Pictures from this year’s May Crowning at St John Fisher Parish in Reading

Click here to view the entire photo album!

by Fr PD

Family & Life Magazine just released

After their successful annual Conference at St George’s Cathedral in London last 4th May (nearly 150 attended).

by Fr AM

CSP Pilgrimage Italy Oct. 23 – Nov. 1, 2019

This pilgrimage is organised primarily for members of the Confraternity of St Peter, the 6,600-strong international prayer network for vocations linked with the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter. But anyone supportive of Catholic priestly vocations is welcome to join.

Chaplain: Fr de Malleray, FSSP – General Chaplain to the Confraternity of St Peter.
Included: Eighth annual Summorum Pontificum Int’l. Pilgrimage in Rome.

Pilgrims from the UK & Ireland are welcome to join this pilgrimage for the following rate:1995 GBP for land only. The single room cost would be an additional 395 GBP.
Please contact Syversen Touring for any questions: info@syversentouring.com.
https://syversentouring.com/confraternity.html

Facebook page for this event: https://business.facebook.com/events/175175610083502/

Even though you may be unable to participate, please pray for many holy priests!

by Fr AM

Photos from the Sacred Triduum in Reading

Click here to see a selection of photos from the Easter Ceremonies!

by Fr PD

Family Life Conference London 4th May

WHY BE A CATHOLIC:
TO BE A TRUE DISCIPLE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
4th May 2019
CONFERENCE @ ST GEORGE’S CATHEDRAL

Webpage & booking: http://www.familyandlife.co.uk/conference
Facebook Event Page: https://business.facebook.com/events/277152076495721/

Basing itself on scripture and tradition, Vatican II teaches that the Church is necessary for salvation since Christ, the one mediator and way of salvation, is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk. 16:16; Jn. 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which is entered through baptism as through a door. Therefore, no one can be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, refuses either to enter it, or to remain in it. Church membership obliges us to respond in thought, word and deed to the grace and teachings of Christ. Lumen Gentium §14.

09:30 HOLY MASS at St George’s Cathedral
10:30 FR. ARMAND DE MALLERAY, FSSP on ‘Our Eucharistic Faith is key to evangelization’
11:45 GABRIELE KUBY on ‘The Sexual Crisis of the Church – a reason to stay’
13:00 LUNCH
13:55 THE WORK OF FAMILY LIFE INTERNATIONAL -2018
14:15 FR. LINUS CLOVIS on ‘A Church in Crisis – Why be Catholic?’
15:30 PATRICK FAGAN on ‘Civilization’s Keystone: The Father-Son Bond’
16:30 Q&A ALL SPEAKERS

FR ARMAND DE MALLERAY, FSSP
REDISCOVERING OUR EUCHARISTIC FAITH IS KEY TO EVANGELIZATION
Rediscovering our Eucharistic faith is key to evangelisation. The Sacred Host is God present among us, without Whom we can do nothing, let alone evangelise. The deeper our Eucharistic faith, the more fruitful our witness to the world. The Church grows from the Eucharistic Sacrifice, Presence and Communion. Committed Eucharistic adorers will foster lasting evangelisation.

Fr de Malleray’s book on the Holy Eucharist can be ordered here: https://www.lumenfidei.ie/product/ego-eimi-it-is-i/

GABRIELE KUBY
THE SEXUAL CRISIS OF THE CHURCH – A REASON TO STAY
“The gates of hell shall not prevail” against the church, not even the hell of sexual abuse. How did we get there? How do we get out? By inspiration, conversion and purification. The beautiful plan of God for man and woman, sex, marriage and family is the answer to the longing in every human heart.

FR. LINUS CLOVIS
A CHURCH IN CRISIS – WHY BE CATHOLIC?
A crisis is a moment of decision, a time of testing. That the Church is currently in a state of crisis is clear for all to see. The daily unfolding scandals of clerical sexual immorality from priests to cardinals, the financial chicanery enveloping the Vatican Bank, the institutional cover-ups, the shrinking congregations, the open opposition between bishops, the undermining of settled doctrine all point to a time of testing and of answering the question “Why be Catholic”.

PAT FAGAN, PH.D.
CIVILIZATION’S KEYSTONE: THE FATHER-SON BOND
Marxists gradually realized they could dismantle Western, Christian, Civilization from within by destroying the father of the intact married family — the “Patriarch”— through “sex gone wild”. The key to rebuilding is for each father to take charge of his sons’ formation in the fullness of sexuality.

G.K. CHESTERTON ONCE WROTE,
“The difficulty in explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” Nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church to preserve the truth He gave us and hand it down through the centuries, helping people all around the world encounter the love of God in every age and in every corner of the earth. Over the years, there have been an untold number of questions and objections raised about the Catholic Church’s teachings and practices. The answers are there, and it’s worth your time to find them. As the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “There are not even 100 people in this country who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they think the Catholic Church to be.” The Lord wants us all to know and understand His truth, so we can embrace it wholeheartedly and live by it. Christ reminds us, “The truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

Address of the St George’s Cathedral is on Lambeth RD, London

by Fr AM

Who where the Emmaus pilgrims?

Easter Monday Gospel as illustrated by Caravaggio.

CARAVAGGIO’S SUPPER AT EMMAUS

Caravaggio gave two renditions of the Supper at Emmaus: the earlier one (1601, first picture left below) is in England at the London National Gallery; the later one (1606, second picture right below) is in Italy at the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. This commentary by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP is about the latter painting. Click on this link to open best definition picture: https://pinacotecabrera.org/en/collezione-online/opere/supper-at-emmaus/.

KNOWLEDGE

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened”, we read of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis after their original sin (Gn 3:7). Many centuries later, at the end of his Gospel, Saint Luke uses the same words to announce the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to another couple, the two pilgrims of Emmaus: “Their eyes were opened” (Lk 24:31). In each one of these episodes then, a spiritual disclosure brings to a couple a specific understanding. Adam and Eve “realised that they were naked”; while the Emmaus pilgrims “recognised Him”. Equally, on both occasions, an item of food causes this enlightenment: the stolen apple of the serpent; the blessed bread of the Saviour.

Having lost Eden where everything was bathed in the divine light of innocence, our first parents opened their eyes to the darkness of sin. Conversely, on the day of the Resurrection, by sunset, the pilgrims of Emmaus open wide their eyes to the dawn of salvation when the risen Christ, true Sun of Justice, is revealed to them. Then is the hour of grace recovered.

Let us examine this latter episode. In the Paschal radiance of the divine Spouse, humanity awakes from the long slumber in which the Prince of this world – Satan – was holding it captive. Caravaggio’s painting displays this blessed instant as an irradiation.

His picture suggests a parallel between the two pilgrims of Emmaus and Adam and Eve. In a fascinating shortcut, discreet enough to avoid contrivance though, Caravaggio paints for us the history of humanity: from our original fall to our blessed restoration. Led by art, let us admire as in a mirror this painted reflection of our fallen ancestors in the persons of their offspring, along sinful millenaries until the day of our rising!

MIRROR

Thus, let us consider the first couple in our painting, standing at the top on the right. They are in all probability the innkeeper and his wife who, in the artist’s imagination, have welcomed these three pilgrims for the night. In this humble married couple, following the parallel drawn in the Bible, a spiritual reading of the painting reveals to us Adam and Eve, our first parents, whose fault led us into the darkness of sin. Here they are then, these pitiful innkeepers of all humanity: whose pride one day imprisoned sons and daughters and all descendants in a sad dwelling called “Downfall”.

Consequently, it is their offspring, ourselves, which the couple of “pilgrims” sitting at the ends of the table represents, punctuating our journey towards death with a few licks of obscure dishes, in the growing shadow of dusk. Of only one of the pilgrims do we know the identity: a man named “Cleopas”; this is the bearded person sitting on the right. The other pilgrim is turning his back to us, as if he were unaware of our presence. It is strange: why has the artist deliberately hidden the face of this second guest, whose surprised expression would after all have enriched the scene with a beautiful piece of painting? All the more so since, five years earlier, in a version of the same scene kept in London, Caravaggio had not hidden the face of the second pilgrim. But also, in that former version, the innkeeper was present without his wife: it is only in our painting that she appears.

The landlady’s face eclipses that of the pilgrim. If the second pilgrim’s identity, masculine in this case, is concealed here, would it not be in order to give it the same function of alter ego in relation to Cleopas as the hostess adopts in relation to the innkeeper, they who, as we have seen, represent Adam and Eve, the fallen couple?

The pilgrim pair, a couple saved by the Resurrection of Christ, reflects the previous couple as if through the mirror of Salvation. Adam lives anew in Cleopas, Eve in this anonymous guest, this vacant figure with which each observer, whether man, woman or child, can now identify, thus becoming an actor in the painting.

Actor, but of which part, do you say? That of partner in grace with every believing soul, united by intimate bonds through faith in Him Who has risen: “and they recognised Him” (Lk 24:31). Caravaggio offers us a striking confrontation between our first parents and their descendants. Now that the Redemption once promised if fulfilled, the original couple sees its heirs delivered of their guilt.

On either side of the Risen Lord then, are two couples. Set back on the right, the couple of Adam and Eve stands, depicted as innkeepers. In the foreground, the pilgrims are seated: the first couple to witness the victory of the Messiah which had been announced to their sinful forefathers.

INKEEPERS

From its dark abode, this ancient couple now emerges. Their heads are leaning towards each other, symmetrical in relation to the column of darkness rising up from the head of Cleopas. But they are not looking at each other: shame binds them together, rather than tender affection. They represent the two sides, masculine and feminine, of the one fallen humanity. Each like a reflection of the other, their faces exude the bitterness and tedium of having until this moment waited in limbo for this Salvation at which their offspring, sitting in front of them, suddenly marvel.

They are weary. The same wrinkles line their humourless, youthless foreheads. The same soiled caps conceal their dark hair. Their twin faces are three-quarters revealed, the left ear uncovered, the right cheek and forehead in profile emerging from a neckline of dull hemp under the beige sackcloth of the jacket or apron. Their look is emotionless or even defiant with regard to the sign performed beneath their eyes. They seem too deep in loneliness to show any interest. Their apathy is the final result of the sad seclusion from which the Resurrection comes to lift them.

In the dish that she is holding out, Eve is carrying, as though in acknowledgement, the rib from which she was formed. Adam’s unbuttoned stomach echoes this Caravaggian pun, as if the stitches across his scarred abdomen had burst to remind us that out of her husband’s side, Eve had once been fashioned (cf Gen 2:22). This couple thus shows the mark of its origin: they remember the happy days before their guilt, the time of their unblemished love for their Creator, the joy of their complete submission to the will of God – all ruined, through their own fault.

HEIRS

Their heirs on the other hand, these two pilgrims at table, form a wholly spiritual couple whose root is grace, not nature. In the newborn Church, the mystical union of the members is more profoundly fertile than mere conjugal complementarity. Men and women, rich and poor, Jews and Greek – all are bound together in the risen Christ, Who guarantees to these pilgrims a different progeny, freed from the constraints of the flesh, begotten as it is of apostolic zeal and brotherly love. They represent an embryo of the primitive “company of believers […in which] there was one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32).

We see them sitting, facing one another. Their hands mark out a perfect square on the two sides of the table. They are not looking at each other anymore than the landlord couple are. But unlike those shamefaced old people, they commune in the contemplation of the Unique Object – this God whom they believed to be dead! Their common clothing expresses their spiritual proximity: they are both bare-headed and are both wearing a tunic under a beige cloak draped over their left shoulder, falling diagonally across their chest.

HANDS

Finally, the different positions of their hands recall those of their first parents Adam and Eve, symbolised by the innkeeper (for Cleopas) and by the landlady (for the faceless pilgrim). Cleopas’ hands reproduce the posture of his counterpart, the innkeeper: pointing downwards, clasping the table, like the landlord with his arms down and his hands holding his belt. By contrast, the landlady’s hands (on which the dish is placed) are opened upwards like the wide-open hands of the stranger which seem to rise up above the table.

Significantly, Christ ensures the transition between the pilgrims’ hands by the juxtaposition of His left hand, turned downwards and resting on the table like that of Cleopas (except that it is only bent, not clenched) – and of His right hand rising up above the table like the hand of the faceless pilgrim, although the fingers are less open and not yet spread.

Thus, starting with the left hand of Cleopas, then passing via his right hand and then via the hands of Jesus and of the anonymous pilgrim, we move through a spiral taking us up in a circle from the table. Through His central position and the intermediate posture of His hands, neither clenched nor surprised, Christ revives for the pilgrims’ couple the cohesion and dynamism which the innkeepers’ couple had lost.

COMMUNION

Moreover, this spiral is balanced by three objects (edible) which occupy the centre of each pair of hands: the pitcher of wine for Cleopas (behind which we can see a half-filled glass), the broken loaf for Christ, and the full loaf for the anonymous pilgrim. The hands of Adam and Eve are positioned on the painting to frame the two elements of their shared origin according to the flesh, namely, Adam’s unstitched abdomen and Eve’s rib. Similarly, Cleopas and his fellow pilgrim present respectively the wine and the bread as the two originating species of their spiritual reunion.

These symbols express a reciprocity which establishes each of the couples in its relationship. Thus, Adam’s unbuttoned ‘wound’ refers to Eve’s origin, and Eve’s rib evokes Adam’s side. Similarly, the bread and the wine evoke each other – through the Eucharistic connotation of the blessing pronounced by Christ.

Let us remember the context in which these separate observations spontaneously occur: man, his fall, his redemption. The community of origin of the first human couple was marked in the flesh: the wound, the rib. God guaranteed it, He Who had created it. Thus, man having separated himself from God through sin, became at the same time divided: his spouse was no longer the flesh of his flesh, his other self, but rather the humiliating object of his concupiscence. What affliction, as expressed in the dejected faces of the innkeeper and his wife! Conversely, in returning to God through the merits of Christ, man comes back to himself. Other human beings become his fellow-men again and his neighbours. Having at last left this distant country, the land of discord, they return to grace, their homeland.

AMBASSADORS

From that moment, see the dynamic and joyful unity gathering the two pilgrims: their sad flight, their desertion from Jerusalem are forgotten – through the gift of Faith, Christ makes them members of the one Body onto which grace looks to graft all men. Here, the lost unity of the first couple is sumptuously restored; indeed it is augmented by the diversity of the people who will be gathered together within this mystical Body of Christ, which is the universal Church.

On the table-cloth, a discreet line of demarcation winds between faded and flowering lilies: like a symbol of another boundary now crossed, this Passover through which Adam and Eve, pallid skeletons of humanity until recently still fallen, are reborn for the glory of the Redemption of which our two pilgrims are the first couple to be informed.

Outside, a Light, through an invisible door open on the left of the painting, is calling them. Faith galvanises them: they get up in haste – no more will they sleep! Jesus leaves this gloomy lodging only in order to embrace them better in the witness they die to bear to Him on every road and before any tribunal: He is alive! □

This commentary was first published in 2001, originally in French, as part of the Caravaggio volume of the Art for Souls series of CD-Roms. The English translation is by Robert Johnston and the author. Read it in https://fssp.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/2019-03-06-Dowry-41-FINAL-WEB.pdf

by Fr AM

Notre-Dame in flames, mirror of our times.

Notre-Dame collapses in fire at the beginning of Holy Week.

Although the fire may be accidental, this looks like a symbol of our times of Catholic apostasy and Christian persecution. The flames destroying this Gothic jewel figure the culpable ‘amnesia’ of our Western elites, sabotaging the Christian legacy of Europe and further afield.

Let us pray that all may realise what the civilised world owes to the centuries of Christendom past. Let all tourists fall on their knees and become pilgrims or, more fittingly, penitents with us as Our Lord is about to die for all sinners in but four days, on Good Friday. Through pictures online, let all children for whom Notre-Dame only evoked a Disney cartoon be taught the splendour of the Truth once displayed on the divine stained glass windows, now probably lost forever.

by Fr AM

Fr Goddard’s Installation as Parish Priest

Bishop Philip Egan assisted in choir at our 11am Reading Mass on Sunday 3 March. At the end of Mass he installed Fr Goddard as the first Parish Priest of the Parish of St John Fisher – another watershed moment in the life of our Parish community!

For more photos, click here.

by Fr PD

Dowry 41 Spring Issue now Online

Click here to open the latest issue of our magazine.

In this issue:

Editorial: The Great Thaw?

Former Muslims Give Thanks For Conversion

Muslim Invasion Stopped By Otranto Martyrs

A Paradigm of Unfolding

Waiting For My First Traditional Latin Mass

Finding One’s Predominant Fault

Forthcoming Events

Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus

Support Our Apostolate

by Fr AM

A PARADIGM OF UNFOLDING

A Paradigm of Unfolding

An Analogy between Christ’s Holy Shroud and Divine Revelation – by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP

Introduction

All along Church history, new doctrinal statements are issued as part of the Magisterium, in fulfilment of the Church’s teaching mission. In what sense are they new? Never can such pronouncements contradict earlier ones. They can only make more explicit what has always been part of Divine Revelation, consisting of Scripture and Tradition. The Hierarchy of the Church and Her theologians gradually unfold Revealed Truth, after the parable of Our Lord: ‘Every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old’ (Matthew 13:52). The data is not to be invented or imported, even less construed, but merely expounded under the guidance of the Holy Ghost: ‘The Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you’ (John 14:26).

To explain the development of Catholic doctrine, we offer an analogy between unfolding Christ’s Holy Shroud and developing Christ’s Revelation. The purpose in each case is to display the full figure of Christ, either visually on the cloth, or doctrinally through magisterial promulgations. On Easter morning then, St Peter, St John and St Mary Magdalene found the empty linens wrapped together in the empty tomb. Some time on that day, they would have taken with them the precious relic. Back home in the Upper Room, with what emotion they would have slowly unfolded the linens, gradually displaying the Master’s silhouette: first His shoulder, then His elbow, now His foot and then His Head… Everywhere, their eyes would meet so many wounds, all endured for their redemption – and ours.

Please note that it is irrelevant to our analogy whether or not the Turin Shroud is indeed the one in which the Saviour lay buried. What is certain is that there was such a shroud, and that none more scientifically convincing than the Turin one has surfaced.

Upon Christ’s folded Shroud as within Christ’s Revelation, the entirety of the message is present from the start – albeit hidden. Consequently, the Church cannot add anything new to the data given. She can only unfold Christ’s silhouette and make explicit His Good News. She bears witness to growth, like a mother to the child in her womb, or like astronomer Father Georges Lemaître theorising universal expansion (later known as the Big Bang theory). In each case, a core is given and development follows. How long will the unfolding of Christ’s Revelation take? It will take until Christ’s return. The completion of this work of patience, love and humility will mark the end of time. Then Christ will appear before all eyes, as if His eyelids on the Shroud opened, radiating His Good News as a reward of glory for the just, and as retribution for those who will have shut their minds to His truth and their hearts to His mercy.

1- Considering the Holy Shroud

What does the Holy Shroud look like? It is a depiction of Our Lord’s tortured Body (both back and front), spread across the ‎14.5-feet-long by 1.4-foot-wide linen cloth, with such accuracy that this sacred relic has been termed ‘The Fifth Gospel’. The Holy Shroud – presently kept in Turin, Italy – is the most tested object in the world. The scientific findings, due to their number and complexity, now constitute a distinct branch of science called sindonology, after the word ‘sindon’, the Greek word for ‘shroud’.

Let us recall a few sindonological discoveries. It took nineteen centuries to realise that the Shroud is a photographic negative: inversing paler and darker areas reveals the actual picture. Further analysis established that the depiction results from irradiation, not from the application of pigments upon the linen material. Later on, the image was found to be three-dimensional, allowing the shaping of a resin model of Our Lord’s Body as when it was lying wrapped in the Shroud. Anomalies such as the absence of thumbs on either hand were explained, while microscopic examination found diverse pollens from the Middle-East stuck in the fibres of the cloth.

Thus, the Holy Shroud of Christ yields its secrets by stages, and yet, all information has been present on the material since Easter morning. Similarly, Christian doctrine develops across time, even though Christ’s Revelation was completed when Christ’s last apostle died. For example, in 451 the Council of Chalcedon defined that Christ had two natures, the human and the divine ones, under one single divine self. But these truths had been contained in Christ’s Revelation from the start. Another example: in 1215 the Council of Lateran defined the Eucharistic change as Transubstantiation, not inventing a new belief, but explaining an original truth. Hence, just as no genuine scientist would add to the Holy Shroud data from without, equally, no Catholic theologian can ever increase Christ’s Revelation. Scientists will apply to the Holy Shroud modern technology and the resources of their intellect to infer further evidence. Similarly, Catholic theologians rely on their skills and inspiration to draw new conclusions from pre-existing truths. In either case, new investigations can only build upon earlier findings.

The following episode in the Shroud examinations illustrates this principle a contrario. In 1989, Carbon 14 tests seemed to establish that the Holy Shroud dated from the middle ages. But leading researcher Raymond Rogers changed his mind on discovering that the samples tested were not part of the original material. They belonged instead to the repairs undergone by the Shroud after the 1532 fire in Chambery. In other words, medieval cotton threads had been expertly woven into the original linen fabric to mend fire damage. This applies analogically to the work of theologians probing Christ’s Revelation. Any theological statement one may proffer in contradiction with Christ’s Revelation rests upon unauthentic premises (and fosters a non-Catholic agenda). Like the Carbon 14 findings, such unorthodox statements may sound convincing when issued, but like them, they are flawed at some level, hence unscientific.

2- Why Holy Church takes Her time

Holy Mother Church tells us all truth about God. She does not tell it all at once though – for three reasons. First, God is infinite, whereas our human intelligence is limited of its nature, and obscured by sin, so that we need time to explore the truth. Second, unlike angels who understand by intuition or immediate grasp, we humans reach the truth gradually, from consequences to causes. Third, the Church reacts to historical circumstances: whether adverse ones such as heresies and wars, or favourable ones such as the deeds of saints or even the discoveries of scientists. By God’s Providence, the Church’s response to circumstances leads Her to focus on this or that specific aspect of the revealed truth, while further aspects will only be examined later on. For instance, the Church’s pro-life teaching was greatly developed in the past fifty years in response to institutionalised abortion.

These three factors help understand the development of doctrine. Development here expresses inner growth and precludes addition from without. This is the capital point to understand: whenever the Church makes a new pronouncement, it is never new in relation to God’s Revelation, but only in relation to contemporary believers. For example, when the Divine Motherhood of Our Lady was defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431, it was new inasmuch as the Church had not until then committed Her authority to affirm this fact dogmatically. But that truth was already contained in God’s Revelation, rather than added to it later on. Long before it was promulgated as a dogma, the divine Motherhood existed as a fact, from the instant when the Blessed Virgin Mary had answered ‘Yes’ to Archangel Gabriel at Her Annunciation. The dogmatic promulgation at Ephesus did not create the fact. It only provided formal assurance of orthodoxy. For this, the inhabitants of Ephesus in thanksgiving took to the streets, holding torches and singing hymns. Believers of all ages may react similarly when further aspects of God’s Revelation are displayed by Holy Mother Church through Her Magisterium.

3- God’s Love Letter

God’s Revelation is like His love letter to His immaculate Bride, the Church. For a letter to be safely transmitted, the sheet of paper requires folding into an envelope (or many sheets, because God has a lot to tell to His beloved). When a young woman receives a letter from her fiancé (ink on paper being more personal than emails on a screen or instant messages), she does not see the sentences and words, nor his handwriting and signature, until with her own fingers she delicately extracts the sheets from the envelope, and lovingly unfolds them for her eyes eventually to meet the written signs. Even then, although she can guess that he wrote gracious things about their shared love, she is not able to grasp in one glance the detail of his communication. It takes unfolding and reading time – until the beloved returns.

With this comparison in mind, we may ask ourselves: what are the fingers with which Holy Mother Church unfolds God’s message of love? They are the theologians and the Magisterium. The Church’s fingers are Catholic believers of either sex mandated by the Holy See to apply their sound philosophical and theological training to probing Holy Scripture and Tradition. These people examine the Deposit of Faith according to their individual temperaments, skills and interests, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and in response to historical circumstances. In that sense, their inquiries entail novelty and subjectivity. But the object of their investigation can never be a product of their imagination, a fanciful innovation or an artificial addition, however clever or expedient it may sound. On the contrary, whatever they find has to be just that: found – not imagined. They can deduce, not invent.

Holy Mother Church, then, has loving fingers. Now, what is Her love letter? Upon what sheet and within what sealed envelope did Her Beloved Jesus imprint His message of passionate love? It is upon a burial sheet, sealed within a stone cavity. On Easter morning, the Risen Spouse let His angel break the seal from His tombstone; and His first pope found the empty shroud that covered the dead Lord’s Holy Face and Body: ‘the napkin that had been about his head, [was] not lying with the linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place’ (John 20:7). Christ’s message was folded, so that even Simon Peter did not behold the full silhouette of the Saviour at the time. Later on that memorable day however, the Vicar of Christ would have taken away with him for safekeeping the folded shroud – the material witness of the Resurrection, which is the core of the Christian Revelation as St Paul affirms: ‘if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain’ (1 Cor 15:14).

4- Truth knows no expiration date

Certain dogmatic pronouncements can be more important than others, but they cannot contradict past ones. Some well-meaning Catholics believe, more or less consciously, that referring to Councils earlier than the twenty-first one (also the latest: Vatican II, 1962-1965) is disloyal. They mistakenly assume that what was defined in centuries past loses its relevance with time; or worse, that truths of old become toxic after a number of years, like pharmaceutical drugs past expiration date. On 19^th November 2013, Pope Francis proved such assumptions erroneous when he commemorated the 450^th anniversary of the Council of Trent, writing to his extraordinary envoy Walter Cardinal Brandmüller:

‘It behoves the Church to recall with more prompt and attentive eagerness the most fruitful doctrine which came out of that Council convened in the Tyrolese region. Certainly not without cause, the Church has for a long time already accorded so much care to the Decrees and Canons of that Council that are to be recalled and observed… Graciously hearing the very same Holy Ghost, the Holy Church of our age, even now, continues to restore and meditate upon the most abundant doctrine of Trent… You will exhort all who shall participate in this event, that, souls joined together with the soul of the Most Holy Redeemer, they may be fully conscious of all the fruits derived from this Council, and that they may unite themselves in bringing these fruits to others and in propagating them in every way.’

Thus, five centuries after the Council of Trent, the successor of Peter affirms the perennial validity of the truths defined in its documents, and commands them to be ‘propagated in every way’, following Pope John Paul II’s similar praise of ‘the perennially valid teaching of the Council of Trent’ (Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia §15, 17 April 2003).

Still, it cannot be denied that of late, disconcerting statements have been issued by the hierarchy of the Church at every level. Even though no formal heresy has been promulgated, traditional teaching on marriage for instance, or on death penalty, or on salvation through Christ only, is undermined. How are the laity and clergy to react in such situations? The Code of Canon Law (1983) states that: ‘They have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position, to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to others of Christ’s faithful, but in doing so they must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, show due reverence to the Pastors and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals’ (Can. 212 §3).

5- The Sense of Faith equips us to discern

A document of particular relevance to this question, The Sense of Faith in the Life of the Church, was published under Pope Francis by the International Theological Commission of the Holy See on 10^th June 2014, explaining how the ‘sense of faith’ (in Latin sensus fidei) enables the baptised to assess doctrinal truth. We will now quote extensively six paragraphs from this document:

‘49. The sensus fidei fidelis is a sort of spiritual instinct that enables the believer to judge spontaneously whether a particular teaching or practice is or is not in conformity with the Gospel and with apostolic faith. It is intrinsically linked to the virtue of faith itself; it flows from, and is a property of, faith. It is compared to an instinct because it is not primarily the result of rational deliberation, but is rather a form of spontaneous and natural knowledge, a sort of perception (aisthesis).

53. The sensus fidei is the form that the instinct which accompanies every virtuetakes in the case of the virtue of faith. ‘Just as, by the habits of the other virtues, one sees what is becoming in respect of that habit, so, by the habit of faith, the human mind is directed to assent to such things as are becoming to a right faith, and not to assent to others.’ Faith, as a theological virtue, enables the believer to participate in the knowledge that God has of himself and of all things. In the believer, it takes the form of a ‘second nature’. By means of grace and the theological virtues, believers become ‘participants of the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1:4), and are in a way connaturalised to God. As a result, they react spontaneously on the basis of that participated divine nature, in the same way that living beings react instinctively to what does or does not suit their nature.
54. Three principal manifestations of the sensus fidei fidelisin the personal life of the believer can be highlighted. The sensus fidei fidelisenables individual believers: 1) to discern whether or not a particular teaching or practice that they actually encounter in the Church is coherent with the true faith by which they live in the communion of the Church (see below, §§61-63); 2) to distinguish in what is preached between the essential and the secondary (§64); and 3) to determine and put into practice the witness to Jesus Christ that they should give in the particular historical and cultural context in which they live (§65).
55. ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God ; for many false prophets have gone out into the world’ (1Jn 4:1). The sensus fidei fidelis confers on the believer the capacity to discern whether or not a teaching or practice is coherent with the true faith by which he or she already lives. If individual believers perceive or ‘sense’ that coherence, they spontaneously give their interior adherence to those teachings or engage personally in the practices, whether it is a matter of truths already explicitly taught or of truths not yet explicitly taught.
56. The sensus fidei fidelisalso enables individual believers to perceive any disharmony, incoherence, or contradiction between a teaching or practice and the authentic Christian faith by which they live. They react as a music lover does to false notes in the performance of a piece of music. In such cases, believers interiorly resist the teachings or practices concerned and do not accept them or participate in them. ‘The habitusof faith possesses a capacity whereby, thanks to it, the believer is prevented from giving assent to what is contrary to the faith, just as chastity gives protection with regard to whatever is contrary to chastity.’
57. Alerted by their sensus fidei, individual believers may deny assent even to the teaching of legitimate pastors if they do not recognise in that teaching the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd. ‘The sheep follow [the Good Shepherd] because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run away from him because they do not know the voice of strangers’ (Jn 10:4-5). For St Thomas, a believer, even without theological competence, can and even must resist, by virtue of the sensus fidei, his or her bishop if the latter preaches heterodoxy. In such a case, the believer does not treat himself or herself as the ultimate criterion of the truth of faith, but rather, faced with materially ‘authorised’ preaching which he or she finds troubling, without being able to explain exactly why, defers assent and appeals interiorly to the superior authority of the universal Church.’

6- Filial Concern

These authoritative quotes from a theological document published by the Holy See as recently as 2014 may surprise for their boldness. They stress clearly that the undiscriminating acceptance of any doctrine is not Catholic. On the contrary, genuine worship of Christ as Truth Incarnate leads every believer to assess what is presented as truth, even when uttered by those acting in Christ’s name. The touchstone of orthodoxy is continuity with what has always been professed and believed in the Church of Christ: ‘For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles’ (Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus Chapter 4).

With this in mind, one understands how considering the hypothesis even of a heretical pope is not in itself imprudent or disrespectful. Eminent and saintly theologians have done so, for the sake of guiding souls in times of perplexity. Cardinal St Robert Bellarmine stated that: ‘A Pope who is a manifest heretic, ceases in himself to be Pope and head, just as   he ceases in himself to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.’ It is one thing for a sovereign pontiff to allow the spread of falsity by other prelates, or even to support it privately, or to be quoted as such – it is another for him to teach formal heresy with all the marks of authority required to bind the Church to his error. St Bellarmine believed that Christ would preserve His Church from the latter evil.

We should all filially pray for this, while making better use of the wealth of safe doctrinal resources provided on the Internet. At the tips of our fingers, we can gain access for free to the texts of the twenty-one Councils and numerous papal encyclicals, but also the Fathers of the Church and the works of sound theologians and spiritual authors. All such doctrinal riches are offered us as the gradual unfolding of Christ’s Revelation. Nothing can be changed or added to Christ’s Revelation, since it was completed at the death of His last apostle. But much can be deduced from the same Revelation, through the humble and loving process of explicating pre-existing truth, according to our analogy with the unfolding of Christ’s Holy Shroud.

As our reader may have noticed, bringing together Christ’s Revelation and Shroud rests upon a motive stronger than an analogy. The Shroud indeed bears witness to the Revelation in the most realistic manner. It is significant that Easter Saturday’s Gospel quoted above shows St John waiting outside the tomb for St Peter to enter first. Again, the respective positions of the linens are noticed as if through St Peter’s eyes. Who more than Christ’s Vicar has authority to guard, pass on and expound the treasure given by the Risen Lord? On that same Easter day, as we learn, the Lord ‘appeared to Simon’ (Lk 24:34). There were no witnesses. Or perhaps, the Shroud was the witness, as we now attempt to picture, offering this meditation to conclude our essay.

Conclusion

Alone at last in the Upper Room, Simon had unfolded the long strip of cloth, nowhere more fittingly than across the trestles of the Last Supper table. Three nights earlier, upon another cloth, the Lord had made Himself truly present under the Eucharistic species at the first Holy Mass. The Eleven and He had walked thence to Gethsemane. Before cockcrow, Simon had thrice denied his Lord. Since then Jesus had died and was risen.

Back in the Upper Room on Easter day, Simon was on his knees at the far end of the long linen rectangle. His eyes slightly higher than the level of the cloth swollen in successive waves upon the trestles, the fisherman would look at the maculated Shroud as a seaman at a vast archipelago spread across a limitless map. Wide or tiny, each bloodstain was an island, mystically bearing the name of each and every sinner, redeemed through the wounds of the Lamb.

Which stain bore Simon’s name? It could not be less than three, one for each denial – and so many more… In St Peter’s soul, contrition connected the reddish shapes of various sizes like the stars under which he was reborn, as in a new constellation named Absolution. It was probably no surprise to Simon then, when he became aware of Christ’s bodily presence, standing at the other end of His unfolded Shroud. The contrite Vicar had opened his soul to the Saviour already. Christ confirmed His pardon and left, until they met again by the Sea of Galilee.

His Vicar remained on his knees looking across the bloodied sheet, while on either side of the table of redemption hundreds of men materialised, imitating his posture: his successors. What were there names, their races and languages: Clement, Anaclet, Alexander, Fabian, John, Stephen, Pius, Leo, Gregory, Benedict… Francis? How many of them would the Fisherman have until Christ’s glorious return? The Lord would not fail to assist them, as He had done for him, that each might be faithful: ‘But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren’ (Luke 22:32).

Simon would pray for them, that they might ‘feed Christ’s sheep’ (John 21:17) in the pastures of truth unadulterated, whatever the cost. In order to save though, truth must not only be believed, but also implemented by all believers. Every genuine Pope to Christ’s flock would also have to ‘teach them to observe all things whatsoever the Lord had commanded His apostles’ (Matthew 28:20). The Mother of the Lord had ordered it so, at the wedding in Cana. She did not command merely to believe whatever Christ would say, but to do it: ‘His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye’ (John 2:5).

Presently, Peter felt her hand gently resting on his shoulder. No nail had pierced that hand, but a sword had pierced the immaculate heart of the Mother who, standing behind him, silently assured forgiveness to the kneeling penitent, and promised assistance to Her Son’s first Pope, now rising. Within fifty days, She would be with Peter and the ten others in this very room, when the Holy Ghost would be sent upon them, turning every believer into an ‘epistle of Christ… written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart.’ (2 Co 3:3).

How long would the unfolding of Christ’s Revelation take, until His return in might and glory? A few years; a few centuries; or millennia? One thing was certain: all that was ever to be proclaimed through dogmatic promulgations in the ages to come was already lying there, before Simon’s tearful eyes, spread across the linen cloth of the Risen One. His message was imprinted on His Shroud: apparently flat, but unfathomably deep if measured in mercy – transcendentally high if gauged with joy. □

Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP is the author of Ego Eimi – It is I, Falling in Eucharistic Love; and the editor of the magazine Dowry.

by Fr AM