On The Perception of Beauty

(Rome, Feb 1, 1998, Faculty of Philosophy, Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum)

INTRODUCTION

Anyone who has contemplated a masterpiece of art and felt that you could stay and gaze upon it for hours without tiring, or who has found real joy in a piece of music that seemed to elevate the soul, or found peace in the blazing symphony presented by nature in every sunset, knows that a textbook knowledge of beauty doesn’t seem to fully explain these aesthetic experiences.

What is beauty? How do we really know beauty? What are its characteristics? Is beauty really “in the eye of the beholder”, that is, only a feeling, each person choosing for himself what is beautiful? Or is it strictly objective, with known criteria?

These are some of the questions that moved me to choose this theme for my elaboratum. They pose the philosophical problem to be reflected on in this paper. The beautiful, in abstract, and in its concrete manifestations in the world around us, is intriguing to man and is one of the few things that really make a man stop and ponder a moment about something “higher” than his daily distractions.

In this study I have followed a simple outline, first introducing the beautiful and its definitions commonly stated, and its base in being. Then follows a part on our knowledge of beauty, both transcendental and perceivable, not that I wish to introduce a strict separation, but as a means to treat the theme with order. Perceivable should be understood as including sensible and intellectual beauty. I will cover a little both intuition and cognitive knowledge of beauty. Then follows an explanation of the aesthetic experience and knowledge, and some of the characteristics of a beautiful object. Then I go into a little more depth with respect to one of the means through which we know beauty, i.e., knowledge through connaturality, as mentioned by  Thomas Aquinas.

One of the interesting points that I found in this research was the lack of consensus among authors, not so much in the main doctrines, but in the finer shades of explaining them.  This leaves room for one to explore and think with a sense of personal freedom perhaps a bit wider than in other themes.

My aim, what I hope to achieve, is to put together in one paper the path available to man to know the beauty of reality, transcendental, intellectual, and sensible. Thus although it is not within the scope of this paper to go into extreme depth on these aspects, it is not because the theme does not merit such in depth research, but is due to the extension of this work.

1. THE DEFINITION OF BEAUTY 

1.1. Perceivable beauty 

Our daily experience gives us ample evidence that there are many beings which strike us as beautiful, and equally so many that lack any sensible beauty. In order to determine what it is that makes certain beings beautiful and others less so, I think we can turn to the common explanation of  Thomas Aquinas that the beautiful is, “id cuius apprehensio placet”[1] or also, “quod visum placet”.[2] The terms apprehensio and visum are to be taken in a broad sense as referring to seeing, perceiving or understanding.

In these definitions we see two aspects which reveal the nature of beauty: apprehension and pleasure. The first, apprehension, shows the relation of an object to the intellectual and cognitive faculties of man. This apprehension consists in a certain intuition of the external and internal senses, always united to the intellect.[3] It is an immediate apprehension of a singular being by contact with the senses. From the sensible species formed, the intellect then abstracts the quiddity and forms the universal concept of the object. In summary this is what is meant by apprehension. It is not only of the exterior form of the object but also of the essence.

The two go together, the pleasure is to be understood as deriving from the knowing, there is an immediateness in it. We saw that this apprehension is accompanied by a certain pleasure in the act of perceiving the object. The apprehension of the object brings with it the joy in the same object. This is the relation of the object to the senses, both external and internal, and ultimately to the will which perceives the goodness of reality. Once the object is removed the pleasure ends and is replaced by desire for the object now absent. We see that the mere idea of the object in the mind is not sufficient to provoke this joy, it must be accompanied by the apprehension of the senses. Thus we can call these the two poles of detecting the beautiful, each one referring to the other: apprehension and pleasure, or ultimately, the object in relation to the intellect and to the will. 

1.2. Transcendental beauty 

The dialectic process of the idea of being reveals a gradual series of discoveries of the transcendental properties of being, from unum to verum to bonum. The oneness of being is found in the indivision of being[4], the truth and the good are both revealed in the relation of the intellect and the will with being[5]. By integrating the concepts of true and good, seeing them united in relation to the intellect, we end the dialectic process of the idea of being in the beautiful. This relation to the intellect and will shows the roots of beauty in being, as one of the transcendental properties of being, convertible with being. In this level beings are beautiful precisely according to their existence, i.e., its act of being is beautiful in relation to the mind which constitutes the relative transcendental property of Beauty. Every being, in as much as it participates in the totality of being, is beautiful, since being as being is true and good and thus beautiful. The beautiful is the perfection and union of the transcendentals[6].

KNOWLEDGE OF BEAUTY 

2.1. Intuition of beauty 

We look again to the definition of beautiful by  Thomas Aquinas, “id cuius apprehensio placet”[7]. By referring to the word apprehensio (as seeing, understanding, etc.)  in the definition, the perception of beauty is put in the intellectual order, for no abstraction ends in the senses. But precisely with the word pleasure (including also gaudium of the mind) it is referred to the senses external or internal, as we mentioned before, not simply as the starting point but as a required presence accompanying the intellectual activity. The perception of the beautiful is a union of the spiritual and corporeal faculties. With our reasoning abilities we can see that all things that have being are beautiful, but this is a purely intelligible reasoning. What we actually see in daily life is that some beings are actually ugly to us. For us to see the beauty of all reality would require an intuitive manner of knowing, we would have to be able to perceive intellectually the essence of the object without abstraction - as angels do. But our intellect knows only discursively, by abstraction from the senses. Our intellectual activity is always universal, based on universal concepts of the reality around us. The only manner of intuition that we are capable of as souls united to the body is that of the senses. The senses apprehend by immediate contact with their object, they “know” by intuition, without mediation. Thus by including the word placet in the definition we can say that at least on the sensible level to perceive beauty requires intuition. The mind apprehends, but united to the senses. Therefore when it is stated that the participation of the senses is necessary during the entire time we are perceiving a beautiful object, and that the understand or seeing of the intellect is the bearer of this pleasure, this means that in the perception of beauty we approach intuitive knowledge. 

2.2. Beauty and the cognitive sense 

In the study of our manner of abstraction we see that in between the senses and the intellect are the internal senses. The highest of these is what we call the cognitive sense. Considered in relation to our knowing in general, the cognitive sense is as a bridge. It is a type of “intellect” because with it we decide and choose behavior in concrete circumstances, and it is “sense” because it is the sum of the sensible experience and always remains in the particular[8]. This same faculty belongs to animals and is used by them to evaluate and appraise a given situation. In man the cognitive sense enables us to make the abstract concrete, and the universal particular. Uniting in this way the intellect and the senses, it is likened to the manifestation of being (esse) in action (agire). [9] 

If we return then to what we said about the perception of beauty being the union of knowing by the intellect with the sensible or intellectual pleasure, it is easy to see why it is possible to basically attribute almost all the aesthetic activity of man to the cognitive sense as a specific and originating faculty[10]. It is the place where the apprehensio and the placere co-penetrate each other. 

2.3. The aesthetic experience 

This aesthetic activity has its summit in the so-called aesthetic experience, the manner by which we attain the maximum cognitive harmony between subject and object. It is the experience of oneself and the object as being connatural one with the other, and more than connatural till one seems taken beyond to something higher. The object that provokes this is the beautiful. The intellect perceives the unity, truth, and goodness of an object which is present to it, but it is abstract knowledge. It perceives them by means of reflection on the idea of being and on its relation to reality. To truly “see” it we would need intuition. But in the intellectual apprehension of the beautiful, united to the intuition of the senses, we experience this intuition in as much as it is possible in this life, (although the possibility of intellectual intuition is disputable.) It is the most perfect knowledge possible to us as beings united to the body, for it complements abstraction. The senses and the intellect penetrate together; the senses become “knowing”, and the intellect “senses”[11].  Once we are separated from the body after death all of our knowledge will be intuitive, and in this sense will be aesthetic, but this enters into the area of faith.

But we are not the only participant in creating this experience. The aesthetic experience, this co-penetration of the senses and the intellect, is provoked by the object contemplated. Beauty is not simply “in the eye of the beholder” if this is meant that it is solely determined by the subject. Thus the object must be such that it simultaneously pleases both the intellect and the senses, each one finding that which is connatural with it in the object, and that which is beyond its connaturality. The intellect looks for the order and takes pleasure in the order found in the object, an order of the form of the object, the mind grasping this form. This is the objective side of beauty. But the senses find their pleasure in the diverse external qualities, and this may differ from subject to subject, due to the variation to which the senses are subjected, giving beauty its subjective side.

Thus on the perceivable level the beautiful is found in an object in which the order occurs within the qualities that please the senses[12]. (But also on the transcendental level beauty is not completely unperceivable, for nothing is so contingent that it doesn’t contain something of the absolute.) It is in this way that the beautiful differs from the good, by the addition of the truth of the object, and is thus called splendor veri or verum delectans[13].

Therefore the aesthetic knowledge, or aesthetic experience, whose object is the beautiful, and which is provoked in the subject by the object, reveals the connaturality that exists between the whole mind (intellect and will), and the whole of reality (being). Thus the subject becomes aware of his own unity when he becomes aware of his connaturality with the object[14].

At the same time the subject becomes aware of the truth and intelligibility of reality at a level that is fuller than abstract knowledge alone, since in perceiving the beautiful he “approaches” intuitive knowledge, or in our case as incarnated spirits, quasi intuitive.

It reveals also the goodness of reality because the aesthetic experience takes place in the presence of the object which provokes it, and creates desire for the presence of the object when it is removed or absent[15]. Only in the presence of the beautiful is our connaturality with it revealed or confirmed. In the following numbers I will analyze this order and pleasurable qualities that belong to a beautiful object. 

2.4. Characteristics of beauty 

Thomas Aquinas describes the beautiful object as a fusion of three aspects: integrity or perfection, proportion, and clarity[16]. 

Integrity and perfection mean free from defects and mutilation, that the object has all the parts that normally belong to it, (or that it does not have parts that don’t belong). This integrity by itself does not make the object beautiful, and even in some cases a beautiful object or work of art could be lacking some perfection due to it and still be beautiful, if the lack is such that it doesn’t impede the mind from completing the image by using the imagination[17]. Think of the Venus of Milo and other greek and roman statues, so many of which are missing parts previously in place. They lack integrity but they surely are not for this reason ugly. From this aspect of perfection and integrity belonging to the beautiful we get also the notion of the Ideal. That for which one strives for is the Ideal, conceived as the perfection of its nature, lacking nothing and thus worthy of imitation.

The proportion of the object means the equilibrium of the qualities and is often summed up in various subcategories such as symmetry referring to vision, harmony referring to audition, and rhythm referring to movement. All of these terms are then applied analogously to many objects, including the cosmos as a whole[18].

Lastly clarity is the third aspect. Clarity means a certain relation with light and thus with the sense of sight. What we perceive above all with our sense of sight, when there is proper illumination, is color, and the more light there is the brighter and more vivid the colors seem[19].

But the aspect of clarity refers not only to sight but also to the intellect. We often make the comparison of knowing with “seeing”. All intellection seeks to dispel confusion and make its object clearer, or “enlighten” the thinker. We could even say that the intellect is like an internal light, and indeed if we look to the philosophies of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas we see that there is this aspect of light attributed to the intellect. It is what they called the intellectus agens which illuminates the sensible species and makes possible the passage of an object from the sensible to the intelligible[20]. Therefore an object can also be said to have clarity if it is so ordered as to be easily intelligible.

These three aspects work together and are all interrelated among themselves within the unity of the object. They are also related to the form of the object from which they receive their existence. In this way it is seen that they have their ultimate root in the being of the object, as an essence composed of form and material. The sensible beauty has its base in the ontological beauty[21].

---

   [1]      ST I-II, 27, 1 ad 3.

   [2]      ST I, 5, 4 ad 1.

   [3]     Cf. A. Lobato,  Ser y belleza, Ed. Herder, Barcelona 1965, p.69.

   [4]     Cf. F. O’Farrell, Metafisica Generale, P.U. Gregoriana, Rome 1971, p.41.

   [5]      Ibid., pp. 56, 65.

   [6]      Ibid., p.93.

   [7]      ST I-II, 27, 1 ad 3.

   [8]     Cf. S. Babolin, L’uomo e il suo volto,  P.U. Gregoriana, Rome 1993, p.215.

   [9]      Ibid,. p.215

   [10]      Ibid,. p. 215-216

   [11]     Cf. F. O’Farrell, Metafisica Generale, p.88-89.

   [12]      Ibid,. p.90.

   [13]     Cf. A. Lobato, Ser y belleza,  Ed. Herder, Barcelona 1965, p.122.

   [14]      Cf. note 15.

   [15]     Cf. F. O’Farrell, Metafisica Generale, p. 91 :O’Farrell calls aesthetic knowledge the means to know the maximum extension of the transcendentales of unity, truth and goodness. The unity due to the connaturality; truth, because intuition is more perfect way of knowing than abstraction; and good, because the desire for a good that is absent is enough to verify its foundation in being. But refering to the beautiful he says that to perceive it by means of the aesthetic experience demands its presence. 

   [16]      ST I, 39, 8.

   [17]     Cf. A. Lobato, Ser y belleza, p.88.

   [18]      Ibid,. p. 93-94.

   [19]      Ibid,. p. 97.

   [20]      Ibid,. p. 98. (One could see Aristotle, De Anima III,5, 430a10 and ST I, 79, 3-5.)

   [21]      Ibid,. p. 103.

Dear Troubled Catholics, a letter by Ralph Martin

(Taken from Ralph Martin's page with permission to pass around)

Ralph Martin | July 31, 2018

Dear Troubled Catholics,

I have never seen so many “ordinary Catholics”—who usually never follow or hear about Church news—as deeply troubled as I have seen them in response to the recent revelations about the retired archbishop of Washington, DC.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was asked by the pope to resign from his membership in the College of Cardinals and ordered to live in seclusion until a canonical trial can be held to verify the validity of charges of sexual abuse and harassment made against him. After the first brave person came forward (whose accusations were found credible by the Archdiocese of New York Review Board), more and more followed. The climate of fear among many of our clergy—the fear of being punished or marginalized if they report sexual immorality among their fellow clergy or leaders—is starting to break. Cardinal McCarrick is now known as Archbishop McCarrick.

What has been so disturbing to so many people is the fact that there had been numerous warnings to various church officials that he was a homosexual predator, harassing many seminarians, priests, and young boys, for many years, but nothing had ever been done about it, and he was continually promoted. Even after a delegation of priests and lay people went to Rome to warn the Vatican about the situation, he was promoted. Even after a leading Dominican priest wrote a letter to Cardinal O’Malley, nothing was done. Even after lawsuits accusing him of homosexual sexual harassment in two of his previous dioceses had been settled with financial awards, he was still promoted. And not only that, he became a key advisor to Pope Francis and offered advice on whom to appoint as bishops in the United States!

One young Catholic mother with two boys who was open to the priesthood for them said to me that she now has grave concerns about ever having one of her sons enter the seminary, given the corruption that has been revealed.

Another said she could no longer see anyone joining the Catholic Church, due to such bad leadership. She lamented about the difficulty this presents for evangelization.

Another said that seven people from her very small, rural parish had left the parish, because sexual sin is never spoken of and there is almost an exclusive emphasis on political issues. She now fears that even more will leave.

Another said that the only way this is ever going to change is if we simply stop giving to the bishops’ national collections and to our own dioceses and parishes’ collections, unless they are led by bishops who are willing to call a spade a spade and govern accordingly. To this day, there are quite a number of “gay friendly” parishes in even “good dioceses,” where those afflicted with homosexual temptation are not encouraged to live chaste lives or offered effective correction, but instead are confirmed in their sexual activity. It seems many bishops are afraid to tackle the local “homosexual lobbies” and choose to turn a blind eye.This past weekend at Mass, the priest giving the sermon was more upset than I’ve ever seen him about the unfolding scandal. The Gospel was about how the weeds and the wheat grow up together and will only finally be separated at the judgment. It was unclear what the priest was actually saying, but we are certainly not called to “enable the weeds.” And shepherds in particular have the obligation to admonish the sinner and remove from ministry those who refuse to preach the truth and who encourage others in wrong doing. Yes, we will always have sin, but as Jesus said,

“whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Mt 18:6).
There have been a veritable deluge of articles that have appeared from highly respected lay Catholics and priests saying that “enough is enough,” and we need to stop the cover-ups and get to the bottom of who is implicated in promoting men like this and covering up for them. We do.

In 2002, when the American bishops approved their “charter” that attempted to respond to the many cases of priest pedophilia that had come to light by that time, they conspicuously exempted themselves from their “zero tolerance” policy. Many priests have told me that they felt “thrown under the bus” by the bishops, who conveniently didn’t adopt policies to deal with their own tolerance of immoral behavior, cover-ups that allowed the pedophilia to go on for many years, or in some cases, their own immoral behavior. Another disturbing thing about the 2002 Charter is that—despite pleas to not ignore the fact that this is primarily a homosexual scandal, since most of the victims were adolescent boys rather than true children—the bishops decided not to tackle “the elephant in the room.” Could it be because they knew some of their brother bishops/cardinals were implicated, and they didn’t want to face the mess of cleaning it up? Now this refusal to acknowledge the “homosexual lobby,” as Pope Benedict termed it, is coming home to roost.

But there’s not just a huge homosexual problem in the Church; unfortunately, heterosexual sin and financial malfeasance are common in many places as well. In some countries, a significant percentage of priests are living with concubines or fathering children by vulnerable women and giving scandal to the faithful, who often know about it. This is the case in Uganda, from which I have recently returned, and in many other countries as well. In these situations, the “protection” of the priests and the frequent disregard for their victims—the women and their children—cries out for justice.
And so, once again because of the pressure of lawsuits and the press, the bishops are talking about “developing new policies” that would apply to bishops. As a colleague at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, Michigan, has said: “Isn’t it clear enough from the Gospel that covering up immoral behavior is itself wicked? Why do we need new policies when the teaching of Jesus and the apostles is so clear?” Can the words of the Old Testament prophets and Jesus Himself against false shepherds be any clearer or more devastating? (See Jeremiah 23:1-6; Matthew 23, etc.)

The Archbishop McCarrick case may prove to be the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” It may make the bureaucratic, carefully worded, evasive statements that have come from our leaders finally address sin and repentance, instead of the mere policies and processes they typically focus on. Could it be—finally—that the revelation of the long-term sexual harassment of seminarians and priests that never stopped Archbishop McCarrick’s rise in the hierarchy will be so totally repugnant that real repentance may actually start to happen? I have never prayed more for the pope and our leaders than I have in the last several years, and we all must continue to do so. More about that later.

Unfortunately, the Archbishop McCarrick case is certainly only the “tip of the iceberg.” The cumulative effect of revelation after revelation of immorality in high places is devastating. First, a number of years ago, a cardinal from Austria was forced to resign over homosexual activity; then, more recently, a cardinal from Scotland resigned over sexual harassment of seminarians and priests; and then the archbishop of Guam underwent a canonical trial in Rome over the sexual abuse of minors; and now cardinals in Chile (one of whom is on the pope’s Council of Cardinals that oversees reform) are under heavy suspicion for covering up homosexual abuse in their country. In fact, the whole bishops’ conference of Chile, acknowledging complicity in not taking seriously reports of a bishop’s cover up of sexual abuse, recently gave their resignations to the pope, and he has so far accepted several of them. The pope himself at first stubbornly backed the appointment of this bishop and dismissed the victims’ pleas as “calumny” and “gossip.” And before we could absorb this news, there was news of an archbishop in Australia getting a prison sentence for covering up abuse on the part of a priest. And just today, as I am writing this, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered the release of a grand jury report implicating more than 300 “predator priests” in six of the eight Pennsylvania dioceses involved in the sexual abuse of minors over many years.

Unfortunately, the rot is wide and deep and years of covering up abuse (and the concomitant reluctance to really preach the Gospel and call people to faith and repentance) and its ultimate exposure have injured the faith of millions. How shocking and tragic was it to see tens of thousands of Irish people in the streets of Dublin wildly celebrating that they could now legally kill babies!!!! Just when the Irish bishops needed to speak most strongly on fundamental moral issues, their credibility was destroyed when it was finally exposed that they had covered up abuse for decades. Satan is indeed like that wild boar Scripture talks about that rampages though the vineyard of the Lord because the hedges of protection have been destroyed (Ps 80:12-13). The corruption, ineptitude, and cowardice runs wide and deep, and its effects on the eternal salvation of millions, and the destiny of nations, is devastating.

Most recently, Cardinal Maradiaga of Honduras has seen his auxiliary bishop resign over homosexual and financial impropriety, and forty seminarians in his diocese publish a letter asking him to please root out the homosexual network in his seminary. This cardinal is Pope Francis’ chief advisor, the head of his “Council of Nine” that works closely with the pope in bringing about reform in Rome, and is mentioned as a possible successor to Pope Francis.

But continual reports of ongoing financial and sexual scandals suggest reform doesn’t seem to be happening. Recently, a male prostitute in Italy published the names and photos of sixty priests who frequent his services—with scarcely any comment from the shepherds. And the homosexual orgy in the apartment of a Vatican cardinal, used by his secretary, was met with a “no comment” by the Vatican press office. And then we hear also of a monsignor in the papal nuncio’s office in Washington, D.C., who suddenly leaves the country and is put on trial in the Vatican for trafficking in child pornography and is given a five year prison sentence.

I didn’t plan to discuss this whole situation, but it came up this summer when the thirty priests in my class at the seminary wanted to discuss Pope Francis’ leadership and the McCarrick scandal. We all agreed that Pope Francis has said and done some wonderful things (I teach his Apostolic Exhortation The Joy of the Gospel in one of my classes), but he also has said and done some things that are confusing and seem to have led to a growth of confusion and disunity in the Church. How can German and Polish bishops approach the question of whether divorced and remarried couples can receive Communion without getting an annulment in opposite ways, and the Church still retain an ability to speak to the contemporary culture with one voice? It can’t. And how long can Church officials speak about the “positive values” of “irregular relationships” until the average Catholic comes to believe that we no longer believe the words of Jesus that fornicators, adulterers, and those who actively practice homosexuality will not enter the kingdom of God unless they repent? How many still believe that there is really a hell and that, unless we repent from such serious sins before we die, we will go there? Have we ever heard from leading churchmen, even in Rome, in recent years, that adultery, fornication and homosexual relations are not only “irregular,” but gravely sinful? Has the creeping “universalism” (the belief that virtually everyone will be saved) so undermined the holy fear of God and belief in His clear word, which has been transmitted faithfully all these centuries and is found intact in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that people have become “understanding” about persisting in grave sin with no fear of God or of hell?

Has false compassion and presumption on God’s mercy replaced true love, which is based on truth, and the only appropriate response to God’s mercy—faith and repentance?

And what are we to make of the fact that so many of those advising the pope have questionable fidelity to the truth? How can we have confidence in Cardinal Maradiaga as the head of his Council of Cardinals when he is accused of financial impropriety (which he denies); he chose an active homosexual as his auxiliary bishop; and he allowed a homosexual network to grow up in his seminary, dismissing attempts to appeal to him to clean up the mess as unsubstantiated gossip? How can we have confidence in the pope’s main theological advisor, a theologian from Argentina who is most known for his book The Art of the Kiss, or the pope’s main Italian theological advisor, who is known for his subtle dissent from the Church’s teaching in the area of sexuality and who tried to insert texts in the synods on the family that pushed the document in a permissive direction? And how can we have confidence in the recently appointed head of the John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family—an archbishop who commissioned a mural in his former cathedral in an Italian diocese from a homosexual artist who included homo-erotic themes in the mural, including a portrait of the archbishop in an ambiguous pose?

One godly woman just asked me last night if it was OK for her to be upset with what was happening. I sadly said yes, of course it is.

How can we passively endure such corruption that runs so wide and deep? It is right to make our views known. It is right and necessary. But even more so, it is necessary to pray and offer sacrifices for the Church and her leaders at this time. It is necessary to pray that genuine reform, rooted in real repentance and an embrace of all the truths of the faith, would come out of this awful situation and that the Church, more deeply purified and humbled, may shine forth with the radiance of the face of Christ.

But it is going to be a long way from here to there. Grave damage has been done to the credibility of the Church, and more will leave. Grave damage has been done to many of the flock, and reparation must be made; public repentance is called for. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote when he was a young priest, the Church will have to become smaller and more purified before it can again be a light to the world. The Church is going through a radical purification under the chastising hand of God, but already we can see a remnant of fervent renewal appearing all over the world, which is a sign indeed of hope and the renewal to come.

And so, what can we do as we continue to pray for the pope and our leaders that God may give them the wisdom and courage to deal with the root of the rot and bring about a real renewal of holiness and evangelization in the Church?

    »We need to go about our daily lives, trying to live each day in a way pleasing to God, loving Him and loving our neighbor, including the neighbor in our own families. We need to look to ourselves, lest we fall.

    »We need to remember that even though we have this treasure in earthen vessels (or as some translations put it, “cracked pots”), the treasure is no less the treasure. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater! Baby Jesus is the treasure, and He is still as present as ever and still as ready to receive all who come to Him. And the Mass! Every day, He is willing to come to us in such a special way. Let’s attend daily Mass even more frequently, to offer the sacrifice of Jesus’ death and resurrection to God the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, for the salvation of souls and the purification of the Church.

    »We need to remember that the Catholic Church is indeed founded by Christ and, despite all problems, has within it the fullness of the means of salvation. Where else can we go? Nowhere; this is indeed our Mother and Home, and she needs our love, our prayers, and our persevering in the way of holiness more than ever.

    »We need to remember that there are many truly holy and dedicated bishops and priests, and we must pray for them and support them. They need and deserve our support.

    »We need to remember that this isn’t the first time such grave problems have beset the Church. In the fourteenth century, St. Catherine of Siena bemoaned the “stench of sin” coming from the papal court and prophesied that even the demons were disgusted by the homosexual activity he had tempted priests into and the cover up by their superiors! (See chapters 124-125 of Catherine of Siena’s The Dialogue.)

That isn’t to say that we don’t need to take seriously and do all we can in response to the grave scandal we are facing in our time. And yet we need to remember that all this is happening under the providence of God, and He has a plan to bring good out of it. It was even prophesied strongly in Mary’s apparitions in Akita, Japan. Jesus is still Lord and will use the current grave problems to bring about good.

And finally, I’m beginning to see why the Lord has impressed on me so strongly in the past year the urgent need to heed the appeals of Our Lady of Fatima. Indeed, as Mary said,

“Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them.”

Let’s continue to pray and offer sacrifices for the conversion of sinners and as reparation for sin, and let’s pray the rosary daily as Mary requested, for peace in the world and true renewal in the Church.

Your brother in Christ,