Brother André posted the article, “To Fly From the Cross,” in his column below from the Remnant file, with a link to author Jean Ousset’s relevant and insightful letter. This is my reply to an email request for commentary:
Tim, I thought Jean Ousset’s letter was superb. Brother Andre posted a link to it.
I got so much out of the letter I don’t know where to begin. By 1973 the enemies of the Faith, within the Church, had taken off their masks as they emerged within the ranks. They had been festering underground for half a century, growing more liberal with each decade. As far back as 1903 the Church almost had a Freemason elected pope in Cardinal Rampolla. Instead God blessed the Church with Saint Pope Pius X. And, I’ve read somewhere, that Benedict XV, who succeeded Pius X was Rampolla’s “disciple.” Some Church historians say that Benedict’s election was the college of cardinals’ way of rebuking the good Catholic emperor, Franz Josef, for using his veto privilege to oppose Rampolla (state interference with Church affairs) because it had been made known to the emperor that the cardinal had been initiated into the subversive secret Order of Eastern Templars. It would seem that the sacred college had no factual information at the time (1911) as to the exact reason that the Hapsburg emperor exercised his veto privilege, and they were a bit upset at the interference. The information that was circulated (re. masonic connections) was probably tossed up as rumor. In any event, Saint Pius X nullified the four century-old imperial privilege
One has to have a knowledge of history in order to deal with the realty of the “dark disorder.” Ousset’s point was that in every age of the Church’s history the children of darkness outnumbered the children of light. And the latter have an obligation to confront those in darkness, or at least pray for them, that they may come to the light before death. In God’s inscrutable Providence our own salvation is often the fruit of our patience in dealing with sinners who are close to us, and our patience in defending the Church against those who persecute Her directly. We could not confront obstinate sinners, nor challenge them, if we despaired of any hope for their conversion, or in the worst case, despaired of ourselves.
The virtue of hope can be lost by two extremes: presumption and despair. Doctor Josef Pieper wrote in one of his books that despair destroys hope by way of making the soul senile; whereas presumption attacks hope by reducing a man to the infantile.
The man who cancelled his subscription to Ousset’s journal was dying prematurely in his despair and anger. He had no knowledge of history and no knowledge of theology to sustain him. His soul had atrophied. Deflated of that spiritual vitality, which always accompanies hope, he could not even pray for help, for himself, or for others.
Ousset, I think, deliberately avoided saying explicitly that the Church was going through the “worst of times” in 1973, but it certainly could be inferred from his passionate interpretation of the age of the Mystical Body in its extended duration of the life of Christ in every time. Today the Church is surely enduring, I should say re-living, the Passion. She has been chastised for the sins of her members, but it was fitting that the Head, the Savior and Redeemer, should suffer first. He was abandoned by His Apostles; the Church is being abandoned by so many of Her shepherds. She is being beaten, scourged, and, at this moment, mocked and spit upon by Her enemies, within and without. She has yet to be crucified (Fatima vision?) The “darkest hour” will be on the cross: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Ousset’s letter helped me appreciate the infused supernatural virtue of hope, which must manifest itself in Catholic action. That is the name of his masterful book, Action. Hope is an affirmation of God’s truth and fidelity to His promises, and it is an affirmation of ourselves, of who we are, made in His image and likeness, and “capable” of becoming what God intends us to be. Even in the darkest of times, the demons, or our own fallen tendencies, cannot prevent us from being saints. The saints were not negative, they kept their joy alive even while fighting blasphemous heresies and suffering through outrageous scandals. They were sorrowful and joyful at the same time. Ousset, I think, is calling for this scandalized subscriber, not to be a scandal himself, and so to regain his spiritual balance: “Be angry and sin not” (Psalm 4:5).
What a sad thing it is for someone to live and die in despair. As my friend Robert Hickson often says (and I paraphrase): Hope is the virtue that gives us the strength to flare out, not burn out. And none flared out more brilliantly, though the world would think them pitiful fools, than Christ’s holy martyrs.
Finally, there is Mary our Exemplar of Holy Hope. No one sustained hope more perfectly, in the darkest of hours and the gravest of agony, than she. Again Josef Pieper: “Purity is the unreserved openness of the entire being, from which alone the word can be spoken: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord’ (Luke 1:38). This supreme realization of purity is expressed in one of the most perfect . . . German poems in an image of immaculate beauty and radiant authenticity: ‘Untroubled, the undaunted rose / stays open in hope.’”
