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Devotion to the Angels
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

I do not hesitate to say that devotion to the angels is one of the hallmarks of being a true Christian. It was an angel who first appeared to our Lady to announce her conception of Jesus Christ at Nazareth. It was an angel who appeared to the shepherds at Bethlehem to tell them that the Messiah had been born. It was an angel who consoled our Lord in His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was an angel who told the women who visited the tomb in which Christ had been buried, that the Savior was risen from the dead. It was angels who told the disciples staring into the sky at Christ’s ascension that He would return from heaven to earth even as He had ascended from earth to heaven. It was an angel who delivered Peter from prison where he was chained for his proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. It will be angels who will announce the coming of Christ on the last day of time and the first day of eternity to judge the living and the dead.

Our focus in this conference is on Devotion to the Angels. Before we go any further, I would like to identify what devotion to the angel means.

Devotion to the angels means venerating the angels.

Devotion to the angels means praying to the angels.

Devotion to the angels means promoting the apostolate to the angels.

Devotion to the angels means imitating the angels.
My purpose in this conference will be to explain each of these four forms of angelic devotion, and apply our explanation to the practical, day by day, living of our Catholic faith.


Veneration of the Angels
To venerate the angels means two things. It means to know who the angels are and to respond to this faith knowledge with our love.

If anyone still wonders why we should be giving so many conferences on the angels, let me assure him that it is positively necessary in our day. Literally hundreds of books, periodicals, movies, and television programs, are flooding today’s market with so much angelism that we better understand what the Catholic Church teaches about the angels.

There are two obvious sources for authentic knowledge about the angels. They are divine revelation and the teaching of the Church’s tradition over the centuries.

One of the surprises for lay Catholics today is the preoccupation with the angels which characterized the life of Catholics in the believing centuries of the Middle Ages. There were Church definitions in angelology; there were papal and episcopal documents; there were extensive treatises in theology dealing with the faithful and fallen angels. St. Thomas Aquinas is called the angelic doctor mainly because he published tens of thousands of words on the nature, and function, and role of the angels in the life of the human race.

One of the heartening signs of a conversion in materialistic countries like America is the rising avalanche of print and the media on the angels.

We are asking: “Who are the angels?” The angels are persons, created by God, who have a mind and a will, but do not have the limitations of a material body.

Like the human race, the angels had to prove their fidelity to God by submitting their free wills to His divine Majesty.

Our concentration in this conference is on the good angels who remained faithful in their obedience to God. These angels are constantly adoring the Holy Trinity, even as they are enjoying the vision of the Triune God.

However, they are angels because they are messengers of God’s providence in our lives. They are His angels to enlighten our minds and inspire our wills. Why? So that they might bring us to that celestial Jerusalem where they are waiting for us to join them.

Venerating the angels, we must remind ourselves, is not only believing in their existence and generous service in our favor. We venerate the angels by responding to the graces which they bring from God to us. They are channels of God’s love to us. We are to use these graces and thus show our grateful love for God in return.


Praying to the Angels
Until the sixteenth century when Protestantism broke with Catholic unity, prayer to the angels was part of the staple diet of Catholic piety. Living in a culture which has been so deeply protestantized, we must brace ourselves and not be misled by the errors of those who deny that we should pray to the angels.

Praying to the angels means talking with the angels; telling them how we admire their nearness to God and look forward to joining them after we finish our trial here on earth. Praying to the angels is thanking them for the many favors they have done for us over the years and how much we appreciate their angelic care for our needs. Praying to the angels is asking them for what we need. Certainly we could go directly to God with our petitions. But we know what sinners we are and how close the angels are to the all holy One. We are therefore sure that their nearness to God makes them powerful intercessors on our behalf. Praying to the angels is begging them to plead for us at the throne of the merciful God whom we have offended and from whom we hope to obtain His forgiving mercy.

All of this is locked up in the single phrase, “Praying to the angels”. You might change the preposition if you wish, and say that we pray through the angels to God, being assured that their nearness to Him makes their influence with Him greater than would be our addressing God by ourselves. If Christ in His agony was strengthened by an angel of the Lord, who are we to think we can dispense with angelic assistance in our lives?


The Angelic Apostolate
I can honestly tell you that the conferences that we are having on the angels is unembarrasingly an angelic apostolate. I sincerely believe that what the world today needs is a deeper, clearer, stronger and more zealous devotion to the angels than ever before since the time of Christ.

Why do I say this? Because the angels are such a powerful militia for protecting a world that is being widely seduced by the fallen angels.

In our next two conferences we shall deal at length with Christian Faith and Demonology and The Devil in the Modern World. For the present we wish to examine more carefully into what the angelic apostolate really means.

By definition, an apostolate is the zealous effort to bring God’s grace to others through the practice of the corporal and the spiritual works of mercy.

You might ask “What do the angels have to do with the corporal and spiritual works of mercy?” The answer is, everything!

The seven corporal works of mercy are: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to visit the sick, to visit those in prison, and to bury the dead.

These works of mercy are the seven conditions on which Christ prophesied our salvation would depend. It is not coincidental that, on the last day He will tell those who are lost, “ Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels”(Matthew 25:41).

Why will human beings be lost? Because during their life on earth they had allowed themselves to be seduced by the devil into selfishness and failed to practice the works of mercy.

The good angels are especially chosen by God to protect us from the self-idolatry which ignores the needs of others and thus paves the way for the eternal loss of a heavenly destiny.

The good angels protect us from the selfishness of the devil, so we might practice the corporal works of mercy. But the good angels also inspire us to practice the spiritual works of mercy. They are: converting the sinner, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving injuries, and praying for the living and the dead.

As twenty centuries of Christianity tell us, our salvation also depends on our practice of the spiritual works of mercy. If anything, the devil is more anxious to prevent us from practicing the spiritual than the corporal works of mercy. We need the help of the good angels to protect us from the devil’s instigation on both levels.

I spent last week in Haiti, giving instructions to the Missionaries of Charity. While there, I visited one of the five homes for the dying conducted by the Sisters. I administered more infant baptisms, more anointings of the dying, and gave more absolutions in a few hours than I had given in the past five years. Here is a nation dreadfully in need of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and there are so few dedicated Catholics available to meet what I can only call superhuman needs, in a subhuman society, literally dying for lack of Christian charity. Do not tell me this is not the work of the evil spirit. Do not tell me that we do not need to promote the angelic apostolate among the faithful.

We said that devotion to the angels includes the apostolate to the angels. This should be taken literally. Of course we must first develop our own deep veneration for the angels and frequent prayer to the angels. But we dare not stop there. We are to do everything in our power to inspire others to follow our example. The apostolate to the angels, I sincerely believe, is one of the most gravely needed in contemporary Christianity.

The angels are sent by God to us. We in turn are being sent by the angels to others to bring to everyone whose life we touch a deeper veneration of the angels, a more fervent prayer to the angels, and a more zealous dependence on the angels to protect a world that is immersed in self-adoration to the rejection of the most elemental laws of God.


Imitation of the Angels
Humanly speaking the last persons you would expect to imitate are the angels. There are people, good Catholics that I know, who do not even realize that the angels are persons. How could you imitate someone who was not even an individual intelligent being, which is the standard definition of a person.

Moreover, angels do not have bodies. They do not have bodily emotions. They do not have eyes or ears or lips or hands or feet. The angels in heaven do not have temptations. They cannot sin. They have no inordinate passions or sinful urges.

Can we still say that the angels are imitable? Is there any intelligible sense in which we not only can but should follow their example?

Here we enter an area as wide as the ocean and as high as the stars. Yet, there is more than passing value in understanding something, no matter how little, of what it means to imitate the angels and how this imitation should be put into practice.

Angels as Contemplatives. All that our faith tells us about the angels is that they constantly behold the face of God. They are contemplating the Holy Trinity.

In the vocabulary of Catholic Christianity, contemplation is the enjoyable admiration of perceived truth (St. Augustine). Contemplation is the elevation of the mind resting on God (St. Bernard). Contemplation is the simple intuition of divine truth that produces love (St. Thomas).

On all these terms, the angels are certainly living a life of intense contemplation. They are not only always thinking of God, they are always loving God with the full intensity of their being. More still, they are seeing God with an intuitive vision in which God is so close to their minds that not even angelic thoughts stand between themselves and the most Holy Trinity. Needless to say, this vision of God’s infinity fills them with a joy for which no words in the human vocabulary can describe.

The angels are constantly praising God, constantly adoring the Creator in a most perfect form of prayer that only the celestial hierarchy can give the Divine Majesty.

Angels Active on Earth. By all human calculation, the ecstatic prayer in which the angels are engaged should preoccupy them so completely that they could not do anything else. We might even say they should not be doing anything else. After all, what is more sublime than prayerful contemplation?

But the angels are not only contemplatives. They are contemplatives in action. As often as we may have heard the expression, “Contemplation in action,” this is a constant reality. Our faith tells us that the very name angel means “messenger.” The angels, as Christ tells us, who constantly behold the face of the Father are also constantly engaged in what we may call the angelic apostolate of serving our human needs.

The Lesson for Us. We are speaking about imitating the angels. We are asking ourselves how the angels are to be models for us to imitate and patterns that we should follow.

The single most important lesson that we should learn from the angels is that union with God in prayer is never to be divorced from our service of others. Among the early Fathers of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria could not be more clear.

In every place, but not ostensibly and visibly to the multitude, the perfect Christian will pray. While engaged in walking, in conversation, while in silence, while engaged in reading and, in work that needs to be done, in every situation he prays (Stromata, VII, 7).

In other words, so far from serving others being incompatible with prayer, prayer should be the soul of everything we do in our practice of Christian charity.

Another saint tells us that, “Prayer is the uplifting of the soul to God”(St. Nilus, On Prayer, 35). Who would dare say that no matter what we are doing for others, whether engaged in conversation, or preparing a meal, typing at a computer, or teaching a class - we should not be simultaneously lifting our soul to God?

St. Thomas Aquinas explains how union with God through prayer can be combined with the practice of charity to others. When we pray, our minds are united with God. But our prayer deeply influences our will. Our mind can therefore be fixed on the Lord while our wills are choosing whatever actions the Lord wants us to perform.

One more quotation from St. Clement of Alexandria. He lived in the third century, in the height of the persecution of the Church. He knew what it means to combine contemplation and action. He told his contemporaries, “The Christian prays in every situation, in his walks or recreation, in his dealings with others, in silence, in reading, in everything he does where his mind is active.”

Our focus, remember, is the imitation of angels. They are our paradigm, our constant example, of combining union with God in prayer with the service of our neighbor in charity.

How to Imitate the Angels. I have saved the hardest question for last. How are we to imitate the angels in their remarkable ability to pray while working?

Before we say anything else, let us be sure that we are not talking in abstractions. The founder of consecrated life in the Western world was St. Benedict. The motto which he gave his followers and, through them, to the rest of the world, is a simple imperative, Ora et Labora, “Pray and Work.”

Notice what comes first. It is the duty to pray. Notice what comes second. It is the duty to work. Our souls are to be united with God after the example of the angels, and then, but only then, are we ready to serve the needs of the persons that God puts into our lives.

The hard question is how to combine these two. Dare I say that we have no choice. We can be busy in serving others, in fact, we can be preoccupied with what they need. But what is the main reason for our practice of charity towards other people? Is it to perform some chore, or serve some obvious human need? No, as the angels so clearly teach us, our underlying reason is to be channels of grace to the people whom we serve. No matter what else we may do for others, if we are not communicators of God’s grace to those whom we serve, we are not really serving what people mainly need. Their greatest and constant need is to receive light from God for their minds and strength from God for their wills. And our role in life is to be conduits of this grace to every single person who even momentarily touches our lives.

What is the key to being a channel of grace to others? The key is our own union with God in constant prayer.

This statement may be frightening when we first hear it. But it is the formula for living a truly Christian life. We are praying always if our wills are always ready to do the will of God. Everything else follows with simple logic.

Surely the angels are always disposed to do the will of God, whose face they are always beholding in celestial ecstasy. But that is precisely the secret. Our union with God in prayer is the condition for our living an angelic life of service in this valley of tears. We shall do only as much real good for others as our hearts are united in prayerful union with God.


Prayer
Angel of God, my guardian and guide, teach me what it means to be devoted to you and your angel companions in heaven. Teach me to combine constant union with God in prayer with a constant readiness to be of service to others. Show me how I will be only as generous to others and only as effective in meeting their needs as I am united with our Lord in striving to do His will. I need your help to be a contemplative in action. I need your example to learn that no matter how busy I am here on earth, my mind and my heart must always be in heaven with God. Amen.


Copyright © 1996 Inter Mirifica

The Church is Missionary by Her Very Nature

IN FAITHFUL Catholic circles, there is a collective sense of angst and dread on the eve of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region (October 6-27). Not basing themselves upon rumor or speculation, those concerned point to public statements of the Synod’s organizers and the very content of the instrumentum laboris (working document) that will set the pace of the synod’s proceedings. Alarmingly, in reference to this document, the word “apostasy” has been used by more than one high-ranking churchman.

Only yesterday, it was learned that the progressivist Bishop Mario Grech, of Gozo, Malta, now leads the Synod of Bishops as pro-secretary general, working alongside the very liberal Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri.

Very much has been written on these phenomena, and the news is coming fast and furious as we head into next week’s Synod (coverage of the event can be found at Church Militant, Life Site, and the National Catholic Register); my focus here will be on only one angle, the evident denigration of the Church’s salvific mission which is surrounding the Synod’s preparations.

The Austrian Bishop Erwin Kräutler, who is one of the eighteen official members of the pre-synodal council established by Pope Francis in March of 2018, is a missionary with a decades-long career in the Amazon region. He has made himself infamous for the statement, “I have never in my life baptized an indigenous [person], and I also do not have the intention of ever doing so.” Dr. Maike Hickson writes that, “Different progressivist sources say that Bishop Erwin Kräutler is the author of the synod’s working document.” Whether or not he authored the document, his involvement in the synod is more than concerning, based only on this anti-missionary, anti-baptism, and essentially anti-Christian remark. (It should come as no surprise that Bishop Kräutler wants to keep alive the possibility of women’s ordination.)

As critiques of the instrumentum laboris have shown, consistent with Bishop Kräutler’s deplorable statement, a sinister anti-missionary spirit is entering the Church. This must be condemned and resisted as the work of the Evil One.

That the Church has an exclusive mission and a sacred obligation to evangelize all nations is a matter of Catholic doctrine. The existence of this obligation and the necessity of its being exclusive to the Catholic Church alone can be illustrated from a consideration of the Church’s four marks (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic):

One — The unity of the Church includes a unity of faith, of worship (liturgical cult, including the sacraments), and of government. Unbelief, heresy, and schism exclude people from this unity. Now, it is to the one Church possessed of this unity that Christ gave the mandate both to teach all nations and to bring them into His Mystical Body. Further, this one Church is synonymous with the “Kingdom of God” that Jesus said He came to establish on earth, and which He sent the Apostles to preach (Luke 9:60, Matt. 24:14). No other “kingdom,” then, has a mandate to preach the Gospel, which is “the Gospel of the Kingdom” according to Our Lord’s explicit utterance in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. In his treatise on the unity of the Church, Saint Cyprian of Carthage excludes from salvation all who leave this unity by heresy or schism. If salvation is dependent on being joined to this one Church, then no other ecclesiastical body (or non-denominational movement, or individual person[s]) can possibly have a divine mandate to evangelize the world. See more about the Church’s unity here.

Holy — The Church is holy “in her origin, her purpose, her means, and her fruits” (Ludwig Ott). Of this holiness, Saint Paul writes, “Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life: that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27). It is “the Church” that Christ sanctifies in the sacraments; it is not mankind in general, or any mere assembly of men, or individual men independent of the Church. That sanctifying souls is an integral part of the mission of Christ’s followers is evident from the New Testament. Now, if the Church is what Christ sanctified, then to the Church alone is entrusted the mission of bringing others to sanctity in Christ. (Nemo dat quod non habet.) See more about the Church’s sanctity here.

Catholic — By this note (catholicity, or universality), the Church is widely diffused throughout the world while yet remaining one and the same, for spacial extension and local diffusion mean nothing if the body is not one. The Biblical proofs of the Church’s catholicity (e.g., Matt. 28:18-20, Mark 16:15-16, Acts 1:8), are at the same time explicit proofs of her divine mission; such diffusion would not be possible without her proactively laboring to incorporate all men and nations into her bosom. Further, the catholicity of the Church is proof of the exclusivity of that mission, for the mandate to bring “all nations” into the one Church is by a logical necessity an exclusive one. Our Lord could not possibly have told the Apostles, “Bring all nations into my Church — and then I’ll send other churches to preach to certain nations.”

Theologians distinguish “catholicity of right” from “catholicity of fact,” the former being the right the Church has to be the one diffused among all nations, while the latter is her actual extension among all nations. Father Salaverri explains “catholicity of right” in these terms:

Christ committed to one Church the right or office of gathering to herself everywhere all men, with the obligation of men corresponding to this right or office. But the catholicity of right consists in this right or office with the corresponding obligation. Therefore the Church necessarily is catholic with a catholicity of right.

It follows that no other institution or person has a right or a divine mission to preach the Gospel. It is therefore execrable, and even treasonous, when Catholics disparage as “sheep stealing” the noble attempt to convert non-Catholics to the Catholic Faith.

Apostolic — This mark of the Church identifies her as possessing the actual mission that Christ gave to the Apostles. Theologians distinguish apostolicity of origin, of doctrine, and of succession. Christ sent the Apostles to preach to the whole world and promised to give them the Paraclete to “abide with” them “for ever” (John 14:16). These men would all die by the year 100, hence the “for ever” continues in their successors, thus the apostolic succession that links every valid bishop back to the Apostles. It is a material succession if the sacramental lines are valid; it is a lawful (or “formal”) succession if it is traced back through men who maintain ecclesiastical unity. Hence, schismatic sects, even if they retain sacramental validity (not all do), do not enjoy apostolic succession in the full sense of the word. It strictly follows that nobody who is independent of this succession has the mission Christ gave the Apostles.

Given what we have said so far, it is highly distressing to learn that the Vicar of Christ has recently berated a Catholic woman for seeking converts and that, in very high circles, more attention is given to “human fraternity” than to the actual mission Jesus Christ gave to His Church, which is to glorify God and to save souls by uniting all men and all nations in His Mystical Body.

I would like to conclude these lines with a collection of recent magisterial affirmations of the Church’s exclusive and sacred obligation to evangelize all men and all nations (where possible, references to the latest edition of “Denzingers” are given; underlined emphasis mine):

“Consequently, as Jesus Christ came into the world that men ‘may have life and have it abundantly’ [Jn. 10:10], so also has the Church for her end the eternal salvation of souls, and hence she is so constituted as to open wide her arms to all mankind, unhampered by any limit either of time or place. (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885, DH 3166)

“The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father.” (Ad Gentes, No. 2)

“Missionary activity is nothing else and nothing less than an epiphany, or a manifesting of God’s decree, and its fulfillment in the world and in world history, in the course of which God, by means of mission, manifestly works out the history of salvation. By the preaching of the word and by the celebration of the sacraments, the center and summit of which is the most holy Eucharist, He brings about the presence of Christ, the author of salvation.” (Ad Gentes, No. 9)

“Since the whole Church is missionary, and the work of evangelization is a basic duty of the People of God, this sacred synod invites all to a deep interior renewal; so that, having a vivid awareness of their own responsibility for spreading the Gospel, they may do their share in missionary work among the nations.” (Ad Gentes, No. 35)

“All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.” (Lumen Gentium, No. 13, DH 4135)

“As the Son was sent by the Father, so He too sent the Apostles, saying: ‘Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’ The Church has received this solemn mandate of Christ to proclaim the saving truth from the apostles and must carry it out to the very ends of the earth. Wherefore she makes the words of the Apostle her own: ‘Woe to me, if I do not preach the Gospel,’ and continues unceasingly to send heralds of the Gospel until such time as the infant churches are fully established and can themselves continue the work of evangelizing. For the Church is compelled by the Holy Spirit to do her part that God’s plan may be fully realized, whereby He has constituted Christ as the source of salvation for the whole world. By the proclamation of the Gospel she prepares her hearers to receive and profess the faith. She gives them the dispositions necessary for baptism, snatches them from the slavery of error and of idols and incorporates them in Christ so that through charity they may grow up into full maturity in Christ. Through her work, whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God, the confusion of the devil and the happiness of man. The obligation of spreading the faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his state. Although, however, all the faithful can baptize, the priest alone can complete the building up of the Body in the eucharistic sacrifice. Thus are fulfilled the words of God, spoken through His prophet: ‘From the rising of the sun until the going down thereof my name is great among the gentiles, and in every place a clean oblation is sacrificed and offered up in my name.’ In this way the Church both prays and labors in order that the entire world may become the People of God, the Body of the Lord and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in Christ, the Head of all, all honor and glory may be rendered to the Creator and Father of the Universe.” (Lumen Gentium, No. 17, DH 4141)

“We believe that this one true religion continues to exist in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus entrusted the task of spreading it among all people. Thus, he said to the Apostles: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you’ (Mt 28: 19-20). Especially in those things that concern God and his Church, all persons are required to seek the truth, and when they come to know it, to embrace it and hold fast to it.” (Dominus Iesus, 23, quoting Dignitatis Humanae, 1).

“‘The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.’ [DV 10 § 2.] This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.” (CCC 85)

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Scandals in the Vatican!

ONE of the institutions most associated with the Renaissance Papacy was the so-called “Cardinal Nephew,” a man related to the reigning Supreme Pontiff who was created Cardinal by the pope, often unworthily and sometimes as an act of naked ecclesiastical nepotism. In fact, the word “nepotism” draws its very origin from this phenomenon, the Latin name of which is cardinalis nepos, nepos meaning nephew. The practice actually stretches back to the Middle Ages and continued until the reforms of Pope Innocent XII in 1682. And for over 100 years — 1566 to 1692 — there was a curial office in the Holy See associated with this institution, namely the Superintendent of the Ecclesiastical State, the occupant of which was generally also known as the “Cardinal Nephew.” This office was done away with in Innocent XII’s reforms, when the Secretary of State’s position was created to assume its responsibilities. Prior to the reforms, the Cardinal Nephew was the de-facto prime minister of the Pope, and often exerted great power. The institution lent itself to incredible corruption at times, including especially financial corruption, and it helped to turn the papacy into the play-thing of several powerful Italian families (e.g., Borgheses, Borgias, de Medicis, della Roveres, Barberinis, and Colonnas).

The list of cardinal-nephews includes at least fifteen, and possibly as many as nineteen popes — that is, men who went from being Cardinal Nephews to becoming the Vicars of Christ.

Of course, if you were Cesare Borgia, you didn’t need to be a nephew of the Pope’s to become a powerful cardinal; you were, rather, lineally descended from him as bastard son, thanks to the sacrilegious infidelities of Pope Alexander VI and his long-term mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei.

Why do I mention this?

Two Cardinal Nephews are canonized saints:

Guarinus of Palestrina (+1158) was created cardinal by Pope Lucius II (1144-1145)
Saint Charles Borromeo (+1584), the cardinal-nephew of Pope Pius IV (1559–1565)
Guarinus, an Augustinian Canon Regular, at first refused to be made a bishop, but was at last compelled to become Archbishop of Palestrina. He was a devout religious who opposed the will of his parents to embrace the clerical state. He was known for his humility and became a great patron of Palestrina’s poor. When his pope-uncle gave him rich gifts worthy of a man of his new station — the gifts included fine horses — Saint Guarinus sold them all and gave the money to the poor.

Better known than Saint Guarinus is Saint Charles Borromeo, the nephew of Pope Pius IV. After having gone on an Ignatian retreat, the young sub-deacon resolved to become a saint. Appointed to the Archdiocese of Milan as its Archbishop, he surprised everyone when he not only took the orders of diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy, but even took the trouble to live in his Archdiocese and actually minister to his flock. He was the first Archbishop of Milan to do so in eighty years, thus ending the terrible practice of episcopal absenteeism in that see, an abuse that was common in those times, as was the related abuse of multiple benefices, which was the simultaneous holding by one man of more than one, sometimes several, bishoprics, abbacies, priorates, and other ecclesiastical offices — along with the financial benefits attached to them. These abuses are commonly listed among the causes of the Protestant Revolution. They were abuses that were addressed by the Council of Trent and its subsequent reform, known properly as “the Catholic Reformation.”

Speaking of which, most of us know that Saint Charles Borromeo was called “the Soul of the Council of Trent,” and had a large share in the compiling of the Roman Catechism (also known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent). He became a major figure in the reforms of the Catholic Reformation, founding seminaries for the formation of priests, and making his own Archdiocese a model of true reform. In his charity, he expended his personal wealth and even went into debt to help the victims of a plague that had broken out in Milan. He also showed great interests in the plight of persecuted English Catholics, personally hosting Saints Edmund Campion and Ralph Sherwin on their way to England, ministering to English Catholics in exile in Italy, and even carrying on his person an image of the not-yet-even-beatified Saint John Fisher.

A contemporary of Saint Charles Borromeo was Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s disciple, Saint Francis Borja, known more commonly by the Italianized form of his name, Borgia. My earlier mention of the Borja family and especially of the wicked Cesare Borgia was not a gratuitous bit of scandal mongering, but was for a purpose: In celebrating the feast of Saint Francis Borja just yesterday (October 10), the Church celebrated the man who was the fourth Duke of Gandia (in Aragon, Spain), the third Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and another major figure of the Catholic Reformation. He was also the grand-nephew of Cesare Borgia, and the great grandson of Pope Alexander VI.

We must, when coming upon such things in Church history, recall that “parable of the kingdom of heaven” known as the “parable of the wheat and the tares,” something upon which we ought to meditate from time to time.

What does all this have to do with our conference?

For this year’s conference, our speakers have been asked to address the theme, “The Church’s Four Marks: Reflections on These Indelible Divine Signs.” The reason I chose this theme was because I know how deeply afflicted and scandalized many of the faithful are at the goings on in the Church. If you have been following any of the coverage of the current Amazon Synod going on in Rome from October 6 to the 27th, then you know that it is a scandal factory. This is happening in a Church already shaken internationally by the homosexual priest scandal. Additionally, just days ago, big news of horrible financial scandals have come out of Rome, with the Vatican police force dramatically raiding the offices of Holy See’s own Secretariat of State and its Financial Information Authority (AIF). It seems that a four hundred thousand euros went missing. Moreover, the man who was tasked with the Herculean labor of cleaning out the Augean Stables of Vatican finances, Cardinal Pell, is rotting in an Australian prison, victim of a plot hatched by an alliance of his Australian and Italian enemies.

And the scandals multiply, each day’s Catholic news bringing fresh rot to our attention; so, by the time you read this, the paragraph above will be stale news.

Amid such horrors, we need to keep our minds on the supernatural truths of the Faith and to remind ourselves that the Church is a living supernatural organism that has the seeds of reform in herself. Moreover, we ought to see, love, and seek God above all things so as to be the very saints who will help reform the Church, in our own small way, in these times God has given us to live in the Church Militant.

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Oh boy who would have ever thought of finding a catholic so more (Roman). In lowyat simply a pleasant surprise. Well done all those who have created and kept this this thread alive.

Welcome. Can you introduce yourself and which parish you regularly go to?

Johann here from St John's Cathedral and your good self?

Welcome welcome. yeeck from Guadalupe Puchong.

How many active members are there is this forum?

I had come across it by chance. I was searching for a wireman or someone with home electrical experience to help install some lighting etc for my house.

used the search bar and this thread showed up. how amazing!

Saint of the Day:

Saint Ursula (383)

When the pagan Saxons started to invade England in the fourth century, with the intention of destroying the Catholic Faith and the purity of all young English virgins, a great group of English girls, numbering ten friends of Saint Ursula, and each having a thousand companions — which made their number in all, 11,011 — fled from England to the Continent. In the year 383, Saint Ursula and her 11,010 companions were all slaughtered for their purity and their Faith. This great martyrdom occurred in Cologne, in Germany. A shrine has been erected to them there, containing as many of their bones as could be rescued. A Religious Order of nuns in the Catholic Church in honor of Saint Ursula was established by Saint Angela Merici in the year 1535. They are known as the Ursulines.

Queen of Heaven
Brian Kelly



As I noted in my article defending Padre Pio’s miraculous stigmata, if the belief is Catholic and traditional, you can bet that my friend, Pastor Joe, a Pentecostal minister, will be against it.

The latest missive I received from him accuses Catholics of idolatry for giving honor to Our Lady under her title “Queen of Heaven.”

Still choking, I hope, on all the camels he has swallowed from my past rebuttals, albeit still in denial, he now finds a new “gnat” to strain out in his obsession to indict the One True Church.

Yes, he finds the condemnation of our honoring Mary as Queen of Heaven in Jeremias.

Indeed, especially in chapter 44, the prophet does excoriate, over and over, the remnant of Jews exiled with him in Egypt, in particular the women, for worship of a queen of heaven. Not all of the exiles were guilty, but a lot of them were. Enough for God to rouse the indignation of Jeremias against them. These Jews had been routed from Jerusalem, along with our prophet, by the Persians in the 6th century B.C. The women, in particular, were “sacrificing” cakes and libations to an Egyptian goddess named Asherah, whom they were worshipping as “queen of heaven.” The same is Isis, their goddess of the moon. Appropriately, the woman carved the cakes into a crescent shape. (Now you know another origin for the word lunatic.) The Moslems, it seems, were not original in their adoption of the crescent moon and star. To be accurate, they did not adopt the symbol until the Turks used it for their Ottoman Empire emblem sometime in the early fifteenth century.

By the same token, shall we, Pastor Joe, refrain from calling God “the Father” because the pagan Romans worshiped the principal deity under that title. Jupiter, literally, means “Zeus Father”? I know, I know, Saint Paul in many places speaks of God the Father. Therefore, the comparison fails because it’s in the Bible. C’est la vie. I withdraw the point — to an extent, that is. What still stands is that the pagans called God “Father” Zeus. And, by Our Lord’s command, Christians call God “ Our Father.” And there is no problem here. So why is there a problem with giving the Mother of God the title “Queen of Heaven” when we have no intention of worshipping Ashera?

It is not beyond our scope here to note that the Protestant heresiarchs, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, all defended the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity. Hear Luther: “The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.” In his last sermon in 1546 Luther said: “This is the woman who crushed the serpent’s head . . . For your Son denies you nothing.” They write nothing against her Queenship, or her bodily Assumption. Can we not assume that they so honored her “Queen of Heaven”?

Let’s take a quick survey of queenship in the Old Testament.

Here are some related passages:
“The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety” (Psalm 44:10).

The Jews, of course, had their queens, good and bad ones. In the same inspired book that Pastor Joe employs, we read: “After that Jechonias the king, and the queen, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Juda, and of Jerusalem, and the craftsman, and the engravers were departed out of Jerusalem” (Jeremias 29:2).

And, what shall we say of Queen Esther? She was a figure of Our Lady because she saved her people from destruction. Her story is told in the Book of Esther of the Old Testament.

Although Abraham was not a king, he was considered royal by his friendly hosts, the Hethites — a “prince” in fact. And we are defending not only queenship but royalty as we have it throughout the Bible.

And Sara lived a hundred and twenty-seven years. And she died in the city of Arbee which is Hebron, in the land of Chanaan: and Abraham came to mourn and weep for her. And after he rose up from the funeral obsequies, he spoke to the children of Heth, saying: I am a stranger and sojourner among you: give me the right of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead. The children of Heth answered, saying: ‘My Lord, hear us, thou art a prince of God among us: bury thy dead in our principal sepulchres: and no man shall have power to hinder thee from burying thy dead in his sepulchre’” (Genesis 23, my bold).

Now, let’s return to the subject in question: to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven.

The first thing my pastor friend gets wrong is that he confuses the celestial luminaries above us with the home of the blessed in eternity. The moon is in its place orbiting the earth. And, of course, the stars are high above in the heavens. But the heaven of which Our Lady is Queen is not that of Asherah, but the “Kingdom of Heaven” where Jesus reigns with His saints. What the idolatrous Jewish women were adoring was not the abode of anyone, but a thing that gives us the reflected light of the sun at night. Maybe not as bad as worshiping an idol made by human hands, but still idolatry, giving worship to a piece of rock, a beautiful round rock, but a rock. The moon, however, is symbolic of Our Lady in that she filters the radiance of the Son of God, reflecting His brilliance, and making Him more conformable to our dull intellects. “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” (Canticles 6:9). Saint Louis Marie de Montfort (+1716) applies the verse to Mary: “She is not the sun, which by the brightness of its rays blinds us because of our weakness; but she is fair and gentle as the moon, which receives the light of the sun, and tempers it to make it more suitable to our capacity.”
― Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary:

And where is the moon in Marian iconography? Under her feet. So, she appears in the Book of Apocalypse and so she appeared and still appears on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego in Mexico. This sign, given to the pagan Aztecs, manifested that the holy woman of Guadalupe was greater than the moon or the sun which shines behind her in the Miraculous Image. Their gods were devils.

It would seem to any one without bias that Our Lady’s title of Queen is most fitting. She is the Mother of Christ the King. My pastor friend is quick to assure me that Jesus is certainly our King. And that His reign is forever. This, as he says, is clearly affirmed in the Gospels, even by Our Savior Himself. I asked him why then does he not honor Mary, either as “Blessed Virgin-Mother” or as “Queen” reigning as Queen-Mother with her Son? Our Lady’s Magnificat canticle, particularly the verse “Behold all generations shall call me blessed,” gives Pastor Joe a problem. And that prophecy is ex clara scriptura (clear in scripture). He had no answer for why he refuses to call the Mother of God “Blessed Mary,” but, as I noted, he assumes having a real “Queen of Heaven” is like the idolatry condemned by Jeremais.

I doubt that my Pentecostal friend would accept the authority of Saint Athanasius (or any other father of the Church) but the saint from Alexandria (296 to 373), in Egypt by the way, writes “If the Son is a King, the mother who begot Him is rightly and truly considered a queen and sovereign.” (de Deipera, on the Godbearer). Common sense, right? One would think having a Queen-Mother in Heaven would be a cause of great joy. One would think so.

Saint Ephrem the Syrian (+373) writes in the person of Mary: “‘Let Heaven sustain me in its embrace, because I am honored above it.’ For heaven was not Thy mother, but Thou hast made it Thy throne. How much more honorable and venerable than the throne of a king is his mother.” And in another place he thus prays to her: “. . . Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me.”

Our Lady has always been honored as Queen since apostolic times, especially in the East. In the West, the great hymn Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) was composed in the late eleventh century by Blessed Herman the Cripple. It soon became part of the liturgy and was sung in the divine office. Its main promoter in the West was Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153). Over time, popular devotion added it at the end of the Rosary. Pope Leo XIII added it, the prayer to Saint Michael, and the O God Our Refuge to the Prayers after Low Mass

The Kingdom of Heaven is a court royale. We have Christ our King, Mary our Queen, and we also have a Prince of the heavenly host. Who might that be? Saint Michael, of course. It’s in the Book of Daniel, clara scriptura Pastor Joe.

“But I will tell thee what is set down in the scripture of truth: and none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince” (Daniel 10:21).

And, again: “But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come such as never was from the time that nations began even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1).

The prophet calls Michael “one of the chief princes.” So, there are others.

Saint Paul, who knew a lot about angels, speaks of thrones, dominions, and principalities in the celestial realm. (Colossians 1:16).

Yes, indeed Heaven is a court royale. Our King would have nothing less in His kingdom. As Saint Paul tells Timothy, “[T]he saying is sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12a, my emphasis). And, as Saint John saw in vision concerning the martyrs “Then I saw thrones” (Apoc. 20:4).

“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1).

I expect that pastor Joe will argue that this verse refers to the Church not to Mary. Indeed it does refer to the Church I will respond. So, say the early fathers of the Church. But the fathers also say that the passage redounds as well to the glory of the Mother of the Church, Mary. Pope Pius XII affirms the same in his encyclical, Munifentissimus Deus, in which he defined the bodily Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven:

“Moreover, the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos” (#27).

The fathers also point out that this verse from the Apocalypse is preceded by the Apostle’s vision of the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, which was hidden by Jeremais over five hundred years before, was considered by the fathers to be a figure of Our Lady, the Ark of God, the Theotokos, in whose womb rested the divine Manna, the Bread of Life. “Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.” (Psalm 131:8).

Note, too, that this is why the passage from the Apocalypse is read at the Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15.

Not that our pastor friend will be convinced by anything proclaimed by Pope Pius XII, but, in 1954, he also blessed the Church with an encyclical ad Caeli Reginam honoring Our Lady as Queen of Heaven. That was issued on the feast of the Divine Maternity, October 11:

From the earliest ages of the Catholic Church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother’s solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.

I also might add that the Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) taught, “Finally, the Immaculate Virgin preserved free from all stain of Original Sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords (cf. Rv 19:16) and conqueror of sin and death” (No. 59). In making this statement, the Council referenced the passage from Revelation on the “great sign [that] appeared in heaven.” (my bold emphasis)

Lastly, a word about the feast day for Our Lady Queen of Heaven and Earth. In the old liturgical calendar the feast is celebrated on August 22. Actually, when the feast was established by Pope Pius XII in 1954 he set the date for its celebration on the same day as that of the Divine Maternity, October 11. It was later moved to August 22 in order to enhance the Church’s devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, co-celebrated this day, thereby so wonderfully magnifying her universal Queenship.

According to Pastor Joe the prophet Jeremias was warning about an abuse that would arise in Christian times, namely these latter times. The pastor, I assume, had no clue that the Queenship of Mary was honored throughout Christendom in every age. It is astonishing that he thinks Jeremias had us Catholics in mind, Catholics such as Saint Athanasius of Egypt and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, to mention only two. I can only imagine what he thinks of Pope Pius XII and his definition of the bodily Assumption of Mary (and corresponding Coronation).

So, there you have it. In this year 2019, Pastor Joe has figured out what Jeremias was most worried about back in the sixth century B.C. I say “most” worried about. And it wasn’t the “sacrifices” of the idolatrous Jewish women as much as it was the future cultus of Marian devotees.

Salve Regina

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, Amen.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Oct 21 2019, 02:55 PM

I have a question yeeck? I take it that you set up this thread, Could you share your thoughts on the purpose this thread was created ?

Fellowship among Catholics and for those who are interested in Catholic Christianity.

hello, khool from SIC, dominus vobiscum!

et cum spiritu tuo...... Khool thanks. I know a friend from SIC he is part of the opus dei group.

Were you guys from mission schools?