The Catholic Thing

By Joanna Bogle

This summer, as in so many summers past, I will be making a pilgrimage to Walsingham. This Norfolk village is the home of England's national shrine to Our Lady, and I'll be on a coach from London, and telling the story of the shrine along the way.

One result of our country's complicated history is that many Catholics – here at home but also abroad – don't know the story of some of our ancient shrines, abbeys, and churches. Better known is the modern story that starts with Henry VIII's destruction in the 1530s, with resulting horror and heroism, and the poignant – and it has to be said, hauntingly beautiful – sight of great ruined arches standing amid glorious and silent countryside.

The Walsingham story starts with the vision of a lady – her name has come down to us as Richeldis – living in this part of Norfolk, some six miles from the sea – in the 11th century. The year is 1061 and it is a time of uncertainty. Who will be the next king?

Edward the Confessor has no heir. There are rumors that the throne has been promised to William of Normandy. Meanwhile Christendom itself feels threatened. The Moslem religion has swept across what were once the Christian heartlands of the Middle East, and the Holy Land, where Christ Himself lived and walked, may soon be in their hands. Pilgrimages which have been taking place for centuries are now dangerous.

In the vision, Richeldis heard Our Lady ask that her house, the holy house at Nazareth, be rebuilt in Walsingham. Richeldis set about the task – she had been given the exact specifications – but the workmen struggled to make the measurements work. Nothing seemed to fit. They retired to rest after some grueling days with the thing unfinished. That night, all slept soundly. The next morning, the sun rose on a perfectly completed house.

Down through all the following years – through the Norman Conquest and up to the 16th century – pilgrims flocked to Walsingham, filling the lanes and highways summer after summer. The village flourished – a great Priory was built, in addition to a Franciscan house, and of course many taverns welcoming travelers from across Europe.

Then came the destruction under Henry, and long years of abandonment and silence, and then the restoration – initiated by a local Anglican vicar – and the new story began.

Traveling in a coach is the main way modern pilgrims reach Walsingham: there is no railway station. Much more enjoyable is a walking pilgrimage with overnight stays in pleasant villages and glorious walks down country lanes.

I have done it in traditional style – sleeping on the floors of church halls and so on – and also in greater comfort, with overnight stays in comfortable rooms. Like so many other pilgrims, I have memories of prayers said in wooded glades and picnics in sunny meadows – and the sense of triumph on arrival, especially if the timing has worked and we arrive at the main Pilgrim Mass on a Sunday, sore feet forgotten as we join in rousing hymns and grateful prayers.

I've also attended some of the great events held at Walsingham over recent years – the big New Dawn gatherings with hundreds of families camping in the neighboring fields, the Youth 2000 pilgrimages with a new generation beginning the fresh evangelization of our country at the start of a new Millennium.

And I've been at Walsingham as coaches arrive from parishes or dioceses or from various ethnic groups – notably the Tamil pilgrimage with delicious food cooked on arrival and generously offered to all.

But my main reason for writing about all this for an American Catholic readership is something specific, in this year when America is marking its 250th anniversary.

As our coach makes its way from London to Walsingham through Cambridgeshire, we will effectively pass a little bit of America on the way. Not literally – the stretch of land is British sovereign territory.

But at one point the great Stars and Stripes flaps against the sky, and the gateway leads you along wide...

By David Warren

One of the best ways to keep everybody angry, and thus to let us share in the modern experience, is to use words in a left-brained sort of way.

I refer, of course, to Iain McGilchrist, the writer who has given us the most thorough and accessible account of our two brains. For we, like the other senior animals, have a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere. Both are in use for ordinary consciousness unless one or the other has been cancelled by some horrific accident.

McGilchrist is an abnormally intelligent neuroscientist, an influential psychiatrist, and was a credible English professor in his earlier Oxford life. He remains the master of several disciplines in the humanities.

It is rare that we find such a crossover to scientific authority. The intellectual world now seems to specialize in one or the other: science or socialism.

But he is not spouting scientific bafflegab. He really does demonstrably know what he is talking about. And he is not one of those tedious "new atheists" either.

Left and right brains had been frequently treated in pop literature, before, which was crudely aware of the cerebral hemispheres, generally in a silly, pop-fashion way, that often confused one hemisphere with the other.

Because McGilchrist isn't a flake and is conversant with physiological research (he has trained as a doctor), he can actually be considered an authority. Nor is he innocent of epistemology and metaphysics.

Read his book The Matter of Things (2021), some 1500 reasonably entertaining pages, or his earlier magnum opus, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2009). Of course these books will require attention, as anything would, which tracks back to the scientific revolution and explains its limitations. As mere collections of quotations from Western thought, they are formidable.

What McGilchrist establishes is that the left brain provides the factitious, unimaginative, and naturally arrogant mental order, which was used by our swamp ancestors to identify "stuff" – specifically, food — by ruthlessly excluding all other objects in the environment.

It is machine-like, especially in the sense of showing no curiosity, and no remorse, except in the context of its limited function as complement to right-brained thinking. But it is essential to human and most other forms of life, and one can't get rid of it without dying.

But if one thinks nature and the human mind function like a machine, or in some other deterministic way, one already suffers from left-brained thought and is one of nature's aspiring automatons.

It remains the natural method of bureaucracy, of mechanical "progressive" advance, and of systems of censorship and blind power. Indeed, bureaucrats might be expressly defined as "persons we could do without," just as they contrast with more intelligent forms of life.

This may sound like a prejudiced political statement, but I beg the reader to study the sciences surrounding "brain lateralization" in order to form his own (hopefully right-brained) conclusion; or rather, "impression," for the right brain is never so sure of itself.

It cannot be, for the right brain is left to investigate such awkward things as beauty, goodness, and truth, and so far as we are finite beings we cannot know their perfection, or final extent.

Conversely, when we were limited to the left-brain functions, we could not know that the transcendentals were even possible. They are irrelevant to the task of finding food, after all, or even to identifying poisons.

If one were a Communist, however – that is, a heroic left-brained revolutionist – one would inevitably have the opinion that nothing else is important. We call this "scientific materialism," and in fact it kills you.

But the right-brained exist for another purpose (in addition to keeping the left-brained from killing themselves). Instead of locating food sources, it is necessary for several other purposes, and must continuously survey...

By Stephen P. White

I am in Poland, as I am every July, for the Tertio Millennio Seminar, a three-week meeting on Catholic social teaching and the thought of John Paul II. As we often do, we began our seminar with Mass in the St. Leonard's chapel. It was there that a newly ordained Karol Wojtyla offered his first Mass on November 2, 1946.

The chapel dates from the 11th century. Built in the Romanesque style, it has little decoration beyond the arches and columns. It does, however, contain the mortal remains of some of Poland's great heroes, and their sarcophagi provide all the ornament the chapel requires.

King Jan III Sobieski, who saved Europe by defeating the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vienna (1683), is buried there alongside his wife. Sobieski's predecessor, King Michał, lies nearby.

The other three tombs in the chapel are the tombs of men who fought, unsuccessfully in each case, for Polish independence.

General Władysław Sikorski, the Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile and commander-in-chief of the Polish Army during World War II, is also buried there. Sikorski died tragically in a plane crash during the war. He was buried in England, and his remains were only permitted to return to Wawel in 1993 after the fall of Communism.

When Poland ratified the first modern constitution in Europe (the second in the world after the United States Constitution) in 1791, the Russians invaded to put a stop to it. Józef Poniatowski led Polish forces in defense of the new Constitution, an effort which ultimately failed and resulted, eventually, in the first partition of Poland.

Beside the tomb of Poniatowski lies Tadeusz Kościuszko, who crossed the Atlantic in 1776 to join the American army. He designed the fortifications at West Point and played a decisive role in the American victory at Saratoga. He was a lifelong champion of Polish independence, a dream he never realized, and long after his death became the namesake of the RAF's Polish Squadron during the Battle of Britain in World War II.

In life, Kościuszko was known for his unimpeachable character. He was a true devotee of human freedom, wherever it was threatened. One example: Kościuszko made his friend, Thomas Jefferson, the executor of his will, which ordered that his not insignificant American assets be used to purchase American slaves, free them, and set up schools for their education. (For complicated reasons, including legal challenges that ended up before the Supreme Court, Kościuszko's will was never carried out.)

Young Father Wojtyła chose to offer his first Mass among the tombs of these Polish heroes, not from some misguided sense of nationalism, nor because they were successful in preserving or achieving Polish independence (most weren't). Nor was the future pope under any illusion that these heroes were great exemplars of the Catholic faith; not all heroes are saints.

Nevertheless, these men were true heroes. And while they may not have been heroic examples of faith, hope, and charity, they possessed real virtues: justice and fortitude, to be sure, but also loyalty and a willingness to sacrifice for the common good. These heroes used those virtues in the service of their people and their beloved nation. And so while most of these "secular" heroes never lived to see Poland free, and are not counted as saints, their memory and example were precious – indeed, formative – to a young Karol Wojtyła who did become a saint.

Moreover, John Paul II understood, from both Polish history and his own experience of Nazism and Communism, just how precious and fragile freedom can be. This shaped his view of freedom in the modern age, and in particular, his admiration for (and occasional critiques of) our own experiment in ordered liberty here in the United States.

Politics requires virtue. This is true always and everywhere, but it is particularly true in a democracy (or if you prefer, a republic) like our own. People who cannot govern themselves cannot be expected t...

By Msgr. Thomas G. Guarino

As everyone knows by now, the ordination of bishops carried out by the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has resulted in the automatic excommunication of the six bishops involved. No matter how it may spin its canonical status, the Society is now definitively outside of the Catholic Church.

Insofar as the SSPX denies the authenticity of Vatican II, this outcome was inevitable. After all, Pope Leo himself has been uniting the Church around the Council, devoting his weekly audiences to examining, and profusely praising, conciliar teaching.

One cannot cogently argue, as the SSPX does, that Vatican II was not a legitimate council. (Subsequent developments, of course, can be debated, and are – within the Church.) In fact, the great synod bears every mark of an authentic ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. What are these marks?

• The Council was formally convoked by the bishop of Rome, John XXIII.

• Ahuge number of bishops, over 2,500 from the entire world, was gathered at the Council for debate and deliberation from 1962-1965.

• All bishops could speak freely or, if desired, submit written comments (which were then carefully examined by the Theological Commission).

• The Theological Commission (where the conciliar documents were drafted or reviewed) was composed of a mixture of more conservative and more progressive bishops and theologians. A review of their journals reveals that even the smallest points were debated freely and at great length.

• Anyone who studies the texts of Vatican II will see the extraordinary care and balance achieved by the documents – which underwent numerous drafts before final voting.

• Paul VI always insisted that the concerns of the (more conservative) minority be adequately addressed. To cite only two examples: At the last minute, Paul mandated nineteen changes to the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) in order to satisfy those bishops who wanted a stronger accent on the truth mediated by Sacred Tradition. Secondly, Paul insisted on the Nota Explicativa Praevia appended to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium). This interpretative note was added to ensure, in juridical-canonical language, that papal primacy was in no way jeopardized by episcopal collegiality.

• Each one of the sixteen conciliar documents was approved by an overwhelming majority vote.

• Each of the documents was formally promulgated by the Bishop of Rome, Paul VI.

In truth, one could more easily marshal questions about the First Vatican Council, held in 1869-1870. At that council, episcopal speakers were occasionally shouted down, and some seventy bishops left Rome so as not to vote "non placet" on the infallibility of the papal magisterium.

The argument against the legitimacy of Vatican II, made by the founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, is straightforward. He and his movement contend that the most recent council fulfilled the long-standing dream of liberal Catholicism: marrying the Church with the French Revolution.

The Council allegedly betrayed the ancient Catholic faith by incorporating the three chief principles of the revolution of 1789: liberté, égalité and fraternité. The conciliar declaration on religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) is little more than the "liberty" of the revolution – leading inexorably to indifferentism in religious matters, thereby undermining Catholic truth.

And in promoting episcopal collegiality, Lumen Gentium made common cause with the revolutionary notion of "equality," speaking as if all bishops were equals, thereby corroding papal authority and primacy in the process.

And the revolutionary "fraternity" may be found most clearly in the Decree on Ecumenism, wherein the SSPX argues that contemptible heretics are now facilely called "separated brethren."

Also central to the SSPX argument is a statement by Yves Congar, one of the important theological experts at Vatican II. In October 1963, the Council took several votes in order t...

By Randall Smith

Magnifica humanitas has been widely discussed for its approach to artificial intelligence. Pope Leo emphasizes the importance of the schools for training people to retain their humanity in the face of these challenges. If we took the encyclical as a guide to education, what sort of education would that be?

An essential goal would be to educate students about the dignity of the human person and what is required for the integral development: body, soul, and spirit. It would teach students that, "elevating any single dimension of human existence to an absolute is always a mistake." The university would have to model this respect for dignity in its own actions and in the rules governing the community. A Catholic university would teach its students not only about rights, but also about their responsibilities and duties. Such an education would consider the nature of the common good and our obligations to it.

Given the pope's comments, an authentic education would be one in which "a love for truth" is fostered. "When people come to believe that nothing is genuinely true and that principles are hollow," he writes, "when questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective," the bonds of trust needed for democratic life are weakened.

And so, "we are in need of a healthy realism that avoids both political idealism and cynicism," and avoids any ideology that, "in order to preserve its own worldview, tends to choose facts selectively, distorting and renaming them," whose proponents "eventually, inhabit a reality constructed to fit their own convictions."

But in addition to avoiding the error of assuming there is no truth, or that there is just "my" truth and "your" truth, students should also be taught to avoid the error of assuming that reaching truth is relatively easy. Students should learn, writes the pope, that authentic education is "a long journey requiring patience and therefore needs time for development and for engagement with reality beyond appearances." They should be taught how "truth is often distorted in order to serve particular interests and communication strategies."

Students should learn the value of technology, but also how "technology shapes those who use it." And they should be taught to avoid succumbing to the dominance of the pervasive "technocratic paradigm." Computers and cell phones would not be a ubiquitous presence. A "genuinely healthy" community would integrate "rhythms that incorporate silence, in-depth study, reading and judicious analysis, for without these elements inner freedom may be compromised."

Universities should take care that a "culture fostered on the internet does not become an instrument of excessive distraction, homogenization or dominance." Rather, they should establish settings "in which inner freedom and critical thought can mature." Attaining such "inner freedom" and the ability for "critical thought" require the virtues, intellectual and moral, and a university fails if it does not inculcate them.

So too, the pope speaks repeatedly of the importance of dialogue "to establish a set of basic agreements that enable the creation of a shared vision, upon which everyone can move forward together." Dialogue of this sort is not easy; it requires patience, discipline, and skill and "an attitude that seeks to forge bonds of fraternity built on listening, an open demeanor, making time for each other and even wasting time together."

"As knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented," he warns, "it becomes difficult to grasp reality as a whole, to ask profound questions about meaning, or to develop authentic, critical and creative thought." Thus, a "principal challenge" for universities "lies in the integration of knowledge," hence they must cultivate in their students "both the capacity to connect and synthesize knowledge in order to grasp complexity, and the skills necessary to verify facts."

"Many educat...

By Michael Pakaluk

When J.D. Vance's memoir of his path back to Christianity, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is described at a high level of generality, we see immediately that it is a book of the highest importance. Here is a leader on the world stage who grasps, and is not afraid to say, that Christianity has been the source of social unity for European – that is, Western – civilization, and also for that nation we call the United States, and even for neighborhoods and families.

The only two realities that unite us across disparities of wealth, race, and creed are the military and the Church, he likes to say. Economic bonds – trade agreements and business relationships – are insufficient. So too are procedural constructions of "international order" and human rights.

Rather, these systems risk dissolving subsidiary unities; and when they become "global," they serve only to unite the elites of various countries, rendering them incapable even of understanding the concerns of common working men and women.

Now add that this perceptive world leader has embraced Catholicism as that realization of Christianity that he regards as best. I don't think that commentators who anticipated a "Catholic moment" thought it could take this form.

Also working at a high level of generality, we can say that Vance converts to Catholicism because of a neglected transcendental. Some have seen Christianity as the source of Beauty (Kenneth Clark). Others, as the source of knowledge, science, and our grasp of Truth (Pierre Duhem). Still others, for its fostering of holiness, the virtues, and the Good (Tom Holland). But Vance correctly sees it as the glue that can make us, across our differences, in various ways One.

In this he is closely following Vatican II, which in Gaudium et spes taught that the Church, "thanks to her relationship with Christ, [is] a sacramental sign and an instrument of intimate union with God, and of the unity of the whole human race." (n.42, quoting Lumen gentium n.1)

But this is at a high level of generality. The book is a memoir and begins, again, with Vance's "hillbilly" roots in Appalachia, with tales of Mamaw and her crass bits of wisdom and guns. True, the book is interspersed with mini-policy papers on Catholic social teaching – immigration and other topics you'd expect from a potential presidential candidate – that are not always very accurate or well-grounded. But what keeps the book moving are anecdotes and tone of a tent-revival testimony.

Therefore, it must ultimately be evaluated for that testimony and, as a Catholic's memoir, whether it witnesses well to Catholicism.

The man giving witness is appealing and good-hearted. He shows real self-knowledge about the pointlessness of his ambitions as a young man. He wants above all to be a good father. He puts being a good father above his career. He sees that being a good father means caring for the character of his children above all.

Although highly credentialed, he wants to stay united with ordinary workers, like his dad, who was a welder. He strives to consider himself no better than they are, to regard their work as having equal dignity with his own.

He has a generous love of the religious pluralism distinctive of America. In this, he is like a mainline Protestant from the 1950s. He's a Catholic who loves Charlie Kirk, and who can also get along with progressive Christians in supporting the labor movement. He loves the generically Christian American civic religion of the 1950s.

But when I consider the book as the story of a Catholic convert, I find multiple shortcomings, and one very disturbing and scandalous chapter, which together make this a book that I cannot recommend to young persons or inquirers. This is a shame, because these shortcomings could easily have been repaired.

The scandalous chapter is entitled "My Favorite Year," which describes how he and Usha shacked up in Cincinnati, bought two dogs, and lived like the secular elites Vance loves to ...

By Msgr. Charles Fink

There are terrible injustices in our country. There are people in jail who don't belong there and people on the street who belong in jail. But there is no country on earth where one is likely to get a fairer trial or where one will have a better chance of having a wrong righted or an injustice undone.

There are glaring inequalities in our society. There are very rich and very poor, and there are people who need help who don't get it. But there is no society on earth where anyone – no matter his race, religion, or ethnic background – has a better chance of raising himself up and improving his lot.

There is too much corruption in our government, in business, and even in our churches. Bad, weak, and foolish people rise to high places and destroy confidence in institutions. But there is no nation on earth where corruption is more likely to be exposed in all its ugliness to the light of day, thence to be, if not eliminated entirely, at least ameliorated.

There is a lot that is cheap, licentious, and obscene in our culture. But no culture on earth is more open to such a variety of expression as ours; none is more creative; and no one in this land is forced to engage in any cultural activity he finds offensive.

When our military personnel are sent overseas to fight wars, they sometimes kill innocent people, and their morals have not always been exemplary. But no military establishment on the planet works harder at avoiding civilian casualties, and none expends more energy and resources on humanitarian aid – by miles.

Compared to Heaven or Utopia or Shangri-La, ours is a dreadful, wicked, misbegotten country. Compared to any other nation on earth that ever existed or currently exists, it is the best human beings have managed to produce.

Criticism, if it is constructive, can be helpful, but one often gets the impression that America's critics, at home and abroad, seriously believe that the world would be a better place if the United States ceased to exist as a nation. Or that, if tomorrow, there were no United States of America, the next day or week or month, a year or so at the outside, Heaven would descend upon earth.

This is to ignore all of history, to be blind to the present state of the world, to be blissfully ignorant of human nature, and to imagine that civilization can be torn down and rebuilt overnight.

Torn down, maybe. How easy it is to destroy. But rebuilt? When it comes to civilizations, that takes centuries and great good fortune, perhaps even the grace of God.

The naïve belief in quick and easy "fundamental change" may be understandable and forgivable in the young, by which I mean children and teenagers. Among those of voting age, it spells disaster for our future.

How we've arrived at a state of affairs in which large numbers of our populace – many in their twenties and thirties, some elected officials in our local, state, and federal governments – can speak and act with utter disdain for our nation while looking approvingly at other nations in which they would be silenced, or worse, for espousing some of their opinions or living openly their alternate lifestyles is beyond comprehension.

It gives credence to the suggestion that a kind of "mind-virus" has afflicted our citizenry, rendering many of them incapable of rational thought or contact with reality.

None of this is to say that the United States is the New Jerusalem prophesied in the Bible. It is not. But it is still the country to which more people from more nations come, or want to come, than to any other nation on earth.

Why is that? And why do so few critics of America, including those who are forever threatening to leave the country whenever an election doesn't go their way, actually leave? Because such talk is cheap, childish, and churlish.

If people want something better than the USA as it currently exists, there are plenty of ways to work towards that goal, but trash talking isn't one of them. Neither is electing those who support...

By Robert Royal, Brad Miner, Francis X. Maier, Michael Pakaluk and Joseph R. Wood

In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo invokes the Biblical story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem as a poignant alternative to the Tower of Babel's effort to reach Heaven without God. It's a good reminder – but of something more than the pope indicated. In the days of walled cities, rebuilding walls was a defensive measure, establishing a safe perimeter before the reconstruction of the city itself could take place. There were threats outside – and within: "half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. . . .each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other." (Nehemiah 4:16-17)

And once the walls were rebuilt, Nehemiah had the priest Ezra publicly recite the Law of Moses before the whole people, who pledged themselves anew to the Covenant.

If I could have one wish on this anniversary, it's that we – at least many of us – will come to realize that America must be defended as well as reconsecrated. We've developed an allergy to this truth because we don't want to appear "defensive." But without a defense, those who are offensive – and they are legion – will have their way with us and many other nations.

It doesn't stop there. The defense exists so that we may build, and abundantly – in both a physical and a moral sense – because time is always wearing things down. We must work not just to keep what we have, but to extend it for ourselves and those who will come after.

In a confused and contested time like ours, that seems impossible because our divisions run so deep that we cannot even agree on what rebuilding would mean.

But here's a proposal. Every year for almost a quarter century, I've been running a Summer Seminar on the Free Society in the Slovak Republic, founded by the great Catholic and American, Michael Novak. In the concluding session, I lead students through "The Gift Outright," a poem that Robert Frost read at the inauguration of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy (Kennedy had asked Frost to write something for the occasion, which he did, but the day was so sunny – and Frost's aging eyes so weak – that he couldn't read the text, and instead recited this poem from memory).

It laments how Americans remained colonials – until they changed. It ends:

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

That transformation was not peaceful ("many deeds of war"), but it was heartfelt, a free gift to an uncertain future, in short, the only thing that might renew us all, of whatever persuasions, yet again: outright love for this land.

I don't remember much about Mesopotamia, but they say it's where civilization began. As has been the case throughout history, it was good for those on top but not for the rest. This was true of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, although, unlike Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt, the Greco-Roman legacy remains very much with us. It has always been true.

You can see that legacy in the Constitution of the United States. You can also see there the Fall of Man, after which no civilization has been or could be a City of God. I'm thinking here of the Three-Fifths Compromise, a deal with the Devil if ever there was one.

But name a society before the U.S. that was able to correct its trajectory in less than two centuries, and to restore amity.

We know we'll never be perfect. Still, as G.K. Chesterton wrote about America, ours is the "only nation in the world that is founded on a creed":

That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perh...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

In the early days of July 1826, Thomas Jefferson "marshalled his will toward the realization of one last mission: He wanted to survive until the Fourth of July." So writes Jon Meacham in his marvelous biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.

Jefferson did, repeatedly asking in his final agony in the evening hours of July 3: "This is the Fourth?" He finally heard the twelve chimes of midnight on his bedroom clock; he lingered, drifting out of consciousness, but knowing it was the Fourth. He died at ten minutes before one o'clock that afternoon.

Five hours after the third president died at Monticello, the second president, John Adams, died in Quincy, Massachusetts. His famous final words were false: "Thomas Jefferson survives."

Both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, two hundred years ago. (The fifth president, James Monroe, would die on the Fourth in 1831.) It's the great anniversarial coincidence of the Founding Fathers. The reaction to the twin presidential deaths on the fiftieth anniversary of the first Fourth was that Providence was at work, not unlike how Catholics consider miracles in the causes of saints.

John Quincy Adams, president at the time of his father's death, styled the coincidental deaths "visible and palpable marks of Divine Favor, for which I would humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the Ruler of the Universe."

The junior President Adams issued an executive order in memory of the senior Adams and Jefferson:

A coincidence of circumstances so wonderful gives confidence to the belief that the patriotic efforts of these illustrious men were Heaven directed, and furnishes a new seal to the hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence.

In early August 1826, with President Adams present, Daniel Webster was more fulsome at Faneuil Hall in Boston:

Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.

Webster continued:

If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine Providence. . .[that] the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?

The Declaration of Independence, signed fifty years before Adams and Jefferson died, professed a "firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence." Now, it seemed to their contemporaries that Providence had vouchsafed a final protection, calling Jefferson and Adams home on the anniversary of their great work.

Meacham wrote that Webster "painted an indelible portrait of Jefferson's and Adams's ascent to the American pantheon."

Catholics do not have a pantheon, but there are the saints. Catholic saint-making – or saint-recognizing, strictly speaking – has two broad parts. First there is the human judgment, after a painstaking examination, that the candidate lived a holy life, culminating in a declaration of "heroic virtues." The second is the celestial confirmation, the requirement of a miracle, understood to be divine evidence, as it were, that the candidate is in heaven, interceding before God.

The Fourth in 1826 was something like a miracle for the secular canonization of the nation. What the founding generation of Americans knew by experience – and aspiration – had apparently been confirmed by Providence. They knew the heroic virtue of the young republic; now a divine benediction had been granted.

Organizers of the golden jubilee of the Declaration had greatly desired to have Jefferson in Washington, but he was too ill to travel. He wrote a letter f...

By Fr. Gerald E. Murray

The canonically illegal consecration/ordination (the terms are interchangeable) of four new bishops by two Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) bishops who were themselves illegally ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre 38 years ago is a renewed wound upon the Mystical Body of Christ. This schismatic act of disobedience carried out in direct defiance of Pope Leo XIV's public warning has resulted in the incurring by the six bishops of latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication.

While claiming to uphold the traditional faith of the Catholic Church, the newly excommunicated bishops boldly cast aside what the Catholic Church has always taught her children, namely that the hierarchical nature of Catholicism includes the dogmatic teaching that the pope is the Supreme Authority to whom all Catholics owe obedience. That obedience, needless to say, includes not ordaining bishops when the pope forbids such ordinations.

Simply stated, the pope is the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ. He governs the Church. Obedience to his decision about who may or may not receive episcopal ordination is necessary if one is to remain a faithful Catholic.

The Holy See instructed the SSPX earlier this year to desist from carrying out on July 1 the illegal ordination of any new bishops. The SSPX rejected this instruction. This defiance of Pope Leo is an act of grave disobedience that the Holy See judges to be a schismatic act that involves "the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff" (canon 751) by carrying out an act forbidden by canon law, namely the ordaining of bishops without a papal mandate (canon 1387). These episcopal ordinations involve not simply the absence of a papal mandate, but clear disobedience in direct defiance of Pope Leo.

On the eve of the illegal consecrations, Pope Leo wrote to the Superior General of the SSPX, Fr. Davide Pagliarani:

With a paternal heart, and aware of the responsibility entrusted to me by the Lord as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, I address you and, through you, the bishops, priests, seminarians and faithful connected to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X. . . .[F]illed with Christian affection, I plead with you and ask you with all my heart: please turn back! I urge you to consider carefully the spiritual good of the faithful, because the schismatic act you are about to undertake would deprive them of the licit and, in some cases, even valid reception of the Sacraments, which they love and seek for their sanctification.

The pope has the authority to determine what constitutes a schismatic act, and he has done so. The SSPX has no authority to gainsay or ignore this papal judgment.

Fr. Pagliarani responded: "Paradoxically, in the present circumstances, we believe it to be our very duty to do everything possible to mend Christ's seamless garment, torn by forces and pressures incompatible with a truly Catholic spirit." Paradoxical indeed! The SSPX Superior General incredibly claims that the SSPX will "mend Christ's seamless garment."

No, it tears that garment by committing what he knows the Holy See has deemed a schismatic act. This is akin to an army claiming it has to destroy an enemy-held village in order to save it.

Why did this happen? The SSPX wants to continue ordaining priests who celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) while refusing to return to full communion with the pope and the Church. The Society claims that a state of necessity in the Church permits them to ordain new bishops blamelessly. They need some younger bishops, they say, to allow them to continue ordaining new priests in the years to come.

If it were in full communion with the Church, any number of bishops would be willing to ordain the seminarians of the SSPX. Instead, the SSPX has deepened its embrace of a dangerous separatist spirit. Ordaining new bishops against the will of the pope is a necessary action for providing new priests for the SSPX only if it plans to continue operating apart from th...