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Mgr Antonio de Castro Mayer: On the KINGSHIP Our Lord Jesus-Christ - Stone - 06-25-2024
Anonymous English translation by a Resistance member [PDF of the English translation]:
Le Sel de la Terre
'MANDEMENT' (A bishop's letter) On the KINGSHIP Our Lord Jesus-Christ
SALT Of The EARTH No. 82, AUTUMN 2012 English Translation
"Love much the intelligence and the comprehension of the truth."
"For it is necessary to understand well in order to believe truly: even as it is still more necessary to believe in order to understand well." - Saint Augustin, Letter to Consentius and Sermon 43.
Mandement on the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ
by Mgr Antonio de Castro Mayer
by the grace of God and the Holy Apostolic See, bishop of the Diocese of Campos.
'MANDEMENT' (A bishop's letter) On the KINGSHIP Our Lord Jesus-Christ
SALT Of The EARTH No. 82, AUTUMN 2012 English Translation
"Love much the intelligence and the comprehension of the truth."
"For it is necessary to understand well in order to believe truly: even as it is still more necessary to believe in order to understand well." - Saint Augustin, Letter to Consentius and Sermon 43.
Mandement on the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ
by Mgr Antonio de Castro Mayer
by the grace of God and the Holy Apostolic See, bishop of the Diocese of Campos.
We reproduce here, translated into French for the first time, the remarkable pastoral letter addressed by Mgr. de Castro Mayer to his clergy and faithful on December 8, 1976. The theme of this letter is the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ. As, over the next four years, we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the ill-fated Second Vatican Council, the need to recall Catholic doctrine on Christ the King is greater than ever. Among the Council's errors, religious freedom ranks first. Religious freedom is the "legal apostasy of society", as Leo XIII put it in E giunto (July 19 1889), it's the secularization of Catholic states, it's the rejection of the social kingship of Our Lord. This is precisely what Monsignor de Castro Mayer proposes to explain here, drawing extensively on the texts of the pontifical magisterium. We admire the profoundly Catholic and supernatural spirit of this 'mandement'. How we'd love to read similar ones today!
N.B.: We encourage our readers to refer to issue no. 37 of Le Sel de la terre, dedicated to Mgr de Castro Mayer.
Dear collaborators and dear Sons,
AT THE CLOSING of the Holy Year of 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Our Lord Jesus-Christ the King. He fixed the day as the last Sunday in October, the one before the feast of All Saints. The new calendar moved it to the last Sunday of the liturgical year, at the end of November.
With this new liturgical Feast, dedicated in particular to solemnizing the universal kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ, the Pope's aim was to provide an effective remedy for secularism, the plague that is eating away at human society, "the plague of our age", says the Pope.
To justify His expression, and to express His hope in the fruits that the new liturgical solemnity would produce, Pius XI wrote His memorable encyclical Quas primas, dated December 11 of the Holy Year 1925. Fifty years have passed: his teaching remains just as timely, given that the punishments that have befallen mankind, particularly with the long war of 1939-1945, have not turned men away from their impiety. And even those who make profession of religious faith continue to live as if God did not exist.
It is therefore useful, indeed necessary, to repeat to the faithful, again and again, the importance of the feast of Our Lord Jesus-Christ the King, in order to encourage them to practice, in their private lives as well as in their family and social lives, the submission due to the Sovereign of the universe, and so that hope of the fruits that this Feast is destined to produce in souls is not frustrated.
This is the reason for this conversation with you, dear collaborators and beloved sons, through which we hope to encourage one another to zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Divine sovereignty
First of all, let us strengthen our faith in the universal kingship of our divine Saviour.
He is truly king of the universe, that is to say He has absolute sovereignty over the whole human race, over all men, even over those outside His sheepfold, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. For, truly, every person is a creature of God. He owes his whole being to Him, both for the unity of his nature, and for each of the parts of which he is composed: body, soul, powers, intelligence, will, sensibility. Even the actions of these powers, and all their organs, are gifts from God. God's sovereignty extends to the goods of fortune, which are the fruits of His ineffable liberality. The simple consideration that no one chooses or can choose the family to which he or she belongs on earth, with its respective social position, is enough to convince us of this fundamental truth of our existence.
It follows that God Our Lord is the sovereign master of all men, both as individuals and as social groups, insofar as, when they are constituted into various communities, they do not lose their condition of creature. This being so, the very existence of civil society obeys the designs of God, who made man's nature social. Consequently, all peoples, all nations, from the most primitive to the most civilized, from the smallest to the greatest powers, all are subject to the divine sovereignty, and therefore obliged to recognize this gentle heavenly domination.
The Kingship of Jesus-Christ
God confided this sovereignty to His only Son, as the Holy Scriptures frequently attests.
Generally speaking, St Paul declares that God "made His Son heir of all things" (Heb 1:2). For his part, Saint John confirms the thought of the Apostle to the Gentiles in many passages of his Gospel. For example, when he reminds us that "the Father judges no one, but that He has given all power to judge to the Son" (Jn 5:22). Now, the prerogative of rendering justice belongs to the king; he who possesses it is endowed with sovereign power.
This universal kingship which the Son inherited from the Father is not to be understood only as the eternal inheritance by which, with the divine nature, He received all the attributes which make Him equal and consubstantial with the first person of the Holy Trinity, in the unity of the divine essence. This universal kingship is attributed especially to Jesus-Christ as man, mediator between heaven and earth. For the mission of the Incarnate Word was precisely to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Indeed, the expressions in Sacred Scripture relating to the Kingship of Jesus-Christ refer, without the shadow of a doubt, to His human
condition.
He is presented to the world as the Son of David, come to inherit His Father's throne, which extends to the ends of the earth, and which is eternal, without limit of time. It is in these terms that the archangel Gabriel announces the dignity of Mary's Son: "You will bear a son, to whom you will give the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; He will reign forever over the house of Jacob, and His kingdom will have no end" (Lk 1:31-33). It was also as king that the Magi from the East sought Him out to worship Him: "Where is He that is born king of the Jews?" they asked Herod on their arrival in Jerusalem (Mt 2:2). Consequently, the mission that the eternal Father entrusted to His Son in making Him man consisted in establishing a kingdom on earth, the kingdom of heaven. It is through the establishment of this kingdom that the ineffable charity with which, from all eternity, God has loved mankind, mercifully drawing them to Himself, will become a reality: "Dilexi te, ideo attraxi te miserans - I have loved you, therefore in My mercy I have drawn you" (Jer 31:3).
This is why Jesus devotes His public life to announcing and establishing His kingdom, sometimes referred to as the kingdom of God, sometimes as the kingdom of heaven. In the oriental manner, He uses evocative parables to establish the idea and nature of the kingdom He has come to found. And His miracles seek to convince His people that His kingdom has arrived, that He is in their midst. "Si in digito Dei ejicio daemonia, profecto pervenit in vos Regnum Dei - "But if I by the finger of God cast out devils; doubtless the kingdom of God is come upon you." (Lk 11:20).
The constitution of this kingdom absorbed so much of His activity that the Judaic apostasy profited of the idea to justify the accusation it brought against Him before Pilate's tribunal: "Si hunc dimittis, non es amicus Caesaris - If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend" they cried to the proconsul, "for whoever makes himself king declares himself against Caesar!" (Jn 19:12). And Jesus Christ, by approving the opinion of His enemies, confirms before the Roman procurator that He really is king: "You say well, I am king" (Jn 18:37).
King in the Literal Sense
The royal character of Jesus-Christ's work can no longer be doubted. He is king.
But our faith demands that we understand the scope and meaning of the divine Redeemer's kingship. From the outset, Pius XI excludes the metaphorical sense by which we call king and royal that which is most excellent in a human way of being or acting, as when we speak of the queen of goodness, the king of poets, and so on. No. Jesus-Christ is not king according to this transposition of meaning. He is king in the true (proper) sense of the word. In the Holy Scriptures, we see Him exercising the royal prerogatives of a sovereign government, dictating laws and threatening punishment to those who transgress them. In His famous "Sermon on the Mount" (Mt 5:4ff.), the Savior can be said to have promulgated the code of His kingdom. As the true sovereign, He demands obedience to His laws on pain of nothing less than eternal damnation. Similarly, in the Last Judgment scene - when the Son of Man comes to judge the living and the dead - where He announces the end of the world: 'The Son of Man will then come with great power and majesty [...], He will separate men as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats [...] and He will say to those on His right, "Come, you blessed of my Father", and to those on His left, "Go, you cursed, to eternal fire" [...]. 'And they will go away, these to eternal torment, and the righteous to eternal life' (Mt 25:31ff.).
A sentence that is both very gentle and fearsome. Very sweet for the good, because of the unparalleled excellence of the reward awaiting them. Fearsome and frightening for the wicked, by the extreme punishment to which they are eternally condemned.
Such a consideration is enough to show the capital importance for men to discern where here below, on earth, the kingdom of Jesus-Christ lies, since to be part of it or not decides their eternal fate. We say "here, on earth", because it is in this world that man merits his reward or punishment after death. It is here on earth, then, that men must incorporate themselves into this ineffable kingdom of God, both temporal and eternal, since it is formed in this world to blossom in heaven.
The Catholic Church, Kingdom of God
The same sacred Scriptures that have led us to the knowledge of the Kingship of Jesus-Christ tell us who, in the present world, are the authentic leaders of His Kingdom, as continuators of the divine Master's mission. The authorized guides of Christ's flock are the legitimate successors of the Apostles; indeed, it was on the Apostles that the Savior built His Church, that is to say His kingdom, and it is within her bosom that men make their way to heaven.
In fact, it was to the Apostles that Jesus entrusted His power, and He demanded the same obedience from them as He did from Himself: "Whoever listens to you listens to Me", said the divine Master, "whoever despises you despises Me" (Lk 10:16). In another passage, explaining the power to govern, to direct His society, the Church, He declared to them: "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound also in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven" (Mt 18:18).
After His resurrection, He clarifies the sovereign power granted to the Apostles, saying that it even includes the forgiveness of sins, God's exclusive prerogative: "Sins will be forgiven to those to whom you forgive them, and they will be retained by those to whom you retain them" (Jn 20:23). Having thus made it clear throughout His life, and by means of various expressions, that He was passing on to His Apostles His power to guide men to heaven, as if to sum up His will, at the moment of leaving this world to return to the bosom of the eternal Father, Jesus entrusts them with the direction of His work; it will continue on earth, for at the end of the world, God must be glorified and souls saved: "All power," He tells His Apostles, "has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, then, and teach all peoples to observe all the things I have commanded you" (Mt 28:20). There is an obligation to obey the Apostles' orders as if they were legitimate superiors, on pain of losing one's soul: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16). Believing, that is to say, accepting and living in accordance with the Apostles' doctrine - that is "believing" in the truest sense of the word, with all one's soul - and consequently behaving as a subject of the kingdom of Jesus-Christ, of the holy Church. For, at the supreme moment when He handed over His powers to the Apostles, Our Lord guaranteed the permanence of His work, of His Church, of His kingdom - three expressions which have the same meaning; and this by declaring that He would remain with the Apostles until the end of the world, in other words, that the Apostles would be the legitimate successors with whom He would remain present, so that they would maintain the integrity of the inheritance received: "I will always be with you until the consummation of the ages" (Mt 28:20).
The Church is Hierarchical
Finally, to ensure that the unity of government necessary for kingdoms to preserve themselves and achieve, in an orderly fashion, the purpose for which they are constituted is not lacking, Jesus instituted the sacred hierarchy which, in the holy Church, instructs, governs and sanctifies the people. He made Peter the indestructible rock of the Church, giving him the keys to the kingdom of heaven and gathering in his hands all the power conferred on all the Apostles: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Mt 16:18 ff.).
In like manner the Church that possesses the successor of Peter and the successors of the Apostles, She is the Church of Christ. In Her lies the kingdom of Jesus-Christ. And this Church, the only one of its kind in the world, which possesses, in the pope, the successor of Saint Peter, and in the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, is the Catholic Church, apostolic and roman. And insofar as we are part of it, insofar as we live according to its doctrine, that we belong to the kingdom of Christ, that we ourselves are faithful vassals of the King of glory, and we ourselves are on our way to the kingdom of heaven, eternal beatitude.
Dear sons, look at the other denominations, those that usurp the title of Christian: they all have a later date of birth than the divine Master. Only the Roman Catholic Church can trace Her origins back to the time of Jesus-Christ. From then on, She alone is truly apostolic, coming in direct line from the Apostles. She is the Church of Christ.
A Principally Spiritual Kingship
Jesus is King in the truest sense of the word. He exercises His sovereignty on earth through His Church, His mystical body, a visible and hierarchical society, endowed with all the powers to lead men towards the end for which they w ere created: to give glory to God and save their souls. Thus, to be part of Christ's Church and to live as a docile and obedient subject of the King of kings, Jesus-
Christ, is the condition of eternal happiness.
These considerations make it clear from the outset that the kingdom of Jesus Christ is spiritual - "praecipuo quodam modo, in a very special way", says Pius XI in his encyclical. It is spiritual because it concerns domains related to the spiritual life, which transcends the limits of earthly life, as well as to divine worship and the sanctification of souls.
The Saviour Himself attested to this before Pilate's court. In response to the proconsul's question: "Are you a king?", Jesus answered affirmatively: "You say well, I am king" (Jn 18:37). Shortly before, He had already explained to the Roman magistrate the special nature of His reign: "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My people would have fought so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But My kingdom is not from here" (Jn 18:36); that is, He does not concern himself with earthly affairs restricted to this world. And in the next verse, Jesus is more explicit, linking His kingdom with the empire of truth: 'For this reason I was born and came into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth My voice." (Jn 18:37).
Although all power, even in the civil order, belongs to Jesus according to His humanity by virtue of the hypostatic union, the Savior reassures the rulers of the earth: His reign is not of this world. In the same sense, every year at Epiphany, the Church repeats: "Non eripit mortalia qui regna dat coelestia - He does not seize mortal kingdoms who gives the celestials."
The Two Powers
As we have just seen, the divine Master has foreseen the coexistence of two sovereign powers on earth.
One presides over temporal life, and is embodied in the person of Caesar. This power must be respected, honored and obeyed, for the Lord commands us to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" (Mt 22:21). The reason for this is that this power too is conferred by God our Lord, as the divine Master declared to the representative of the Roman emperor, when He told him: "You would have no power over Me if it had not been given to you from on high" (Jn 19:11). And the Apostle adds: "All power comes from God" (Rom 13:1). Consequently, Christians must accept civil power and submit to it with love, that is, not out of fear of punishment, but as to an authority
delegated by God, for the prince acts as a minister of God. (Rom 13:4).
The other power looks after the interests of the soul, bringing man into relationship with God and leading him to eternal salvation. It deals with religious duties, worship of God and obedience to the divine commandments. This power is the proper power of the reign of Jesus-Christ; it must be respected and obeyed with special reverence, because contempt for it reaches God Himself: "Whoever despises you despises me, and whoever despises Me despises the One who sent Me" (Lk 10:16).
All men are bound to obey these two supreme powers: in temporal affairs, all must obey civil power, even those who share in religious power; in God's affairs, all must obey spiritual power, even civil authorities. However, although sovereign, state authority gives way to religious authority, for "we must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Consequently, in the event of conflict, religious duties prevail, provided they concern the eternal destiny of souls.
Relationship between Church and State
Thus, the natural structure of the government of human society, according to historical order - that is, taking into account Revelation and the constitution of the holy Church to preside over spiritual affairs - requires 'mutual collaboration' between these two supreme powers, Church and State. The Church will recognize civil power and lead the faithful to sincere respect for the authority of the State, to which it will provide loyal collaboration in everything that is for the benefit of society and does not run counter to the law of God. For its part, the State will recognize the one Church to which God has entrusted the care of spiritual matters, namely: the divine cult and the salvation of souls. And since man's life on earth must be directed towards eternal salvation, not only must the State not oppose the Church's specific action, but it must also help it, positively, by creating a framework in society that encourages the practice of virtue, piety and faith, and makes it difficult to sin, impiety, and in general, the proliferation of vice.
Leo XIII formulates this thought with precision:
Quote:"For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavour should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.
"Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfilment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus-Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate.1."
Dear sons, you see that it is exclusively in a state constituted in accordance with this doctrine that the kingship of Jesus-Christ can be effective and complete. This is why it has been constantly taught by the ecclesiastical magisterium.
1 - Enc. Immortale Dei, #6 Nov. 1, 1885.
The Church Fathers
Thus, St Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390) declares that imperial magistrates are subject to the authority of bishops as the flesh is to the spirit and earthly things to heavenly things 2; St John Chrysostom (d. 407) expounds the relationship between spiritual and temporal authority by means of the comparison between the sun and the moon 3; St. Ambrose, in his letter to Valentinian against Auxentius, declares that "the emperor is in the Church and not above the Church; for the good emperor helps the Church, he does not refuse it4".
Saint Augustine, in chapter 24 of Book V of The City of God, cites, among the emperor's obligations, that of placing his power at the service of the divine majesty in order to extend its reign. And in a letter to Count Boniface, governor of Africa, commenting on the words of the Psalm: "Serve the Lord in fear", he teaches that kings serve the Lord by forbidding and punishing transgressions of God's commandments. On this point, St. Augustine makes a clear difference between the way kings serve God, and the service proper to each individual: the individual serves God by living in accordance with the faith, whereas the king does so by promulgating laws with the appropriate severity, to command what is right and forbid what is contrary to justice. After giving several examples from the Old
Testament, in which he emphasizes the action of rulers against the works of impiety, the holy doctor concludes: kings serve the Lord as kings, serving Him as only kings can.
In the middle of the 5th century, St. Leo I, pope from 440 to 461, wrote to Emperor Leo of Constantinople to urge him to apply the decrees of the Council of Constantinople against the maneuvers of the Eutychians (monophysite), and reminded him that "royal power was not given to him only for the government of the world, but above all for the defense of the Church1".
2 - Hom. XVII.
3 - Hom. XV on the 2nd to the Corinthians.
4 - Saint Ambrose, Sermo contra Auxentium, de basilicis tradendis, preached in Milan in 386, when Valentinian II gave the order to grant some churches to the Arians.
Roman Pontiffs and Emperors
It was particularly in its relations with the emperors of Constantinople that the Church had occasion to reaffirm these principles of Catholic doctrine. Thus, in August 484, Pope Saint Felix II pointed out to Emperor Zeno that he must protect the freedom of the Church and that he himself must submit to priestly power in the causes of God, this submission being beneficial even to the State. Saint Gelasius, also pope, had to repeat the same sacred lesson to Emperor Anastasius I. In 494, he sent him this famous document on the subject of the two powers existing on earth, and the harmony that must be maintained between them: 'I beg your piety not to deem it presumptuous of me to exercise the duties received from God: let it not be thought that a Roman prince takes the truth addressed to him as an insult. For, august emperor, there are two supreme powers governing the world: the holy authority of the pontiffs and the royal power.
Between them, the priestly authority is all the greater as the pontiffs must even give an account before the divine tribunal of the deeds of kings. Surely you know, most merciful son, that even though your dignity places you above other men, in spite of everything you must bow your head before those who are entrusted with divine matters [...]
If, in fact, the priests themselves obey your laws in matters of public order, knowing that the empire has been granted to you by divine disposition, and because they do not wish to give the appearance of opposing, even in purely material matters, a judgement which is beyond their jurisdiction, how much more appropriate for you to obey religiously those whose duty it is to administer the divine mysteries 2?
Around the year 506, another pope, St. Simacus, reminded Emperor Anastasius of Catholic doctrine. In order to forestall any possible objection from his august correspondent, he wrote to him: "Perhaps you will say: it is written: 'We must be subject to all power'. To this, the Pope replies: "We respect human authorities as long as they do not set their will against God. Moreover, if all power comes from God, all the more does the power that presides over divine affairs issue from it. Be subject to God in us, and we will be
subject to God in you."
Later, it was the turn of St Nicholas I (pope from 858 to 867) to refresh Emperor Michael III's memory of the two supreme powers to which men are subject in the world: in spiritual matters, the empire must be subordinate to the priesthood, while sacred ministers are subordinate to the empire in the temporal order1.
1 - Letter 156, 3.
2. Letter to the emperor Anastase, 494
The Middle Ages
When the new European nations were formed as a consequence of the ruin of the Roman Empire, the Church continued to teach its doctrine on the obligations of the state in religious matters.
As far back as the 7th century, St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) recognized that kings have full powers in the affairs of the century, but that they cannot neglect their duties towards God, nor their respect for the Church, "quam a Christo tuendam susceperunt - whose custody they have received from Christ 2". The thought of the Archbishop of Seville, along with that of St. Augustine, reappeared in the ecclesiastical masters of later centuries. They used a variety of images to expound the Church's traditional teaching. Following the example of St. Bernard, they speak of two swords: the sword of the spirit wielded by the Church, which concerns matters of the soul, and the temporal sword, intended for the service of the Church. At other times, as in the case of Pope Innocent III, the intimate union between body and soul is used as an example to illustrate the harmony and mutual dependence between the two supreme authorities that guide men towards the fullness of earthly life, subordinated to eternal life.
Or again, in Gracian, the relationship between Church and State is compared to those that exist between the sun and the moon. Just as this satellite of the earth benefits from the light of the sun then also in turn beneficial to the earth, so by the guidance of the Church the State achieves its proper purpose, which is to make its subjects happy.
1. Letter 'Proposueramus quidem, Sept. 28 865 A.D.
2. Sent. III 51
Such is the traditional doctrine that flows from the acts of the ecclesiastical magisterium concerning political relations between the Church and the various sovereigns. Pope Urban II, for example, wrote to Alfonso VI of Spain: "Two dignities, King Alfonso, govern this world in the first place: that of priests and that of kings; however, the priestly dignity, my dear son, so surpasses the royal dignity that, of the kings themselves, we must give account to the King of kings 1."
St. Thomas Aquinas, both in his Summa Theologica and in his treatise on the government of states written for the King of Cyprus 2, sets out and justifies the common teaching of the Church on this question. Starting from the principle that the end of society cannot be opposed to the end of each of its members, and that their ultimate end is the enjoyment of God, he concludes that political government must also ensure that men gathered in society attain heavenly beatitude through a virtuous life.
"However," continues St Thomas, "as guiding or leading to this end does not belong to human government, but to divine government [...] and in order that the spiritual may be distinguished from the temporal, the ministry of this kingdom has not been granted to earthly kings but to priests, and principally to the Sovereign Priest, successor of Peter, vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff, to whom all the kings of Christendom must be subject as to Our Lord Jesus-Christ Himself 3."
And in the next chapter, the Angelic Doctor adds:
"[...] It belongs, for this reason, to the office of the king to procure for the multitude a good life [according to virtue], as befits the attainment of heavenly beatitude; that is to say, he must prescribe what leads to this heavenly beatitude, and forbid, as far as possible, what is contrary to it 4. "
1 - PL 151, 289 - In VILLOSLADA, Historia de la Iglesia católica, II, Edad Media,
Madrid, 2nd ed. LAC, p. 409.
2 - De Regimine Principum or De Regno, L. I, c. 14.
3 - ID, ibid.
4 - ID, L. I. c. 15.
Christian Civilization
In this way, the Church, the true educator of humankind, leads society towards that ideal situation where life in society achieves equilibrium and well-being, thanks to natural subordination of all earthly activity to the ultimate end in which lies the perfection of happiness to which reasonable nature aspires. Leo XIII reminds us that this was the condition of society in the Middle Ages.
Indeed, in his encyclical Immortale Dei of November 1 1885, he wrote:
Quote:"There was a time when the philosophy of the Gospel governed the States. [...] At that time, the priesthood and the empire were bound together by a happy concord and the friendly exchange of good offices. Organized in this way, civil society produced fruits beyond all expectations, the memory of which remains, and will remain, consigned as it is to innumerable documents that no artifice of adversaries can corrupt or obscure."
At this time, what Yves de Chartres considered an indispensable law of relations between the Church and civil society was being realized:
Quote:"When the empire and the priesthood live in harmony, the world is well governed," he wrote to Pascal II [pope from 1099 to 1118], "and the Church is flourishing and fruitful. But when discord arises between them, not only do small things not grow, but the great themselves wither miserably 1."
The Apostasy of the "New Law"
Unfortunately, dear sons, modern times mark the rupture of the perfect harmony between priesthood and empire, which Leo XIII praised as the source of so many benefits for human relations.
First, it was the Christian rulers who resented the Pope's autonomy. This led to the dissolution of Western religious unity, culminating in the 18th century in what the aforementioned pontiff qualifies as "new law". In the name of the equality and dignity common to all men, any authority whose origin is not the human will itself is rejected.
"It follows that the State does not believe itself bound by any obligation to God, does not officially profess any religion, [...] that it must attribute to them all equality in law, for the sole purpose of preventing them from disturbing public order 2. "
Dear sons, a minimum of reflection on such a theory shows that in a political and social order conceived in this way, the kingship of Jesus-Christ disappears, and the salvation of souls becomes very difficult. A society founded on these principles does not recognize, purely and simply, the sovereignty of God our Lord. How can it call itself Christian if its legitimate representatives - while individually claiming to be Catholics and piously fulfilling their religious duties- - cannot, as public persons, recognize the will of God expressed in His true Church?
We think, dear sons, that it is hardly necessary to point out that, in such a legal disposition, the salvation and sanctification of souls, far from being encouraged, on the contrary encounter the greatest obstacle: they lack the favorable environment that would be provided by legislation openly concerned with the rights of God.
1 - Letter 238. Quoted by Leo XIII in Immortale Dei.
2 - Leo XIII, Immortale Dei.
The Secular State, the Ideal of the Occult Powers
Furthermore, in his encyclical Humanum genus of April 20, 1884, the same Leo XIII denounced the fact that the secular state, strictly neutral in religious matters, is the means that occult forces consider most apt to annihilate and "destroy the whole religious and social Christian order". To this end, they teach that "among the various forms of religion, there is no reason to prefer one over another; all must be placed on an equal footing". The Pope observes that "this principle is enough to ruin all religions, and particularly the Catholic religion for, being the only true one, it cannot, without suffering the last of the insults and injustices, tolerate that other religions are equal to it 1".
The logical consequence of such a principle is the secularism of the State, "the great error of the present age", which consists in relegating concern for religion to the rank of indifferent things. This is why we said, dear sons, that in a political and social regime conceived in this way, it is impossible for the Church to fulfill the mission it has received to establish the reign of Jesus-Christ on earth.
1 - Leo XIII, Humanum genus, April 20, 1884.
The Inversion of Values
Likewise, dear sons, it's worth noting that in the "new law", the social status of religion is reversed. It has been transformed from a guide and organizer of human acts to one of the many private manifestations of the soul, subject like all others to the limits imposed by public order. According to the traditional magisterium, on the contrary, in line with common sense, the State, whose task it is to provide for the goods of the temporal order, is subordinate in its activities to the ultimate end of citizens, and can do nothing to make it difficult to obtain it; on the contrary, it must encourage knowledge of true religion and the practice of virtue.
In the new conception, it is the Church that is subordinate to the State, since, in its activities, it must abstain from anything that the State deems contrary to public order. How can the Church still provide the world with an image of God's excellence and sovereignty, when it sees its field of action restricted to the simple particular interest, which the State enlarges or reduces according to what seems best to it? With such a conception, it's hard to see how a Communist government could be blamed for, say, condemning a priest for baptizing a child, even if he had done so with the parents' consent.
Objective Public Order
And if anyone, dear sons, were to object that this is not just any public order, understood arbitrarily, but the only true public order - that which is objective and indisputably constitutes the common good, and which therefore excludes abuses of authority - if anyone were to oppose such a sophism, it would be easy for you to reply that, in such a hypothesis, we are already leaving the "new law". It's worth pointing out here that without the acceptance of an objective morality, and without the exact notion of the good that morality gives us, an objective public order is inconceivable, since it becomes impossible to know the common good. And if we disregard (abstract -Ed.) true religion, we can no longer conceive of a just objective morality. Consequently, when we appeal to public order or the common good against abuses of authority, we leave behind the "new law" that recognizes no norm superior to man, declaring once and for all that the human will is the source of all law.
'Common good, objective public order' - these are terms that cannot be understood unless they are linked to the idea of a morality superior to man, serving as a standard for the acts of rational creatures. This objective morality culminates in the human being's obligation to worship God, according to the sovereign will of the Almighty Lord. In other words, it obliges man to profess the
true religion. With great aptness, St. Pius X asserted, against Le Sillon - the secular apostolic movement seeking to bring all religions closer together: "There is no true civilization without moral civilization, and there is no true moral civilization without true religion1" .
1 - Apostolic letter Our Apostolic Charge, August 25, 1910.
Half-truths
The quotation from St. Pius X's apostolic letter on Le Sillon leads us to alert you, my dear sons, to the way in which heterodoxy nestles in our midst. Let us apply to faith a rule of action that is proper for the moral virtues.
There is, in fact, a prudence in action that requires a certain indulgence when dealing with men bearing a fallen nature, and whose purpose is to avoid extinguishing a wick that is still smoking. "If you have to put the iron in the wound, you must first feel it with a light hand", said Saint Gregory the Great 1".
But transposing this prudence to the realm of principles can be catastrophic. "Truth," asserted the same Saint Pius X, "is one and indivisible, eternally the same, and does not submit to the whims of the times 2. This is why truth is uncompromising, and why it inherently perishes when it is shared and attenuated. We cannot, therefore, apply to it the condescension with which moral virtue tolerates a certain adaptation to different situations, nor that patience dictated by prudence summed up by the maxim once enunciated by Cicero:
"Summum jus, summa injuria3 - excessive justice, the height of injustice." For the moral order of actions, without sacrificing the regulatory norms of human behavior, must take account of human deficiencies, in imitation of divine patience, which seems to turn a blind eye to human sins in order to obtain their penance and conversion4.
Truth is not to be found in this realm of 'action'. It belongs to the order of 'being', of what is or is not. It is understandable that a human act should be incomplete; it is inconceivable that a truth should be incomplete, because the true idea corresponds to the being to which it refers. If the idea corresponds to reality, there is truth; in the contrary case, the idea is incomplete. It is simply false.
If, out of condescension towards the human frailty, we transpose the prudential principle of action into the order of being and of the truth, by proposing imprecise terms which are not certain, but which do not appear to be totally false either, thus offering a kind of half-truth, we undermine and destroy the faith in the spirit of the faithful. The perpetrators of such a calamity are those who, when false systems arise, strive to find an arrangement, a compromise with these ideologies, by the intermediary of movements which pretend to be apostolic, but which are sufficiently vague and floating so as not to hurt the susceptibility of those outside the Church's flock. They act as a fifth column among the faithful, the edifice of faith being washed out of them.
1 - Quoted by SAINT PIE X in His encyclical Jucunda sane, March 12, 1904.
2 - Encyclical Jucunda sane.
3 - De Officiis, I, 10.
4 - Book of Wisdom, 11, 23.
Agreement Among All Religions
Such a course of action received its doctrinal justification in a principle we see proclaimed in the 16th century by the famous Erasmus of Rotterdam: "Every man possesses the true theology." At the root of this maxim is the assertion that, in the final analysis, there is a profound religious agreement between all men, despite their doctrinal differences. It is only on this condition that the statement "every man possesses the true theology" makes sense. Consequently, there is no conflict between opposing religions, since they are opposed in appearance only. They are merely different manifestations of the same true theology possessed by every man. If we delve more deeply into a religious thought that at first sight seems different from the others, we find, beyond the divergences, the same identical basis common to all. Consequently, the best way to deal with new religious theories and non-Catholic beliefs is to avoid confrontation, polemics and rigid positions, and to ensure that each member of the faithful keeps an equal distance from the different 'credo', since all men find unity in the true theology they hold. Underneath the different religious denominations, there is agreement, a common ground. In other words, there are no errors as such. There are only divergences.
This mental attitude, generalized by diffusion of the free examination of the Protestant pseudo-reformers, prepared minds for compromise with apostasy when the "new law" arose, born of the rise of liberalism from philosophers of the 18th century.
A Vitally Christian State
You know, dear sons, the position taken on this issue by the men of the 19th-century French newspaper 'L'Avenir': Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert.
Despite official censure by the Church, this position reappeared in the aforementioned Sillon social movement and in the well-known ideas of certain Catholic philosophers, who advocated a 'vitally' Christian society, flourishing within a state officially and legitimately secular.
In the thinking of these authors, society would have evolved: from the sacred State of the Middle Ages, to the modern secular state. A natural, historical evolution, which would even have seen a deepening of the doctrinal. For, in the latter period, the independence of the two powers - spiritual and temporal, religious and civil, Church and State - would have been further strengthened.
Thanks to a better understanding of the limits of its action and power, the State would henceforth remain entirely aloof from the religious question, contenting itself with giving the Church - as well as the citizens who are members of it and the religious sects already existing or to come - full civil freedom, so that it could carry out its work in individual souls and within families, through action of an exclusively private nature. The state would not be Christian, but neither would it be oppressive. Within the framework of this legal status, the Church would have the freedom to create, through its apostolic action, a 'vitally' Christian society in an autonomous state, which would not exert religious pressure, being absolutely incompetent in this field. Still according to this opinion, such a state would adapt to the actual times, where is manifested, in the bosom of various peoples and even to the utmost interior of a nation, a pluralism of beliefs.
Lastly, such a state would be more attentive to the dignity of man and to divine Revelation, both of which require the free determination of the creature in the choice of its religious 'credo'.
This would be a way of overcoming, at the level of principles and therefore radically, the misunderstandings between Church and State that have arisen throughout history.
Ignorance of Natural Law and of the Catholic Doctrine
The extent to which this way of understanding the state's religious situation is far removed from natural reason and Christian Revelation, and how detrimental it is to the Church's mission of restoring all things in Christ Jesus, that this is evident, beyond the reflections of common sense, by the entire tradition of the ecclesiastical magisterium. This magisterium, far from accepting a modification of patristic doctrine in the light of historical developments on the question of the relationship between State and religion, has endeavoured on the contrary to confirm the teaching of all time, by highlighting the incalculable and inescapable evils that would result from the formal denial of public recognition of God's rights over State and society.
The Church's True Doctrine on this Subject
The Church has never accepted that, as a matter of principle, the State should be secular or neutral in religious matters. This can easily be seen in the history of the Church since the end of the Middle Ages.
In fact, what we are asserting is contained in the definition of Boniface VIII (pope from 1294 to 1303), declaring that it is necessary for salvation that all creatures submit to the Roman pontiff (Bull Unam Sanctam, November 18, 1302). But it is above all in his unceasing condemnation of 'religious indifferentism' designated as 'the cause of the apostasy of the nations', that one can find this teaching. For religious indifferentism is a necessary consequence of the proposition that the State must be secular as a matter of principle. Yet this religious indifferentism, the logical consequence of the official atheism sought by the secular state, has been denounced by pontiffs, particularly since the French Revolution, as the greatest obstacle to the full realization of the reign of Our Lord Jesus-Christ.
From Pius VI to Gregory XVI
Pius VI, in His first encyclical 'Inscrutabile divinae Sapientiae consilium' of Christmas 1775, Leo XII, in his encyclical 'Ubi primum' of May 5, 1824, Pius VIII (1829-1830), in 'Traditi' (his only encyclical written at the start of his short-lived twenty-month pontificate), all, as Christ's vicars on earth, full of zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, all, unanimously, pointed to 'religious indifferentism as the cause of the evils' afflicting society and hindering the Church's action.
Pius VII, who governed the Church during the extremely difficult period of Napoleon's hegemony (1800-1823), did not fail to censure the equality of cults sought by Bonaparte:
Quote:"Under the equal protection given to all cults," warned the Pope, "hides and disguises the most dangerous, the most cunning persecution imaginable against the Church of Jesus-Christ, and, by misfortune, the most elaborate [attempt] to throw confusion and even destroy it, if it were possible for the forces and wiles of hell to prevail against it".
Under the Bourbon Restoration, Pius VII deplored the similar position taken by Louis XVIII's Constitutional Charter, also favorable to the freedom of all cults.
Gregory XVI, too, could only repress this "delirium" - as he called religious indifferentism and the freedom of all cults taught within the Church - since this delirium was professed, as we have seen, by influential clergymen and laymen, so blinded that they did not hesitate to present it as a very profitable means to the
cause of religion (encyclical Mirari vos, August 15, 1832).
Quanta cura and the Syllabus
Despite these authoritative explanations and condemnations, dear sons, the avalanche of new ideas swelled and threats against "the cause of the Church, the salvation of souls and the good of human society itself" increased. Pius IX therefore repeated the magisterial teaching of his predecessors in several encyclicals, consistorial addresses and apostolic letters, once again condemning such absurdities of the human mind. The importance of the subject, however, was so great for the Church's mission, that the Pope felt it was his duty as Vicar of Christ to issue a special and more solemn magisterial document, in which he would make clear the absolute opposition between the new naturalistic conceptions of the state, culture and civilization, and Catholic doctrine.
Furthermore, he ordered a catalog to be drawn up, bringing together all these errors in propositions that would express them without distorting their nature, and at the same time show the logical link between them: this act of papal magisterium is known as the 'Syllabus', and Pius IX sent it to the bishops of the entire world with his encyclical 'Quanta Cura' of December 8, 1864.
In it, the Sovereign Pontiff proscribed the thesis of secularism on the part of the State, because it impedes the action that the Church is charged with exercising by divine command:
Quote:These misleading and perverse opinions," writes the Pope, "are all the more detestable in that they aim principally to hinder and overthrow that power of salvation which the Catholic Church, by virtue of the mission and mandate received from Her divine Author, must exercise freely until the consummation of the centuries, no less with regard to individuals than to nations, peoples and their leaders. They seek to destroy this mutual alliance and concord between the Priesthood and the Empire, which has always proved propitious and salutary to Religion and society.
Consequently, Pius IX calls 'shameless impiety' the relentlessness of those who, in accordance with the impious and absurd principle of naturalism, teach that... ' ... the best political regime and the progress of civil life absolutely require that human society be constituted and governed without any more regard for Religion than if it did not exist, or at least without making any difference between true and false religions. And against the doctrine of the Holy Scripture, of the Church and of the Holy Fathers, they assert without hesitation that: the best condition of society is one in which power is not recognized as having the duty of repressing violations of Catholic law by legal penalties, except in the case as required for public tranquility"1.
1 - PIE IX, Quanta cura, December 8, 1864.
Leo XIII and Tradition
Despite the vigilance of Pius IX, dear sons, new ideas continued to spread and endanger the existence of the Church as a society of public right, realizing on earth the kingdom of God for the eternal salvation of mankind. It was therefore necessary for the successor of Pius IX to reassert Catholic teaching against the naturalism and secularism of the State, which were undermining the edifice of the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ.
Leo XIII struck at the root of the evil, denouncing the founding principle on which the secular state is based, indifferent in spiritual matters and entirely autonomous from any religious denomination: the principle that power comes from the people.
"All power comes from God", teaches the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the Apostle (Rom 13:1); "all power comes from the people", dogmatizes the Revolution and the "new law". This law opposes God and man, as two totally alien persons, autonomous from each other. From man, in his free and sovereign will, asserts the "new law", the State takes root, as in its primary source, so that political society accepts no higher authority than the people, whose will is expressed through universal suffrage.
Here, Leo XIII points to the cause of social apostasy. For such a principle justifies an agnostic and even atheistic state, very conciliatory or neutral in matters of religion. Moreover, it is through this principle that the rebellion of the creature is accomplished, for it is the social expression of the satanic cry "non serviam - I will not serve"; as is also the expression of the unholy ideal suggested by the angel of darkness to our first parents: "You shall be as gods, knowing for yourselves what is good and what is evil" (Gen 3:5).
In order to cut this evil at its root, his encyclical Diuturnum illud of June 21, 1881, Leo XIII dealt at length with the origin of political authority, setting out exactly the doctrine of the Faith, corroborated by reason, diametrically opposed to the teachings of the "new law", the acceptance of which is indispensable to the Church if it is to fulfill its mission on earth. Drawing on St. Paul (Rm 13:1), and St. Peter (1 Pe 2, 13) the Pope reminds us that all power comes from God. Consequently, he who resists power is resisting a divine order, which may lead to his own condemnation, since those who govern act as God's ministers.
This first principle of the good civil order of society implies two indispensable consequences for the public establishment of the Kingdom of God in the State: firstly, civil authorities can do nothing against the law of the Lord. For while they govern as agents of God, their power is limited by the decrees of the One by whose will they exercise power. Secondly, among its most important obligations, by virtue of the same fundamental principle, political power has that of rendering official worship to God, its sovereign Lord. Not just any worship, but the worship willed by God, i.e. the true worship of the Catholic Church.
'This is why, just as no one is allowed to neglect his duties towards God, [...] so political societies cannot without crime behave as if God did not exist in any way, or do without religion as foreign and useless, or admit one indifferently according to their good pleasure. In honoring the Divinity, they must strictly follow the rules and mode according to which God Himself has declared that He wishes to be honored 1'.
The doctrine on the divine origin of political power logically unfolds in two directions that concern the religious attitude of the State, namely: the affirmation of harmony between religious and civil society, between Church and State, and the affirmation of the State's subordination to the Church in the religious and spiritual realm. As you can see, dear sons, we are returning to the doctrine of the early centuries of the Church, in accordance with the principle of St. Vincent de Lerins, a principle that the first Vatican Council canonized: "In the Catholic Church, one must apply oneself with the utmost diligence to professing what has been believed' everywhere, always and by all'.2
At a time when the apostasy of the nations was on the increase, a subject of such great importance demanded particular attention from the Holy See. Leo XIII responded to the expectations of the faithful with several encyclicals, especially 'Immortale Dei', dated November 19, 1885, on the Christian constitution of States. Even today, dear sons, reading these documents from the pontifical magisterium is extremely opportune.
1 - LEON XIII, encyclical Immortale Dei.
2 - Commonitorium, 2, 5, in KIRCH, Enchiridion Fontium historiæ Ecclesiasticae Antiquae, 742.
Tolerance of Evil
In Leo XIII's political teaching, the traditional doctrine on the two powers - spiritual and temporal, Church and State - is presented in a systematic and clear exposition, dispelling any kind of doubt on the matter. It is only natural that later popes should refer to it. This is what St. Pius X did in His encyclical 'Vehementer' of February 11, 1906, prompted by the French government's rupture of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and also in his apostolic letter 'Our Apostolic Mandate' of August 25, 1910, on the errors of the Sillon, already mentioned. Benedict XV did likewise in his first encyclical Ad Beatissimi, of November 1, 1914. Also Pius XI, in various documents, but especially in the one we commented on above on the kingship of Jesus-Christ [Quas primas, December 11, 1925], where he called on the faithful to unite to triumph over "the plague of our time, secularism". Finally, Pius XII, in his first encyclical 'Summi Pontificatus' of October 20, 1939, took up the argument of 'Quas primas' in order to once again, insistently, recommend the social kingship of Our Lord Jesus-Christ.
Throughout his long pontificate, Pius XII addressed this subject on a number of occasions. Thus, in his "Address to the Participants of the 5th Congress of Italian Catholic Jurists", on December 6, 1953, he clarified the principle previously established by Leo XIII: "That which does not correspond to truth and the moral norm has objectively no right to existence, propaganda or action." Man, in fact, was created for truth and goodness. And in his effort to attain the knowledge of truth and the practice of the good, he enjoys, because of his social nature, the right to be helped by the ambient framework established in society by the action of the State. Therefore a state which, as a matter of principle, authorizes or promotes the public practice of false religions, or of principles contrary to moral law, would not help, but would actually make it more difficult for its members to perfect their reasonable lives. This, moreover, was the reason
given by Pius XII to justify his doctrinal intolerance:
Quote:'It is contrary to nature [...] to consider error and evil as indifferent things. God Himself could not give positive authorization to teach or do what is contrary to religious truth or moral good, because it would be in contradiction with His absolute truthfulness and holiness 1.
Of itself, therefore, the State is under a grave obligation to favor true religion and repress false cults. However, the application of this principle must be nuanced. In other words, it is in the designs of Providence that public power should carefully examine the factual situation of the people, or of all the peoples subject to it, in religious matters.
And, as circumstances require, it may or may not tolerate false or superstitious cults alongside true religion. It can never positively approve the existence and propaganda of such cults. However, the actual conditions in which society finds itself may be such that a legislative act authorizing the existence and even the propaganda of certain false beliefs may constitute an act with a double effect: one bad effect, which is the public authorization of superstition; and another good effect - the appeasement of conflicts that would make it impossible for people to live together, or other analogous goods. In these concrete circumstances, the State can tolerate the existence and practice of false religions, provided this is required by the common good, which remains the norm regulating the rights and duties of the State.
1 - PIE XII, Allocution aux juristes catholiques italiens, December 6, 1953.
Abnormal Situation
Like Leo XIII, Pius XII makes it clear that this is not the ideal situation for the state's relations with religion and divine worship. At no time and in no way do they accept the thesis of the secular state, based solely on the proper purpose of civil society, which would be purely temporal. They are, however, inclined to justify the 'toleration ' of evil, i.e. the religious neutrality of the state when (and uniquely in this case) an imperative social requirement makes it indispensable. In practice, tolerance finds its backing in the way God our Lord Himself acts, who desires man to come to faith through a free determination of his will. This is illustrated by the Gospel parable of the weeds sown by the enemy in the field where the father of the family has sown wheat. Although the presence of tares is an evil, the Lord nevertheless allows it to grow in the midst of the wheat, because the good of uprooting it could turn into a greater evil, or stand in the way of some excellent good. In the parable, this is the danger that the wheat will also be lost.
Saint Thomas Aquinas explains how civil authority can tolerate certain evils in society:
Quote:'Human government derives from divine government, and must take it as its model. Now God, although omnipotent and sovereignly good, nevertheless allows evils to occur in the universe, when He could prevent them, because their suppression would remove great goods and lead to greater evils. Thus, in human government, those rightly tolerate some evils, lest some goods be prevented, or even lest worse evils be incurred 1.
However, it should not be forgotten that toleration relates exclusively to evil things 2.
This is why, in itself, it is never a good. Consequently, 'it cannot claim any rights 3'.
Faith must be Free
In reality, anyone who would base his argument on the freedom that must characterize the act of faith would be going against the whole of the Church's traditional doctrine if he were to deduce from it the right of man to freely and publicly profess the religion he finds best, or a religion that is false because he himself is convinced that it is true. Apostolic Tradition has never taught this.
And, my dear sons, the parable of the tares and the wheat (Mt 13:24-30) cannot be used to support some pseudo right to profess false religions, because, in traditional teaching, there is no interpretation of the parable in this sense.
Saint Augustine, who for some time had been in favor of compromises with heretics, was soon admitted that it was right for them to be repressed. Saint John Chrysostom deems it appropriate any repression of the public activity of heretics, excepting only capital punishment. Saint Thomas Aquinas also considers it natural to prevent heretics from engaging in religious activity.
In fact, when we say that faith must be embraced by a free act of the will, we are in no way giving a right of power to error, since in adherence to error or evil, there is no perfection, either of the intelligence or of the will. On the contrary, there is a deficiency. So man, as a reasonable being, has the right to freely adhere to revealed truth and freely practice virtue, but 'he does not have the right to deform his intelligence by accepting error, or his will by the practice of vice'. Our Lord himself affirms that he who sins is not free, but is enslaved by sin. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains:
Quote:'The condition of a slave arises when a person acts not according to his nature, but under the pressure of another. Now, man, according to his nature, is reasonable. So when he acts in accordance with reason, he acts according to his nature, driven by a proper movement, his own. And this is what freedom is all about. But when he sins, he acts contrary to reason, and it is as if he were moved by another. This is why he who sins is enslaved by sin 4.
1 - II-II, q. 10, a. 11.
2 - Saint Augustine, En. in Ps. 1, 20.
3 - Let's be clear: the "tolerated" have no natural right to be tolerated, but their tolerance can be guaranteed by a civil right. On the other hand, tolerance is for the common good, not for the particular good of the tolerated; it is therefore a matter of general justice, not commutative justice. (Editor's note)
4 - Commentary on St John's Gospel, lectura 4, c. 8; see also Leo XIII's encyclical Libertas praestantissimum, June 20, 1888.
If the state were not obliged to protect true religion exclusively, it would be fundamentally failing in its purpose. This purpose is clearly to provide citizens with the means to achieve a suitable perfection of their life on earth, but in dependence on their ultimate end, which can only be reached through the profession and practice of the true religion. This is why Pius XII teaches that not even God can give the State the right to be indifferent in religious matters. In short, tolerance is always the tolerance of an evil, which can be admitted in concrete circumstances, whenever required to obtain a necessary or superior good, and even if it's only a question of removing a situation that makes life in society impossible or harmful.
With great zeal, Gregory XVI describes as an "absurd and erroneous principle", or rather, a "delusion", the freedom of conscience that allows everyone to practice their religion publicly 1. Saint Augustine said that "there is no worse death for the soul than the freedom of error 2. Just because pride and sensuality have succeeded in imbuing contemporary mentality with a spirit of rebellion, striving to shake off every kind of yoke imposed by faith and morality, does not mean that we are going to deny the truth taught by right reason and by the ecclesiastical magisterium in a continuous and invariable manner.
1- Encyclical Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832.
2 - Letter 166.
Freedom and Responsibility in the Act of Faith
My dear sons, let us close this chapter with a final consideration that underlines the wisdom with which God's mercy, and consequently, His Church, acts. God our Lord wants the act of faith, by which man enters the kingdom of Christ, to be free and meritorious. To this end, He gives all men the necessary grace, without which the supernatural act of faith, worthy of eternal life, would be impossible. In view of His benevolence, of His grace, which He refuses to withhold from no-one, Our Lord makes the act of faith obligatory for salvation. Nevertheless, in His infinite mercy, He endures the sinner on this earth, so that he may not die eternally, but "be converted and live" (Ez 33:11).
The corollary of these truths of the Catholic religion is that the act of faith cannot be imposed on man's interior forum of his conscience. Infidelity can be a sin, a serious sin. But it is not lawful to force a man's will not to commit it. It is each individual, aided by grace, who must freely and with horror reject this impiety which consists in not paying attention to divine Revelation. Consequently, no human power can force a person to adhere to the true Faith. The use of violence to impose conversion has always been condemned by the Church.
Hence the Magisterium envisages the possibility, temporary or exceptional, that someone may find himself in invincible ignorance of the true religion. Such an individual deserves respect and attention, as long as his unbelief is only material. He has not deformed his will by linking it to evil in a responsible manner. This aberration, however, does not give him the right to profess his error, since, objectively, he is in error; and error "has no right to existence, propaganda or action 1".
We recall, dear sons, the Catholic doctrine on the kingship of Jesus-Christ here on earth, because the secularism of modern times easily obscures it in the minds of the faithful, and, without a firm conviction of what we should believe, our apostolate loses the zeal essential to its effectiveness. The weakness of love for
the truth among the upright is responsible, in large part, for the progress of apostasy in today's society.
The principle we are expressing to you, dear sons, is universal, even though our apostolate is usually restricted to the environment in which we live and the terrain in which we have the opportunity to act, but it is always the same doctrine that makes every form of apostolate fruitful, from the most modest to the most vast and sublime.
1 - PIE XII, Allocution aux participants du 5e congrès des juristes catholiques italiens, December 6, 1953.
Summary and Pastoral Considerations
Therefore, before turning to the pastoral consequences of the teaching set out here, we shall summarize it, dear sons, so that it may be better fixed in your minds.
1. Our Lord Jesus-Christ, true God and true man, as Mediator between heaven and earth and Redeemer of the human race, was constituted by the eternal Father as King of the universe in the fullest sense of the word. Through the establishment of His kingdom of truth, justice and peace, is realized His mission, ordained for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Although de jure Jesus is also a temporal king, de facto He has reserved for Himself sovereignty over those things which bind man to God and concern eternal salvation.
2. Since the establishment of this kingdom on earth is the 'raison d'etre' of the Church of Christ, i.e. the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, the kingship of Jesus-Christ inherently requires that political society be constituted in accordance with the one Church of Christ.
3. However, the kingship of Jesus-Christ must not be imposed by force or violence. It is by a free act of the will that man adheres to the faith and enters the kingdom of Christ. This condition of human nature - that we can only enter Christ's kingdom through the exercise of a free act - does not give error or vice any right to a peaceful existence in the state, let alone a right to propaganda and action. For, man being created for truth and goodness, there is nothing in him that gives him the right to adhere with impunity to error or consent to vice.
4. This condition, though it does not confer a 'right', nevertheless justifies the State in exercising 'tolerance' towards false religious confessions, as long as concrete circumstances require it, in view of a great good to be obtained, or an evil to be avoided. Tolerance of false religions, or of certain behaviors contrary to the rule of morality, is therefore always a 'lesser evil', and for this reason cannot be considered a normal, definitive situation. He would be mistaken who claims to elevate to the rank of principle the mixing of good and evil in the parable of the wheat and the tares. The parable presents a fact, not a right. It exposes the fact of the situation of the good in the world, who, according to the designs of Providence, will always be surrounded by evil people. The latter, explains St. Augustine, exercise the faithful in the practice of virtue and confirm them in the faith. The parable in no way claims to give notice of the right for error or evil to exist, as if, as a matter of principle, the normal situation of the state entailed or required granting all religious beliefs the freedom to exist and propagate.
5. Moreover, the State cannot be dispensed from its duties towards true religion on the pretext that it must concern itself only with earthly realities; for in devoting itself to its specific end, the State must not and cannot forget the subordination of earthly goods to the ultimate, eternal end of the citizens. It will only act properly if it itself submits to the true religion, which is the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, endowed with clearly manifested characteristics. So that, generally speaking, no one can be excused for not knowing it or not living by its commandments.
Our Duties towards the Kingship of Jesus-Christ
Establishing the kingdom of Jesus-Christ in society is an apostolic objective which obliges all the faithful. However, it must always be carried out in an orderly and peaceful manner, in imitation of Jesus-Christ and the Apostles who obeyed and commanded obedience to the constituted public powers, except in cases where the power imposed laws or ordered acts contrary to God's will.
Leo XIII affirms that the first Christians were... '... of exemplary fidelity to princes, and as perfect an obedience to the laws of the State as they were permitted. They displayed a marvellous radiance of holiness on all sides; they strove to be useful to their brethren and to attract others to follow Our Lord, yet they were prepared to give way and die bravely if they could not, without wounding their consciences, retain honours, magistracies and military offices' 1.
Our Conversion
The obligation to work for the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus-Christ, which concerns each of us, dear sons, begins with 'our very own conversion'. Above all, we must let Jesus-Christ reign over our being, by conforming our own will, our actions and our behavior, to the most holy will of God, expressed in His commandments and in the directives of His holy Church, whose spirit we must assimilate above all. Such submission obliges us to shun the solicitations of the world.
This is how the first Christians completely reformed pagan society, converting it and building the city of God, Christian civilization, on its ruins. Let's listen to Leo XIII:
Quote:'In this way, they rapidly introduced Christian institutions not only into domestic homes, but also into the camps, the Curia and even the imperial palace. [...] So when it was permitted to profess publicly the Gospel, the Christian faith appeared in a large number of cities, not still wavering, but strong and already full of vigour 2.
1 - LEON XIII, Immortale Dei.
2 - LEON XIII, Immortale Dei. See Tertullian: "We're only from yesterday, and already we're filling everything that is yours, your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your municipalities, your conciliabules, your camps themselves, the tribes, the decuries, the palace, the senate, the forum". (Apol., 37). (Editor's note)
In the Family
Personal action takes place within families. When the austerity of the Christian life reigns within the family, when the atmosphere of the home is imbued with faith and encourages the practice of virtue, people find it easier to overcome the seductions of impiety and vice that come from the passions, the devil and the spirit of the world.
Dear sons, it is important to stress the 'enormous responsibility of parents' in the Catholic education of their children; for, on their vigilance, on what they have done positively to educate their children, depends the spirit which, later on, will animate all the latter's behaviour. Without decisive action on the part of parents, it is impossible to establish the reign of Jesus-Christ in society. On this subject, let us denounce, dear sons, the harmful influence exerted on the family atmosphere by television, magazines, bad books or frivolous reading.
Be aware, beloved sons, that good families come together in larger social groups, from which civil society is formed. And this is how, through firm but patient action, we can contribute to the renewal of the State, by gradually christianizing it. As the divine Saviour said in the parable of the leaven in the dough (Mt 13:33), it is through the continuous radiance of the good odour of JesusChrist that the fervour of the faithful will reconquer the world, for the service of the King of glory.
In Public Life
This is why, dear sons, the devil, by ambushes of every kind, attacks the integrity of the Christian family, attacking it in its nature as well as in its duties and the ordinary course of its life. You understand, therefore, that our eagerness for Jesus-Christ to be the sovereign Lord of society cannot be confined to particular personal or family actions, however important and necessary they may be. We must 'also act in public life', both positively and to prevent families from being asphyxiated by these disorders of all kinds that are tolerated to satisfy the misunderstood freedom of modern people.
As Leo XIII warns, when he emphasizes this obligation of the faithful, action in public life must be taken in an orderly and serene manner: without provoking strife between classes, without arousing spirits against the established order; but by acting firstly by good example, that absolutely indispensable weapon, and then, by all legal means - writings, manifestos, collective representations, etc. - with the aim to prevent the approval of laws or customs that are contrary to Christian faith and morals, such as divorce, induced abortion under any pretext, the free sale of contraceptives, their use in hospitals and maternity wards, sex education in schools, public licentious behaviour, the dissemination of pornography, the free circulation of films offensive to Jesus-Christ, which offend dogma or corrupt the family, etc.
An identical positive activity is also needed, with a view to achieving a public order inspired by the Christian spirit, which prepares citizens to adhere to the true faith in Jesus-Christ, as proclaimed by His Church, the One that is Catholic, Apostolic and Roman.
Schools: Teaching Religion is not Enough
Whence this apostolate and the rights of parents, dear sons, include organized action 'against the school monopoly' being established in our homeland1 under the pretext of educational efficiency.
This action is essential, first and foremost, because the very real situation for the Brazilian people, will be one of official secular education. So, in a school where the official teaching is secular, it is not possible to give students a Catholic education. This training requires that all disciplines be considered as a harmonious whole, so that, animated by the same spirit, they integrate the spirit of Our Lord Jesus-Christ, Wisdom of God, to whose glory all sciences must be ordered. The late Carlos de Laet2 rightly said that secular teaching is by its very nature seditious. And he gave the example of writing, an apparently indifferent subject, where the teacher necessarily loses his neutrality when he has to explain, for example, why the word God is written with a capital letter.
And it's not by introducing religious education into official establishments that we'll remedy the ills of secularism. In the first place, because it's a condition of simple favor to religious education in these establishments.
1 - In Brazil, the school monopoly is much more recent than in France. (Editor's note)
2 - Carlos DE LAET (1847-1928), Brazilian journalist and essayist, a vigorous polemicist, brilliant in His columns and articles.
What's more, as this teaching is often inserted into a system that does not give it its rightful place, the development of the Catholic mentality is immediately altered. Secondly, as Pius XI observes, religious instruction given in a school where other subjects ignore religion, and even work against it, is absolutely insufficient to give anyone a Catholic formation.
Therefore, if they accept the introduction of religious instruction into the 'curriculum' of school subjects, in order to uphold the principle that education cannot do without religion, Catholic parents must take great care to give their children a religious training outside school, in order to correct the evils to which we alluded above 1.
Above all, they must take a special stand against the school monopoly, so that their rights to educate their children are truly recognized and respected in all their fullness. Let them demand protection and support for private schools. They can even assume control of it, or at least give themselves the opportunity to influence its activities.
It's worth recalling Pius XI's comments to parents about national socialist schools:
Quote:'...Parents who are earnest and conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which eliminate, in school questions, the respect of this free will of the parents go against natural law, and are immoral.
...Therefore, we shall never cease frankly to represent to the responsible authorities the iniquity of the pressure brought to bear on you and the duty of respecting the freedom of education. Yet do not forget this: none can free you from the responsibility God has placed on you over your children. None of your oppressors, who pretend to relieve you of your duties can answer for you to the eternal Judge, when He will ask: "Where are those I confided to you?" May every one of you be able to answer: "Of them whom Thou hast given me, I have not lost any one" (John xviii. 9).
1 - Bishop de Castro-Mayer wrote this at a time when it was still possible to make do with intermediate solutions, because the official school system was not entirely corrupt everywhere. Today, as the situation worsens, the only advice is: put your children in traditional schools if you don't want them to go to perdition! (Editor's note)
2 - Encyclical 'Mit brennender Sorge', March 14, 1937.
Slackening of the Faith
As we engage in these considerations with you, dear sons, our hearts ache at the indifference with which many Catholics approach the problem of educating the younger generation. A good many of them confine themselves, at most, to looking for a college that carries the Catholic label. They dispense of discovering more accurate information, and feel they have no responsibility in the matter. Where does such a lack of faith come from?
To a large extent, it stems from the love of ease 1, with which these Catholics have been contaminated by the 'liberalism of modern civilization', made up of the immoderate enjoyment that is the hallmark of the consumer society. But this lack of faith also stems from a' lack of confidence in grace', which is in some ways more serious.
In fact, many of us feel that God's grace has become insufficient to overcome the wickedness into which the world is plunged today. Although we don't express it clearly, we do in fact judge that the apostasy of society, and consequently of states, has become so profound that it is no longer possible to speak of the social reign of Our Lord. We would have to be content with a 'modus vivendi' in which we seek to save as many souls as possible, while at the same time refraining from fighting, even in the long term, in favor of a Catholic State.
Hence, the accommodation of many, who profess the Catholic faith, with the paganization of society. Naturalism has led them to trust in their own strength and lack confidence in grace. They worry that they have everything to achieve, and, realizing their inability to defeat the monster of secularism, they judge that 'the only possible path is that of concessions'. The reasoning should be entirely different. Feeling their weakness, their inability to overcome the modern spirit, these people should turn to grace, and be assured of its omnipotence against all God's enemies.
On the anniversary of the death of Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Pius X noted that His admirable predecessor had distinguished Himself precisely in that He had ignored the prudence of the flesh...
Quote:'... and in the preaching of the Gospel, and in the other admirable works he accomplished for the relief of human misery. He followed the example of the Apostles, who said on the day they set out to proclaim Christ throughout the world: "We preach Jesus crucified, a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23). But if ever there was a time when the helps of human prudence may have seemed opportune, it is indeed that time: for minds were in no way prepared to welcome this new doctrine, which was so strongly repugnant to passions everywhere in control, and clashed head-on with the brilliant civilization of the Greeks and Romans2.
1 - The Brazilian text uses the term "comodismo", which could be translated as "commodism" if the word didn't already refer to a scientific theory (developed by Henri Poincarao). We're talking here about that form of practical liberalism that seeks ease and compromise with the spirit of the world. (Editor's note)
2 - Encyclical Iucunda sane, March 12, 1904.
Religion within Human limits
Dear sons, this lack of confidence in the efficacy of grace, this overconfidence in our own abilities, was already present in the time of the divine Master. In fact, what else does this attitude of the Saviour's disciples indicate, when they judged His words to be harsh and impossible to follow? "Durus est hic sermo et quis potest eum audire? " (Jn 6:61). What were these disciples asking for, if not a Christian message they could put into practice themselves? What were they refusing, if not a grace so powerful that it would make them overcome their own misery?
Basically, it was a question of finding a compromise between the severity of the Gospel preached by Jesus-Christ and the principles of the world; a religion, definitely, that would "understand" human conditions and "would adapt" to their weaknesses.
However, these disciples did not always have imitators who followed them in all their attitudes. Unwilling to follow the rules laid down by the Savior, they abandoned Him. Over the centuries, not all those who would promulgate their pride and lack of confidence in grace would reproduce (imitate Ed.)their open defection. Many would remain in the bosom of the Church, only to deform it, and create a 'new Church', closer to the times, more accessible to its passions, and for that reason, inauthentic, false. This is how heresies appeared suddenly.
How Heresies are Born
It's a normal part of human psychology that man seeks a reason to legitimize his actions. Because of a lack of confidence in grace and a weakening of his faith, he becomes accustomed to a trivialized and peaceful coexistence with the error and evil present in society, and looks for a principle that endorses his behavior and gives what he does and thinks a semblance of coherence.
This phenomenon, which lies at the root of the heresies of the past, can still be found today in various movements that have arisen within the Church, generous in appearance because they intend to devote themselves to the conversion of those outside Christ's fold. But their generosity is infected with the love of the world 1. To smooth the way, they resort to a less rocky presentation, if we may put it that way, of revealed morality and doctrine, and, consequently, more accessible to minds accustomed to living, to varying degrees, according to the maxims of the world. In reality, such movements rob Revelation of the clarity of its dogmas and, by the same token, falsify it, for in the words of Our Lord, the 'yes' must be 'yes', and the 'no' must be 'no'. What dilutes these clarifications comes from the Evil One (see Mt 5:37).
Immortification
These movements are known precisely for their compromising apostolate, which attenuates traditional severity. They weaken the precepts of morality, avoiding the emphasis on a life that is usually serious and austere, and allowing themselves liberties that offend souls accustomed to the image of the faithful Catholic docilely attached to Sacred Scripture and to Tradition. An image full of confidence, no doubt, but also of a holy and respectful fear of God.
More by their way of proceeding than by clear teachings, these movements we're talking about distill a Christianity in which levity of morals and freedom of speech, commonplace in today's paganized world, are considered absolutely normal and of no great importance. We've already had occasion to warn you, dear sons, against coarse language, social leveling, vulgar manners and irreverence towards Our Lord, all of which can be found in circles imbued with the ideology and spirit of the Cursilhos2. We are told that there are other similar movements suffering from the same defects. These movements would bridge the gap between Christianity and the easy, sensual lifestyle that capitulates to the evil tendencies of nature inherited from original sin. Then appears a new Church, having lost confidence in the omnipotence of grace - which, however, was able to bring down and raise up a St. Paul - the sublime character of Christ's religion to the level of human nature and its deficiencies.
1 - Their generosity is "comodista", inclined to compromise with the world.
2 - The term is a calque of the Spanish word, Cursillos de cristiandad, "Little course in Christianity". A Catholic action movement that emerged in Spain in 1944, it quickly became a vehicle for ecumenism. Bishop de Castro Mayer refers in a note (in the Italian translation of SiSi NoNo in August 2011), to "Nostra Carta Pastoral sobre cursilhos de Cristiandade, 3rd ed., Vera Cruz, Sao Paulo, 1973." (Editor's note)
The Spirit of Independence
A second characteristic of these movements, linked to pride - that other fundamental tendency of fallen nature - is the spirit of independence from Tradition. The coryphae of the movements we're talking about make no secret of their claim to be building a renewed Christianity. They strive to convince their peers that they have at last rediscovered with certainty the true substance of the Christian message, which had been obscured by the excesses of Tradition. In this, they are contumacious1.
They are the only ones who know how to apply the words of the Gospel to today's world. They claim a similar autonomy from the hierarchy. Outwardly very respectful, they seek - as we have often heard said in recent years - ecclesiastical leaders who "understand" them, i.e. who accept their positions. Absolutely convinced that their thinking is authentically Christian, they say nothing to arguments based on Sacred Scripture and Tradition. And so they continue, obstinate in their ideas and their proselytism. As they feel that only by maintaining their links with the Church will they be listened to, they invoke a few ecclesiastical approbations, the existence of which they do not always prove, and the content of which they are carefully cautious to divulge their contents- when it exists. Some, like the so called "Catholic Pentecostals", go further: they believe in a direct, more or less perceptible influence of "the Spirit", without the intervention of the hierarchy.
All these movements, without judging the intentions of their instigators, are in fact inspired by the modernist mentality, whose rules of action were as follows: to remain in the Church in order to renovate it in depth; and, within the Church, to transcend the limits of the hierarchy, in order to reach the essence of Christianity that exists in the subconscious of every human being. As a tactic, they sought to silence publications and arguments opposed to them, and endeavored to discredit their opponents2.
1 - In Roman law, a "contumax" is an individual who shows an inclination to despise authority. In ecclesiastical law, contumacy refers to the attitude of a sinner who, externally, shows arrogance towards ecclesiastical authority and refuses to amend his ways. (Editor's note)
2 - Antonio FOGAZZARO, Il Santo, and St. Pius X's encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, September 8, 1907.
The Antidote: Living by Faith
You see, dear sons, that with such a mentality, it is out of the question to think of establishing the kingship of the divine crucified One. His kingship is opposed to that social atmosphere produced by the domination of passions wounded by original sin. This mentality is entirely committed to a compromise that seeks to preserve the faith without separating itself from man's "conquests", by virtue of the autonomy that the deprivation of grace would have indirectly procured him, when sin reduced him to his natural condition.
To guard against the contamination of such a harmful spirit, spread by movements of the type we have described, it is necessary, dear sons, that you make the spirit of faith more alive in yourselves.
Above all, anchor in your minds the exact concept of the faith indispensable to salvation, the faith without which, says St. Paul, "it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6). This faith is a supernatural virtue, infused by God, whose object is revealed Truth. The first Vatican Council defined it as follows:
Quote:'This faith, which is the beginning of man's salvation, the Catholic Church professes to be a supernatural virtue by which, forewarned by God and helped by His grace, we believe the things He has revealed to us to be true, not because of their intrinsic truth perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself who reveals, who can neither deceive Himself nor us'1.
Thus, the fundamental condition for belonging to Christ's flock is to accept revealed truths in their exact meaning, as proposed to us by the Holy Church. To think otherwise, to reduce faith to an act of trust or mere sentiment, is to fall into heresy. As a result, any movement, association or group of the faithful that claims to be Catholic - and especially if it is destined to the apostolate, to the propagation of the spirit of Jesus-Christ in the social milieu in which it finds itself -this movement, then, must first and foremost have as its aim a firm and scrupulous adherence to revealed doctrine. What's more, these truths, which divine goodness has deigned to manifest to man, must be accepted with humility and gratitude, as expounded by the Holy Church, the only infallible teacher to whom God our Lord has entrusted the deposit of His Revelation.
Without a docile submission of the intelligence to this revealed truth, attentive above all not to distort in any way what God has deigned to make known through His Church, there is no authentic Catholicism. There is only an appearance, which can mislead one's neighbor, and which, as a result, presents the danger of making him deviate towards an equally erroneous conception of the faith.
We repeat: this attitude of submission, fundamental for the Catholic, implies obedience to a double external authority: to the truth proposed by Revelation, and to the Church which transmits it.
Because this requires us to admit our inferiority and limitations, the modern mind rebels against this attitude, in the name of reason and Rights of man. It's this spirit of rebellion that drives - albeit perhaps unconsciously - the movements we've been talking about. The remedy for contamination by this spirit lies in humble and loving obedience to the authentic magisterium, receiving revealed dogma in the sense that the Church has always taught. Without this pure and unreserved faith, we are not immune to the virus of adaptation to the world, which St. Paul condemned.
1 - Vatican I, session 3, Constitution 'Dei Filius', ch. 3 (DS 3008).
Living by Faith
With the same docility, without wrapping them in the sinuosities of our selflove, we must hear and practice the precepts enunciated by the divine Master, so that He may reign in us and we may be effective instruments in spreading His reign in souls.
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Lk 9:23). This is the golden rule, irreplaceable. Without "let him deny himself", without renouncing our egoism, our pleasures and our desires, in order to do God's will alone, sanctification is illusory, the apostolate practically sterile and exposed to the danger of being led astray in the direction of compromise with the world.
This renunciation requires daily mortification; consequently, every day, we must take up the cross that Our Lord sends us: the cross of the exact fulfillment of our duties of state; the cross of patience towards our neighbor; the cross of the struggle against human respect.
Such a precept, understood according to its objective truth, is incompatible with the maxims of the world. Only a spirit of faith, living in the hope of future realities that will only be revealed in eternity, is capable of accepting it and loyally proposing to live by it. Rightly understood, it shows us how all those movements that aspire to establish a new Church and practice openness to the ways of being and behaving of the modern world, stray dangerously far from the path that leads to God's glory and eternal salvation.
The Spirit of the World
Let us agree, dear sons, that the temptation to seek agreement between the doctrine of salvation and the spirit of the age is tempting. Everywhere we are offered, including the inclination inherent in our sinful nature, a false charity, the fruit of a naturalistic conception of existence.
That's why the divine Master never tires of warning His disciples against living according to worldly principles. In His great priestly prayer, after the Last Supper, Jesus asks the Eternal Father, in a special way, to preserve His disciples from the contagion of the world (Jn 17:9-15). And the reason for this request is that the whole world is under the influence of the Evil One (1 Jn 5:19), by the lure of concupiscence, vanity and pride (1 Jn 2:16). In the same vein, St. Paul urges us to flee the temptation to conform to the spirit of the present age (Rom 12:2).
If, aided by confident and fervent prayer, we remain faithful in this vigilance, God our Lord will have mercy on us and grant us the grace not to get caught up in the meshes of an apparent, but false apostolate; that is, an apostolate which, if it does not totally renounce the social reign of Jesus-Christ over the world today, accommodates itself to a half-christianity, conceived in the manner of a union between two antagonistic spirits: 'Christian austerity and the wanderings of modern life. The result of such an alliance can only be the nausea of which the Apocalypse speaks (Apo 3:16), and which provokes the Lord's reprobation.
Dear Sons, in His encyclical 'Immortale Dei', Leo XIII echoes the admonitions of Jesus-Christ, and draws the attention of those who dedicate themselves to the work of spreading the Kingdom of God in society, to the two dangers that threaten them: connivance with false opinions, and a less energetic firmness than that demanded by the truth.
Let us therefore, dear sons, avoid our charity degenerating into an encouragement to error or vice. And let our patience never be an incitement to persevere in evil.
The Prayer
"Sine me nihil potestis facere - Without me, you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). Union with Jesus-Christ, dear sons, so that He may reign in us, and so that we may be crusaders in the service of His reign, is absolutely necessary.
This union with the Redeemer of mankind, the fruit of grace, is nourished and made more intense by the reception of the sacraments and by the practice of the Christian virtues, especially charity, which brings us to avoid anything in our lives that is displeasing to God our Lord, and which arouses in us a genuine interest in our neighbor, especially in his sanctification.
The indispensable means of maintaining union with Jesus-Christ, zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and at the same time making our apostolate effective, is prayer, that sovereign means which the divine Savior has bequeathed to us for obtaining all the favors of heaven.
Therefore, dear sons, we urge you always to use this weapon, so effective in establishing the reign of Jesus-Christ on earth, first within yourselves and then in the society in which you live.
"Ask, and you shall receive" (Jn 16:24), said the infallible Word, which can and does accomplish what it promises. If our country isn't as Catholic as it should be, it's partly our fault. If we had asked with faith, with confidence, surely we would have been sanctified and our prayers granted. Well! pray, dear sons, pray with the ardent will to receive what you ask for.
Prayer is so necessary that Jesus himself taught us how to pray. For us, He composed the most beautiful and complete of prayers: the 'Our Father'. It is the prayer we should say every day. In it, we ask precisely for the grace that this reign of God to come to us. Indeed, what else do we implore in the second petition of the Our Father, if not that God's reign may come to us? Thy kingdom come!" (Mt 6:10). So let us fervently say the' Our Father', paying close attention to what we're asking for, and begging with a burning desire to see its fulfillment: "Thy kingdom come!" We may lack all other means of extending the reign of Jesus Christ -- science, health, personal charisma, the ability to captivate crowds,...everything! but we never lack the means of prayer. IT IS the indispensable means. The others, without it, are ineffective; but, through prayer, we are made capable of exercising that apostolate which, according to the designs of Providence, it behooves to us to accomplish. Prayer is within our reach. Let us use it with a burning desire to be heard. God takes great account of the fervor of our desire when we ask Him for grace. So let's pray with all our heart and soul, and we'll obtain it.
Especially if we call upon the intercession of the Mediatrix of all graces, the Queen of heaven and earth, the most holy Mary, Our Lady. Let us confide our aspirations and preoccupations to Her. And She, against all human hope - "in spem contra spem, against all hope, keeping hope" (Rom 4:18) - will make her divine Son reign over the world today, fulfilling the kind and gentle promise She made at Fatima: "In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!"
With our affectionate blessing in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, we pray the most holy Virgin, Mother of God, to grant our dear cooperators and dear sons, perseverance in the love of Jesus-Christ, for the glory of God and the good of souls.
Given in our episcopal city of Campos, on the eighth day of December one thousand nine hundred and seventy-six, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Antonio, bishop of Campos.