The Sanctity of Marriage

Second in a Series on Catholic Marriage and Parenthood

 by

 Fr. Thomas J. Gerrard

It is part of God's providence that, when He sets before us an end to be attained, He provides us also with the means of attaining that end. So in the case of marriage, having ordained it for the high purpose of preparing souls for heaven, God has endowed it with qualities which make it an apt instrument for the purpose for which it was instituted. These qualities are revealed in the truth of Christ and the Church. Christ's Church was to be one only, and it was to last until the end of time. The bond of Christian marriage must likewise be one only and must last until broken by death. Unity and perpetuity are the qualities which make the marriage state specially fitted for the great object of bringing children into the world, of nourishing them in body, mind, and spirit, of bringing them to the final perfection for which man was created. If the bringing of children into the world is attended with great pain and labor, the bringing of their souls to perfection is attended with still greater pain and labor. It requires nothing else than the united life and love of both parents.

Now, such is the nature of man and woman that they cannot love effectually with a divided love. Let either partner give the other the slightest cause for jealousy and there is an end of that perfect love and harmony in the family which is so needful for the well-being of the children. The archtype of perfect love is the mutual love of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity. One of the fairest created reflections of that love is the triple love of family life: the love of husband, wife, and child. It will brook no intrusion from without. It cannot bear the prospect of it coming to an end. This is a fundamental and universal law of nature, a law of nature which is accentuated, ennobled, and made perfect by a law of grace. The Sacrament of Matrimony implies a special divine sanction to the laws of unity and perpetuity in the marriage bond.

The need of the higher sanction and help is seen from the passing nature of the merely natural charms. The mere physical pleasures pass away with their satisfaction. Youthful ardor burns out before the mature part of life is reached. In the course of a life so intimate as that of husband and wife, many faults of character become exposed. Marriage certainly brings a revelation of many new beauties of character, but it also brings a revelation of many faults of character. It is fraught with disappointments even as with agreeable surprises. The fading of bodily beauty also tends to weaken the natural bond. When the hair turns gray, and the eye loses its luster, and the features fall into wrinkles; when the general buoyancy and ardor of youth tones down into the prose of middle age; then, indeed, is there need of something more sustaining, something more lasting than the mere tie of natural affection or natural contract. It is found in the unity and perpetuity of the Sacrament. The Sacrament imparts all the courage, the energy, the refreshment, and the love needful to make the bond strong and lasting. It renews the youth of married life and makes it satisfying even in spite of years.

The Church claims to have the care of this Sacrament. The Church, therefore, has ever insisted on its unity and perpetuity. The Church regards the sin of adultery as something infinitely more heinous than any sin possible among the unmarried. The father who has to provide for his children must be certain that they are his own. He cares for them only on the supposition that they are his offspring. Any infidelity, therefore, on the part of the woman must of necessity tend to break up these sacred family relationships. A father cannot love and care for children who may be those of the man who has done him the greatest possible injury. And if a woman gives unswerving fidelity to her husband she has a right to claim an equal fidelity in return. Infidelity on the part of the man, although it does not act directly in rendering the offspring of the family uncertain, yet it strikes at the root of conjugal love, and thus almost directly at the foundations of family life. A violation of the sanctity of marriage, then, by either party is a double violation of God's law, a violation of chastity, and a violation of justice. Hence, we have the most stringent laws against adultery, against polygamy, and against divorce.

Among the Jews the penalty of adultery was death by stoning. In the most savage races of the earth, its punishment is immediate death. The law of Christ makes the law of nature and the law of Moses more perfect. This it does by all the conditions and rules which it lays down for the prevention of polygamy and divorce. By polygamy we usually understand the possession of two wives at the same time. The possession of two husbands at the same time is known as polyandry. Both are equally condemned by the Christian law.

The cases of polygamy among the Jews are frequently quoted by those who want an excuse for disregarding the laws of Christian marriage. Attention must be paid to the circumstances of time and race. If polygamy was permitted, then it was for a special reason. And the permission was mere toleration. The circumstances of the times required that it should be permitted in order to avoid greater evils. Nevertheless, God did not cease to give signs to His people as to what was the great ideal. The most wondrous love song ever sung by man was that inspired by the Holy Spirit, the song of songs, which tells of the love between one bridegroom and one bride, the love which lasts till death.

One is my dove, my perfect one is but one. [...] I to my beloved and my beloved to me, who feedest among the anemones. [...] Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell, the lamps thereof are fire and flames. [...] My beloved to me and I to him who feedeth among the lilies, till the day break and the shadows flee away.

So the young Tobias could say to his wife Sara: "For we are the children of saints, and we must not be joined together like heathens that know not God." In praying to God for a blessing on his marriage he referred back to its original conditions: "Thou madest Adam of the slime of the earth, and gavest him Eve for a helper. And now, Lord, thou knowest that not for fleshly lust do I take my sister to wife, but only for the love of posterity, in which Thy name may be blessed forever and ever." And Sara prayed with him: "Have mercy on us, and let us grow old both together in health."

Further, the Church, although she insists that the marriage bond lasts only till death, although she allows remarriage after the death of one of the partners, yet she looks upon such remarriage as something less perfect. Her ideal is that a marriage should be so distinctly one and perpetual as to exclude any other marriage even after the first has been dissolved by death. A marriage is not merely a union of two in one flesh, but also of two in one spirit. The more perfect thing, therefore, would be to consider the bond of love lasting right through death. The reason why the Church allows remarriage after the death of one of the partners is because there are other ends of matrimony besides mutual love. To give expression to her wish, however, and to mark the distinction between the more perfect state and the less perfect state, the Church does not give the nuptial blessing in cases where the bride is a widow if she has received it in a previous marriage. She gives It where the bride is being married for the first time, even though the bridegroom be a widower. Having regard to the dignity of the bride, the Church in this case overlooks the defect in the bridegroom. Her end is achieved by withholding the blessing only in the case of the marriage of widows, as stated above.

This brings us to the all-important question of divorce. If both the natural and divine laws maintain the unity and perpetuity of the marriage bond, then no power on earth, not even the Church, has power to grant a divorce. "What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Here, on the threshold of the question, it is necessary to make a clear distinction of terms.

When it is said that no power on earth can grant a divorce, divorce must be understood in a particular and strict sense of the word. Let us distinguish then between three kinds of separation. First, there is a separation which implies that the husband and wife are allowed to live apart. It is called, in juridical language, a judicial separation. It is called, in theological language, separatio a mensa et thoro, or "separation from bed and board". Its meaning is that, although the parties are separated from each other, yet they are not free to marry again. If they were allowed to marry again the separation would be said to be a vinculo, or "separation from the bond". The actual contract or tie would be broken. Now, the first kind of separation is allowed by the Church whenever there is a grave reason, such, for instance, as the misconduct of one of the parties. But the second kind the Church allows never. The bond which has been made by God may not be broken by man. One of the parties may forfeit certain rights of marriage through infidelity to the partner, but can never thereby acquire the freedom to marry again.

And further, the Church makes no distinction in this respect between the innocent party and the guilty. A bond is a bond, the contract is a two-sided one, and, therefore, as long as the bond or contract remains, it must bind both the parties. However unfair it may seem to the innocent party, yet it is God's law and God will see to it that those who observe His law, will, in the final balancing, receive their just reward.

Then there is another kind of separation which is frequently believed to be a divorce and which is a source of much perplexity to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is called a declaration of nullity. It means that that which has appeared to be a marriage is declared never to have been a marriage from the beginning. The parties have gone through the ceremony, but there has been some obstruction in the way which has prevented the knot from being tied and so the supposed marriage must be declared null and void.

Let us take an instance. A Jew married to a baptized Christian wife seeks for a divorce in the law courts. He is successful in his suit. Then, he becomes a Catholic, falls in love with a Catholic girl, and wishes to be married to her in the Catholic Church. There is no difficulty, the Church approves of the marriage. What has happened? The undiscerning public think that the Church has approved of divorce and of the remarriage of a divorced person. And if the man happens to have been a wealthy Jew, the undiscerning public is not slow to attribute unworthy motives to the Church. But again, what has really happened? The Jew's first marriage was really no marriage at all in the sight of the Church. Baptism is the first Sacrament and the door of the other Sacrament. The Jew had not received the Sacrament of Baptism and so was incapable of receiving the Sacrament of Marriage. And, being unbaptized, he was furthermore incapable of making the contract of marriage, for the Sacrament is the contract. Therefore, the marriage which, by the law of the land, was declared to be dissolved was, by the law of the Church, declared never to have existed, to have been null and void from the beginning. Consequently, when the Jew became a Catholic and received the Sacrament of Baptism, he was quite free and capable of uniting himself with the partner of his choice.

There are three exceptions to the law of indissolubility. The first two concern marriages ratified but not consummated. Such may be dissolved either by papal dispensation for some grave reason, or by the solemn, religious profession of one of the parties. The third is known as the Pauline privilege. It may happen only in a marriage between unbelievers, and this even when consummated. If one of the parties is converted to the Christian faith, and the other refuses to live peaceably, or shows contempt for God and religion, or tries to pervert the faithful partner, then the faithful one has a right to a real divorce (1 Cor. 7:15).

Within these limitations, the Church is absolutely inexorable against any attempt at separation from the bond. She has suffered the loss of whole nations from the faith rather than sacrifice one jot or tittle of her principle. The care of the Sacrament has been committed to her keeping, and to have condoned a denial of the sacramental nature of the matrimonial bond, even in one case, would have been to renounce the divine charge given to her. For the English-speaking world, the Pope's firmness in refusing to grant a divorce to Henry VIII must ever be a monument of the fidelity of the Church to the sanctity of the marriage state. And the famous Encyclical of the late Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII, must ever remain the character of woman's dignity and safety as to her marriage right. He wrote:

The great evils, of which divorce is the spring, can hardly be enumerated. When the conjugal bond loses its immutability, we may expect to see benevolence and affection destroyed between husband and wife; an encouragement given to infidelity; the protection and education of children rendered more difficult; the germs of discord sown between families; woman's dignity disowned; the danger for her of seeing herself forsaken, after having served as the instrument of man's passions. And as nothing ruins families and destroys the most powerful kingdoms like the corruption of manners, it is easy to see that divorce, which is only begotten of the depraved manners of a people, is the worst enemy of families and of States, and that it opens the door, as experience attests, to the most vicious habits, both in private and in public life.

Views subversive of the Catholic ideal are now very prevalent, and are becoming day by day more prevalent. In the matter of the sanctity of marriage, as in many other things, it is the Catholics who are the salt of the earth. Whilst other religious bodies are prepared to give way under any specious pretext which may arise, the See of Peter proclaims the principle of no compromise. And when the churches which ought to guard the sanctity of marriage show themselves weak and accommodating to the lower pleasures of man, we must not be surprised if non-religious bodies speak openly in favor of divorce and, all unashamed, make profession of free love. This, indeed, has come to pass.

High time is it, then, for Catholics to make their voice heard in protest. Nay, absolutely imperative is it that Catholics should rally themselves anew with even greater loyalty around the Holy Father who watches the marriage Sacrament so anxiously and sees its dangers so clearly. Legislation is made which may be irksome; but the irksomeness thereby suffered is trifling compared with the irksomeness thereby avoided. Let us admit boldly that the marriage state is fraught with difficulties, that love is liable to grow cold, that childbearing is a burden, that the education of many children is a tax on the family's resources, that a drunken husband is an almost intolerable nuisance, that a gossiping wife is a plague of a life; let us admit all this, but at the same time insist that the Sacrament of Marriage has power either to prevent or mitigate the evils. It restrains the passions. But let the idea of divorce once get established, and there is an end of restraint. The passions are let loose and fall victim to every little counter-attraction to family life. The half-hearted partner who realizes that there is an easy escape from the burden of married life makes no serious attempt to bear it. Then comes the sad spectacle of a mother left alone with a house full of children and no father to provide for them; or what is perhaps even more sad, a father with a house full of children and no mother to take care of them. The Church's laws may be hard to bear at times. They are, however, as the yoke of Christ, sweet and easy to bear, if only we spread them out over the short run of life.

On the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture, or The Fissure of Pope Paul VI

[Note: The following article, which treats the crisis of biblical exegesis in the century preceding Vatican II, is something I originally posted over a year ago on Louie Verrecchio's blog - on April 11, 2014 to be precise, just a few months before I decided to start The Radical Catholic. I hesitated to re-publish it here, mainly because I wanted to undertake a more comprehensive treatment of the subject at some point. I still do. In fact, I've since collected enough raw material for a medium-sized book. But the circumstances of my off-line life have changed recently, and I don't know when I'll be able to get back to working on that project. In the meantime, I present to you, gentle reader, the original unedited article for your consideration. - RC]

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It is often claimed that the changes made to the Sacred Liturgy in the wake of Vatican II have had a devastating effect on the life of the Church. That these two things - the liturgical changes and the devastation - were historically concomitant is clear enough. But are the two things connected as a cause to its effect? Or are they both rather effects of some other cause?

For those who have spent any time researching the matter, it is clear that trouble was brewing long before the opening of Vatican II. Many point to Pope St. Pius X’s 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis as a key document in the Church’s war against Modernism, and rightly so. But that work is often treated in a way which removes it from its historical context.

Even a superficial examination of the reign of Pope St. Pius X reveals a man fighting a veritable hydra of heresy. It is clear that the matter weighed heavily on him, and he devoted a tremendous amount of energy to combating it. But the focal point of his energy is often overlooked: biblical exegesis.

Pascendi has to be read in light of the documents with which it appeared. Of central importance here is the 1907 syllabus of errors, Lamentabili Sane Exitu, nearly all of which treat errors pertaining to the interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Of equal importance are the documents Praestantia Scripturae (1907), which bound all Catholics to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Commission, and Vinea Electa (1909), which established the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Taken together, these documents reveal that Pope St. Pius X clearly recognized biblical exegesis as the crack through which Modernism was attempting to enter the sanctuary of the Church.

Pope St. Pius X was not the first to recognize that biblical exegesis was to be the Modernist’s chosen point of entry in their campaign to "reform" the Church from within. Under Blessed Pope Pius IX, the First Vatican Council promulgated Dei Filius, which forcefully restated the Church’s position on Sacred Scripture. This, however, seems only to have emboldened the Modernists. As a counter-measure, Pope Leo XIII delivered his encyclical Providentissimus Deus in 1893, which deals extensively with the study and interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

Providentissimus, while laudable in its treatment of the potential errors in regards to biblical exegesis, appeared to leave just enough wiggle-room for Modernists to continue spreading their errors. In 1902, Leo XIII delivered Vigilantiae Studiique, which officially instituted the Pontifical Commission for Biblical Studies. This Commission, it was hoped, would close the crack and thwart any future advances of the Modernists in the field of biblical exegesis. As it set about its work, however, one thing became perfectly clear: the extent of the errors promulgated by "Catholic" exegetes had been grossly underestimated. The very foundation of the faith was under full assault, and the Church was doing little to nothing to combat it. This recognition is what prompted Pope St. Pius X to issue Lamentabili Sane Exitu in 1907 and found the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 1909. For the time being, the Church closed ranks behind its leader. It would also prove to be the last time.

The period of superficial calm ended with the death of St. Pius X in 1914, and the Modernists returned to their work with renewed vigor under Pope Benedict XV. Taking advantage of the occasionally vague language of Leo XIII’s Providentissimus, the Modernists pushed ahead with their advocacy of the methods of historical criticism. This prompted Benedict XV to deliver the encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus in 1920, which set about to give an official clarification of the intent behind Leo XIII’s encyclical. Benedict roundly condemned once again the errors of modernist biblical exegesis, but the warnings fell on deaf ears. The modernists held so many key positions in institutions of higher learning that dissent from Rome on this point had become commonplace.

The ultimate turning point in the battle is marked by Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. This document essentially removed every defensive measure the previous Popes had put in place to safeguard Sacred Scripture from the attacks of modernist criticism. It was, by and large, drafted by Cardinal Bea, who served as Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute from 1930 to 1949 and was later to become instrumental in the drafting of several key documents of Vatican II, including Nostra Aetate and - most significantly - Dei Verbum, the Council’s "Dogmatic Constitution on Sacred Scripture". It is questionable whether Pius XII had much to do with the Divino at all prior to putting his signature on it. Of course, the person of Cardinal Bea needs little in the way of further introduction. He was Pope John XXIII’s closest adviser, and was appointed as the first President of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. Cardinal Bea was, indeed, one of the major players in the tragedy of Vatican II.

If there is one central fact which could be used to illumine all of the events leading up to and transpiring after Vatican II, it is this: the members of the Church, clerics and laity alike, have, by and large, lost all sense of supernatural faith in Sacred Scripture. Even among the most staunch supporters of Tradition and the time-honored form of the Divine Liturgy, there are exceedingly few who would maintain anything resembling a traditional interpretation of Genesis 1-11. Countless are those who run to St. Augustine or - incomparably worse - Origen, hoping to find something there which will allow them to read a big bang, billions of years, evolution, and any other modern scientific theory into Sacred Scripture. Little do they realize that, in doing so, they have already capitulated to modernism inasmuch as they grant the underlying thesis that modern science and Sacred Scripture are telling the same story. They are not.

When we give up the plain historical sense of Genesis - the same sense taught by Our Blessed Lord - we open up the very real threat of giving up the plain historical sense of the Gospel. Without a historical Adam, without a historical Eden, without a historical Fall, there is no New Adam, no New Jerusalem, no Eternal Salvation. There’s just a Jewish carpenter’s son preaching social justice in the countryside of Judea 2,000 years ago.

Already now, theologians are working feverishly to remove the biblical foundation of traditional soteriology and eschatology. For example, Benedict XVI made no secret of his desire to rehabilitate the work of the heretic evolutionist Teilhard de Chardin. For anyone familiar with the work of the latter and capable of thinking the system through to its logical consequence, the prospect is horrifying. For the uninformed, let it suffice to say that this is most emphatically not the faith of the Apostles.

So, my question is this: How can the call to traditional liturgy be made without an equally forceful call to traditional exegesis?

Ancient Alexandria

Reading N°27 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

By good fortune, the later First Century saw Asia Minor become wide open for the spread of the Gospel. Next to the city of Ephesus, Alexandria seemed to promise the brightest future for the Christian religion.

Serapis

Like Ephesus, which became the metropolis of the Roman province of Asia in 129 BC, the city built by Alexander the Great and containing his tomb, a century later also fell under the might of Rome. Old Egypt became a Roman province and its great capital was thereafter the center and a sort of rallying place for the world of philosophers, thinkers, poets, artists, and mathematicians. Under Roman sway, however, Alexandria jealously kept its religious autonomy. The vast temple of Serapis, which from the top of its artificial hill surveyed the commercial activity of the whole city, appeared to symbolize that haughty independence.

There was located the great library containing 200,000 volumes, which Antony brought from Pergamus to replace that of the Museum which had been burned when Julius Caesar set fire to the Egyptian fleet. This library was the meeting-place of Alexandrian Hellenism and of Jewish culture. The Jews had long been settled in Egypt. At Alexandria they formed an important community which, in this city of a million souls,^[1] reached a figure of more than 300,000, about one-third of the total population.^[2] One of our canonical books, Wisdom, was probably written at Alexandria toward the middle of the second century BC.^[3] The Bible had there been translated into Greek under the first Ptolemies, between 280 and 230 BC. The Jewish books had an influence upon the notions of Greek philosophy. And Alexandrian Judaism, though still venerating at Jerusalem the center of the theocratic religion, was renewed by contact with Hellenic civilization. From this reciprocal influence was born the work of Philo.

Philo of Alexandria

We have very little information about the life of this Jewish writer, who was a contemporary of Christ. We know only that his brother, or rather the son of his brother, was alabarch, or chief collector of the customs at Alexandria, and that Philo himself was deputed by his fellow-Jews (AD 40) to go to Rome to appease the wrath of Caligula, who had been angered against the Jews because they refused to adore him as a god.^[4] Philo of Alexandria was principally an exegete, but applied Plato's idealism in the interpretation of the holy books. Many Fathers of the Church speak of him with a respect that borders on admiration. Philo had none of the narrowness of the Pharisees attached to the letter of the Law. He was a man of mysticism and inner worship. With him the idea of philosophy and that of revelation, far from being mutually exclusive, harmonize with each other.^[5] But it is also noteworthy that the ideas which Philo sets forth in his books are not so much personal, as they are ideas slowly and deeply elaborated in the Alexandrian atmosphere, ideas that, outside the limited circle of scholars, penetrated into the minds of the ordinary people.^[6]

Such being the case, Alexandrian philosophy, if ill-directed, might contribute to the perversion of the Christian movement and might lead it in the direction of vague and dissolvent fancies; but if wisely regulated, it might become, by its broad spirit, a powerful instrument in the spread of Christianity. It is a fact that, at a very early date, Alexandria was entered by missioners of the gospel. According to Eusebius, the first Christian community there was founded by St. Mark.^[7] It is probable that the Alexandrians and the Cyrenians who were present at Pentecost may have preceded him there. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that one of the most eloquent preachers of the good tidings, Apollo, "one mighty in the Scriptures, fervent in spirit," was a native of Alexandria. Alexandrian Jews are mentioned among the adversaries of Stephen.^[8] Soon, beside brilliant apologists of the school of Clement of Alexandria, the Gnostic sects began to increase. Both truth and error appeared in a powerful and spirited manner, overflowing with life and splendor.

Footnotes

[1] Dict. de la Bible, I, col. 354.

[2] Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, I, 239.

[3] Dict. de la Bible, I, col. 356; Touzard, in Où en est l'histoire des religions, sec. 7, nos. 148-152.

[4] Beurlier, Le culte impérial, pp. 264-271.

[5] Brehier, Les Idées philosophiques et religieuses de Philon d'Alexandrie, pp. 311-318. Cf. Louis, Philon le Juif; Lebreton (Les Théories du Logos au debut de l'ère chrétienne, in Etudes, vol. 106, and Les Origines de la Trinité) shows that Philo's doctrine is fundamentally a Jewish doctrine, altered and distorted, not a doctrine taken from the pagans, as was once claimed. For Philo, the Logos is "the world of the ideas of the personal God according to Moses." The origin of this conception is connected with the Sapiential literature of the Old Testament. "In Palestine, as also in Egypt, the Jews were accustomed to meditate upon these inspired pages, notably Baruch 3:10-38, Job 28, and especially Prov. 1-9, Ecclu. 24:5-47; Wisdom 7:10; 10:17. Considering the outward operation of this Wisdom, we find it very similar to the Logos of the Stoics or the popular Hermes of Egypt or the amesha spenta of Persia or the Logos of Philo. But the Scriptural notion of the hypostatic Wisdom, in which Israel adored the only true God, is quite opposed to the pantheistic materialism of the Porch, as also to the mythological phantasies of Egypt and Persia, which were an undefinable product of Alexandrian speculation. The contemporary apocrypha, as also the books of the Bible, show how deeply this notion had penetrated the minds of the chosen people." (D'Alès, in Etudes, 1912, p. 90.)

[6] Bréhier, loc. cit.

[7] Eusebius, H. E., II, xvi.

[8] Acts 6:9.

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Religion

Twenty-Third in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by
 Fr. John H. Stapleton

As far back as the light of history extends, it shows man, of every race and of every clime, occupied in giving expression, in one way or another, to his religious impressions, sentiments, and convictions. He knew God; he was influenced by this knowledge unto devotion; and he sought to externalize this devotion for the double purpose of proving its truth and sincerity, and of still further nourishing, strengthening, safeguarding it by means of an external worship and sensible things. Accordingly, he built temples, erected altars, offered sacrifices, burnt incense; he sang and wept, feasted and fasted; he knelt, stood and prostrated himself - all things in harmony with his hopes and fears. This is worship or cult. We call it religion, distinct from interior worship or devotion, but supposing the latter essentially. It is commanded by the first precept of God.

He who contents himself with a simple acknowledgment of the Divinity in the heart, and confines his piety to the realm of the soul, does not fulfill the first commandment. The obligation to worship God was imposed, not upon angels - pure spirits - but upon men - creatures composed of a body as well as a soul. The homage that He had a right to expect was therefore not a purely spiritual one, but one in which the body had a part as well as the soul. A man is not a man without a body. Neither can God be satisfied with man's homage unless his physical being cooperate with his spiritual, unless his piety be translated into acts and become religion, in the sense in which we use the word.

There is no limit to the different forms religion may take on as manifestations of intense fervor and strong belief. Sounds, attitudes, practices, etc., are so many vehicles of expression, and may be multiplied indefinitely. They become letters and words and figures of a language which, while being conventional in a way, is also natural and imitative, and speaks more clearly and eloquently and poetically than any other human language. This is what makes the Catholic religion so beautiful as to compel the admiration of believers and unbelievers alike.

Of course, there is nothing to prevent an individual from making religion a mask of hypocrisy. If in using these practices, he does not mean what they imply, he lies as plainly as if he used words without regard for their signification. These practices, too, may become absurd, ridiculous and even abominable. When this occurs, it is easily explained by the fact that the mind and heart of man are never proof against imbecility and depravity. There are as many fools and cranks in the world as there are villains and degenerates.

The Church of God regulates divine worship for us with the wisdom and experience of centuries. Her sacrifice is the first great act of worship. Then there are her ceremonies, rites, and observances; the use of holy water, blessed candles, ashes, incense, vestments; her chants, and fasts and feasts, the symbolism of her sacraments. This is the language in which, as a Church, and in union with her children, she speaks to God her adoration, praise and thanksgiving. This is her religion, and we practice it by availing ourselves of these things and by respecting them as pertaining to God.

We are sometimes branded as idolaters, that is, as people who adore another or others than God. We offer our homage of adoration to God who is in heaven, and to that same God whom we believe to be on our altars. Looking through Protestant spectacles, we certainly are idolaters, for we adore what they consider as simple bread. In this light we plead guilty; but is it simple bread? That is the question. The homage we offer to everything and everybody else is relative, that is, it refers to God, and therefore is not idolatry.

As to whether or not we are superstitious in our practices, that depends on what is the proper homage to offer God and in what does excess consist. It is not a little astonishing to see the no-creed, dogma-hating, private-judgment sycophants sitting in judgment against us and telling us what is and what is not correct in our religious practices. We thought that sort of a thing - dogmatism - was excluded from Protestant ethics; that every one should be allowed to choose his own mode of worship, that the right and proper way is the way one thinks right and proper. If the private interpreter claims this freedom for himself, why not allow it to us? We thought they objected to this kind of interference in us some few hundred years ago. Is it too much if we object most strenuously to it in them in these days? It is strange how easily some people forget first principles, and what a rare article on the market is consistency.

The Institution and Purpose of Marriage

First in a Series on Catholic Marriage and Parenthood

 by

 Fr. Thomas J. Gerrard

One of the most remarkable phenomena of the social life of the 20th century is the movement among womankind for a readjustment of the relations between man and woman. The movement affects all spheres of life. It makes the most noise in the sphere of politics. But as the affairs of the State have their root in the affairs of the family, it is to the family that we must look for the cause of the disturbance.

There would seem to be something wrong with many of the current ideas concerning the relationship between husband and wife. The fact indeed is that in many quarters the Catholic ideal of the great Sacrament of matrimony has become obscured. The protective love of the husband toward the wife has been changed into a tyrannical overlordship. The loving acquiescence in that protection on the part of the wife has been construed into a servile obedience. The outrage on both nature and grace has rendered the mutual Life irksome beyond endurance, and consequently ideas have become prevalent which tell both against the sanctity of the marriage state, and against the indissolubility of its bond. Let us see then what the Church has to say about this wondrous mystery.

The very institution of marriage has its reason in the weakness and insufficiency of man. God, although supremely happy in the company of His own blessed Trinity, had willed to exercise His love outside Himself. He had willed to produce a created world in which there should be one class of creatures bearing His own likeness.

After separating the night from the day, and the land from the water, after making the fishes of the sea, the fowl of the air, and the cattle of the earth, He made man to rule over the earth. He made man a reasonable being, capable of giving a reasonable service. But even with all the delights of that paradise of pleasure, with all his unimpaired intelligence and power of ordaining things for God's glory, man by himself was not enough for God's purpose. There were parts in God's great design which man by himself could not accomplish. He was wanting in both physical, mental, and moral complements. So God said: " It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself." So God cast Adam into a deep sleep, took a rib from his side from which He built a woman. And when God brought the woman to the man, then did Adam say:

This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.

Having been thus made for each other and united to each other, they then received the message of God as to the end for which all these things had been arranged.

Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.

The formation of Adam and Eve and their union in the matrimonial bond had, however, a very much wider significance than the mere multiplication of human beings and the replenishment of the earth. God, when He created them, had also in His mind His own Incarnation and His Church. The institution of matrimony was to be a kind of prophecy of His Incarnation and a figure of His Church. As Adam was made weak so that Eve might be given to him to be his strength, so the Son of God became weak, emptying Himself of Himself so that He might take upon Himself the form of a servant and, clothed in flesh, might accomplish the strong victory over sin and death. As Eve was taken from the side of Adam as he slept, and became the mother of all living, so was the Church taken from the side of Christ as He slept upon the Cross, and became for Him His chosen spouse, the Mother of all those to whom He had come to give life.

The state of marriage, therefore, as reflected in the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Church is seen to have the high function not only of procreating human beings to replenish the earth, but also of training them in the higher life of grace and thus preparing them for the still higher life of glory. Christ came into the world solely to save sinners. The end of the Church is merely the salvation of souls. If, therefore, matrimony is a figure of the Incarnation and the Church, then its chief end is the population of heaven with immortal souls.

Seeing, then, that the chief end of matrimony is so high and noble, the means ordained for the accomplishment of that end must be proportionately high and noble. And so we find that nature has provided such means. These may be summed up in the two properties of marriage: its unity and its indissolubility.

And if we would probe further into the mystery and find the common source of these properties of marriage, we discern it in that all-attractive beauty of the state of conjugal love. The mere procreation of children could not possibly be the end of matrimony; for this could be done without the bond, without the unity, without the perpetuity, without the love. Manifestly, then, the chief reason for the institution of matrimony was the welfare of the offspring, not merely the existence of the offspring, but its growth and development, the promotion of all its interests. Therefore it was that God so made man and woman that they should love each other, that they should foster that love and concentrate it on each other by excluding all other love of the same kind, that they should make it so strong and lasting that only death should be able to bring about a breach of the union.

All this points to the fact that the marriage bond is a law of nature. It is a mutual agreement by which a man and a woman give themselves to each other until death, and this chiefly for the sake of the highest interest of the children which shall be born to them.

Its natural perfection, however, in course of time became corrupted. Impurity then, even as now, led to hardness of heart. Consequently Moses allowed divorce. The Pharisees, knowing this, brought it as an objection to Our Lord's teaching. Our Lord, however, was able to quote an earlier and more fundamental law.

Have ye not read that He who made man from the beginning, made them male and female? And He said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.

Moses had taken into consideration the hardness of their hearts and for the sake of preventing greater evils had permitted them to put away their wives. "But," Our Lord reminded them, "from the beginning it was not so."

In this, as in many other matters, God had a greater design in view. He desired to provide a remedy for all this irregular life by raising the natural state of marriage to a supernatural plane. Forbidding divorce and insisting on the essential unity and indissolubility of the marriage tie, Christ raised it to the dignity of a Sacrament. Thus it became a more perfect figure of the Incarnation and the Church. Through the union of the Godhead and the Manhood, Christ in His human nature was filled with all grace and knowledge compatible with His created nature. Through the union of Christ with the Church, the Church is sanctified as His one perfect and spotless bride. So likewise, through the union of man and woman in the Sacrament of matrimony, there is conferred on them all the graces needful to enable them to carry out the arduous duties of that state. St. Paul says:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life. [...] So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. This is a great Sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.

When St. Paul speaks of marriage being a great Sacrament he does not use the word in the strict sense in which we use it now. He means merely that it is a great sign of something sacred, a mystical symbol of the union between Christ and His Church. Nevertheless, on account of the similarity of the marriage bond to the bond between Christ and His Church, we are able to gather that marriage is a Sacrament in the strictest sense of the word.

The union between Christ and His Church consists of sanctifying grace. It consists further of a continual flow of all those graces which are needful for attaining the Church's end, namely, the salvation of all the souls for whom the Church was instituted. If, therefore, the marriage bond is like the bond between Christ and His Church, it must be the means by which graces sanctifying the marriage state are conferred. A Sacrament of the new law is a sacred sign instituted by Christ to signify and to confer grace. If, therefore, the marriage bond signifies and confers the graces needful for the marriage state, and if instituted by Christ, then it is one of the seven Sacraments of the new law. So it was then that Christ placed His divine seal on the natural contract and with His own lips proclaimed it henceforth to be a bond forged in heaven.

What, therefore, God hath joined together let no man put asunder.

From the fact that Christ raised the natural contract into a Sacrament, it follows that the parties to the contract are the ministers of the Sacrament. It is the man and woman who hand themselves over to each other making a mutual contract to live together till death. It is the man and woman, therefore, who confer on each other the Sacrament enabling them to fulfill the higher duties which are involved in the Christian married state. The priest is not the minister of the Sacrament, but only the witness of it. Our late Holy Father, Pope Leo XIII, emphasized this when he insisted that the contract and the Sacrament were not two separate things. In his encyclical Arcanum divinae sapientiae, he writes:

The distinction, or rather separation, cannot be approved of, since it is clear that in Christian matrimony the contract is not separable from the Sacrament, and consequently that a true and lawful contract cannot exist without being by that very fact a Sacrament. For Christ Our Lord endowed matrimony with the sacramental dignity; but matrimony is the contract itself, provided that the contract is rightly made. [...] Therefore, it is plain that every true marriage among Christians is in itself and by itself a Sacrament; and that nothing is further from the truth than that the Sacrament is a sort of added ornament or quality Introduced from without, which may be detached from the contract at the discretion of man.

If, therefore, the Sacrament is the mutual contract, it is the woman, who, as God's minister, confers on the man those soul beauties which make him a figure of Christ, the bridegroom of the Church; and so likewise is it the man who, as God's minister, confers on the woman those soul beauties which make her a figure of the Church, the bride of Christ. Husband and wife are thus seen to be the complement: of each other in their supernatural, as well as in their natural relationships.

It is well to keep this supernatural aspect of the case prominently before our minds when we consider the duties and obligations of the state. The end for which marriage was instituted was a most difficult end to attain. Indeed, it were an impossible task without the special divine helps provided. Remembering these helps, however, the married couple may face their difficulties with a good heart. The sacramental effect of matrimony does not spend itself out within a week or two of the nuptial ceremony. The grace conferred on the wedding morning remains with them when they leave the church, remains with them in their home life, fortifies them in their discouragements, and steels their wills to the emergencies of every difficult situation.

The Church then, having made this clear to them, sets aside all false modesty and tells them in grave and plain language what their duties are. The first duty is the bringing of children into the world and the educating of them in the service of God; the second duty is mutual love and service in the companionship of domestic life. In the nuptial Mass the priest solemnly prays over them that they may be fruitful in their offspring and that they may see their children's children unto the third and fourth generation. And finally in his exhortation he warns them to be faithful to each other, and to remain chaste at special times of prayer, during the fasts and solemn seasons of the Church.

Now all this involves much trouble and anxiety both on the part of the husband and of the wife. With the former lies the paramount obligation of working for the sustenance of the household; with the latter lie all the cares of child-bearing; with both lies that anxiety for the temporal and spiritual well-being of each other and of the children. St. Paul says:

But if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned. But if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned; nevertheless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh.

Those who enter this state, therefore, should do so with their eyes wide open to the fact that it is a life fraught with difficulty and that both man and woman are supposed to be willing to bear grave inconveniences. When a man complains of his loss of liberty or the increased burden on his pocket, or when a woman complains of the troubles of children, there has evidently been some radical misunderstanding as to the end of the institution of marriage and of its burdens. What is needed on those occasions is the consideration that marriage is a Sacrament - a Sacrament which is a channel of divine strength to bear the burden, of divine light to see the way out of the difficulties, of divine refreshment for the constant renewal of conjugal life and love.

The Church of the Late First Century: The Immediate Successors to the Apostles

Reading N°26 in the History of the Catholic Church

 by

 Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

The Martyrdom of St. Simeon of Jerusalem

We have already said that the Christian community of Jerusalem had mostly taken refuge in the city of Pella. They soon founded a new center of equal importance somewhat farther north, in the city of Kochaba.^[1] But in both places the refugees lived under precarious conditions. Most of them had no resources other than their labor. Eusebius relates how, a few years later, our Lord's relatives, summoned before their persecutors, who were somewhat disquieted by the report of their noble birth, "showed their hands, adducing as testimony of their labor the hardness of their bodies, and the tough skin which had been embossed on their hands from their incessant work."^[2] The same historian, basing his statement on an ancient text of Hegesippus, tells us that the successor of James the Less in the episcopate was also a relative of the Savior. It was Simeon, the son of Cleophas, cousin-german of our Lord.^[3] He was martyred under Trajan about the year 110.^[4] At the time of which we are now speaking, he bore his adversity with a heroism worthy of his glorious predecessor. In him seemed to live again that Apostle James who had so forcefully anathematized wealth and had said:

Hath not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom?^[5]

But these praiseworthy Christians, it seems, did not recruit adepts. They were devout and austere, and whole-heartedly attached to Christ; but as they had not yet broken sufficiently with Israel's past, they remained almost altogether outside the great movement that would regenerate the world by freeing it from the Law.

In spite of appearances, the situation at Rome was hardly any better. In many respects, the first two Flavian emperors (Vespasian and Titus) deserved the praise later voiced by St. Augustine, when he called them "the most benignant emperors."^[6] The good will that they accorded the Jews extended to the Christians.^[7] But neither of these emperors abolished that principle of public law which, looking upon Christianity as opposed to the Roman civilization, served as a ground for the Neronian persecution. "Everyone of Nero's institutes was abolished," says Tertullian, "except his edict of persecution."^[8]

Flavian Emperors Vespasian (AD 9-79), Titus (39-81) and Domitian (51-96)

The third emperor of the Flavian family was Domitian. The beginning of his rule gave the Christians equally great hopes, but also aroused terrible suspicions. While men of letters, highly honored by the new emperor,^[9] showered their praises upon him,^[10] common rumor accused him of the death of his brother Titus,^[11] and some discerning persons questioned whether his virtues were not more apparent than real. The last two years of Domitian's reign fulfilled the most sinister anticipations.

Fresco of the Good Shepherd from the Catacomb of Priscilla

Meanwhile, the Christian Church profited by the broad tolerance which the Emperor granted it. The faith entered the ranks of the highest Roman society and was openly practiced. Evidence of this may be seen in the appearances of the cemeteries of the Flavians' time. All of them are even with the ground; their entrances are never disguised; they open upon the fields, along the highways, and sometimes display monumental façades. Some of these burial-places, excavated with magnificent and almost royal care, are adorned with every refinement of art.^[12] Among the cemeteries of this period we may note, on the Via Salaria, the catacomb of Priscilla, belonging to the noble line of the Pudens; on the Ostian road, the cemetery of Lucina, who is probably none other than the famous patrician Pomponia Graecina; and near the Porta Ardeatina, the great burial domain of the Flavians, belonging to the grand-daughter of Vespasian, Flavia Domitilla.^[13]

Pope St. Linus (AD 67-80)

The three popes who, during this period, presided over the destinies of the Church of Rome belonged to the lowest ranks of the people. The first, LINUS, was, it is supposed, a former slave. At least, this is what certain historians think may be inferred from his very name.^[14] This first successor of St. Peter seems, in any event, to have belonged to a very humble class. We know almost nothing of his pontificate. St. Epiphanius supplies us with a list of the first eleven popes according to a very ancient document; he says that Linus governed the Church for twelve years.^[15] The tradition recorded in the Liber Pontificalis adds that he maintained the regulations established by St. Peter,^[16] that he died a martyr, and was buried on the Vatican hill.^[17]

Pope St. Cletus (AD 80-92)

Of the life of his successor, CLETUS or ANACLETUS even less is known.^[18] It would seem that his name, too, must be that of a slave or freedman. Probably he belonged to that group of poor people that formed the first nucleus of the Church of Rome. Perhaps this humble disciple of the Apostles changed his name from Anacletus ("the blameless") to Cletus ("the called" of the Lord). Like his two predecessors, he was martyred.^[19] Eusebius says his pontificate lasted twelve years.^[20] Perhaps this figure should be reduced two or three years.

Cletus' successor in the See of Peter was CLEMENT I. After the names of the Apostles there is none more venerable and illustrious in Christian antiquity. Less than a hundred years after the death of Clement of Rome, as he is called, his figure is adorned with a wonderful halo. The Christians appeal to his authority, and heretics seek shelter under his respected name. A whole pseudo-Clementine literature arose. In spite of this fame - perhaps because of it - his life and writings are surrounded with shadow. Legend became mingled with his history to such an extent as almost completely to obscure it. He is said to have been of senatorial rank, related to the Flavian dynasty. Some historians even identify him with the Consul Titius Flavius Clemens, Domitian's cousin, whom the Emperor had executed on a charge of "atheism," i. e., Christianity. But then how are we to explain the silence of the Fathers regarding the raising of a member of the imperial family to be the head of the Roman Church? It is more reasonable to suppose that Pope Clement was a simple freedman, or the son of a freedman, of the household of the Consul Clement.^[21] Tillemont, and other scholars after him, thought that the contents and form of Clement's letter to the Corinthians indicate that he was of Jewish origin.^[22] What is certain, however, is that no more genuine witness to the Apostolic tradition can be found. St. Irenaeus says:

This man [Clement], as he had seen the blessed Apostles [Peter and Paul], and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the Apostles still echoing in his ears and their traditions before his eyes.^[23]

Pope St. Clement I (AD 92-99)

Following Origen and Eusebius, many have attributed to him the writing of the Epistle to the Hebrews under the inspiration of St. Paul, or at least the translation of this epistle from the original Aramaic text.^[24] The only authentic writing of St. Clement of Rome is the lengthy and beautiful Epistle to the Corinthians. From the text itself it appears that this letter was written at the end of a great persecution, probably the one that broke out against the Christians of Rome in 95.

The fears shown by some far-sighted men at the outset of Domitian's reign regarding his natural inclinations were in fact accentuated and generalized. On the pretext of adorning the city of Rome and of increasing the happiness of his subjects, the Emperor spent great sums of money foolishly. By immense constructions, by endless festivities which Martial and Statius glorified in their poems, the imperial treasury was exhausted; the intoxication of power, a sort of madness, occupied a more and more predominant place in the ruler's soul. Domitian was one of those unscrupulous men whom necessity makes rapacious and fear cruel.^[25] Rome trembled at seeing the return of the worst days of Nero. Public opinion was not mistaken. As under Nero, the Christian Church was the first to suffer from the outburst of tyranny. The development of Christianity, retarded in Judea, was likewise halted in Rome.

Footnotes

[1] St. Epiphanius, Haereses, xxx, 2.

[2] Eusebius, III, xx.

[3] Ibidem, III, xi and xxxii.

[4] Ibidem, IV, v.

[5] James 2:5.

[6] City of God, v, 21.

[7] Some writers, on the basis of a text of St. Hilary (Contra Arianos, 3) and an inscription preserved in the crypt of the Church of St. Martin at Rome, have placed Vespasian among the persecutors. But in St. Hilary's text, Vespasian is named probably by mistake in place of his son Domitian (Allard, Hist. des pers., I, 85); and the inscription in St. Martin's Church is certainly false, as Marucchi shows (Elements d'archéologie chrétienne, I, 20).

[8] "Permansit, erosis omnibus, institutum neronianum" (Tertullian, Ad nationes, I, 7.) Tertullian refers to Nero's charge against the Christians independently of the accusation of setting fire to Rome - namely, that they were enemies of mankind, i. e., of the Roman civilization.

[9] Tacitus and Pliny were decorated by him with the pretorship. (Tacitus, Annals, XI, II; Pliny, Epistles, III, II; VII, 16.)

[10] Quintilian calls him "the most righteous of censors" (Institutes of Oratory, bk. 4, pref.). Martial praises him because under him "chastity was commanded to enter our homes." (Epigrams, VI, 2-4, 7.)

[11] Dio Cassius, Roman History, LXVI, 26.

[12] Cf. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae Urbis Romae, p. 2. The history of the catacombs is divided into four periods. During the first period (the first two centuries), the catacombs were family burial places, protected by the law, and recognized to be loca sacra, loca religiosa. The owners of these tombs, or rather private cemeteries, sometimes of vast extent, including gardens and houses, with dining-rooms for funeral feasts, could receive in them the bodies of their clients. Wealthy Christians admitted the bodies of poor Christians into their buryinggrounds, and there, instead of funeral banquets, liturgical meetings took place. During the third century, the Church, profiting by the Roman law regarding associations, founded common cemeteries. This was the second period. During the third period (from Constantine to Alaric, 313 to 340), no more cemeteries were established except at the surface of the ground; yet the catacombs continued to be a place of pilgrimage, and many Christians insisted upon being laid to rest near the venerated remains of their predecessors. This was the period of the great inscriptions, many of them due to Pope Damasus. Lastly, beginning in 410, the catacombs ceased to be places of burial, and no inscriptions were placed on the tombs; yet they continued to be visited for several centuries. This was the fourth period of their history. (Cf. Marucchi, op. cit., I, 113-117.)

[13] Marucchi, op. cit., I, 23.

[14] Fouard, St. John, p. 49. Duchesne (Liber pontificalis, I, 121) observes that "this name is extremely rare in Christian epigraphy."

[15] Epiphanius, Haereses, xxvii, 6.

[16] The Liber Pontificalis seems to say that he began to govern the Church during the lifetime of St. Peter, and many writers are of opinion that St. Peter, being occupied in the labors of the apostolate, left the administration of the Roman Church to Linus and Cletus. (Rufinus, Preface to the Recognitions of St. Clement.) But this opinion is now generally rejected.

[17] Duchesne, Lib. pont., I, 121. De Rossi does not venture to declare that the sarcophagus discovered underground in the seventeenth century, near the confession of St. Peter, is the authentic tomb of St. Linus. (Duchesne, loc. cit.) St. Peter's successor is probably the person mentioned by St. Paul, 2 Tim. 4:21.

[18] Duchesne (op. cit., I, lxix) gives reasons which incline one to regard Cletus and Anacletus as the same person. (Cf. De Smedt, Dissertationes selectae, VII, art. 2.)

[19] Duchesne, loc. cit.

[20] Eusebius, III, xv.

[21] Lightfoot establishes a great likelihood for this hypothesis. (The Apostolic Fathers, I, 60-63.)

[22] Tillemont, Mémoires sur les six pretniers siècles, II, 149-166, 545-568; De Rossi, Bullettino di archeol. crist., 1863, pp. 27 ff.; 1865, p. 20; Lightfoot, op. cit., I, 16-61; Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, I, 162.

[23] Irenaeus, Haereses, III, iii, 3. Duchesne (op. cit., I, 161) says that Clement was old enough to have seen the Apostles and to have conversed with them, as St. Irenaeus asserts. Origen identifies him with the person of the same name who labored with St. Paul in the evangelization of Philippi. (Origen, In Joannem, I, 29.)

[24] Eusebius, VI, xxiii.

[25] "Inopia rapax, metu saevus." (Suetonius, Domitian, 3.)

***

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Prayer

Twenty-Second in a Series on Catholic Morality

 by

 Fr. John H. Stapleton

No word is so common and familiar among Christians as prayer. Religion itself is nothing more than a vast, mighty, universal, never ceasing prayer. Our churches are monuments of prayer and houses of prayer. Our worship, our devotions, our ceremonies are expressions of prayer. Our sacred music is a prayer. The incense, rising in white clouds before the altar, is symbolic of prayer. And the one accent that is dinned into our ears from altar and pulpit is prayer.

Prayer is the life of the Christian as work is the life of the man; without one and the other we would starve spiritually and physically. If we live well, it is because we pray; if we lead sinful lives, it is because we neglect to pray. Where prayer is, there is virtue; where prayer is unknown, there is sin. The atmosphere of piety, sanctity, and honesty is the atmosphere of prayer.

It is strange that the nature and necessity of prayer are so often misunderstood. Yet the definition in our Catechism is clear and precise. There are four kinds of prayer: adoration, thanksgiving, petition for pardon, and for our needs, spiritual and bodily.

One need be neither a Catholic nor a Christian to see how becoming it is in us to offer to God our homage of adoration and thanksgiving; it is necessary only to believe in a God who made us and who is infinitely perfect. Why, even the heathens made gods to adore, and erected temples to thank them, so deep was their sense of the devotion they owed the Deity. They put the early Christians to death because the latter refused to adore their gods. Everywhere you go under the sun, you will find the creature offering to the Creator a homage of worship.

He, therefore, who makes so little of God as to forget to adore and thank Him becomes inferior to the very pagans who, sunk in the darkness of corruption and superstition as they were, did not, however, forget their first and natural duty to the Maker. Neglect of this obligation in a man betrays an absence, a loss of religious instinct, and an irreligious man is a pure animal, though he be a refined one. His refinement and superiority come from his intelligence, and these qualities, far from attenuating his guilt, only serve to aggravate it.

The brute eats and drinks; when he is full and tired he throws himself down to rest. When refreshed, he gets up, shakes himself and goes off again in quest of food and amusement. In what does a man without prayer differ from such a being?

But prayer, strictly speaking, means a demand, a petition, an asking. We ask for our needs and our principal needs are pardon and succor. This is prayer as it is generally understood. It is necessary to salvation. Without it no man can be saved. Our assurance of heaven should be in exact proportion to our asking. "Ask and you shall receive." Ask nothing, and you obtain nothing; and that which you do not obtain is just what you must have to save your soul.

The doctrine of the Church is that when God created man, He raised him from a natural to a supernatural state, and assigned to him a supernatural end. Supernatural means what is above the natural, beyond our natural powers of obtaining. Our destiny, therefore, cannot be fulfilled without the help of a superior power. We are utterly incapable by ourselves of realizing the end to which we are called. The condition absolutely required is the grace of God and through that alone can we expect to come to our appointed end.

Here is a stone. That this stone should have feeling is not natural, but supernatural. God, to give sensation to this stone, must break through the natural order of things, because to feel is beyond the native powers of a stone. It is not natural for an animal to reason; in fact, it is impossible. God must work a miracle to make it understand. Well, the stone is just as capable of feeling, and the animal of reasoning, as is man capable of saving his soul by himself.

To persevere in the state of grace and the friendship of God, to recover it when lost by sin, are supernatural works. Only by the grace of God can this be effected. Will God do this without being asked? Say rather: Will God save us in spite of ourselves, or unknown to ourselves? He who does not ask gives no token of a desire to obtain.