and Franciscan spirituality. One of the major accomplishments of the Archive has been the publication of the first volume of St. Bonaventure's Commentaries on the Four Books of Sentences of Master Peter Lombard. When can readers expect further publications? Will this work be continued if your plans with the monastery move ahead?

Br. A: The first tome was published last fall; God willing, the following tomes every two years. Yes, I would expect the friars of the monastery to want to study Bonaventure and make him the patron of studies.

RC: Br. Alexis, thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to answer these questions.

Br. A: You're very welcome.

America's Scholastic Roots

Quo vadis, Carolus?
Catholic Founding Father
Charles Carroll (1737-1832)

I'm not a big fan of American political commentary, but I do read the odd opinion piece now and again. One such piece, penned by Patrick J. Buchanan and published on his blog a week ago, especially caught my attention. Entitled The Long Retreat in the Culture War, it laments the capitulation rendered by America's political and religious conservatives in the face of the cultural revolution which has been advancing virtually unchecked since the 1960's. On every important front, from religion in the public square to marriage and the family to human sexuality, the progressives have not only taken the field, but have been allowed to dictate the terms of the surrender. Mr. Buchanan tries hard to end the piece on a positive note, but there's very little he can offer in the way of an encouraging counterbalance. The situation is grim, and we would do well to come to grips with it sooner rather than later.

The reasons why America lost - some would say sold for a song - its own soul are many and far too complex to treat in anything approaching sufficient detail in a blog post. But I recently discovered an interesting piece of the puzzle which deserves more thoughtful consideration. The discovery came by way of a book with the following title:

Education of the Founding Fathers of the Republic

Scholasticism in the Colonial Colleges:

A Neglected Chapter in the History of American Education

by

James J. Walsh M.D, Ph.D, Sc.D., E.D., etc.

Fordham University Press

1935

As you might have guessed from that title, the book sets out to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic - indeed, nearly all educated Americans up through the middle of the 19th century - were intimately familiar with Scholastic philosophy and the medieval methods of teaching and study, and that this familiarity imparted the intellectual and moral foundation upon which the Founding Fathers conceived the new nation. Walsh writes:

The Founding Fathers of our republic, then, were educated according to the academic traditions which had been formulated in the earlier Middle Ages by Boethius, sometimes hailed as the father of Scholasticism, developed under St. Anselm in the eleventh century, reaching their culmination in the mind of Aquinas and the group contemporary with him in the thirteenth century when there came the conciliation of Scholastic doctrines with Aristotle, thus welding together the whole course of philosophic thought.

Walsh develops the thesis in great detail, providing a careful analysis of the so-called Commencement Theses debated publicly by examinees at the great American universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, the College of Rhode Island (Brown University) and King's College (Columbia University) from the middle of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century. He continues:

A definitely revolutionary change came over the content and the method of college and university education during the first half of the nineteenth century. [...] Scholastic philosophy, which had been the basic element of education in practically all the institutions of learning in our western civilization from the early Middle Ages down to this time, was gradually dropped from the college curriculum in all except distinctly Catholic educational institutions.

The effect of this change was dramatic. Walsh writes:

Almost needless to say, this alteration in the subjects to which the student devoted their efforts, especially during the last two years of their college course, involved a profound modification of the method and content of education. The acquisition of information now took the place to a great extent of training in thoughtfulness and in discrimination of truth from falsity on which so much emphasis had been laid in the older time.

As to the motivation behind this change away from the sound principles of Scholasticism and critical thinking and towards novel theories of education and data-gathering bordering on pursuit of the trivial, I leave it to the interested reader to peruse the volume for himself and draw his own conclusions. But the following passage is very much worth noting in this regard:

It is probably easier to fool people now than ever before. Many refuse to believe that and lay the flattering unction to their souls that we are an intelligent, discriminating people, but the stock market and its devotees, our wonder-working patent medicines, the ease with which our people fall for all sorts of frauds as well as the prevalence of political chicanery and the naivete of voters, demonstrate very clearly the ease with which our generation may be duped. We have been filling students' memories with large numbers of facts but we have not trained them in that intellectual discrimination so important to the making of distinctions between what is true and what seems true and noting how close to each other truth and falsity may be under a great many circumstances. After all, half truths are more dangerous than whole lies.

Given what we know about the relationship between Scholastic philosophy and the recognition of human nature, natural law and the objective moral order - if you need something of a refresher on this extremely important subject, I recommend the brief but thoroughly accessible article by Logan Paul Gage entitled Darwin, Design and Thomas Aquinas - is it any surprise that the abandonment of Scholastic education was followed by an inability on the part of the people to intelligently self-govern as envisioned by the Founding Fathers? Or that today's average American conservative seems utterly incapable of making a cogent moral argument without referencing the Bible?

Those who are interested may download a pdf of the above-mentioned work here.

The Deadly Sins

Eighth in a Series on Catholic Morals

by

Fr. John H. Stapleton

Narcissus
Gerard van der Kuijl (1604-1673)

You can never cure a disease till you get at the seat or root of the evil. It will not do to attack the several manifestations that appear on the surface, the aches and pains and attendant disorders. You must attack the affected organ, cut out the root of the evil growth, and kill the obnoxious germ. There is no other permanent remedy; until this is done, all relief is but temporary.

And if we desire to remove the distemper of sin, similarly it is necessary to seek out the root of all sin. We can lay our finger on it at once; it is inordinate self-love.

Ask yourself why you broke this or that commandment. It is because it forbade you a satisfaction that you coveted, a satisfaction that your self-love imperiously demanded; or it is because it prescribed an act that cost an effort, and you loved yourself too much to make that effort. Examine every failing, little or great, and you will trace them back to the same source. If we thought more of God and less of ourselves we would never sin. The sinner lives for himself first, and for God afterwards.

Strange that such a sacred thing as love, the source of all good, may thus, by abuse, become the fountainhead of all evil! Perhaps, if it were not so sacred and prolific of good, its excess would not be so unholy. But the higher you stand when you tumble, the greater the fall; so the better a thing is in itself, the more abominable is its abuse. Love directed aright, towards God first, is the fulfillment of the Law; love misdirected is the very destruction of all law.

Yet it is not wrong to love oneself; that is the first law of nature. One, and one only being, the Maker, are we bound to love more than ourselves. The neighbor is to be loved as ourselves. And if our just interests conflict with his, if our rights and his are opposed to each other, there is no legitimate means but we may employ to obtain or secure what is rightly ours. The evil of self-love lies in its abuse and excess, in that it goes beyond the limits set by God and nature, that it puts unjustly our interests before God's and the neighbor's, and that to self it sacrifices them and all that pertains to them. Self, the "ego," is the idol before which all must bow.

Self-love, on an evil day, in the garden of Eden, wedded sin, Satan himself officiating under the disguise of a serpent; and she gave birth to seven daughters like unto herself, who in turn became fruitful mothers of iniquity. Haughty Pride, first-born and queen among her sisters, is inordinate love of one's worth and excellence, talents and beauty; sordid Avarice or Covetousness is excessive love of riches; loathsome Lust is the third, and loves carnal pleasures without regard for the law; fiery Anger, a counterpart of pride, is love rejected but seeking blindly to remedy the loss; bestial Gluttony worships the stomach; green-eyed Envy is hate for wealth and happiness denied; finally Sloth loves bodily ease and comfort to excess. The infamous brood! These parents of all iniquity are called the seven deadly sins. They assume the leadership of evil in the world and are the seven arms of Satan.

As it becomes their dignity, these vices never walk alone or go unattended, and that is the desperate feature of their malice. Each has a cortège of passions, a whole train of inferior minions, that accompany or follow. Once entrance is gained and a free hand is given, there is no telling the result. Once seated and secure, the passion seeks to satisfy itself; that is its business. Certain means are required to this end, and these means can be procured only by sinning. Obstacles often stand in the way and new sins furnish steps to vault over, or implements to batter them down. Intricate and difficult conditions frequently arise as the result of self-indulgence, out of which there is no exit but by fresh sins. Hence the long train of crimes led by one deadly sin towards the goal of its satisfaction, and hence the havoc wrought by its untrammeled working in a human soul.

This may seem exaggerated to some; others it may mislead as to the true nature of the deadly sins, unless it be dearly put forth in what their malice consists. Deadly sins are not, in the first place, in themselves, sins; they are vices, passions, inclinations or tendencies to sin, and we know that a vice is not necessarily sinful. Our first parents bequeathed to us as an inheritance these germs of misery and sin. We are all in a greater or lesser degree prone to excess and to desire unlawful pleasures. Yet, for all that, we do not of necessity sin. We sin when we yield to these tendencies and do what they suggest. The simple proneness to evil, devoid of all willful yielding is therefore not wrong. Why? Because we cannot help it; that is a good and sufficient reason.

These passions may lie dormant in our nature without soliciting to evil; they may, at any moment, awake to action with or without provocation. The sight of an enemy or the thought of a wrong may stir up anger; pride may be aroused by flattery, applause or even compliments; the demon of lust may make its presence known and felt for a good reason, for a slight reason, or for no reason at all; gluttony shows its head at the sight of food or drink, etc.

He who deliberately and without reason arouses a passion, and thus exposes himself imprudently to an assault of concupiscence, is grievously guilty; for it is to trifle with a powerful and dangerous enemy and it betokens indifference to the soul's salvation.

Suggestions, seductions, allurements follow upon the awakening of these passions. When the array of these forces comes in contact with the will, the struggle is on; it is called temptation. Warfare is the natural state of man on earth. Without it, the world here below would be a paradise, but life would be without merit.

In this unprovoked and righteous battle with sin, the only evil to be apprehended is the danger of yielding. But far from being sinful, the greater the danger, the more meritorious the struggle. It matters not what we experience while fighting the enemy. Imagination and sensation that solicit to yielding, anxiety of mind and discouragement, to all this there is no wrong attached, but merit.

Right or wrong depends on the outcome. Every struggle ends in victory or defeat for one party and in temptation there is sin only in defeat. A single act of the will decides. It matters not how long the struggle lasts; if the will does not capitulate, there is no sin.

This resistance demands plenty of energy, a soul inured to like combats and an ample provision of weapons of defense - faith, hatred of sin, love of God. Prayer is essential. Flight is the safest means, but is not always possible. Humility and self-denial are an excellent, even necessary, preparation for assured victory.

No man need expect to make himself proof against temptation. It is not a sign of weakness; or if so, it is a weakness common to all men. There is weakness only in defeat, and cowardice as well. The gallant and strong are they who fight manfully. Manful resistance means victory, and victory makes one stronger and invincible, while defeat at every repetition places victory farther and farther beyond our reach.

Success requires more than strength, it requires wisdom, the wisdom to single out the particular passion that predominates in us, to study its artifices and by remote preparation to make ourselves secure against its assaults. The leader thus exposed and its power for evil reduced to a minimum, it will be comparatively easy to hold in check all other dependent passions.

The Fruit of Dialogue

Catholics of San Francisco, Meet Bishop Sanderson

Dear Catholics of San Francisco,

It has come to my attention that you are rather upset with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and the demands he is making upon Catholic schools in your archdiocese. Your recent letter addressed to His Holiness Pope Francis, in which you respectfully ask him to replace the Archbishop, gives powerful witness to the overwhelming divergence between the Archbishop's understanding of the Catholic faith and your own. Among those who signed the letter were Frank and Diane Pitre, who said that they hoped the letter would serve to get someone's attention. Well, I'm pleased to report that it has!

I have it on good authority that there's someone who would like very much to meet with you in the spirit of charity to discuss your shared values: Bishop Jason Sanderson. Below, I reproduce his special invitation to all who would like to experience the respect, inclusion and freedom of conscience which you so desire. I've highlighted those bits which seem most congruent with your own vision of what it means to be Church.

***

His Excellence Bishop Jason Sanderson

Greetings in the Name of Christ!

Thank you for taking the time to inquire about our Church.

The Liberal Catholic Church is unlike many of the churches you have encountered and yet we are very similar to them. We are founded upon the Gospel of Love as taught us by our Lord and approach our mission to the World from that perspective and value the uniqueness of each individual. We honour and preserve both our Apostolic Succession and our Apostolic Teachings, but realise that these are ever growing and ever evolving teachings that call upon each generation to look at anew. We try to keep pace with the ever expanding knowledge of the universe that science provides and use that knowledge to better understand God's revelations to humanity.

To that end, we do not demand of our members a rigid conformity to a set of dogmas, but instead appreciate the fact that each person will have their own perspective. We are an open and inclusive church, heeding the words of Christ who calls to 'all who are weary and heavy laden' and welcome all those who approach the Lord's table with reverence and respect. We value equality and the stability of tradition and intellectual freedom.

We are also an active church, knowing that we best serve Christ when we serve others. From orphanages and schools in the various countries of Africa, to hospice and outreaches in the churches of the United States and elsewhere, as well as the simple, yet profound expression of God's love in our day to day lives, we put into practice the call of the risen Christ to go into the world and proclaim the Gospel to all.

Thank you once again for giving us the opportunity to share our message with you!

Sincerely,

+Jason 'Wolfman' Sanderson

Presiding Bishop

Liberal Catholic Church International

***

P.S. Besides being a bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, +Sanderson is also:

A beer aficionado:

A collector of carefully hand-crafted monster movie t-shirts:

And the proud owner of an impressive assortment of fine sacred tobaccos and ceremonial turkey-feather fans:

In case you're still not convinced of the man's sincerity, he was also a semi-professional wrestler:

Catholics of San Francisco, if you don't like the archbishop you have, there's no reason you shouldn't have the bishop you deserve.

The Word Was Made Flesh

Sixth Conference on the Most Sacred Heart

by

Fr. Henry Brinkmeyer

We have now seen that the divine uncreated love of the Sacred Heart as manifested in the creation of man dates from all eternity, and that it proceeds from God and embraces, as it were, the whole substance of the Divine Being. Again that overwhelming love is displayed in the Incarnation of the Son of God. It is ever the same eternal and total love we have already considered; it is simple, it is pure, it is immutable as God Himself. Yet we poor creatures, who do not see God, and who study His perfections successively in His works, perceive new qualities in that divine love for man when we look at it, not only through the mystery of Creation, but also through that of the Incarnation. Each of these sublime mysteries demonstrates God's love for His creatures. Creation reveals it as eternal and total, while the Incarnation manifests it as a generous and humble love. We will study, then, the generosity and humility of the divine love of the Sacred Heart for man.

Generosity is something more than kindness, tenderness or beneficence. A kind person will assist one in distress and will be careful not to wound the feelings of another. A beneficent, bountiful person will provide for the comfort and happiness of others and will dispense his favors abundantly. But a generous person will do not only all this, he will not only give, though he receive nothing in return: he will dispense favors, though at a great sacrifice to himself; he will, as it were, forget his own rights and disregard his own inclinations if he can bestow comfort upon another; he will not be repelled by the ingratitude and wickedness of those he benefits. In a word, he will sacrifice himself, his claims, his interests, and all that is dearest to him for the sake of those he loves. Such are the traits of one who is not only compassionate, kind, liberal and beneficent, but who is also generous.

Such are the characteristics of God's love as shown in the Incarnation. God is beneficent as our Creator, He continues His beneficence to us by His daily preservation and protection, He is bountiful in providing us daily with so many things over and above our needs, and which are intended only to procure us pleasure and to gladden our hearts; but He was infinitely generous when He so loved the world as to give for its redemption His only-begotten Son.

What need has He of us? What interest has He in loving us? Is He not complete and perfect in Himself? What beauty, what glory, what happiness does He want? Can we add to His bliss and to His unspeakable loveliness? We can receive all from Him, yet we cannot make any return for His bounties. Says St. Hilary most beautifully:

As no light returns to the sun, or heat to the fire, or to a perfume its sweet scent, so the Divine gifts so precious to him who receives them, are without profit to Him who gives them.

But to his native nothingness, and to his incapability of making any requital to God, man has added sin, and not one sin, but vast oceans and floods of sins - sin so cruel, so heinous, so terrible, that the mere sight of it cast the Son of God prostrate upon the ground in the garden of Gethsemane, and caused Him to sweat blood from sheer agony. And God knew it from all eternity. He saw these oceans of sin rising one upon another, He saw each and every sin in all its naked, revolting deformity, with all its hideous and shocking circumstances. It required all the strength of His infinite intelligence to comprehend the malice of these innumerable sins, yet still His love had to be satisfied. Love, as it were, silenced His justice, it quickened His wisdom, it strained His mercy. We might say, man's sin made Him, in a measure, love man more; for He decreed to become man Himself to redeem man. Yet he knew well that, even after the redemption, man would go on sinning, that few would try to be saved, that fewer still would become saints, and that for those He would make saints, He would have to suffer more grievously than for all the rest. But He shrank not, for love makes one insensible to wrong, for love must be satisfied at every cost. He determined to save His creatures by giving up His only-begotten Son.

Who can understand such love? It is so generous that it overwhelms us. If we had not God's word for it, we could never believe it. Father Faber well says:

More men are puzzled and tempted by the love of God than by any other article of faith.

We may indeed exclaim with Job:

My God, what is man that Thou shouldst magnify him? Why dost Thou set Thy Heart upon him?

To resume: God gives to man without the possibility of receiving any return. And when man is no longer man, when he is become like to senseless beasts, and, from being a child of love, makes himself a child of wrath, even then God loves him, and, to satisfy His own infinite justice, He becomes man, He suffers and, by His sufferings, pays rigorously for all He gives us. Finally, He immolates Himself to save His creature. Is not all this indeed generous?

Secondly, God's love for man, as manifested in the mystery of the Incarnation, is humble. Generally humility is defined as a virtue which prompts us to acknowledge our baseness and accept the place which belongs to us. Since in God there are all rights and no defects, He cannot, in this sense, be humble. There can be no presumption, no excess, no insincerity, no baseness in God; consequently, there cannot be in Him what is ordinarily called humility. But if we regard humility under another respect, namely, as a willingness to be lowered, and as an inclination for abasement, because of the blessed effects of such abasement, then we must say that, without exception, God is the one who abases Himself the most consummately and the most willingly, and on this ground God is more humble than any creature ever can be or ever will be.

It was love for God to create man, but it was a humble love, for it was a condescension, an inclination towards nothing, and therefore an abasement. Especially in decreeing the Incarnation did this humility become apparent. Undoubtedly again it was love that prompted it, but a love which, as St. Bernard says, makes majesty give way; a love which is humble, and therefore, it is indeed humility, and profound humility. Tu non abhorruisti Virginis uterum. "Thou hast not abhorred the Virgin's womb." That womb was all holy and pure, unstained by sin, but for God to descend into it was like descending into an abyss of infinite depth. Think of the pure God putting on a human form and, consequently, assuming an animal nature, not for a day, not only for thirty-three years, but for endless ages : think of His decreeing from all eternity that in time He would unite to Himself personally a material nature, and consequently, in that nature be forever after beneath His own millions and millions of angels. And this is not yet all. Think of His decreeing, from all eternity, that He Himself would take upon Himself the sins of mankind, that He would be their victim and their ransom, that He would be the despised and the most abject of men, as it were, a worm trodden under foot. If we think of all this, and consider that God, as God, from all eternity conceived and willed and in time, as man, accomplished all these things, must we not say that of all beings He is the one who abases Himself most consummately and most willingly, and is therefore most humble? And that humility, that willingness to be abased sprang from love.

For, what is love? It is something more than mere complacency and affection. St. Francis de Sales explains its nature in his beautiful treatise on the love of God. He says that complacency is a sort of satisfaction which the heart experiences at the view of goodness, that affection is a tender sentiment which dwells with pleasure upon an object, but that love is a movement forward, an effusion and an impulse of the heart towards the object of its predilection. Love, therefore, of its own nature tends to union, it breaks down all barriers, it bends towards the object loved, "it unites, collects, assembles and compresses all things, reducing them to unity." God's love for man sought, therefore, union with man, and by means of this union, it sought to communicate itself to man.

Now, there is no connection known to us which could be formed with man so close and intimate as this alliance of God with man in becoming man Himself. And to this unparalleled union, God's love impelled Him. It was an awe-inspiring humiliation, as we have just seen: but God loved us and He became incarnate; His Incarnation proves therefore, that He loves us with a love which is humble even to the lowest degree of self-abasement.

We have now seen God's love, all generous and humble, in the mystery of the Incarnation. "I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also." We should imitate this generous and humble love of the Sacred Heart. We should be generous with God, by the practice of self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, self-abandonment; we should be humble by loving a hidden life, by being silent when blamed, by avoiding praise and seeking what is lowly in the estimation of the world. Love will make all things easy.

O Lord! Make me love Thee, then do with me what Thou wilt! O, would that I could die for love of Thee, who hast deigned to die for love of me!

Tres Cardinales Contra Haereticos

How many Cardinals does it take to condemn a heresy?

If I had been gifted with more wit by Almighty God, I'd be able to turn that into one heck of a joke. I'm sure there's at least a mediocre one in there somewhere.

As many of you know by now, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission for Historical Sciences, has gone on record in condemnation of any proposal to change Catholic teaching on marriage as heresy. As reported on LifeSiteNews yesterday, when asked whether the Church can change its teaching on marriage without falling into grave error, the good Cardinal replied:

It is evident that the pastoral practice of the Church cannot stand in opposition to the binding doctrine nor simply ignore it. In the same manner, an architect could perhaps build a most beautiful bridge. However, if he does not pay attention to the laws of structural engineering, he risks the collapse of his construction. In the same manner, every pastoral practice has to follow the Word of God if it does not want to fail. A change of the teaching, of the dogma, is unthinkable. Who nevertheless consciously does it, or insistently demands it, is a heretic – even if he wears the Roman Purple.

Cardinal Brandmüller thus becomes the third high-ranking prelate to condemn the Kasper proposal and its attendant errors as heresy. The first to use the H-word in relation to the aftermath of the 2014 Synod was Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who quipped back in December of 2014:

Any separation of the theory and the practice of the faith would, in its formulation, represent a subtle christological heresy.

As I noted at the time, one can't help but be reminded of the comments made by Cardinal Donald Wuerl on the second day of the 2014 Synod in which he suggested precisely such a separation of theory from practice.

The second prelate to drop the H-bomb was Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, back in February of this year:

The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice - which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions - is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I affirm solemnly that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose every rebellion against the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.

The case seemed clear to me when I wrote the admittedly sophomoric but nonetheless uncontested article "Is Cardinal Kasper Promoting Heresy?" at the conclusion of the 2014 Synod. Now that there are three high-profile Cardinals who have come forward to condemn the heresy, I feel justified in maintaining my original conclusion.

But what is to come of these condemnations? If the position may be safely rejected as heresy, is condemnation of its promoters as heretics to follow? Cardinal Brandmüller's explicit mention of "the Roman Purple" is as far as anyone has gone in the natural progression from condemnation of the proposal to condemnation of the one who proposed it. If Cardinal Kasper remains adamant in the face of such condemnation, must we wait for the judgment of the Pope - a judgment which may never materialize - before we draw the necessary conclusion? And what would that conclusion entail? I'm no canon lawyer, but it seems to me that the canons of Trent (Session 13, Canon 11) explicitly call for the excommunication of anyone who "shall presume to teach, preach, or obstinately to assert, or even in public disputation to defend" the thesis that one who is in a state of unrepentant mortal sin may receive Holy Communion. Does the fact that Pope Francis, in his address to the Synod Fathers wherein he admonished them "Let no one say 'this cannot be said'," appeared to have had precisely this canonical censure in mind, nullify the incurment of the penalty? And who is competent to decide?

In any event, I have the feeling that momentum is building. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that Cardinal Carlo Caffarra will be the next to publicly confirm the heretical nature of the Kasper proposal, well in advance of the 2015 Synod. If he does, I foresee a chain-reaction which will be well-nigh impossible for anyone - perhaps including even Pope Francis - to stop.