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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Cover | Page 01

From the Editor’s Desk…

By Michael J. Matt

Merry Christmas from The Remnant to the remnant

First off, a word of thanks. As we celebrate the glorious Feast of Christmas once again, I’d like to convey my sincere thanks to all those who subscribe to this newspaper, watch Remnant TV videos, donate to the Remnant foundation, and in general do so much to ensure that the little Remnant stays afloat, year after year and despite it all. I’m humbled by your show of support and encouraged by it to try to make The Remnant even more serviceable to you in the New Year.

I would also like to wish Remnant readers all around the world a happy and holy Christmas. There is no doubt that our weary world today is, as the carol has it, "in sin and error pining"— for the very things that in the last analysis amount to nothing at all. Pining, not for God or the things of God, but for the signs and wonders of His adversary who at times seems to have gained free reign over nearly every aspect of our lives.

I say "seems to" because in reality it’s all an illusion that one day soon will be revealed as such.

Only God is eternal, not the demonic madness we see all around us just now. It will be brought to an end, in His good time, and Christmas has a way of reminding us of this. It’s easy at this time of year to regain a certain Christocentric perspective and to see that just as the fallen world has never been free of tribulation, suffering and indeed

~ See Editor's Desk/ Page 2

The Remnant’s Very First Christmas, 1967

W. Matt/ Continued from Page 1 and my family are concerned. While recent events for me—especially my heavy-hearted decision to leave THE WANDERER after thirty years in harness there—have been exceedingly sad and if not frightening, the response to my modest new venture, THE REMNANT, has been so tremendous, so reassuring in every respect, that whatever momentary discouragement and heartache I may have suffered has vanished and in its place the serenity and joy of Christmas have taken possession of my mind and heart.

I am happy to say, and I know you will be happy to hear, that THE REMNANT—though it was founded less than a month ago on virtually nothing except faith! – is already growing rapidly. As I told you in my opening letter, i.e., about having no mailing list from which to operate, the fact remains that from here, there and everywhere, people immediately responded by sending me names and addresses of prospective "customers". Of the first thousand names that were obtained in this way (additional ones are still coming in each day), and to whom the first issue of THE REMNANT was finally mailed, more than ten percent replied in the very first week.

In addition to personal subscriptions, donations, Masses, Rosaries, and prayers, many more have promised to subscribe in the near future and have urged me on with assurances that not only is THE REMNANT needed but the editor is to be commended who, after having devoted thirty years of his life to the journalistic apostolate, apparently chose "not to abandon, but only to branch out in the field in which you served so faithfully, so long, and so well".

I hasten to add, of course, that it was no particular virtue on my part that caused me to stick with this life-anddeath struggle in the realm of sharply contending ideas and ideals in our day.

Anyone imagining, in this age of cosmic war between Christ and Satan that he or she can remain neutral—a privileged non-combatant so to speak—had better think again about it. The war between Christ and Anti-Christ is a total war, a war embracing the TOTALITY OF ALL PEOPLE. In such a war, whether or not you relish the idea of direct involvement, you have little if any choice. When God calls, draft-dodging is next to useless; it offers no escape, really—either heaven or hell. Our Lord Himself said as much: "He who is not with Me is against Me".

And so, hopefully, as one of God’s undeclared but still resolutely determined "remnant", and without presuming nor deserving to be ranked among His elect, we recall to mind at this time the solemn promise made so long ago at our Baptism, and we reiterate that pledge, to renounce Satan and all his works and pomps.

More than that, we hereby again declare war, unconditionally, not indeed against flesh and blood, but against evil principles and against the prevailing powers of darkness that threaten to engulf the world. We do so because, in today’s utterly disrupted and revoltridden society, we are convinced, as part of God’s "remnant" that the restoration of Godly order and decency and harmony among men and nations is of crucial importance, and the safeguarding of immortal souls—beginning with our own and the souls of our children—is or should be our paramount concern.

Together with Pope Pius XII, who gave expression to the conviction that, in today’s largely de-Christianized and de-sacralized world, "the reform of institutions is not as urgent as the reform of human conduct", we see the problem today as basically spiritual and moral, rather than social, political, economic, or military.

Beginning with ourselves, then, we implore God and our Blessed Lady to grant us the needed grace and supernatural strength, so that we may begin, with new determination and vigor, the needed restoration and reform of shipwrecked family life, social life, religious and communal life, by our own steadfast and persuasive example of a living faith in God and fidelity to His commandments.

In this spirit and with firm confidence and trust in the long-range possibilities of such a plan, I have set about to establish THE REMNANT. And I repeat, already there is every reason for hope and much cause for satisfaction. First of all, came swift and substantial reader-response.

Friends and acquaintances from near and far not only sent their own and other prospective subscriptions, but many volunteered their services as mail-list typists, file clerks, letter-writers, amateur layout personnel and miniature paper designers.

My wife and all of our seven children (excepting little Michael aged 16 months) have rallied, so to speak, to the colors. A "spare room" in our home is now a cozy combination of printing office, mailing room, and dining room; and even Baby Michael gets an occasional postage stamp or REMNANT envelope flap to lick. (If perchance any one or you should ever find a half-eaten cookie or other nondescript edible inside your REMNANT envelope, be assured this was strictly an oversight; it was not intended to suggest in any way a similarity to the heaven-sent Biblical mana for the Chosen People!) In any event, the Morrison Avenue Matts have great plans and hopes for THE REMNANT. We have in mind— tentatively at least—an 8-page miniature paper the same size and shape as this one, hopefully to appear twice each month, on average. It will containafter a certain unavoidable period of experimentation or, if you will, plain trial and error, -- at least brief reports and carefully culled gleanings on national and international events and trends.

Also, in due time, there will be a readers’ page, or forum; a contributing columnist or two, as space permits; and, last but not least, timely extracts from past and present Papal pronouncements on vital questions of the day. My former "This and That" column—which in some respects became my stock-in-trade—will, if you like, also be resumed before long, and, -- say a prayer! -- I am determined that THE REMNANT shall have, must have, a special niche or corner set aside for Mary, our Mother.

But, I repeat, all of these features will take time and space to develop properly.

So, say a prayer on that account. And say one more on mine, so that my present high hopes and future plans do not outstrip, to put it frankly, my modest capabilities and means. And meanwhile I shall pray for you, and for all those gracious benefactors, helpmates, and friends who have been so quick and so eager to join THE REMNANT. You know and I know that "the remnant"— literally the God-fearing, serious-minded and devoted people of God—have always had and always will have, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, an arduous uphill struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil.

Saint Paul states it bluntly when he says; "They that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences." And Pope Leo XIII, in quoting this passage from St. Paul, further reminds us that "they who are not accustomed to suffer and to disregard ease and pleasure, belong not to Christ."

Penance and sacrifice, in and with and through Christ, he tells us, constitutes "the whole essence of the Christian life, which is not to take part in the corruption of the world, but to oppose constantly any indulgence in that corruption."

Christ’s own suffering and death on the Cross is meant to teach us, who claim to be His followers, that there is no escape from struggle and pain in this vale of tears and that all who have, in fact, taken the trouble to love as becomes Christians have followed this same path. Indeed, is not this the self-same message we all have heard from the "Beautiful Lady" at Lourdes and Fatima?

Let us, therefore, be clear about what it means nowadays, in the midst of the Godless if not Anti-God society in which we all live, to enlist in what we have chosen to call "the remnant", or God’s People. Surely it means struggle and it means sacrifice, and it might even mean persecution one day—at the very least a dry martyrdom for many. But whatever the cross we are destined to carry in Christ’s name, it is, when rightly carried, our sole guarantee of final victory over the tyranny of sin and of death itself.

This Christmas especially, coming as it does at the close of the very year which the Church has begged us to convert into a Year of Faith and Year of Fatima, will be for us and for all of God’s People who take His Church seriously, the beginning of a new-found life in Christ and devotion to Mary. It will be a life in which the God-Man who came to redeem us all from sin, will be, if He is not already that, the way and the truth and the life, to which all of us will confidently turn who claim to constitute

Continued Next Page

Mr. Walter Matt and his baby girl, Cathy

" And if, however faithful to that purpose and program this remnant may be, it is nevertheless adjudged by worldly spirits as of little account or even less, so be it!

Little people we wish to be, in the good sense, of course, and unsophisticated and guileless like little children."

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Cover | Page 01

Welcome To Us, Our Lord Christ!

By Timothy J Cullen " Welcome to us, Our Lord Christ, who is our Lord of all, welcome to us, dear Lord, here in the earth, right in honor, Kyrieleys." ( Ninth century C hristmas song) 1

Hundreds of millions round the world will welcome Christ to our fallen planet on Christmas, but sadly many others will not. Many—far too many—would prefer that the Redeemer be rubbed out of history and the day of His birth be nothing more than another dreary day in this decadent and soul-diseased world rather than a celebration of welcome to God made man. While one may feel pity for these envious and emptysouled killjoys, one cannot help but simultaneously wish that they would simply shut their mouths, grin and bear it, just as they wish the faithful would do in the face of their efforts to continue to pervert both the natural and divinelyordained order of the aspirations of the non-embittered.

The epigraph to this essay is drawn from what might be considered the first Christmas "carol", and in a sense the only sung statement necessary to express the joy derived from the arrival on Earth of the Savior of us all. What person in

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRqtS11nxzA ~ See Welcome/ Page 5

Welcome To Us, Our Lord Christ!

T. Cullen/ Continued from Page 1

right mind could deny welcome to our Redeemer, what person could fail to wish to honor Him? Who could possibly prefer the narcissistic notion that each individual flesh-lump is a universe unto itself that answers to no one, whose existence is as fleeting as that of a moth, who exists without purpose or hope of continuance or redemption from what even the most cynical must acknowledge as sin? Not I, not you, not anyone who harbors any sort of hope for the future of oneself, one’s posterity and even of humanity in general.

In this year of Our Lord 2017, anticipation of His coming began on 3 December with the placement of Advent calendars on mantelpieces, on credenzas, on whatever. Advent wreaths adorn hearths as well, and the lighting of the candles is anticipated with excitement by young and old alike. Authentically Catholic households follow these customs not in anticipation of toys beneath the tree but rather as signs of growing enthusiasm for the welcoming of the Babe "here in the earth" Whose birth among us will always be the greatest gift God freely gives to His children, greater by far than anything that is merely an artifice of fallen man.

And yet… While Pope Francis may welcome Christ as the Divine Social Worker, even the Modernist and deracinated Catholic maintains an awareness that His earthly birth as the Second Person of God represents the message of redemption rather than the onset of revolutionary social activism. The Babe in the manger came to save us from ourselves, not to turn us into militants determined to undermine the natural order and make of us a horde of malcontents. Christ came to Earth to redeem us, not to be a rabble-rouser. Who among us wishes to welcome a rabble-rouser into our homes and communities? A Redeemer, however, ah, but that rings true, as true and as clear as the church bells that ring out to celebrate this most important birth of all!

The customs that have grown up over millennia around Christmas reflect this. What other holiday has such universal appeal, even amidst the distorted, degenerate and depraved secular materialist civil societies that have been foisted upon a Christendom now so degraded that civil legislation attempt to impede such celebration? It’s a rhetorical question, really, because as everyone knows, the answer is simple: none! Yes, those who wish to abstain from such celebration should be tolerated, but not indulged. Those who wish to live in Christendom but not be of it are now nearly entirely free to go elsewhere, go to places in which their particular preferences are shared, but should understand that they should not be entirely free to attempt to quash our celebration as they would never permit us to do in those places. We have welcomed them within our civil societies, so even if they do not welcome the coming of Christ, they should understand that we are not only entirely within our rights to do so in our own homes and public places, we are also within our rights to demand reciprocity if they object, as well as to insist that they confine their objections within their own homes and closed communities created within our far larger community.

"Oh come let us adore Him" ( Adeste Fidelis, c. 17th-18th century) we sing when Christmastide rolls around; so we have sung for more than 200 years.

Those who wish to remain mute may do so, though that is their own misfortune; our misfortune is that we have permitted them not merely to raise their voices in protest but have actually allowed such discordant and blasphemous voices to be heard and acknowledged much to our own detriment, not to mention the disrespect heaped upon the Redeemer of humankind Whose human life was blameless, unlike that of any other human save for His Immaculate Mother. This writer believes "tolerance" has its limits and the defamation of Christ is intolerable, just as Muslims have determined must be the case for their prophet Mohammed, a case far more difficult to make than the "case" for Christ.

Christ and the Church He founded created the conditions for what became Christendom and by default the West; historically, there is no denying this.

Those who have become part of the civil societies that grew up thereunder have a duty to recognize this whether or not they share in the transcendental beliefs that underlie those societies into which they chose to join. They wish that Christian civil societies give equal weight to their metaphysical beliefs when their ancestral societies do not afford us the same privilege; why, then, should we consent to such demands?

We should not. This writer wishes one and all a Merry Christmas, but when the wish goes unreciprocated, he finds himself sorely tempted to offer up an impolite, un-Christian and very secular response, but in the spirit of the season refrains from doing so, thanks to the Catholic teaching he received as a youth. Turning the other cheek is tortuous at times, but the Babe was/is God after all, so one endures and keeps Christmas as best one can.

Keep Christmas we will, however, this year and the next and so on unto the day the mortal coil is shed, by which time one hopes that posterity will carry on the custom until the End of Days.

Traditions of Christmas keeping vary around the globe, but invariably they revolve around the Babe in the manger, the materialization of the transcendent in God taking human flesh to instruct and redeem His fallen creatures. His sacrifice and resurrection are celebrated during Eastertide, but His manifestation among us has always held greater appeal on a societal level, likely because the celebration is centered on arrival rather than departure, even though it is the "departure" that seals our own salvation.

Easter is preceded by sadness but crowned with joy; Christmas a purely joyful celebration preceded by a period of penitence but not of sorrow.

In keeping with the anticipatory theme of the Advent calendar and the Advent wreath, the arming of the crèche with one figure after another until the arrival on Christmas morn of the Christ child in the manger, the anticipatory thrill mounts throughout the month of December, not just for children awaiting the "arrival" of St. Nicholas and his sack full of gifts but for children and adults alike who understand there is a mystery unfolding, a sacred mystery that enriches their lives as no gift from Santa could ever do. Christmas warms more than the heart; it kindles a fire in the soul.

Those who reject and ridicule Christmas lack that spark of joy; bitterness prematurely burns their souls to ash.

They are by selfish personal inclination, by a humanistic hubris that hardens their hearts, those who secretly—or not so secretly—celebrate the Slaughter of the Innocents rather than rejoice when any babe is born, never mind the birth of the Babe Who would redeem their stunted souls if only they would open their hearts to Him. Dickens’ Scrooge is merely a grumpy crank alongside these pitiable flesh-lumps whose earthly existence is confined to the echo chambers of their own very finite minds rather than the certainty of the infinite and eternal All that awaits the obedient and faithful servants of the Lord Who is not of this Earth but of the eternal transcendent consciousness of which this Earth is but a shadow.

Imagine the brutishness of the world— all the world—before the First Person of God made manifest to humankind the fullness of the Divine through the materialization—the humanization— of Himself in the Mystery of the Trinity.

What could possibly be more welcome, more a cause for celebration than this?

The mythical Prometheus supposedly brought us fire, some unknown luminary invented the wheel, Edison brought us the electric light, Bell the telephone, Al Gore—according to Al Gore—gave us the internet, but no day has been set aside to celebrate any of these accomplishments, because when all is said and done, they are mere earthly accomplishments that pale into insignificance alongside the sacred birth of the eternal into space and time, a birth that changed the course of fallen human history and existence.

Welcome, Lord of us all, welcome to us, Your family who celebrate Your birth as we do the births of our own posterity!

"Joy to the world, the Lord has come/ Let earth receive her King/Let every heart prepare Him room/And Heaven and nature sing" in the words of the 18th century hymn, now the most-published Christmas hymn in North America2 leads us to sing out, much as does the far older Veni, veni Emmanuel, which has its origins in the O Antiphons dating back some 1300 years and traditionally "sung or recited at Vespers from December 17 to December 23 inclusive".

3

Let no one cast a wet blanket upon the joyful welcoming of the Christ Child by the multitude: a pox upon those who would do so! Pray for those lost and envious souls who mutter "humbug" to themselves as they refuse to join in the welcoming and celebration, but take no heed of their secular nonsense.

Put out the welcome mat privately and publically, inviting one and all to celebrate while keeping Christmas close to the minds, hearts and souls of ourselves and those dear to us, even unto those who are not. We faithful have great cause to celebrate and it is our Christian duty to invite all to share in the celebration whether or not they share our faith and belief.

"And so, as Tiny Tim said, ‘A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one!’" Welcome! ■

2 https://infogalactic.com/info/Joy_to_the_World 3 https://infogalactic.com/info/O_Antiphons

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Cover | Page 01

The Remnant’s

Very First Christmas, 1967

By Walter L. Matt (RIP)

Editor’s Note: As The Remnant’s 50th Anniversary year draws to a close, it seems appropriate this Christmas to revisit my father, Walter L. Matt’s, first Christmas letter to the readers of The Remnant and to, at the same time, renew his pledge to try to earn the right to be counted among the remnant, while declaring total war against the prevailing powers of darkness. Fifty years ago this month, he wrote: "And so, hopefully, as one of God’s undeclared but still resolutely determined remnant’, and without presuming nor deserving to be ranked among His elect, we recall to mind at this time the solemn promise made so long ago at our Baptism, and we reiterate that pledge, to renounce Satan and all his works and pomps. More than that, we hereby again declare war, unconditionally, not indeed against flesh and blood, but against evil principles and against the prevailing powers of darkness that threaten to engulf the world." May he rest in peace and, please God, may we never forget.

MJM Christmas this year promises—thanks be to God and to many, many faithful friends and loyal co-workers—to be thrice blessed and happy where I

~ See Remnant's First Christmas/ Page 8

Walter L. Matt, Founder of The Remnant

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Cover | Page 02

From the Editor’s Desk,

Continued...

crisis, so too the world and all those who inhabit it are as redeemable now as they always were. Redemption is ours for the taking, if we have the faith to desire it and the courage to seek it out. Even the faith of a little child is sufficient. So let's keep a tight hold on ours, and not be discouraged.

Just as Christ died on the Cross and then rose again on the third day, His Mystical Body—the Church—will do the same, just as she’s always done since Calvary.

The Church will rise again, so long as her children are not so scandalized by the antics of her human element just now as to leave her, and instead resolve to continue to love her as our holy mother, no matter what horrors visit themselves upon her visage in the meantime. The New World Order and all that rot has no chance whatsoever against the Catholic Church, so long as her children—or at least a faithful remnant of them— continue to proclaim the kingship of the One Who waits for us each and every year in Bethlehem. Christmas reminds us of what we must do to find our way through the present darkness—continue to follow the star, continue to believe in the Child King of Bethlehem, the lumen Christi, Saviour of the whole World.

In that regard, nothing has changed save, perhaps, for an increase in the frantic bleating of hopelessly lost sheep.

So Merry Christmas. Truly, have a merry Christmas! Let’s all resolve to not let our hearts be troubled this Christmas.

Christ is born, and we will find Him lying in the manger, waiting, just as He always is, for us to put aside the worries and fears of this life and to ponder the triumph of the next...when--not if-- we keep the Faith until the bitter end.

The Remnant in the New Year

For what it’s worth, I’m not discouraged at all this Christmas. I see an awakening taking place all around the world. I see people—so many not yet traditional Catholics—who have nevertheless managed to keep enough Faith to want to learn the truth of what really happened to their Church over the past century.

The Remnant can no longer be accused of peddling conspiracy theories, thanks to Francis. A worldwide coalition of believers is forming, and we've done something no one suffering from despair would ever think to do that--we've going on offense. This is a winable war.

So over at The Remnant’s website this week we launched a major promotion that includes, by the way, words of gratitude and praise for you—the Remnant’s faithful print subscribers, who’ve been with us from the start.

Over the past half century, it is thanks only to God and to you that this little apostolate has managed to survive.

And at Christmastime especially, I’m reminded to tell you again how grateful we are that God has seen fit to bless our little enterprise with so many good friends and allies around the world.

I’m truly humbled by your loyal support of my father’s now half-century-old enterprise, and I want you to know that my wife and children and I pray for you each and every night during our family rosary. You are a close and intimate part of our family, and we love and cherish you as our own.

We’re all in this together, but without you I have no idea how we’d manage to muddle through. The comforting thought each night, as we kneel in the candlelight and think about the stuff that really matters—at those moments, the realization that the little remnant of believing Catholics is alive and well and praying in front of their own home altars all around world…. well, that thought has been our greatest comfort and consolation, night after night, year after year. We are not alone, because you have not given up the old Faith, either.

You have not abandoned Him. I know this, I count on this, I thank God for it, and indeed I could not go on if I thought it was not so. We truly are a band of Catholic brothers and they have failed to drive the old Faith from our midst.

How do I know this? Because throughout the year we receive daily notes and messages of encouragement and subscription renewals from all of you that make everything else possible— the Remnant website, Remnant TV, Remnant pilgrimages, everything. You are the lifeblood of this apostolate, and I’m so grateful to God for you, the little remnant of those who still believe.

And so I went to the many thousands of daily visitors to The Remnant website (RemnantNewspaper.com) this week to sing praises of the remnant family—the folks who realize we simply cannot give away The Remnant for free if we expect to stay in this fight—and I asked them to lend a hand by doing as you’ve done these many years: Purchase an actual subscription to The Remnant.

Rather than asking for a handout to keep The Remnant in operation this year, we've decided to promote The Remnant’s E-edition, since it is considerably less expensive to produce and thus provides much-needed operating revenue. We’re putting all the time and energy every two weeks into The Remnant’s Print-edition anyway, so why not make it available in an electronic format on the Internet, as well. It would be silly not to do that, in fact.

And in the course of this week’s promotion, it occurred to me that many print subscribers to the Remnant might also be interested in helping The Remnant in this way, while also gaining access to The Remnant online.

To current subscribers to The Remnant, we're offering the Remnant’s E-edition at a greatly reduced rate. If you’re interested in having access to The Remnant on your computer or smart phone, just send us $10 and we’ll sign you up for the E-edition (a $25 value), which you can use personally or give to a friend, neighbour, priest, whomever— maybe even for Christmas still this year.

Younger readers tend to be into that sort of thing, of course, so it’d make a great gift for a son or daughter. If you’re interested, just send us the email address of whomever you think might appreciate The Remnant online, along with $10, and we’ll take care of the rest.

To better assist you in understanding how this promotion of the E-edition works to substantially help The Remnant survive, I will close this column with a repeat of what I wrote to our friends on the Internet just this past week. Once again, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, God bless you, Mary keep and we’ll see you next year.

No January 15, 2018 Issue

Don’t Forget: January is one of the two months per year in which we go to press only once. So the next issue of The Remnant will be dated January 31, 2018.

A Word about The Remnant E-Edition As you know, the folks who actually pay to subscribe to The Remnant’s print edition are the ones who provide the lion’s share of the funding for this website. Quite frankly, without our print subscribers, there would be no RemnantNewspaper.com and no RTV. I simply cannot ask them to do more than they already are.

I think—I hope—we’ve come up with an idea, however, that will be immediately regarded as a win/win for everyone, and it has to do with our new & improved Remnant E-edition—something which is absolutely vital to the survival of this apostolate since the costs to print and mail The Remnant have tripled over the past five years, with Uncle Sam promising even more postage hikes early in 2018.

The Remnant’s E-edition is our endaround. It’s identical to the Print-edition only better since it includes audio articles, automatic translation services from English into most languages, full article sharing capabilities, live hyperlinks, and, soon, e-subscribers will be able to view video in the actual online newspaper. It really is an excellent platform with a variety of interactive reader options.

So Here’s My Proposal

In order to keep this website up and running, I’m asking you to lend a hand by subscribing to The Remnant’s E-edition.

Quite frankly, the added revenue that alone would provide is desperately needed. And, at the same time, you will gain access to all of The Remnant’s excellent articles, most of which never appear online.

For example, Father Celatus’s very popular "The Last Word"—printed on the last page of every issue of The Remnant—was posted on the Remnant website only two times throughout all of 2017, which means if you’re not a subscriber you missed 20 of them. There are dozens of other Remnant columnists whose work never makes it onto The Remnant website. Why not? Because if we give it all away, there simply would be no revenue whatsoever to keep The Remnant afloat. Many other articles are also never printed in The Remnant, since the Internet demands almost daily updates and we need to "feed the beast" in order to keep the website going.

So I think I’ve found a way for us to help each other: We commit to keeping the Remnant website free and updated while you commit to subscribing to our E-edition. And that’s it. It’s just that easy.

If even half of the friends of The Remnant were to do this The Remnant would be in a position to forge ahead like never before, since the E-edition costs considerably less to produce than the Print-edition. It’s like a small donation with a built in premium.

Already a subscriber? How about giving The Remnant as a

Christmas gift?

Order before December 31st, and we’ll even send a gift card.

You can set up and account and subscribe to The Remnant E-edition in about 3 minutes here: http://remnant.

mn.newsmemory.com/ Of course, if you’d rather donate to The Remnant Foundation (tax exempt) or subscribe to the Print-Edition, I would not only thank you for doing so but also thank God for it. But this easy third option, which works out to just over two dollars a month, seems to me to be something friends of The Remnant will readily get behind.

I’m optimistic, in fact, that you’ll see this as a small price to pay for all the expansion and additional Remnant outreach. Plus, your 'donation subscription' comes with three months of FREE back issues, to boot!

Please help us out by subscribing right now.

If you should happen to have any trouble with the sign-up process, just shoot us an email and our support staff will walk you through the process: admin@RemnantNewspaper.com I’m praying for the success of this initiative, and I hope you’ll agree to become part of the answer to that prayer since, at this point, the situation is rather desperate. The Remnant cannot continue to give away free content without finding a way to finance for it. And this, I believe, is it!

The Remnant: Fifty Years and Counting Please, friends, I hope you’ll consider partnering with me in order to help The Remnant soldier on for as long as God sees fit to bless us with the health and will to do it. May God bless you with a happy and holy Christmas.

Long live Christ the King. ■

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Cover | Page 03

The Remnant Speaks

Letters to the Editor: The Remnant Speaks P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025 ~ Editor@RemnantNewspaper.

Greetings from Gulag Novus Ordo

Editor, The Remnant: I’m writing to thank you for the great work of The Remnant. Thanks to a great parishioner, who serves my Latin Mass each Sunday, we have The Remnant in the narthex for all our parishioners. I love the Remnant’s 50th Anniversary video. Let us pray for one another. And, please, if you do publish this, withhold my name, lest I die in battle.

God bless, Father X

Editor’s Response: You’ve made my day, Father. Thank you and God bless you. Indeed, let’s pray for each other.

MJM Thanks, Remnant Editor, The Remnant: I wish also to express my gratitude to the Remnant Newspaper and all the dedicated and hardworking people that make this avenue of much needed information and inspiration arrive in so many homes longing to hear truth expounded once again.

We are 80 and knew and lived the faith many years before the deconstruction of Vatican II So often we have felt isolation as we have observed and lived the desolation visited on Holy Mother Church. Many thanks for SSPX over these many years of tears. And for the many people along the way that guided with wise words, Walter Matt, Michael Davies and so many more. Keep the faith and God bless you all.

In the Immaculata, Norma Orendorff

RTV In the Catacombs

Editor, The Remnant: What an absolutely beautiful quote from your father (RTV Episode: ‘Our Father Wrong?’). What would we have done without such faithful pioneers of the Faith some 50 years ago. He is surely among those heroic modern missionaries without whom our holy Faith would most likely have been truly practiced only in catacombs yet today. And indeed that is what it was initially with Masses being said in people’s little basements, living rooms and rented buildings. Thank the Good Lord for people like your father and mine who stood their ground for the Faith.

John Longjohn

Catholic Young People Are Out Here and Getting the Message Editor, The Remnant: I am a Novus Ordo Catholic. That is to say, nearly a year and a half ago, 15-year-old me converted and was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church according to Pope Paul VI’s Rite of the Sacraments.

I attend the local English Mass, and much to my chagrin, our parish has more altar girls than incense. The Holy Eucharist is received standing, in the hands (at least, that is the standard way of receiving), and the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is much more extraordinary to find than the EMHCs who every day pass out the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Blessed Lord to His faithful.

Now, upon reading that, I would not hold you remiss for wondering what exactly I am doing writing to The Remnant.

I don’t sound like the traditional Traditionalist, what with my parish’s rather ordinary Ordinary Form liturgies.

I don’t attend a Society of Saint Pius X chapel, or an Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest church. Sunday morn finds me neither at a Fraternity of Saint Peter Mass nor an Eastern Rite Catholic Divine Liturgy. What, then, am I doing writing to the oldest traditionalist newspaper out there?

The answer lies in what I would call New Traditionalist Evangelization. This just so happens to have a name similar to that of the recent Pontiff’s plan to get the Gospel of Christ out into the world.

There are, in fact, many similarities to be found between the two (when NE is done correctly), but that is not the focus of this essay.

What I am referring to by New Traditionalist Evangelization is the use of Internet sites such as YouTube and Instagram to spread the virtues and values of traditional Catholicism. My journey into the, to quote Pope Francis, "rigid" side of the Church began with some pages on Instagram, pages which made known to me the beauty and reverence of the Mass of the Ages.

I then encountered channels on YouTube, such as Sensus Fidelium and a certain Church Militant, which gave me the hard-hitting, politically-incorrect truths of the Faith that I was missing out on at the typical social-justice homilies of Sunday. Websites like Fish Eaters recounted to me the Catholic devotional and cultural life as it had been for untold centuries into the 1950s.

Then, I stumbled upon the Fatima Center, Tumbar House, and The Remnant. The late Father Gruner and Mr. Vennari, God rest their souls, explained in layman’s terms the Mysteries of the Faith. Mr. Charles Coulombe and Vincent Frankini always brighten up my week with a uniquely Catholic look at the world and her history.

The team at The Remnant produces hundreds of hours of content telling it how it is. I am writing this to encourage all those in the traditionalist movement to keep fighting the good fight. I know that I am only one out of thousands of young people who, through social media, has encountered the wonderful, and sometimes wild, world of traditional Catholicism. Using twenty-first century means, we have been able to reconnect with the Faith of our forefathers, a Faith which has been taken from us youth and relegated to the distant past as something outdated or out-of-touch. Well, I am here to testify, for all it’s worth, that the heart of tradition beats inside of us young people.

Padraig D. Fournier Junior, JSHS

Editor’s Reply: Of course it does, Padraig. It’s guys like you, in fact—good men, who’ve been fed stones rather than bread, and yet are not deceived— that keep us confident that the training camp will soon be packed with recruits.

Let’s face it—we’re not getting any younger. Eventually, we’re going to need replacements out here. I’m counting on you! Keep the old Faith, brother. And we’ll see you at the front.

MJM Must We Rock Around the Christmas Tree (a letter to my local newspaper) The colorful Christmas lights of Fufton’s main street’s lamp posts continues annually to beckon when entering the town. The numerous windows and open shops on main street, plus the windmill, live nativity figures, Drives Bldg. and the Immigrant Museum, etc., easily held our excitement. The stillness of the sky, the warmer temperatures, plus the hot chocolates and cider graciously provided by the unsparing business owners and unfaltering volunteers certainly added to people lingering and enjoying.

Adversely, as we walked toward the Immigrant’s corner of windmill and museum, seemingly the earth split open with the pounding of almost recognizable "Christmas" noise, albeit, music.

Why not, during this quieting time of the year, give people a few seconds to look inward. Must this time be shattered for a few that need every second of their lives assaulted with loudness? Why can’t "music" be played at an acceptable decibel level? Why can’t the recordings be of the traditional arrangement of the carols? The young students in Clinton and beyond are not learning the religious carols in schools. This would be their opportunity to at least hear them. Also, the accompaniment of sound could have been a nice adjunct to the nativity scene across the street. When viewing the nativity, and attempting to visit with them, we were bombarded

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Letters to the Editor,

Continued...

with the continued pounding of the most primitive type of noises coming from the sound box. An electrical failure of that box would have been most welcomed.

We escaped from the street side much too quickly to hear the truly lovely choir in the museum. Alas, the noise from outside, even attempted to shake its walls. This is the only Christmas walk in my now long life, that I left far earlier than what I desired. Fulton wants a "traditional olde time Christmas walk"...

but the raucousness of jazzed up noises from a box does not fit that scene. Also, what is so disturbing about listening to the stillness of the night as one walks with the family members? Also, many older walkers that night have had perhaps eight decades of memories, cherishing the time honored beautiful arrangements of the traditional carols. Please don’t deny them a chance to hear the songs that they sang, loved, and now safeguard as their still Christian nation erodes. Fulton, along with other communities, should not hurry this unfortunate slide. Let the carols sing melodiously always. It’s our heritage. Please don’t rob us. For those that want to check the religious guidelines, you will learn that – fortunately—traditional carols are still permitted; With such a rich heritage, why help push towards the emptiness of snowflakes fluttering.

Arlene Rose-Considine Clinton, Albany area

Persecution and Propaganda

Editor, The Remnant: Thank you for the awakening article ‘Persecution and Anti-Catholic Propaganda’ (Nov 30, 2017 issue of The Remnant) by Theresa Marie Moreau. We read of how gentle loving nuns, who cared for sick and dying babies, were tortured and imprisoned by communism during the beginnings of the Communist takeover in China.

In order to eliminate this particular Catholic bastion, an orphanage, lies were published about the nuns and how they abused the babies ... even to burying some alive. The people drank the "pernicious poison" ... having succumbed to the deceptions, "skillfully concealed in the most extravagant promises."

PPXI Atheistic Communism. The article reads like a novel with chilling details of how babies were thrown by the wayside ... arriving at the door of the orphanage near death. Small children with measles or tuberculosis were cast into the cold and rescued by an elderly person or a policeman in the dark of the night. But it is not a novel. It happened.

In the beginning the Communist system of thought had struck fear throughout the "people’s country", which once had been peaceful. Children were to report to the teacher if anyone at home spoke against the regime. Later came the death squads. "How is it that such a system could spread so rapidly in all parts of the world? The explanation lies in the fact that too few have been able to grasp the nature of communism." PPXI Atheistic Communism. This article helps to grasp it. This reader couldn’t put it down. The sweet loving nuns were put in prison and abused ... with the sanction of the people who had formed raging chanting mobs to accuse them and pass sentence.

History repeats itself. The methodologies and the words of this article are talking to us today. Our once beautiful America is slumbering. She needs the call to arms of this article. It’s coming our way if Russia is not consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Soon. Thank you for the good fight! God bless all at the Remnant.

Mary Anne Sheehy Plymouth, MA

Seeking Pilgrimage Sponsors Editor, The Remnant: To glorify God is to worship Him the way that He desires to be worshipped. That is precisely what led me to transform how I worshipped Him on Sundays. I attend the Ordinariate Chair of St. Peter, which is not the Novus Ordo, but very similar to a Latin Mass in English. Our Lord deserves to be worshipped with reverence and awe. This is what I was longing for, and I found it in attending the Ordinariate Chair of St.

Peter.

Attending a reverent mass is what transformed me spiritually. It inspired me to worship God with more holy fear, and the environment I was worshipping in allowed me to do that. It is also what led me to traditional Catholicism.

Furthermore, it inspired me to grow in virtues such as modesty and my overall love for God, along with the desire to acquire more knowledge about the state of the Catholic Church today.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I am unable to attend the Traditional Latin Mass. This pilgrimage would be a wonderful opportunity for me to experience the Latin Mass, especially in such a beautiful place as Chartres is.

Experiencing the wonder and awe that the magnificent cathedrals offer would be amazing, as I have never actually seen churches of that kind in real life.

Additionally, being able to worship and pray alongside other traditional Catholics who are my age would be incredible, especially because traditional Catholics in my area are very hard to come by.

Gabriella Gladney, 18 Calgary, Alberta, Canada Editor, The Remnant: Hello, my name is Joseph Cavanaugh. I am currently a senior Philosophy Major at Christendom College, in Front Royal, Virginia. I come from a Navy family of four children, wherein I am the youngest brother of three sisters.

I humbly submit this letter in the hopes of receiving sponsorship for the Remnant Chapter of the Chartres Pilgrimage this upcoming Summer. I think that Europe must call to all those who love the Traditional Faith, for it was Europe more than any other country or culture that spread the Faith throughout the World in the much-maligned colonial period. It was the "simple" and "backward" Europe that held the line against the heresies of the near East and the Islamic hordes.

France in particular shares a special bond with the Faith in her History, for which she holds the name of "Eldest Daughter of the Church" (to the chagrin of every Eastern Christian). It would be a great honor to behold the contributions that France gave to the Church, in her spirit, architecture, and Saintly souls.

More than this, it would be a great privilege to take part in a Pilgrimage, a glorious tradition of witness and humble petition, which seems to have most lamentably fallen out of practice among the faithful. I would be proud to share both my prayers and sufferings on the Pilgrimage with any of those who find themselves incapable of making the journey who would like to provide monetary assistance for those who can.

Oremus Pro Invicem, Joseph Cavanaugh

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A Christmas Greeting from Chris Ferrara to New Subscribers

Welcome, brothers and sisters, to the Remnant newspaper, for which it has been my privilege to write for the past seventeen years.

Like you, I came to this publication out of a love for Catholic tradition, preserved whole and entire in the one and only Church that constitutes the Mystical Body of Christ, visible embodiment on earth of the Truth that makes us free.

Like you, I was not willing to deny the obvious about the crisis that has overtaken the Church since the Second Vatican Council abruptly abandoned the classical conciliar presentation of Catholic teaching in favor of unprecedented ambiguities that bedevil the ecclesial commonwealth to this day.

Like you, I knew in the light of the Faith that despite the insane dreams of mere men who think themselves enlightened reformers, the Church they are trying change into something other than what Our Lord founded will never be changed, and that all they have created is a great façade of worthless and harmful novelties that add absolutely nothing to what we must believe and practice in order to be Catholics.

And, like you, I knew that the first duty of the laity to the Church, and to God Himself, is to defend and pass on intact the unreconstructed faith of our fathers, even when the hierarchs falter or even betray their sacred trust. So it was during the Arian crisis of the 4th century; so it is today.

For half a century, the effort to fulfill that duty has been the very mission of this venerable publication, whose founding resulted directly from Walter Matt’s prophetic insight, back in 1967, that the Church immediately following the Council was heading toward a disaster whose epic proportions we now witness.

So, welcome to our little (but rapidly growing!) family. And may God richly bless you and yours as we celebrate the Birth of Our Lord, hoping and praying for the restoration of His devastated vineyard.■

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Remnant Tours’ Youth Fund

As has been the case for the past 27 years, young pilgrims will walk the pilgrimage to Chartres in the name of their sponsors.

If you decide to sponsor one of the young pilgrims (your donations are tax deductible), please understand that you are entering into a spiritual partnership in a tradition as old as Christendom—where Catholics pool their resources in order to send a young member of a parish or town on pilgrimage for the good of the whole community.

I personally select only the worthiest young candidates, so that sponsors can be assured they will be prayed for each and every day (by name) and I will not allow our young pilgrims to forget that Remnant pilgrimages are all about the call to holiness, Catholic action and counterrevolution. The cost of the entire pilgrimage is $3200. The names of sponsors and their special intentions will be carried to Chartres and read aloud each day on the Pilgrimage.

MJM

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 06

The Saga of

Catholic Civilization Builders:

Interview with the Author of Heroism and Genius

Ignatius Press has just released Heroism and Genius: How Catholic Priests Helped Build ‒ and Can Help Rebuild ‒ Western Civilization, by Fr. William J. Slattery, PhD, STL.

The book comes highly endorsed by Cardinals Robert Sarah, Raymond Burke, and Walter Brandmuller; by the novelist Michael O’ Brien, author of Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, who describes Heroism and Genius as an "extraordinary book…an essential read for anyone desiring

to understand where we have come from and where we presently are"; by Thomas Woods, Ph.D., the New York Times best-seller author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History who states "Slattery’s book is the final blow to the Enlightenment version of Western history".

The Remnant decided to interview the author about his book, available already at Amazon.com.

The Remnant (TR) In a nutshell, what is Heroism and Genius about?

Father Slattery: Heroism and Genius is

the story of the lives and struggles of the Catholic builders of the West’s civilization. It narrates the saga of the men, who, during the Dark Ages, from the genius of Christianity and the cultures of the Jews, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Germanic peoples, built a new culture and society, embodying within its structures the Christian vision of God and man, time and eternity.

Heroism and Genius is no mere account of political events but

a flesh-andblood narrative of the real men who built Western Civilization at the cost of pouring out their very lifeblood in red or white martyrdom. What inspired you to write Heroism and Genius?

To communicate that Catholicism matters. Catholicism matters not only to the individual’s soul but to society’s soul.

I want Heroism and Genius to enlighten and encourage priests, strengthen seminarians, foster vocations, and make all Catholics so proud to be Catholic that they become pro-actively pro-convert.

(TR) I think our readers would be interested, Father, in just a brief word about your own vocation. At a time when the Catholic priesthood is suffering perhaps the greatest trial in the history of the Church, how is that a young man is nevertheless able to see past all that and, not only answer the call himself, but also write an entire book in praise of the glorious legacy of the Catholic priesthood?

Father Slattery: Through the fierce light of eternity! That "light [that] shines in the darkness, and [which] the darkness has not overcome" (John 1:5). Nor will it ever be overcome! All I ‒ or any Catholic ‒need do to renew enthusiasm is to go to the fountainhead of light and life in the sacred liturgy. There we will receive clarity of vision and strength unto endurance that the world and the allies of Satan will never be able to overpower!

(TR) The sub-title of Heroism and Genius is "How Catholic Priests Helped Build – and can Help Rebuild – Western Civilization. What benefit would lay Catholics – married men and women, students ‒ get from reading the book?

Father Slattery: The heroism and genius that Heroism and Genius refers to is not the personal property of extraordinary individuals but first and foremost it is the supernatural heroism and genius found in Catholicism. It is Catholicism’s heroism and genius!

Heroism and Genius underlines that the formidable priests of the Dark Ages were great priests because firstly they were great Catholics! All of the heroism and genius of the new civilization sprang from Catholicism!

Today, the world needs strong Catholics but to be a strong Catholic you must be a proud Catholic. Heroism and Genius aims to instill that pride in its readers.

Moreover, besides narrating the stories of the great priest-builders, Heroism and Genius also presents, even if only briefly, many of the great lay men and women of the first millennium.

Men like King Louis IX of France, father of eleven kids; Charlemagne, emperor of the "first Europe"; and the Knights Templar.

Women like the great queen of France, Blanche of Castille; Dhuoda a 9th century mother, spouse, and writer; Bertha, the Parisian princess who supported Augustine on his arrival in England; Theodolinda, the Bavarian princess who became Queen of the Lombards in northern Italy and worked with Pope Gregory the Great to convert her people.

(TR) In Part I you speak about the "Catholic Matrix" of Western Civilization, what exactly do you mean by that?

Father Slattery: By the Catholic matrix of Western Civilization I am referring to the fact that what makes western civilization original amid the civilizations of history is that the institutions that mark it as original originated in Catholicism.

The original form of Western Civilization, medieval Christendom, was, to use an image of Heinrich Heine, a passion flower that blossomed from the blood of Christ. It flowed from the supernatural power of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, mystically present in the liturgy of Catholicism, transforming the souls of men, and inspiring their creativity. What are a few of the original institutions of Western Civilization that were created by Catholics?

Heroism and Genius presents especially the institutions and ideals of chivalry, the romanticism of Christendom, Gothic architecture and Gregorian chant, and Free Market Economics.

It also gives special attention to four other institutions that were crucial to the building of the new civilization: the Traditional Latin Mass, Celtic confession, the birth of that remarkable reality, the parish, and the monastery.

Heroism and Genius also briefly alludes to other key Western paradigms that sprang from Catholicism such as the sense of the superior dignity of the individual over the collectivity, the role of reason, and the scientific-technological mentality that first appeared during the Dark Ages.

(TR) Some of the chapters are especially intriguing, for instance Chapter 8, "Clandestine Revolutionaries of Romanticism". Briefly, what exactly is that about?

Father Slattery: It tells how the most romantic religion in the world, Catholicism, created the first culture of romantic love.

The culture gradually formed during the Dark Ages and then exploded in the sunlight in the France of the 12th century

(TR) Why do you say it was an original culture of romanticism?

Father Slattery: Because nowhere else, ever, in all of history, has a society held up an ideal of relationship between men and women in which the woman was placed on so high a pedestal, men stood at the foot of their beloved’s balconies on moonlit nights to sing their praises, and rode to war with the colors of their beloved strapped to their arms.

(TR) How did this come about?

Father Slattery: Heroism and Genius explains that the new culture of romanticism was possible because of the new vision of the relationship between man and woman. This, however, was due to the new Catholic understanding of masculinity and femininity which, in turn, derives from the new vision of humanity that appeared to men one night in a cave in Palestine.

(TR) Romanticism isn’t something you normally associate with the history of the Catholic priesthood.

Father Slattery: You’re right. And yet during the Dark Ages the barbarians of Europe did most certainly surround the great evangelizers with an aura of romanticism.

They never used the term "romanticism" but they sensed in the great priests of Catholicism men who had made a deep sacrifice for the sake of a higher and deeper love in renouncing marriage for the sake of priestly fatherhood.

For instance, the first biographer of Columbanus ‒ a "Father of Europe" as he was called by the Prime Minister of France, Schuman ‒ makes it clear that Columbanus in his youth was not only strongly attracted by, but also to, the opposite sex.

It was this self-sacrifice through the vow of chastity that gave an aura of almost super-human grandeur to these first missionaries of Western Europe and wowed so many barbarians, inspiring confidence in these priests as true "soulfriends".

(TR) Heroism and Genius has many human interest stories. Give us a few examples.

Father Slattery: For instance, Alcuin of York, the man whom Charlemagne, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire called "my mentor", the educator of an empire’s educators, the instigator of the first political program of universal education, and the restorer in Western Europe of the tools of intellectual culture.

Bernard of Montjou who, at 8000 ft above sea level in the Swiss Alps, founded the famous hospice at the mountain pass now known as the "Great St. Bernard" and after whom the magnificent dogs are also named.

Ambrose, bishop of Milan, whose sensitive soul described the beauty of the Atlantic waves but who also barred the entrance of Milan cathedral to Theodosius, emperor of the Roman empire, until he repented publicly of his sin.

Augustine, the intellectual par excellence, on his deathbed urging the citizens of his city of Hippo to fight off the besieging red-haired Vandals of Genseric.

Gregory the Great, confined to bed in tremendous pain, yet forcing his wearied body to plan the conversion of England.

Leo the Great, riding out on horseback to save Rome from Attila the Hun.

Idealistic European youths riding to Templar castles in order to embrace a life of warriorhood in a monastic

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Remnant Interview,

Continued...

environment. The group of thirty teenagers and twenty-year-olds banging at the door of the Cistercian monastery amid the swamps of Citeaux in order to expand an order that centuries later even had the blueprints for the industrial revolution.

The peasant’s son, Suger, who rose to be prime minister of France and the founder of Gothic architecture.

(TR) Chapter 6 is entitled "Guardians of the Ancient Rite" What exactly is this about?

Father Slattery: Heroism and Genius recognizes ‒ as historians such as Christopher Dawson and Arnold Toynbee have demonstrated ‒ that since cultura comes from cultus, culture comes from religion, which, practically, people find in the liturgy.

If there is no religion, then culture is formed by the dominant worldview, a pseudo-religion, such as the materialism in contemporary Western society.

The religion that inspired the creative minorities of Western Civilization was that of the traditional Latin Mass!

For instance, men built Chartres cathedral in all of its magnificence because it was to be the sanctuary for the "ancient rite".

Music rose into the night of the Dark Ages in the form of Gregorian Chant to express and lend beauty to the ancient liturgy.

Chivalry and medieval romanticism breathed the spirit of the traditional Mass’s collect prayers and symbols." What role, if any, do you see the return of the Traditional Latin Mass playing in the restoration of the Catholic priesthood in the modern world?"

The traditional Latin Mass is the embodiment of Catholicism for us Latin Catholics.

How could it not be? For within it is almost two millennia of the action of the Holy Spirit inspiring the men of holiness and genius who built up the Church.

Heroism and Genius asserts briefly but clearly, with footnotes and bibliography, strongly ‒ even fiercely! ‒that the traditional Latin Mass was crucial to the creation of the flourishing civilization of Christendom.

This is so for many reasons. Chief among them is the fact that the ancient Mass taught men the meaning of history by training their eyes to gaze toward the East.

The popes, kings and queens, knights and peasants of Christendom built a civilization sealed with a poignant sense of sacrificial love because for them the ancient Mass was the mystical enenactment of the Supreme Sacrifice, the most sublime act of sacrificial love in history, that of Christ Crucified.

Therefore, the way forward for Catholicism and for the priesthood lies crucially in the restoration of the ancient form of the Mass!

(TR) In the chapter "Fathers of Chivalry: A New Type of Warrior" you point out the relevance of chivalry for contemporary men. Why?

Father Slattery: The history of the Catholic Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the leaders in the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler—codenamed "Operation Valkyrie"— illustrates the relevance.

A descendant of knights in a sevenhundred- year-old aristocratic family, von Stauffenberg had been educated from boyhood to live by the principles of the natural law and chivalry. His university years brought him to fall in love with the concept of a "secret Germany", a nation to be created in the future inspired by Judaeo-Christian and chivalric principles. As I wrote in the book:

This was the source of his moral conviction, as he and his tiny band of conspirators stood almost alone, surrounded by a mentality of blind obedience to Hitler on account of the oath of loyalty to the dictator (Reichswehreid ). For many German soldiers von Stauffenberg was a criminal since under German law he was committing high treason—to which he once defiantly retorted, "I am engaged in high treason with all the means available to me." After the failure of the attempt, his last words, in the early morning of July 20, 1944, as he stood in front of the makeshift firing squad in a courtyard lit by the headlights of a truck, were "Long live our secret Germany!" ( Heroism and Genius, pp. 180-181)

(TR) What is the chapter "Men with Music, Artistry, and Drama in their souls" about?

Father Slattery: This chapter unfolds the truth of Orson Welles’ intuition, expressed in his soliloquy as he stood gazing at Chartres Cathedral in his last major film, F for Fake:

Now this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man, perhaps in the whole Western world, and it’s without a signature. A celebration to God’s glory and to the dignity of man. All that’s left, most artists seem to feel these days, is man.

Naked, poor, forked radish. There aren’t any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things—this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation—which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish. ( Heroism and Genius, pp. 198-199)

(TR) Heroism and Genius has a chapter about the role of Catholics in founding free-market economics. This is rather a controversial point, even among Catholics. Where do you stand on capitalism?

Father Slattery: It is challenging to explain free-enterprise economics and capitalism nowadays for two reasons.

Firstly, because free-enterprise economics exists nowhere in the purebred form in which it existed during Christendom.

Secondly, because free-market economics is different from capitalism.

The free-enterprise economy is an environment where, free from government interference, individuals have the liberty to fulfill their vocation to be "sub-creators" through private property, business creativity, and the right to bargain freely. In it, individuals and not the government, regulate the size of businesses and the management of capital.

Capitalism, however, is very different. It is an economic system whereby capital is largely concentrated in the hands of either a powerful state or mega corporations, or, as in many countries today, in a combination of both.

(TR) In fostering and nurturing vocations here in what’s become a dangerously secularist society, what role does the Catholic family play?

Father Slattery: Crucial! As St. Thomas stated, the supernatural builds upon the natural. For that reason, we are called to create our own genuinely Catholic institutions (schools, mass media, colleges, homeschooling associations, scout groups, peer support groups, professional associations) that will surround, protect, and nourish Catholic family life.

(TR) Heroism and Genius has a very upbeat, inspiring tone, filled with hope for the future of Catholicism. Why is that, considering the tremendous crisis the Church is going through?

Father Slattery: The history of Catholicism in the Dark Ages reveals the truth alluded to by Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans, chapter 8, when he stated that the events of history conspire to fulfill the mission of the Church.

"Conspire" because on the surface all may appear to be darkness.

As during the Dark Ages.

Up to almost the last minute before the birth of Christendom, things seemed to be out of control and that the darkness would last forever. Christendom’s arrival in the 12th century was, for those who lived in that era, a most surprising reality.

Why? Because even as late as the 10th century, the Church herself was darkened by the horrendous corruption of the papacy.

But, thanks to the Catholic remnant, the creative minorities of faithful Catholics who never ceased to build, rebuild, plan, hope and hand on the sacred Tradition the glory of Christendom was born.

Hence, in this second Dark Ages, after the massive destruction not only of Western Civilization but within the very sanctuary of the Church, we can still shout "We shall rebuild!" Heroism and Genius is available at amazon.com ■

Rev. William Slattery

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By Susan Claire Potts

The sky was gray as concrete, heavy with snow. Dr. Barbara D’Angelo, adjunct professor of Italian Studies, closed her laptop, took off her reading glasses, and rubbed her temples. It was quiet in the building; there were no footsteps in the hall, no conversations in the stairwell. Everyone was gone.

She glanced out the window. The sun seemed to be setting earlier than usual, she thought. It would be dark as night before she got out of the building.

It was December 13, the Feast of St.

Lucy, but Barbara hadn’t mentioned that to her class. If she had, it wouldn’t have mattered; her students would have thought Santa Lucia della Sicilia was just another myth of the Middle Ages.

Much more important to the students at the small Dearborn college was that it was the last day of classes before finals. She’d had a very hard day. All she wanted to do was put her feet up and have a cup of tea. But she had papers to grade.

Sighing, Barbara straightened the stack of essays on the corner of her desk, each written on a computer—all spellchecked and grammar corrected.

Twenty-three final papers on Dante’s Divine Comedy, typed by students who had no interest in medieval literature.

They were taking the class as a prerequisite to a summer semester in Italy. She doubted any of them had read the Commedia, not even in translation.

They probably relied on CliffsNotes, hoping the teacher was too old to know the difference or too tired to care.

A few strands of gray hair escaped the twist at the back of her neck, and she pushed them back in place, thinking she really was too old to teach. She had retired three years ago and should have stayed retired. She could have travelled a little and read a lot, maybe she could have taken an art class. But no, her former colleague, Patrice Girard, had called her in July, begging her to take the class.

*** She remembered the call as she pulled the stack of papers toward her. "It’ll do you good," Patrice had said. "Keep your mind sharp."

"Why me?"

"The guy that was supposed to teach it quit," Patrice answered, clearly irritated. "We couldn’t find anybody else. Nobody reads Dante anymore. But the department thought it’d be good to give the students a taste of Italian literature before their summer abroad.

It’s only one class. You’ll do it, won’t you?" Patrice implored. "We need you.

It shouldn’t be too tough. You’re a native speaker. Besides, you taught The Divine Comedy for thirty years."

"Twenty-two. They discontinued it for lack of interest."

"Oh, right. I forgot," Patrice murmured. "So, what do you think?

Barbara hesitated. She was nearly seventy and more tired than she wanted to admit. Could she still do it? She wasn’t sure.

Continued on Page 10

A Song of Christmas...

S. Potts/ Continued from Page 9

Patrice interrupted her thoughts.

"Barb?"

"Let me think about it. I’ll call you back in a little while."

They hung up the phone, and Barbara went into the kitchen to cook and think. To teach again! And Dante!

She had revered the great Italian poet, loved the rhythm and soft rhyme of his masterpiece. No translation did it justice. When she was in graduate school, working on her dissertation, she used to sit at her desk and read the poem aloud, transported by the language and cadence, touched by words of numinous realities. Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, fresh and compelling, Catholic truths lost to modern ears.

And nearly lost now, too, to hers, she thought ruefully as she cut up vegetables and dropped them in the simmering stock. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard a sermon on the Four Last Things. Did anyone still believe in the Judgment?

Did she? She shivered. Maybe she didn’t. Nothing was clear anymore.

What if Purgatory wasn’t real? What if Heaven wasn’t a place? What if the nihilists and pantheists and Teilhardians were right?

She picked up a wooden spoon and hit the edge of the pan with it. No! she nearly shouted as she thrust the spoon into the soup. They couldn’t be.

Standing by the stove, stirring the broth, her mind travelled back in time, to a line in the catechism she had memorized as a child. She repeated it now, with wobbling faith: I believe all the truths the Catholic Church teaches because Thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.

" Credo," she breathed in the language of the Church, the words of Sacred Scripture. I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.

She wiped off the spoon, set it down on the counter, and sat down at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, her mind troubled. She had never married, had always loved the Church, even considered the convent. But the Changes came when she was still young, and her vocation faded away. She devoted herself to study and teaching. Life went on. Little by little, imperceptibly, her faith grew scratchy and dry as dust. Everything was so different, so torn and broken.

She missed the Old Mass. The last time she’d hear it sung was the year they yanked St. Barbara off the Calendar.

It was Christmas, she remembered.

She closed her eyes as long forgotten memories, images of holy worship, floated like gossamer veils across her mind. It had all been so beautiful.

But the Sacred Mysteries were shrouded now in banal English, jarring and pedestrian. It was hard to endure.

Somehow, somewhere, she had to find what she had lost. Her eyes lifted in wordless supplication.

Maybe teaching would take her mind off it. An hour later, she called Patrice.

"All right," she agreed. "I’ll do it."

*** Five months had passed since that phone call. Now, sitting at her desk, looking out at the empty classroom, she couldn’t wait until the semester was over. It was much harder than she expected. Today was the worst. She shuddered to think about it.

The class began as usual. She was standing at the podium looking out at her students, trying to ignore their surreptitious glances at their smart phones. Holding her copy of the Divine Comedy, she began to review the text, preparing them for their final exam.

She told of Dante’s quest for Paradise, through Purgatory, beginning at the Gates of Hell. Guided by the shade of Virgil, author of the Aeneid, the poet reached the misty shores of Acheron, the River of Woe.

She taught with passion, born not from her weakened faith, but from love of

language. She told of the anguished screams of damned souls, chased and stung by wasps and hornets, tormented by worms and maggots. And then, looking out the window, she quoted from memory the words on the sign at the entrance to Hell: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

She was jolted by a snort from the back of the classroom. "What’s that supposed to mean?" someone blurted.

"Give it to us in English!"

Barbara turned and glared at him.

The student shrugged and looked at the girl next to him. "Do you know what it means?" he asked.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," the woman-child said listlessly, running her fingers through her long blond hair.

"Hope of what?"

"Heaven."

The students laughed. Barbara’s throat went dry.

"Really dumb." A thin student in a gray hoodie stretched his long legs into the aisle, cracked his knuckles, and yawned. "Did people actually believe that stuff?"

"Apparently they did."

"What a joke."

The girl adjusted her glasses. "Actually, not," she said. "Hell is mythological, obviously, but the poem is a rather good exposition of the human condition, an allegory of irrational fears and loathing. And then, of course, the antithesis, the archetypal fantasy of a rewarding god-figure."

The boy pulled his hoodie over his forehead. "Brother." He had no idea what she was talking about. "Pretty stupid."

The girl sniffed. "Primitive time.

Primitive people."

Barbara had had enough. She interrupted them. "People in the Age of Faith feared Hell," she said, "as the place of eternal punishment of evil."

"You gotta be kidding." The boy clutched his chest. "Oooh, I’m so scared. Look out for those demons!

Watch out! You’re gonna get burned!"

Barbara closed her book, then raised her hand to dismiss them. "That will do for today. Prepare well for your finals.

I’ll see you next week."

The students rushed out, laughing and pushing. A girl squealed. "Stop that!"

she said, giggling, and then they were gone.

*** After spending three hours grading papers, Barbara rubbed her temples wearily. It was finally time to go home. She was slipping her laptop into her bag when she heard singing in the hallway. As she listened, the voice came closer, a young tenor, she thought.

She caught her breath when she recognized the song. It was the old Italian carol her grandmother, Nonna Lucia, used to sing on Christmas Eve when the priest laid the Infant Jesus in the manger before Mass. She would never forget it. The words still pierced her heart: Tu Scendi dalle Stelle, O Re del Cielo. Thou comest down from stars, O King of Heaven. To a grotto. In the cold. In the frost.

The singing stopped. Barbara got up and walked to the classroom door. She looked down the hall, but she didn’t see anyone. Shaking her head, she went back to her desk, a little frightened.

Had she imagined it? Was she hearing things? At her age, she couldn’t be sure.

She ran her hand wearily across her forehead. I’m too old for this, she thought. And I’m so tired. She folded her arms on the desk and was laying her head down when someone knocked at the door.

She looked up. A young man was standing there. He looked vaguely familiar, but she didn’t think he was a student. He was wearing an Army uniform with one stripe on his sleeve and a single row of medals across his chest.

He called her name. "Dr. D’Angelo?"

he said.

"Yes," she answered. "What can I do for you?"

"May I come in?"

"Of course."

He walked over to the front row, sat down, and laid a book on the writing arm of his chair.

Barbara stared at it. The cover was silver and lavishly decorated. A golden cross was inlaid in the center, surrounded by jeweled leaves and flowers. It looked like a medieval codex. Where could he have gotten it?

"Was that you singing?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Beautiful," she said.

"Thank you." He smiled at her. "Do you remember me?"

"I’m sorry," she answered, embarrassed.

"I’m Alphonse Donato," he said.

Alphonse. It wasn’t a common name.

She had known an Alphonse, once, a student. But that was years ago.

He ran his finger along the cross on his book. "I was named after St.

Alphonsus. That was his song I was singing."

"I know that song."

"Of course you do."

She looked at him questioningly, but he didn’t explain.

"Your grandmother wanted you to hear it again. Nonna Lucia, right? It’s her name day, you know."

Continued Next Page

Dante and Virgil are assisted in the Inferno by a Messenger from God

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 09

The Remnant’s Very First Christmas, 1967,

Concluded...

His remnant.

Such a remnant, always modest and truthful, and not claiming to be more than they are, will be ever mindful of St.

Paul’s choice words against "pretentious speech" and pseudo-wisdom, and will strive instead to show forth by deeds rather than words "the spirit and the power of Jesus Christ and of Him crucified".

And if, however faithful to that purpose and program this remnant may be, it is nevertheless adjudged by worldly spirits as of little account or even less, so be it!

Little people we wish to be, in the good sense, of course, and unsophisticated and guileless like little children. As with children, we too shall pray for the priceless gift of that simple faith and that ready vision and understanding, which marked the small band of chosen shepherds who went "with haste" and found Mary and Joseph and the Infant King, and, "having seen, they understood what has been told them concerning the Child".

Indeed, is it not precisely this simple faith—of hearing and seeing and understanding what actually came to pass at Bethlehem—that our world today most sadly lacks? In fact, is it not this kind of simple faith that has always been lacking? As Chesterton once remarked, it was a handful of simple shepherds who, having "understood", as Scripture says, knew perhaps more about the crisis besetting their world than all the so-called great and wise men of their time, "Who had become content with cold abstractions and cosmopolitan generalizations" or, like our own modern-day philosophers, "were spinning thinner and thinner threads of thought out of the writing of Plato and Pythagoras".

The place that the shepherds found, and where they suddenly began to understand things clearly and to feel themselves most content and at home, was not some high-sounding precursive thinkfactory, where mystery and metaphysics are crudely dissected and arbitrarily explained away. Rather, it was a place of mankind’s dreams come true. It was, at least for the shepherds and also a few other Wise Men—and for men and women of good will everywhere and for all time—the end of a long and painstaking search for the truth of things, which is to say that they found, at Bethlehem, the reward for their search: They came upon Wisdom, beheld it as Absolute; they saw with certainty the reality of God and knew in their innermost hearts that, at last, they had found Him who is the Creator and Ruler and Judge of all things.

So, too, must we the "remnant", in this proud and vainglorious age, retrace our steps—nay, hasten our steps! – to Bethlehem to "see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us!" We must strive, above all, to become humble even as the poor shepherds and the "little children" whom the Lord, as Scripture tells us, loves so dearly.

Right now, let me add, as the holy season of Advent and Christmas steals upon us, I feel stirring within me a great surge of faith and of radiant hope for the future.

Despite the awful darkness and din that have seized upon the earth, I confess to what I trust is a genuine Christian optimism. I look about me at my own hearth and home, and, you’ll pardon me, my eagerly absorbed youngsters happily folding and sealing and stacking row upon row of—you guessed it! – THE REMNANT, for delivery to you for Christmas. From my study I hear their carefree laughter and songs—from melodious Christmas carols to frolicking nursery ditties—and I am reminded anew of the wonders wrought from time immemorial by God’s little people, the "little people", that is, who not only confound the wise and put to flight all wickedness when they choose, but whose power is such that Our Lord Himself singled them out for special attention, declaring that even heaven considered them to be a special adornment. In tribute to them, God’s "little people", and in tribute to the most humble, most amiable, most child-like Virgin Mary, the late Caryll Houselander penned these golden words:

"I think the most moving fact in the whole history of mankind is that whenever the Holy Spirit has desire to renew the face of the earth, He has chosen to do so through some humble creature. In the instance we know of, it has not been to great or powerful people that the Spirit has come but to the little or the frightened, and we have seen them made new, and known that the subsequent flowering of their lives was nothing else but Christ given to them by that sweet impact…Indeed, the Architect of Love has built the door into heaven so low that no one but a small child can pass through it, unless, to get down to a child’s little height, he goes in on his knees.

"How consistent it is, then, with the incredible tenderness of God, that His Christ, the Immortal Child, should be conceived by the power of the Spirit in the body of (Mary) a child. That a child should bear a Child, to redeem the world…Indeed, the whole world trembled on the word of (Mary) a child, on a child’s consent…Our Lady said yes for the human race. Each one of us must echo that yes for our own lives. We are all asked if we will surrender what we are, our humanity, our flesh and blood, to the Holy Spirit, and follow Christ to fill the emptiness formed by the particular shape of our life. The surrender that is asked of us included complete and absolute trust; it must be like Our Lady’s surrender, without condition and without reservations…What we shall be asked to give is our flesh and blood, our daily life-our thoughts, our service to one another, our affections and loves, our words, our intellect, our waking, working, sleeping and our ordinary human joys and sorrows-to God… "Our Lady has made this possible. Her fiat was for herself and for us. But if we want God’s will to be completed in us as it is in her, we must echo her fiat-‘be it done unto me according to thy word’."

May all of you, dear friends and readers of THE REMNANT, have a most happy and holy Christmas, and may the Prince of Peace, whom the World either denies or refuses to understand, enter into your hearts and keep you always in His tender care! ■

Walter L. Matt February 8, 1915 – April 21, 2002

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 11

A Song of Christmas,

Concluded

Barbara nodded. Was he crazy? She twisted her fingers in her lap.

He started to sing again " O Bambino, Mio Divino…" then stopped. "Sorry…I couldn’t help myself. We sing it often where I come from."

She supposed he meant Naples, Marienella, perhaps, birthplace of St.

Alphonsus. Maybe she should call security. He seemed harmless, but one never knew. "Where is that?" she asked. "Purgatory," he said.

What? Her hand flew to her heart.

"It’s real, you know. Not exactly like Dante described, but he captured the essence of it."

She couldn’t speak.

"Anyway, I’ve come to thank you," he said.

"Thank me?" she stammered. "For what?"

"I was your student once, long ago, when you were young. I was taking Italian to satisfy my foreign language requirement. I was pretty much like your students today, just not so loud and obnoxious. My soul was a mess. Really dark." He ran his finger along the edges of his book. "I’d been baptized and made my First Communion, but that was about it. I never went to confession. Didn’t think there was anything to it.

"But when we studied La Commedia, you told me things I had never heard.

I thought religion was fiction. I never knew Heaven was real. Hell, either, for that matter. But then, when you described Paradise, I knew I had to find out, I had to know more." He paused.

"That was the beginning. Because of you, I studied. I learned. And, then, by the Grace of God and the Hand of the Blessed Mother, I saved my soul. Do you want to know what happened?"

Barbara nodded.

"A year after I graduated, I was drafted and sent to Vietnam. I got shot. I was just laying there in the dirt, scared out of my mind. I knew I was dying. That’s when the chaplain, Capt. Rodriguez came running over, right through the crossfire. He knelt there, like he wasn’t in the middle of a war, and asked if I was Catholic. I said, kind of, and he smiled, then told me to confess my sins. It was tough, but I did it. I could hardly breathe, much less talk, but I got through it. He absolved me…and then I died."

Alphonse pointed to his uniform.

"They buried me in this. ‘Course I sure couldn’t go straight to Heaven, no way.

I was sent to Purgatory. That’s where I’ve been all this time—getting the old stains purged. I had plenty, that’s for sure. I’m almost done." He smiled at her again, and his face glowed with a mysterious light. "I may be home for Christmas," he said with a gentle laugh. "But first, I had a work to do and a debt to pay." He paused. "Listen. This is very important. I was sent to tell you— Everything you once believed is true."

She looked down at her hands.

Coraggio! he said, and then he was gone.

Shaken, Barbara glanced around the room. I must have fallen asleep, she thought. But it had all seemed so real.

She pulled herself together and was slipping her students’ papers into her bag when Patrice Girard stuck her head in the door. "Are you still here?"

"Just leaving."

"I was hoping I could catch you.

Mark and I having some people over Christmas Eve. We’re doing dinner French style with fish, bread and cheese, a little wine. Croquembouche.

Not quite a full Reveillon, but a nod to tradition. The Awakening. Cool, don’t you think? Will you come?"

"I wouldn’t miss it for the world."

"Another thing. We’re going downtown to St. Mary’s for Midnight Mass. Want to join us?"

Barbara hesitated.

"It’s Latin. The Old Mass."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. It’s allowed now. Where’ve you been?"

"Out of touch, I guess."

"Looks like it. Anyway, what do you say?"

"I’d like that. I really would."

"Great," Patrice said as she left.

Barbara was getting up to get her coat when she glanced at the chair where Alphonse had been sitting—or at least the chair where she dreamed he had been—and she did a double-take. There on the writing arm was his silver clad book.

I have a debt to pay, he’d said.

She went over, picked it up, and opened it. It was a Mass missal, hand scribed on vellum, in Latin. She turned the pages carefully, transfixed, until she found the Canon; the consecration was penned in shimmering gold. Her heart raced as she read the words of miracle and power: Mysterium fidei.

The Mystery of Faith.

And then she knew. Her heart beat wildly. She had found what she was looking for. It was all there, in the promise of the new and everlasting Covenant.

Her mind cleared. All doubt faded.

She made a vow. She would go to the ancient Latin Mass on Christmas and every day after so long as she should live. It was there she would find Him whom her heart loved, God in the flesh who had given Himself for her.

A gentle breeze touched her cheek like a kiss. She raised her face. As tears of joy streamed from her eyes, music filled her heart and burst from her lips.

Alone in the classroom, holding the priceless Missal, she sang the precious song of the birth of her Savior: O Bambino, Mio Divino, O my Divine Baby, O, Dio beato, O Blessed God.

And then she heard in the depths of her soul, a whisper, Welcome home, beloved. ■

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 12

On the Culture Front…

Sexual Liberation...

as a Weapon of Cultural Marxism Against the Christian Faith

By Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

With the "outing" of Democratic United States Senator Al Franken (MN) as a "sexual predator" and a whole A-list of film and television personalities, the continuing frenzy, the foaming-at-themouth hysteria to expose all manner of actual, perceived and imaginary sexual infractions, almost entirely perpetrated by men, continues unabated.

Certainly, that is not to say that some of the accusations don’t contain truth— undoubtedly they do. But I cannot but marvel at our society that for the past half century has talked incessantly of and strenuously pushed "sexual liberation" and the idea "if it feels good, do it," and then suddenly reacts with incredible outrage and what would have been considered in an earlier age as "moral condemnation," when the logical results of our drenching in that liberation have produced what we see unfolding before us.

All along, the narrative of "sexual liberation"—like the cultural Marxist template on race and racism—has served as a weaponized revolutionary template, an ideological cudgel, aimed at dismantling traditional Christian standards and the Divinely-given rules that have regulated, for the good, our Western culture for nearly two millennia, and that have assured that moral order exist in society. It was precisely that order and those standards that had to be assaulted and perverted, for, indeed, they formed an integral part of the older, traditional Christian order, an order that stood directly in the way of the triumph of cultural Marxism.

Yet, just as the Soviet Communists learned in Russia, without some standard of moral behavior, some broadly accepted rules, society and the political state become essentially ungovernable. Thus, under Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and those fossilized commissars who looked out on Red Square every May Day, sexual aberrations and "perversions" (which violated traditional moral standards) were still punishable by imprisonment.

Even they understood that there was no real "new" Soviet morality to replace the "old" morality that had been sanctified by the Christian Orthodox Church for ten centuries.

Indeed, the proof of this is that almost immediately after the fall of Soviet Communism, the Russian Orthodox Church emerged from its semi-catacomb state, more resilient and stronger in affirming its moral teachings than ever before, as if the seventy years of Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev had been a bad dream.

And that is precisely what makes the new brand of cultural Marxists so much more dangerous, extreme and toxic, for these Marxists believe with an insane passion and conviction that is quasi-religious that human nature, itself, can be totally altered and transmogrified, that the most extreme dreams—rather, the nightmares—of some of the fiercest ideologues of the French Revolution, of "l’homme nouveau," can be realized and accomplished. The old Soviets talked of it, wrote of it in their theorizing, and tried to implement it in various pursuits, but in fact they finally understood enough of human nature, if regretfully, that even they were forced to adjust to its reality: their theorizing was mostly just that. The genetic/biological/agricultural theories and experiments—and complete failures—of Trofim Lysenko abundantly demonstrated that irreducible fact.

"Soviet Man" was an unrealizable myth.

But the desire to completely remake human nature, to turn it upside down, to re-create man, as it were, has never been that far from the center of revolutionary reverie and festering consciousness. And with the contemporary descendants of Leon Trotsky—those followers of the Frankfurt School social scientists, the modern day manipulators of biology, and the disciplinarians of bastard Freudian psychiatry and feminist theory and sexology—with this phalanx armed with the ideologically-framed results of countless foundation and taxpayerpaid "studies" and the imposing ideas on human conduct which appear relentlessly to sweep all opposition away, we confront again the unleashed Demon who promises us: "Ye shall be as gods!"

There is no greater objective in this revolutionary effort than the near total disappearance—the perversion—of the differences between and distinct roles of male and female in our society. It is nothing less than the attempt to subvert and distort the essential laws of nature, genetics, as well as the teachings of Holy Scripture and Divine Positive Law. For nature and Divine Positive Law both recognize the essential and delicate integrity of the human being, and that the kind of deconstruction of the human personality and the unnatural approach demanded by the modernist revolutionaries leads to the visible radical dysfunction that so characterizes our society today.

In the Christian West, sex and the sexual function were traditionally understood as cradled and clothed in both natural and spiritual reality, as an essential part of human existence and the procreative and loving transmission of human life, itself, through the basic component of the family. For the most part, modern society through its virtual acceptance of cultural Marxist revolutionary theory and praxis in pushing sexual liberation has overturned and rejected this understanding, and the results are the mass of contradictions, newly-defined "mental illnesses," and the rampant hysteria—about actions we once defined simply as "sinful" and about how we treated them.

What we see around us is the ruins of Western Christian civilization and its teachings that worked exceedingly well, attuned to God’s laws and human nature, for twenty centuries. Unlike those old, hated Soviet commissars— who in fact learned that human nature cannot be deconstructed and fatally infected without disastrous consequences socially—our newer Marxist revolutionaries are committed to applying their nefarious ideology and effecting their cancerous schemes even if it kills us all—body and soul.■

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 13

Remnant TV Tackles

Sexual Harassment

Editor, The Remnant: Regarding the following Remnant TV video: https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/ index.php/articles/item/3595-sexualharassment- institutionalized-legacy-ofsexual- revolution Some may disagree of our traditions, our values our beliefs. Some will even mock us and call us nostalgic nuts. But look around, take away the reverence, the veils, the bells, the respect and honor and traditions badges and Sacramentals; change the Our Father, remove fasting from the bible and we wonder why people don’t know what being Catholic is all about? We either stand for 2000 years of traditions or we don’t.

If you don’t believe that then answer yourself this, when traditionalists die off, will the modernists continue on with same zeal and fire from the Holy Spirit?

I know Christ said his Church will survive, but he didn’t give the location did he? If someone knows that answer, please enlighten me.

Enough preaching. Enjoy the video.

Michael Kern

________________ Dear Michael Matt, Your recent video on sexual harassment is absolutely excellent, and says what needs to be said. It is hard to believe, though, that even some Remnant readers wrote negative comments, saying that you are blaming women, which is a liberal slogan. Perhaps they should read a poem from a hundred years ago, which every schoolboy knew, Kipling’s The Female of the Species. They also knew his poem, If, which taught them how to be men.

Thank you for the light of The Remnant in the darkness. God bless.

In Christo Rege, Andrew Senior __________________

If

Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream- -and not make dreams your master; If you can think- -and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build’em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breathe a word about your loss: If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on! ‘ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings- -nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much: If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And- -which is more- -you’ll be a Man, my son!

The Female of the Species

Rudyard Kipling

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.

But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.

But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws, They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.

‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away; But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other’s tale— The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,— Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.

Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.

Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.

These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells— She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.

And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties; Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!— He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights, Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites, Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him Must command but may not govern— shall enthral but not enslave him.

And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

■

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 14

Remnant Tours Feature...

Sister Mary and the Holy Face Devotion

This coming May, Remnant Tours will travel through France after the Pentecost Pilgrimage to Chartres, and will wrap up with two nights in Lisbon. En route, the pilgrims will visit Tours, France, which is the birthplace of the well-known Catholic devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

In Tours, France, during the 1840s, a young Carmelite nun called Sister Marie of St. Peter, received a series of revelations from Our Lord about a powerful devotion He wished to establish worldwide - the devotion to His Holy Face. The express purpose of this devotion was to make reparation for the blasphemies and outrages of ‘Revolutionary men’ (the Communists) and atheists, as well as for the profanation of Sundays by Christians.

This devotion is also an instrument given to the individual devotee as a seemingly unfailing method of appealing to God in prayer - through adoration of His Holy Face and Name.

From 1844 to 1847, Sister Marie of St.

Peter reported that she had visions of Jesus and Mary. She reported that in her vision, she saw Saint Veronica wiping away the spit and mud from the face of Jesus with her veil on the way to Calvary. She said that sacrilegious and blasphemous acts of today added to the spit and mud that Saint Veronica wiped away in that moment. She said that in 1844 she had a vision in which Jesus told her: "Those who will contemplate the wounds on My Face here on earth, shall contemplate it radiant in heaven."

The following prayer was dictated by our Lord Himself to Sister Marie of St Peter. Opening His Heart to her, our Savior complained of blasphemy, saying that this frightful sin wounds His Divine Heart more grievously than all other sins, for it was like a "poisoned arrow".

After that, our Savior dictated the following prayer, which he called "The Golden Arrow", saying that those who would recite this prayer would pierce Him delightfully, and also heal those other wounds inflicted on Him by the malice of sinners. This prayer is regarded as the very basis of the Work of Be always Praised, Blessed, Loved, Adored and Glorified, In Heaven, on Earth and in Hell, By all the Creatures of God, And by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, In the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

Amen.

Meditation upon the Holy Face of Jesus, as depicted in the Turin Shroud and the Veil of Veronica, forms the basis of the Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. The Devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus

was approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1885.

PROMISES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST Revelations to Sr. Mary of St.

Peter, Discalced Carmelite Nun of Tours, France, in favor of those who honor the Holy Face. Details of these revelations are found in the book named The Golden Arrow (the autobiography of Sister Mary of St. Peter)

1. By offering My Face to My Eternal Father, nothing will be refused, and the conversion of many sinners will be obtained.

2. By My Holy Face, they will work wonders, appease the anger of God and draw down mercy on sinners.

3. All those who honor My Face in a spirit of reparation will by so doing perform the office of the pious Veronica.

4. According to the care they take in making reparation to My Face disfigured by blasphemers, so will I take care of their souls which have been disfigured by sin. My Face is the Seal of the Divinity, which has the virtue of reproducing in souls the image of God.

5. Those who by words, prayers or writings defend My cause in the Work of Reparation, especially My priests, I will defend before My Father, and will give them My Kingdom.

6. As in a kingdom they can procure all that is desired with a coin stamped with the King’s effigy, so in the Kingdom of Heaven they will obtain all they desire with the precious coin of My Holy Face.

7. Those who on earth contemplate the wounds of My Face shall in Heaven behold it radiant with glory.

8. They will receive in their souls a bright and constant irradiation of My Divinity, that by their likeness to My Face they shall shine with particular splendor in Heaven.

9. 1 will defend them, I will preserve them and I assure them of Final Perseverance.

A Brief Timeline of Events Relating to the Holy Face and Holy Face Devotion ~33 AD: Veronica wipes Our Lord’s face with her veil and an image of His Holy Face miraculously appears on the veil. Veronica later passes the relic of the veil to Clement I (3rd successor of St. Peter). The relic of the veil was kept in catacombs for the next 3 centuries during persecutions of the Church. After that time, Holy Veil was placed in the church that was constructed over the tomb of St. Peter (later to become the Basilica of St. Peter). The Holy Veil has since been kept intact throughout the centuries.

1843-1847: Sister Mary of St. Peter, a Carmelite nun in Tours France experiences a series of revelations from Our Lord about a powerful devotion He wished to be established worldwide - the devotion to His Holy Face.

1848: Sister Mary of St. Peter passes away in the odor of sanctity on July 8. Just before her death she was able to relay the details of her 5 years of revelations to the local bishop in Tours, France. She was also able to share the information with a friend named Leo Dupont, a retired lawyer in Tours, France.

1849: Shortly after the death of Sister Mary of St. Peter, Pope Pius IX ordered public prayers be offered in all churches in Rome to implore God’s mercy on the Papal States due to revolution occurring at the time. As part of these public prayers, a three-day exposition of the relic of Veronica’s veil was held for public veneration at St. Peter’s Basilica. On the third day of the showing, January 6, 1849, a miracle occurred through which Our Lord’s face on the veil became very distinct and glowed with a soft light. The Canons of the Basilica ordered the bells rung at sight of the miracle, which attracted crowds of people. The miracle lasted for three hours, was attested to by an apostolic notary during the incident, and was documented in the daybook of the Vatican Basilica.

1885: While devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus has always existed in some form or another, these revelations and miraculous occurrences lead to this special devotion being established by Pope Leo XIII as an Archconfraternity; and contrary to custom, He immediately established it for the ENTIRE WORLD. This was confirmed in the following people briefs: First Papal Brief (December 16, 1884) Second Papal Brief (April 22nd, 1885) Third Papal Brief (October 1, 1885) Indulgences Granted by Pope Leo XIII

1885-1897: It was a well-known fact that St. Therese of Lisieux and her family registered as members of the Archconfraternity of Reparation to the Holy Face at Tours France and that St.

Therese herself was so devoted to this that she added the title to her name at the time she took the habit. This is why we often see St. Therese referred to as St.

Therese of the Holy Face.

1910: On April 27, 1910, Pope Saint Pius X approves the Feast of the Image of the Holy Face, with Rite of greater Double in the Third Feria, after the Sunday of Quinquagesima (Shrove Tuesday) for the diocese of Cambrai, France.

Today: Unfortunately, the Holy Face devotion is largely forgotten. In the revelations to Sister Mary of St. Peter, Our Lord was very specific in stating the extreme importance of this devotion for making reparation to God, for holding back the justice of God during the evils of our day, and for obtaining the resolution to problems in our families. ■ _________________

Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_of_St_Peter holyfacedevotion.com/revelations.htm holyface.org.uk/content/srpierina.htm

St. Therese loved this devotion

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 15

The Last Word….

Is The Beast Slouching Towards Bethlehem?

By Father Celatus

Christmas is such a wonderful Season of the year, with many family traditions that are very dear to us. Many of us were fortunate to have grown up in a time when Christmas was less commercialized and family traditions were strong.

My parents had grown up in the depression era and that made Christmas all the more dear to them, as a respite from otherwise hard times. We always had a ten-foot tree to hold the handmade ornaments going back generations in the family and a simple but beautiful Nativity scene displayed on the mantel.

It had been a gift from my father to my mother on their first Christmas together.

No doubt my enduring fondness for Nativity scenes goes back to childhood memories. Long ago I was in Rome for Christmas and I brought back a Nativity set for my young nephews. But before I would let the youngest nephew touch it, I made him identify each figure. He did well with nearly all of them: Baby Jesus, Mary, an Angel, Shepherds and the Magi. But he was stumped on Saint Joseph. After a while he beamed and declared, "It’s Captain Hook!" No doubt the walking staff with its hooked top confused him.

I very much doubt that Captain Hook was anywhere near the original Christmas scene, though his real life evil counterpart King Herod sent his soldiers to Bethlehem under orders to murder the infant Christ Child.

Speaking of figures which were NOT at the scene of the original Nativity, so far as the Bible records and common decency dictates, there was not a naked man lying near the manger, begging for some clothing.

But you would think that there was a naked man present shortly after the birth of Christ, based upon the presepio— Nativity scene—which is now displayed in the Piazza of Saint Peter in Rome.

In a lame attempt to integrate some of the corporal works of mercy into the Nativity scene, the FrancisVatican settled upon a nude figure more scantily clad than a newborn infant. One is reminded of the sacrilegious homoerotic painting a notable Archbishop had painted in his cathedral prior to his recent appointment to the Vatican.

In fact, the homoerotic nudes painted in the cathedral and the nude placed in the nativity are clearly cut from the same cloth—and we don’t mean swaddling!

This is no ordinary naked man, after all.

With his chiseled features, groomed hair and ripped body he looks more GQ than homeless. Even Facebook has banned the Vatican Nativity scene, citing its policy against "sexually suggestive or provocative" material.

How paradoxical that the practice of displaying figures of the Nativity originated with Saint Francis of Assisi, namesake of Francis of Rome. Saint Bonaventure wrote this about the original Nativity scene:

It happened in the third year before his death, that in order to excite the inhabitants of Grecio to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion, [St. Francis] determined to keep it with all possible solemnity; and lest he should be accused of lightness or novelty, he asked and obtained the permission of the sovereign Pontiff.

Then he prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed. The brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise. The man of God [St. Francis] stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem.

A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Grecio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep. This vision of the devout soldier is credible, not only by reason of the sanctity of him that saw it, but by reason of the miracles which afterwards confirmed its truth. For example, of Francis, if it be considered by the world, is doubtless sufficient to excite all hearts which are negligent in the faith of Christ; and the hay of that manger, being preserved by the people, miraculously cured all diseases of cattle, and many other pestilences; God thus in all things glorifying his servant, and witnessing to the great efficacy of his holy prayers by manifest prodigies and miracles.

What irony that whereas Saint Francis went to great lengths to obtain permission of the pope of his time to display the Nativity scene, lest he be accused of novelty, the pope who took the name of this Saint clearly revels in novelty; in this case with the novel inclusion of a homoerotic nude at the Nativity. If anyone doubts that the FrancisVatican is rife with heterodoxy and homosexuality, just gaze upon their presepio!

Nearly 100 years ago, in the aftermath of the First World War, William Butler Yeats wrote his poem, The Second Coming. Remnant readers will no doubt agree that this poem seems more relevant today than ever: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

As we suffer through the most wretched pontificate in Church history, one wonders if the approaching birth of the rough beast is closer than ever, with Jorge preparing the way. To the FrancisVatican perverts who conceived and now approve of the sacrilegious Nativity scene, we say, "Merry Christmas, you filthy animals," quoting from Home Alone. But to Remnant readers, we wish you a very Merry Christmas! ■

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Sun, 31 Dec 2017 | Interview | Page 15

Cardinal Burke to Michael Matt: "Amoris Not an Exercise of Magisterium" (Now what?)

By Michael J. Matt

In my interview of Raymond Cardinal Burke less than one year ago, I asked His Eminence to clarify what, exactly, is the level of authoritative weight of Pope Francis’s post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

Given that Pope Francis has, since that interview took place, attempted to make the Argentine bishops’ interpretation of AL ‘magisterial’-an interpretation that allows public adulterers to receive Holy Communion-Cardinal Burke’s reply to my question on January 9th of this year would seem to take on new relevancy.

It appears less than two minutes into this interview (The relevant part is transcribed below): https://www.

youtube.com/watch?v=OcDFehYqkt0

Michael Matt: How authoritative is Amoris Laetitia, and are we talking merely about scandal, or do these problematic paragraphs savor of heresy on some level?

Cardinal Burke: The very form of AL, and actually the words of the Pope within the document, indicate that it is not an exercise of the papal magisterium, and the way the document necessarily is read, as with every document, [should be] in the light of the constant teaching and practice of the Church. And so, the statements in AL which are in accord with the Church’s constant teaching and practice, certainly are very fine, but there are a number of statements that are, at best, confusing, and that must be clarified.

Now, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, made it very clear to the Catholic News Service on December 5 what the Pope is up to: "The fact that the pope requested that his letter and the interpretations of the Buenos Aires bishops be published in the AAS means that His Holiness has given these documents a particular qualification that elevates them to the level of being official teachings of the church. While the content of the pope’s letter itself does not contain teachings on faith and morals, it does point toward the interpretations of the Argentine bishops and confirms them as authentically reflecting his own mind. Thus together the two documents became the Holy Father’s authentic magisterium for the whole church."

What Cardinal Burke rightly describes as lacking in any magisterial weight whatsoever—and, in fact, in dire need of clarification and correction— has by papal fiat been declared magisterial, and thus binding on us all. Francis made it clear that the Argentine bishops’ interpretation of AL allowing public adulterers to receive Holy Communion "explains precisely the meaning of Chapter VIII of ‘Amoris Laetitia.’ There are no other interpretations."

I would imagine this outrageous overreach of papal authority on the Pope’s part would make it ominously clear to Cardinal Burke that the time has come to issue his public correction of Pope Francis’s erroneous teaching.

The moment, it would seem, has come. Cardinal Burke, please and in God’s Holy Name, we beg you to act now -- before Pope Francis succeeds in tearing the Church in half completely.

We fear that your silence now, in the face of this latest papal travesty, may suggest consent to the claim that Amoris Laetitia is magisterial, and thus prove more damaging than if you had never raised your voice at all.

We thank God for the courage you’ve shown in defending His Church thus far, and we pray he will continue to bless and protect you as you do what must now be done. ■

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