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Dear canons, dear priests, dear brothers and sisters. It is a joy for me to be here with you in Belfast, and I would like to share with you today my thoughts about the necessity of speaking clearly the Catholic faith, promoting the clarity of the Catholic faith in the current crisis of the Church and of the faith which we are living for the sake.
I recently published a book with the title Credo, Compendium of the Catholic Faith. To say the truth, this was not my idea and not my initiative. I was compelled, so to say, to do it by the requests of brave Catholic lay faithful fathers of families. The idea came from the faithful, addressed to those who in the Church have the sacred and grave task of teachers of the faith, that is to say, of the bishops. In this case, too, thanks to the insistence of good lay faithful, I agreed to undertake such a demanding and responsible work.
This recalls to me the words of a father of the Church from the sixth century, St Caesarius of Arles in South France, who said that when a calf is hungry, it goes to the cow, the mother, to get milk. The cow, however, does not give it right away. It seems that she withholds it. And what does the calf do? It knocks with its nose at the cow’s udder so that the milk will come. It is a beautiful image.
So also the faithful must do with the shepherds. The saints said, always knock at their door, at their hearts, that they may give you the milk of the right doctrine, the milk of grace, the milk of guidance. So, St Caesarius of Arles, a saint from the sixth century.
And so the Lord, our Lord, said, Teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. This authority and mandate to instruct people of every time and place in divine doctrine was directly conferred by the eternal Son of God upon St Peter and the apostolic College.
Since that time, this has remained the proper mission of the Catholic hierarchy. Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel, said St Paul.
The Second Vatican Council recalled that each bishop, as a member of the Episcopal college and legitimate successor of the apostles, is obliged by Christ’s institution and command to be solicitous for the whole Church. And this his solicitude for the whole Church contributes greatly to the advantage of the universal Church, for it is the duty of all bishops to promote and to safeguard the unity of faith and the discipline common to the whole Church, to instruct the faithful and to love for the love of the whole Mystical Body of Christ. So said the Second Vatican Council.
Each Catholic bishop makes a public solemn oath during his consecration. In these words, he promises, I promise to maintain the deposit of faith entire and incorrupt, as handed down by the apostles and as professed by the Catholic Church everywhere and at all times. This oath is given by every bishop.
But it seems that in our days, some bishops have forgotten this oath which they gave at their ordination. So when some bishops promote ambiguity and heresies, the faithful should remind their bishop reverently, Do you remember the oath you gave at your consecration?
This means to maintain the deposit of faith entire and incorrupt as the Church has always taught. This is the task of the Church and the bishops. In this sense, I also offer this work, this book, Compendium, to strengthen the faithful in their faith and to serve as a guide to the changeless teaching of the Church, mindful of the Episcopal duty also to be a nurturer of the Catholic and Apostolic faith, Catholic Apostolic V de culturis, as stated in the canon of the Holy Mass.
I also wish to bear public witness to the continuity and to the integrity of the Catholic and Apostolic doctrine. In preparing this text, my intended audience has been chiefly God’s little ones. And these are you also. These are the faithful. You are today the little ones in the Church because you do not belong to the establishment or the nomenklatura.
For you faithful Catholics who are hungry for the bread of right doctrine, it is therefore in obedience to my duty toward the faithful laid upon me in my Episcopal consecration to preach the truth in season and out of season. The teaching of the Catechism in general is, in the words of Pope Benedict the Fourteenth, the most useful of institutions for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. So spoke a pope in the eighteenth century, Benedict the Fourteenth. And Pope Pius the Tenth wrote, when he was still Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, a letter to his priests where he stressed the vital importance of a clear and precise catechetical instruction, since one of the deepest thirsts of the people is the thirst for truth.
In 1894, Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto wrote, I quote, to the priests saying, We preach too much and we teach too little. We must put aside these florid speeches and preach piously, preach simply to the people the truth of the Catholic faith, the commandments of God, the teachings of the gospel.
We must preach and teach the vices and the virtues because it often happens that persons well instructed in profane sciences do not know or miss the truth of the Catholic faith. They see and know less of the catechism than children do. Think of the good of souls more than the impression you hope to make on the people. First, for truth, let them be given what they need for the salvation of the soul. So said Pope Pius the Tenth.
The Catholic faith is greater. It precedes and transcends the popes and the bishops because the popes and bishops are the first ones who must obey the Catholic faith, exemplars really, and they must transmit the Catholic faith integrally to the faithful. The Catholic faith belongs to all times, to all places, and to all generations of Catholics, starting with the apostles and going through all the fathers and doctors of the Church and all the sayings we know.
What should true Catholics do if they are confused or persecuted, marginalized even within the Church in our day? What should they do?
St. Vincent of Lérins, a Church father from the fifth century, gave useful guidelines in this regard when he said, I quote, if some new contagion seeks to infect not only an insignificant part of the Church, but the whole Church, then it will be up to you to cling to antiquity, to tradition, which today cannot be seduced by any fraud of novelty.
You must consult and interrogate the opinion of the tradition of the Ancients, that is to say, those who, although they lived in different times and places, were always in communion with the Catholic faith, and were recognized and approved. And in any case, it must be made sure that this doctrine in the tradition was always being sustained, taught not only by one or two of the authorities, or not only for a short time, but equally always, openly, frequently, persistently. So the words of St Vincent of Lérins.
Cardinal Robert Sarah spoke the following luminous words characterizing the exceptional state of crisis within the Church of our day. He spoke last month in Rome. I quote: Indeed, a true cacophony reigns today in the teachings of the shepherds, of bishops and priests. They seem to contradict each other. Each one imposes his personal opinion as if it were a certainty.
The result is confusion, ambiguity, and apostasy. Great disorientation, deep bewilderment, and devastating uncertainties have been inoculated in the souls of many Catholic believers. In the absence of light, everything becomes confused. It is impossible to tell good from evil. There is an urgent need then to see once again that faith is a light.
For once, the flame of faith dies out, and all other lights begin to dim. In fact, the light of faith is unique since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source. It must come from God.
When we speak of a crisis in the Church, it is important to point out that the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, continues to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. The sources of theology and the Church’s doctrinal and moral teaching remain unchanged and unchangeable. The Church, as the continuation and extension of Christ in the world, is not in crisis as the Mystical Body. It is we, her sinful children, who are in crisis.
The Church enjoys the promise of eternal life; the gates of hell will never prevail against her. Jesus said to Peter, Church, and we know and firmly believe that in the Church there will always be sufficient light for one who sincerely desires to seek the truth, to seek God. St Paul appealed to Timothy, his son in the faith, and his appeal concerns us all. He said, I charge thee before God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who gave testimony under Pontius Pilate, a good confession, keep that which is committed to thee, trust, the deposit of faith, avoiding the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, with some promising have erred concerning the faith. So St Paul.
The deposit of faith continues to be a supernatural divine gift, but today the crisis of the Church has entered a new phase. That is to say, the crisis of the magisterium. Certainly, the authentic magisterium of the Church, as a supernatural function of the Mystical Body of Christ, exercised and guided by the Holy Spirit, cannot be in crisis. The authentic magisterium cannot be in crisis. But today we see a crisis of the magisterium.
So the voice and action of the Holy Spirit, all through 2000 years, are constant, and the truth towards which it leads us is steadfast and unchanging. Lex credendi and lex orandi have walked hand in hand and nourished each other throughout the history of the Church. So the words of Cardinal Robert Sarah in his monumental work about catechetical instruction, the Catechism, the surudibu sent a Justin explained the very aim of all knowledge of truth.
This is the aim of catechism, of a compendium of faith, which consists in a virtuous life according to the recognized truth and according to the right worship. So the right faith, the right morals, the right worship, these together.
St. Augustine said, believe these things in the Catechism, therefore build your guard against temptations so that not only may the devil fail to seduce you by the help of those who are outside the Church, the heretics, pagans, Jews, but you yourself also may decline to follow the example of those within the Church whom you see leading an evil life, either indulging in excess the pleasures, or believing in the pomp and in pride, or pursuing any sort of life which the commandments of God punish, but rather you must connect yourself with the good ones whom you will easily find out if you yourself were once become of that character, so that you may unite with each other in worshiping and loving God, for God Himself will be our complete reward to the intent that we may enjoy His goodness and beauty in that life.
But as regards the heretics, the perverse, even if they find their way within the walls of the Church, think not that they will find their way into the kingdom of heaven, for in their own time, they will be set apart if they have not altered to the better and converted consequently.
Follow the example of good men, bear with the wicked, love all, for as much as you know not what he will be tomorrow who today is evil. How might you love not the unrighteousness of such but love the persons themselves with the express intent that they may convert to God. Our God, every hope ought to be placed, so St Augustine.
Juan Donoso Cortes, the great Spanish Catholic apologist from the 19th century, made the following observation: the day when society, forgetting the doctrinal decisions of the Church, has asked the press and the tribune, news writers and assemblies, what is truth and what is error, on that day error and truth are confounded in all intellect, society enters under regions of shadows and falls under the empire of fictions. So the words of Cortés.
St John Henry Newman said, A sound, accurate, complete knowledge of Catholic theology is the best weapon after a good life in controversy. Any child well instructed in the Catechism is, without intending it, a real missionary. And why? Because the world is full of doubting and uncertainty and of inconsistent doctrine. A clear, consistent idea of revealed Catholic truth, on the contrary, cannot be found outside the Catholic Church. Consistency and completeness are persuasive arguments. Certainly, if inconsistent, it is not true.
He continues to say, Newman, we are cherishing a shallow religion, a hollow religion which will not profit us in the day of trouble. The age, whatever be its peculiar excellences, has this serious defect: it loves an exclusively superficial cheerful religion. It is determined to make religion bright and sunny and joyous, whatever form it adopts. And it will handle the Catholic doctrine in this spirit, it will skim over it, it will draw it out in mere buckets full.
It will substitute its human system for the well of truth. It will be afraid of the deep well, the revelation of God, the abyss of God’s judgments, and of God’s mercies.
And then he says, pretending to be the gospel, dropping one whole side of the gospel, its severe character, and considering it enough to be only benevolent and delicate, though it includes no true fear of God, no fervent zeal for God’s honor, no deep hatred of sin, no horror at the sight of sins, no indignation and compassion at the sight of blasphemies, no jealous adherence to the doctrinal truth of the Church, no special sensitiveness about the particular means of gaining ends, provided the ends be good, no loyalty to the holy tradition of which the Creed speaks, no sense of authority, of a religion in the world, no seriousness, and therefore is neither hot nor cold, but in scriptural language, lukewarm. So John Henry Newman, the same saint, warned of the danger in the Church where clergy identify the kingdom of God with purely earthly and imminent issues, and who are fearful of the critiques and persecutions of this world. So he warned clergy not to be concerned with the imminent, purely earthly affairs, we would say today, climate change, immigration, and so on.
Sir Cardinal Newman thus spoke, unquote: “Do not complain of the world’s imputing to you more than is true. Those who live as the world lives give countenance to those who think them of the world and seem to form but one party with the world. In proportion as you put off the yoke of Jesus Christ, so does the world, by sort of instinct, recognize you and think well of you accordingly. O my brethren, there is an eternal enmity between the world and the Church, eternal enmity. The Church declares by the mouth of the Apostle, ‘Whoever will be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.’ St James says,
Does not the world scoff at all that is glorious and holy and majestic? Does it not speak against the special creations of God’s grace? Does the world not disbelieve the possibility of purity and chastity? Does it not slander the profession of celibacy? Does it not deny the perpetual virginity of Our Lady? Does it not disbelieve the sacraments? Despise the sacraments? Does the world not blaspheme the Real Presence of our Lord upon the altar?” The altars.
What are we, that we should be better treated than our Lord and His Mother and the saints? What are we, if we are better treated but friends of those who thus treat us well and who ill-treat Jesus Christ?
O my dear brethren, be children of grace and not of nature. Be not seduced by this world’s sophistries. It pretends to be the work of God, but in reality, the work that the world is doing comes from Satan. Saint John Henry Newman.
Saint Augustine spoke about the mystery of sin and apostasy within the Church. Yet, they admonish good Christians to keep trust in the victory of Christ and in God’s goodness, who always grants to His Church consolations even in the midst of trials.
In his book The City of God, St Augustine wrote: “Whoever will,” he quotes St Paul, “whoever will live piously in Christ shall suffer persecution,
because even when those who are without do not rage, and thus there seems to be a real tranquility which brings much consolation, especially to the weak, yet they are not wanting. There are many within who, by their abundant manners, torment the hearts of those who live piously in the Church.
Since by them, the Christian and Catholic name is blasphemed, and the dearer that name is to those who live piously in Christ, the more do they grieve that through the wicked in the Church who have a place in the Church the name of Jesus Christ comes to be less loved.”
That grief which arises in the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the bad manners of false Christians within the Church, is profitable to the sufferers because it proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish others either to perish or to hinder the salvation of their souls.
Finally, great consolations grow out of their chastisement, which imbues the souls of the pious with a fecundity as great as the pains with which they were troubled. Thus, in this world, in these evil days, not only from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and His apostles, but even from the time of Abel, the just in the Old Testament, whom his wicked brother slew because he was righteous and pious, and thenceforth even to the end of this world, the Catholic Church has gone forward on pilgrimage amid persecutions of the world and consolations of God.
So St Augustine said: The Catholic faith cannot admit a change, or a rupture, or a reinterpretation into another signification than it has been constantly believed and taught throughout 2000 years.
Nowadays, we can state the introduction of some changes and ruptures in the presentation of the truth regarding doctrine and morals. To hide and mask such changes, seductive expressions are used, such as “paradigm shift,” “hermeneutic of continuity,” “synodality,” even when the obvious sense of these changes contradicts the constant belief and practice of the Church.
In such situations, you should say: I know my Catholic faith, I will not permit myself to be confused. For the sake of this Catholic faith, with the grace of God, I am ready to die. For ambiguity and confusion, nobody will die. And again, St John Henry Newman said, already in 1834, I quote: “The Church of God on earth will be greatly reduced, as we may well imagine, in its apparent numbers in the times of Antichrist, by the open desertion of the powers of the world.
This desertion will begin in a professed indifference to any particular form of Christianity, under the pretense of tolerance, which toleration will proceed not from a true spirit of charity, but from a design to undermine Christianity by multiplying and encouraging sects. The pretended toleration will go far beyond just toleration, even as it regards the different sects of Christians.
For the governments will pretend an indifference to all, from the toleration of the most pestilent heresies, the governments will proceed to the toleration of Islam, of atheism, and at last, to a positive persecution of the truth of Christianity. The merely nominal Christians will all desert the true faith when the powers of the world desert it. And this tragic event, I take to be typified by the order of St John, written in the book of Revelation, to measure the temple and the altar and leave the outer court. These are the national schismatic churches and heresies to be trodden under the foot of the pagans.
The property of the clergy will be pillaged, the public worship vilified by the deserters of the true faith, who are now called apostates because they never were in earnest in their profession. Their profession was nothing more than compliance with fashion. In principle, they were always pagans, but now appear to be pagans, these nominal Christians. They were always pagans.
When this general desertion of the faith takes place, then will commence the sackcloth ministry of the witnesses described in the book of the Apocalypse. They will have no support from the governments, no honors, but they will have that which no earthly power can take away, which they derive from Christ, who commissioned them to be the witnesses of the faith.” So John Henry Newman, in 1834, predicted a promotion of Islam by governments, the persecution of the Catholic truth, and a great reduction of the Church very prophetic and somewhat timely. Hilaire Belloc presented, already in 1938, an almost prophetic analysis of the situation we face today. I quote him: “The modern attack on the Catholic Church, the most universal that she has suffered since her foundation, has so far progressed that it has already produced intellectual and moral forms which combined give the Savior for religion. But reason today is everywhere decried. The ancient process of conviction by argument and proof is replaced in our day by simple reiterated affirmation.
Almost all the terms which, by the glory of reason, carried with them now an atmosphere of contempt. See what has happened, for instance, to the word ‘logic,’ to the word ‘controversy.’ Note such popular phrases as ‘no one yet was ever convinced by argument,’ or ‘anything may be proved,’ or ‘that may be all right in logic, but in practice, it is very different.’ Such speeches are saturated with expressions that everywhere connote contempt for the use of reason itself.
When reason is dethroned, not only the faith, the Catholic faith, is dethroned, but every moral and legitimate activity of the human soul is dethroned. So the word God is truth, which the mind of Christian Europe used as a postulate in all it did, seems in our day to have lost its meaning. None can analyze the rightful authority of government, nor set bounds to it, in the absence of reason. Political authority reposing on mere force is boundless, and reason is thus made a victim, because humanity itself is what the Modern attack is destroying in its false religion of humanity, reason being the crown of man, and at the same time his distinguishing mark. The anarchists march against reason as their principal enemy.
Either we of the Catholic faith shall become a small, persecuted, neglected island amid mankind, or we shall be able to lift up again the struggle, the old battle cry: Christus Vincit.
Lastly, there is this very important and perhaps decisive consideration: though the social strength of Catholicism, in numbers certainly and in most other factors as well, is declining throughout the world, the issue between Catholicism and a completely new pagan religion is now clearly marked in our day.” Hilaire Belloc, 1938. What would he say today?
We conclude:
“Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, for thou alone hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.” These words, Holy Mother, the Church prays for a millennium in the Divine Office and the Missal.
Why has the Blessed Virgin Mary destroyed all heresies? Because she believed that the Son of God would incarnate and become man. The Christian faith consists essentially in the faith in Christ, true God and true man. For one who believes in the divinity of Christ will accept all that Christ taught, His doctrine.
The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first to believe in the incarnation of God. Through the face of Mary, the true faith was established on earth. She was the first who believe, and therefore Mary is most powerful to destroy unbelief and heresy.
When St Francis de Sales, in 1602, after long and hard work, crushed Protestantism in the region of Chablais, between Switzerland and France, he brought back 70,000 Protestants to the Catholic Church.
When he finished this work, he wrote on the arch of the choir of the church of that main town these words in Latin: “Gaude Maria Virgo, contra haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo”, “Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, for thou alone hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.”
And St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen, the first Capuchin martyr priest in 1622, martyred in Switzerland by fanatic Protestants, before he was martyred, spoke these words of Catholic faith: “How solid, how strong you are, O Catholic faith, how deeply rooted, how firmly founded on a solid rock. Heaven and earth will pass away, but you will never pass away.” – St Fidelis of Sigmaringen
Let us ask the Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady, to grant us the grace to be always able to say: “I know my Catholic faith. I will not permit myself to be confused. For the sake of this Catholic faith, with God’s grace, I am ready to die.”
Thank you for your attention.
I thank once more Canon Bellabog and the other Canons for their hospitality here, for the beautiful work they are doing through priests and Catholics. I thank all of you, my dear brothers and sisters, for your fidelity to the Catholic faith.
With this fidelity of yours lies the future of the true renewal of the Church. We believe it will come, and you are already contributing to it, especially our youth, our children.
They will, with God’s grace, live to see the time when the Holy See will again shine bright as the cathedral of truth, and the Popes will defend the truth. This time will surely come.
Let us pray for it and be bright and thankful that we are Catholics.
Thank you.