Category: Church History

7 min read

Church History

Father Pierre-Jean De Smet

D.D. Emmons

January 18, 2023 7:40 am January 18, 2023

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7 min read

If you lived in the United States during the 19th century and asked anyone, other than a Native American, to name the most famous person in the American West, the…

If you lived in the United States during the 19th century and asked anyone, other than a Native American, to name the most famous person in the American West, the answer might be Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson or explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

But if you asked a Native American the same question, the response would likely be the “black robe” Father Pierre-Jean De Smet. Perhaps no individual in the 19th century had more impact on Native Americans than this Catholic missionary.

Born in 1801, Pierre-Jean De Smet began seminary training as a teenager in his native Belgium. Excited by the possibility of being a Catholic missionary in the New World, he immigrated to the United States at the age of 20 and entered the Jesuit Novitiate at White Marsh, Md. In 1823, he moved to the Jesuit facility in St. Louis, where, four years after arrival, he completed his priestly training and was ordained.

In 1826, Pope Leo XII established the Diocese of St Louis, which exceeded the size of the other nine American dioceses combined; it encompassed everything north of Louisiana and west of central Illinois. Almost all of this new diocese, especially west of the Mississippi River, was made up of remote and undiscovered land. It was along the Missouri River, in the Rocky Mountains and west toward the Pacific Ocean that Father De Smet would spend a lifetime proclaiming the Gospel of Christ to the Indians.

Eleven years after taking his priestly vows, Father De Smet was assigned to assist in the establishment of a Catholic mission, called St. Joseph, at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Here, near present-day Omaha, Neb., more than 2,000 Potawatomi Indians had been relocated from the Upper Midwest. Father De Smet spent two years among these people professing the Word of God and exposing them to Christian precepts. Although success was limited, many of these people did find new dignity, freedom and salvation in Christianity.

However, there was one problem that constantly nagged and hampered Jesuit efforts. The relocation agreement that moved the Indians to Council Bluffs stipulated that the U.S. government would monetarily compensate the Indians. White traders and merchants seemed to know of this stipulation and were quick to exploit the Indians, introducing them to the vices of the white man, including alcohol. Father De Smet and his colleagues struggled continuously to keep alcohol out of the missionary encampments, even protesting to the highest levels of government, but with little success.

In that era, the enemy of the Potawatomi was the aggressive and much larger Sioux tribe. These two tribes had frequently engaged in warfare, mostly to the Sioux’s advantage. In 1839, Father De Smet took it upon himself to end the violence. He made the trip from Council Bluffs to the Sioux encampment in the eastern Rocky Mountains, some 12 days of travel up the Missouri River. Alone and unarmed, he walked into the Sioux camp. As he found throughout all his missionary efforts, he was treated respectfully and provided great hospitality. The Indians listened to what this black robe had to say and agreed to make peace with the Potawatomi.

Father De Smet was graced with a God-given special charism that allowed him to relate and minister to Native Americans. He never offended them, never lied, never took advantage or mistreated them. In fact, he would, on numerous occasions, zealously defend their rights before presidents and congressional leaders alike. He was their benefactor at a time when many other whites regarded them as little more than savages. In the most unsanitary, foreign and remote conditions he accepted whatever charitable gifts they offered. A smelly buffalo robe was graciously accepted, or food served on a filthy plate was eagerly consumed; he found ways to fit in with people he grew to love and admire.

In 1840, after two years at Council Bluffs, Father De Smet was assigned to minister to the Flathead (or Salish) Indians, located in what is now Montana. During the several years prior to Father De Smet’s assignment, the Flatheads had made repeated trips to St. Louis seeking a black robe to come live with them and teach them about Jesus. In the spring of 1840, Father De Smet was directed to proceed to the Flathead encampment near present-day Missoula, Mont., and establish what became known as St. Mary’s Mission.

Missionary Challenges

Father De Smet, along with other Jesuits, would establish at least seven missions in the Rocky Mountains, as well as numerous smaller locations largely using the methods of their founder, St. Ignatius. This was never an easy task as the effort was plagued with danger. Just getting to the Indians took days, weeks or even months. Travel was primarily by riverboat, and those river journeys were filled with potential accidents: sand bars, tree stumps, snags, low water and unchartered shore lines. Disease, terrible weather, including tornadoes and snowstorms, forests and thickets also had to be braved. And always there was the unknown reception by the Indians, which never seemed to slow Father De Smet.

Additional aggravation came from the U.S. government, which was forever trying to force the Indians farther and farther west, to confine nomadic people to the reservation. The government also insisted on parceling up the Indians among different religious missionary groups, clearly favoring the Protestants. Perhaps the biggest detriment to all the missionaries was the idea that the noble, proud Indians would adapt to the white man’s culture — that is, they would not only be Christianized but act, dress and conform to a white man’s world. That last challenge was never fully realized.

The Jesuits would quickly discover that the harvest was plentiful but laborers were few. There was an ongoing need for funding and more black robes if their missionary effort was to succeed.

Father De Smet was up to the challenge. He raised money by selling his writings that described the Indians and the geography of the West. He went to Europe repeatedly and not only obtained funding, but convinced more Jesuits to migrate to his missions in the United States. He also petitioned U.S. Congress to support the Jesuit missionary efforts.

During his 72 years of life Father De Smet would come to know and associate with popes, Catholic superiors, presidents, members of congress, Indians from dozens of tribes and his fellow Jesuit missionaries. He would use them all for the greater glory of God.

Peace Mediator

On seven occasions over a 20-year period, Father De Smet was solicited by the U.S. government to intercede between warring Indian tribes and between conflicts of Indian tribes and the United States. One Indian tribe not willing to accept containment on a reservation, not willing to accept the white man’s infringement into their way of life, was the Sioux.

In 1862, they started a war against the United States. The army struggled to handle the situation, and once again the government asked Father De Smet to find a way to intercede and end the warring. The Jesuit, by now 67 years old, took on the assignment to stop the bloodshed and save the Indians from eventual extermination. From St. Louis, Father De Smet traveled 33 days by boat up the Missouri and then trekked another 16 days over land into south central North Dakota looking for the chief of the Sioux, Sitting Bull.

In April 1868, armed with his crucifix and black robe, he entered the Sioux camp and after a few days convinced the famous chief to send representatives to meet with government officials at Fort Rice, N.D. At face value this was a remarkable achievement, because there is little evidence that the two men had ever met. It was Father De Smet’s reputation and the Holy Spirit at work. At the conclusion of the Fort Rice conference, Father De Smet returned to St. Louis where he died on May 23, 1873, Ascension Thursday, from kidney disease.

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Church History

How Is Someone Named a Doctor of the Church?

Msgr. Charles E. Pope

January 5, 2023 8:05 am January 5, 2023

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The Doctors of the Church are teachers of the faith who have demonstrated exemplary holiness and have deepened the whole Church’s understanding of the Catholic faith. They must be officially…

The Doctors of the Church are teachers of the faith who have demonstrated exemplary holiness and have deepened the whole Church’s understanding of the Catholic faith. They must be officially declared doctors by a papal proclamation. Such men and women also are known particularly for the depth of understanding and the orthodoxy of their theological teachings.

Though their teachings are not infallible, being a “doctor” means that they contributed significantly to the formulation of Christian teaching in at least one significant area in a way that has impacted later generations.

Through the Middle Ages, the title and process of being named a doctor remained a fluid and informal one. In the 13th century, however, the Church formalized the process by which the Church could honor persons with the title and then put out the first official list of Doctors of the Church.

There are three requirements for being named a Doctor of the Church. First is great sanctity. Thus only those who have already been declared to be saints by the Church may be named a doctor. A second requirement is eminent learning. This is often demonstrated by the fact that they were known to be great teachers of the Faith. The third requirement is a proclamation by the Church. Usually, such proclamation is made by the pope.

Msgr. Charles E. Pope is a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.

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11 min read

Church History

Catholics and Civil Rights

Msgr. Owen Campion

October 30, 2022 9:20 pm October 30, 2022

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11 min read

The civil rights movement was a series of events and developments that profoundly affected and radically changed life in the United States, and Catholics and the Church played important roles….

The civil rights movement was a series of events and developments that profoundly affected and radically changed life in the United States, and Catholics and the Church played important roles.

Setting a date for the beginning of the movement is not that easy. It began in no single place. In some historical estimates, it began with the abolitionists, those Americans who demanded an end to legalized slavery, gradually making themselves heard in the generations before the Civil War.

For other historians, the deciding moment was the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863. Although remembered today, not inappropriately, as a bold, wide step forward, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited. It freed slaves in most, but not all, the territory of the 11 states that had withdrawn from the Union to become the Confederate States of America.

It left in bondage slaves in all of Tennessee, a Confederate state; in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, states that had remained within the Union despite their acceptance of slavery; and in parts of Louisiana and Virginia, both also states that had entered the Confederacy.

In fact, it was the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the amendment’s seating in law on Dec. 31, 1865, that slavery at last was outlawed in the United States.

Catholics were among the Americans arguing about slavery, both pro and con, and they were affected by all the events of the time, but they were not major players, given their status as a small and not yet influential minority — except in Louisiana and to a lesser degree in Maryland.

With regard to racial justice and equality, however, no Catholic either in Louisiana or Maryland made history opposing slavery. Catholic New Orleans was a huge slave market. From Galveston, Texas, to Wilmington, Del., Catholics owned slaves. And, perhaps hard to imagine, dioceses and religious congregations also owned slaves.

Plessy v. Ferguson

The Catholic community in these states, and in other states, at the time either lost sight of African-Americans, preoccupied as the bishops and also the laity were by other concerns, many of them of the bread-and-butter variety, or Church efforts for blacks that were concentrated upon rudimentary education or human services such as care for the sick. It is important here to recall the general state of education and of human services at the time.

A candlelight procession led by nuns calmed tensions in East Harlem in New York in 1967. That year, several cities across the United States experienced riots due to civil rights issues.

Racial segregation, eventually the match that ignited the civil rights movement, was set in constitutional law on May 1, 1896. At that time, by a vote of seven to one, with one associate justice abstaining, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, ruled that “separate but equal” facilities based on race were in accord with the Constitution. The case was originally about seating in railroad coaches. It came to involve every aspect of life, and in practical terms it meant the deprivation and humiliation of African-Americans virtually throughout much of the United States. What Plessy did not permit in law, it accommodated and empowered as social convention.

The case became the basis of an entire cultural pattern. How did Catholic bishops, priests and laity react? Catholics were gaining numerical strength and political power as the 20th century dawned. There was little, if any, however, Catholic criticism of, and certainly no defiance of, segregation. For Catholics, criticizing the culture created by Plessy was going too far out on a limb.

There were exceptions, specifically in the sense of attention on the part of some bishops and other Catholics to the plight of blacks, a plight inevitably bleak and hopeless because of the widespread, popular frame of mind enabled by Plessy.

Trapped in Surrounding Culture

Katharine Drexel, a wealthy Philadelphia heiress, took an interest in African-Americans and Native Americans and eventually founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to educate black and Indian youths. At the same time, the Josephite Fathers and the priests of the Society of the Divine Word turned their eyes toward blacks.

St. Katharine Drexel helped blacks in the early 20th century. CNS photo from Pope John Paul II Cultural Center

While these efforts were praiseworthy, the overwhelming current of American Catholic opinion, and organized effort, was to ignore injustices imposed on blacks. It may be hard to imagine such indifference, but segregation was so strict and encompassing that few whites truly knew precisely what blacks experienced.

The formal stance of the Church was to relieve human misery and to equip young blacks for lives easier and more rewarding than those their forebears had known, but the attitude was paternalistic. It was as if blacks were perpetual children, rendered as such by their lack of the aptitude that whites enjoyed.

In this, the Church was trapped in the culture surrounding it, and rare was the program that denied this presupposition about anyone not born white. After all, going beyond the United States, it was the mindset that launched, and certainly fixed in place, the great colonial empires ruled from Europe, including Catholic Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal.

Some Catholics, by the 1920s, came to see these injustices indeed as injustices. Jesuit Father John LaFarge was among them. Editor of America magazine, he had a platform to dissect the social norms so widely prevalent and to call for correction.

Bishops were appointed to dioceses with large black populations and, while never confronting what Plessy had created, they built schools and hospitals for African-Americans. Perhaps unwittingly they sowed the seeds of logical questions that later entered the minds of Catholics. If blacks are entitled to the Christian concern of the Church, how then are they different from other human beings? If they are not different, how can they be treated as if they were?

Then came the terrible events in Europe, in particular the savage anti-Semitism in Germany. No decent person could observe what was being done to Jews by the Adolf Hitler regime and not be repelled. To be sure, it was not the same in this country, although the collective experience of American blacks hardly was exempt from brutality of the most frightful type in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Lynchings were not uncommon. The criminal justice system and judicial action were jokes when it came to justice for blacks. Still, the specter of European Jewry’s sufferings under Hitler caused some Catholics in this country to think.

Always, of course, Catholics, as well as others, simply were kindhearted and prompted by the love of Christ that embraced all. Once, for example, the Ku Klux Klan stopped a train in Alabama and dragged a black man from the train. They led him to a tree along the roadbed, planning to hang him. Unnoticed by the Klan, a Benedictine abbot was on the train. He had not all that much security himself, being a Catholic cleric. Nevertheless, seeing what was happening, he left the train and walked directly to the Klan leader to plead for the man’s life. Ignored, the abbot then knelt in the dirt before the Klan wizard and implored that the man’s life be spared.

The man was hanged, nevertheless, but Christianity drove the abbot, and it drove many other Catholics to recoil at the abuses of blacks.

Jumping on Board

When the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, on May 17, 1954, reversed Plessy, strong currents of interracial justice moved through American Catholic public opinion, but by no means pulled the heartstrings of every American Catholic.

Bishop Vincent Waters of Raleigh, N.C. St. Katharine Drexel helped blacks in the early 20th century. CNS photo/courtesy Diocese of Raleigh

To give them their due, the older generation of Southern bishops at the time not only guided the Church through the terrible days of the convent inspection laws, the Ku Klux Klan, the Al Smith campaign of 1928, and limited resources and great demands, but in communities from El Paso, Texas, to Norfolk, Va., Little Rock, Ark., to Jacksonville, Fla., they had made the Church a presence for the good of the entire society.

Some were reluctant to embrace the cause of desegregation. It was not as if any opposed equal rights nor denied the status of human dignity of blacks. Most had worked precisely to enhance this status. Rather, they feared that if they moved too quickly, all would be lost, and in the end neither Catholics as a whole or blacks would be in better straits.

Given the natural course of events, these more cautious bishops were leaving the scene. Succeeding them was a new breed. Having matured in the days just before World War II, and often educated in Europe or in the more intellectually sophisticated centers of the Atlantic Northeast, they saw as the priority the bringing of justice to African-Americans.

Some came from outside the South. Native Southerners, however, were outstanding as bold champions of change, such as Bishop Vincent S. Waters of Raleigh, a Virginia native, Tennessee-born Bishop Joseph A. Durick of Nashville, Bishop Joseph Brunini of Natchez-Jackson, himself from Mississippi, and Bishop Carroll T. Dozier of Memphis, also from Virginia.

To be honest, all these bishops headed divided presbyterates. Old ways died hard for more than a few Catholic priests. Others, to their credit, were at the front line.

There were dozens and dozens of priests who marched when the demonstrations started. They were insulted and cursed by many, encouraged by some, but they marched precisely to put the Church in the forefront of the movement to recognize human rights for blacks.

In Mississippi, Father Bernard F. Law, later cardinal-archbishop of Boston, did remarkable things to elevate and validate the image of the Church because of his constant, but often resented, call for rights for blacks.

Swinging Toward Racial Equality

OSV file photo

At the national level, the Catholic bishops were unswervingly behind the civil rights movement, and their series of public statements made their position crystal clear. At the level of the papacy, Pope Paul VI left no question about Catholic teaching and universal Church policy in the matter. For example, he named African-American priests to the episcopacy, a switch from the time when many dioceses would not accept black applicants for the seminary. The arc was swinging toward racial equality in American Catholicism. At the very time so many young Catholics were attending Catholic schools, Catholic education embraced racial equality. Teachers taught it. Catholic publications forthrightly supported it, and at the time when the Catholic press was at its strongest. Young priests were ordained who fully supported civil rights, and some Catholic lay organizations came around, albeit sluggishly.

This hardly is to say that in the 1950s and 1960s American Catholic public opinion, especially in the South, accounted for one great, mighty groundswell for rights for blacks. Many Catholics feared violence. The Church lost ground numerically among whites, although in the end maybe not as much as might be assumed. Bishops and priests lost good will, although again not as much as they had presumed. No social study of American life today escapes the facts that racism lives in this country. The arc, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, swings toward justice. Still, it goes back and forth. As the U.S. bishops wrote in a statement marking the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington: “The dream of Dr. King and all who marched and worked with him has not yet fully become a reality for many in our country. While we cannot deny the change that has taken place, there remains much to be accomplished.”

Msgr. Owen Campion is OSV chaplain.

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Church History

Exploring The Doctors of the Church

Father Ray Ryland

October 8, 2022 7:58 am October 8, 2022

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When we hear the word “doctor,” we usually think first of a physician. But the word itself comes from the Latin docere, meaning “to teach.” It is in this literal sense…

When we hear the word “doctor,” we usually think first of a physician. But the word itself comes from the Latin docere, meaning “to teach.” It is in this literal sense that the title “Doctor of the Church” is bestowed on certain individuals whose teaching has greatly benefited the life of the Church.

The criteria for determining whether a person receives this title are a high degree of sanctity and great learning.

Investigation of a nominee’s sanctity is the responsibility of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also at the Vatican, makes the judgment about a nominee’s teaching. The latter congregation’s approval recognizes the contribution of the nominee’s doctrine, but does not guarantee that his or her writing contains no error.

With the approval of these two congregations, the Church proclaims a person to be a Doctor of the Church. This proclamation can be made by the pope or by an ecumenical council approved by him. In practice, all designations have been bestowed by the reigning pontiff.

The decree is made by a public proclamation of the pope. (This proclamation is not ex cathedra — that is, not an infallible declaration of the Church’s truth.) He also grants the universal Church the use of a Mass and an Office for the saint to whom the title of Doctor is given.

Some of the Doctors have been given special titles, reflecting their luminous reputations or significant themes in their thought: St. Augustine, for example, is Doctor Gratiae (Doctor of Grace); St. John of the Cross is Doctor Mysticus (Mystical Doctor); St. Cyril of Alexandria is Doctor Incarnationis (Doctor of the Incarnation).

Who Are the Doctors?

The naming of Doctors of the Church began in 1298, when Pope Boniface VIII named four eminent theologians and scholars as Doctors: St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome and St. Gregory the Great. In the Eastern Church, three Doctors were preeminent: St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen.

Four women have received the title of Doctor in recent decades. Pope Paul VI bestowed the title on St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena in 1970. Pope John Paul II named St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face a Doctor in 1997. Pope Benedict XVI so honored St. Hildegard of Bingen in 2012.

Presently, there are 36 Doctors of the Church: nine Eastern and 27 Western. Two were popes, 15 were bishops (archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals), one was a deacon, one a diocesan priest. Several were monks and a majority were members of religious congregations.

Eight religious orders are represented in the list of Doctors: Carmelites (3), Jesuits (2), Dominicans (3), Franciscans (3), and Benedictines (5) and one apiece for the Cistercians, Redemptorists and Oratorians.

Four Doctors were founders of religious orders: St. Alphonsus Liguori (Redemptorists), St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross (Discalced Carmelites), and St. Francis De Sales established an Oratory of St. Philip Neri and the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary.

The national or ethnic identities of the Doctors of the Church include 11 Italians, 3 Syrians, 4 Anatolians, 4 French, 3 Spanish and 2 Germans. There is one each of the following: Armenian, North African, Dalmatian, Visigoth, Italian-English, Egyptian, Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, and Portuguese.

The Church does not act hastily in naming particular saints as Doctors of the Church. The average length of time between a saint’s death and the time of the proclamation is 815 years! It was an early saint, St. Ephraem, for whom the greatest number of years elapsed between his death and his being named a Doctor: 1,547 years. The most recent doctor of the Church — St. Gregory of Narek — was named by Pope Francis in 2015.

The shortest lapse of time was that of St. Alphonsus Liguori, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church just 84 years after his death. The next shortest interval was that of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus: 100 years.

The longest life of all the Doctors is that of St. Alphonsus, who died at the age of 91. Yet not all the Doctors gained their wisdom over a long lifetime. The shortest life is that of St. Thérèse, who lived only 24 years. St. Catherine of Siena lived only 33 years, and St. Anthony of Padua, 36 years.

A Great Diversity

We find great diversity in the works for which the Doctors of the Church have been recognized. Some, such as St. Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose and St. Leo the Great, wrote many letters, homilies and short treatises. St. Thérèse composed only a single book — an autobiography — along with some poetry and personal correspondence.

St. Jerome was the first great biblical scholar, translating the entire Scripture into Latin and writing commentaries on biblical books. St. Augustine produced an enormous and varied corpus bearing on many aspects of theology. Like St. Robert Bellarmine, he defended the Church against onslaughts of heresy. Two from Avila, Spain were mystics: St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of Avila.

St. Ephraem and St. Gregory of Narek were celebrated hymnists. St. Bede’s history of the English people gives us our best information about England in the early Middle Ages. Systematic theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Albertus Magnus, St. Anselm and St. Bonaventure all displayed deep wisdom in relating human knowledge to divine revelation.

Whatever their specialization, the Doctors have all served the Church as holy teachers, one of the great gifts of Christ to His people (see Eph 4:11-13). Through their labors, He has worked “to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (v. 12).

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8 min read

Church History

Why is Sacrosanctum Concilium Important?

Msgr. C. Eugene Morris

August 17, 2022 7:30 am August 17, 2022

8 min read

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8 min read

These celebrations have provided an opportunity for the Church to properly assess the achievements of the council as well as to discuss areas in which the council may have fallen…

These celebrations have provided an opportunity for the Church to properly assess the achievements of the council as well as to discuss areas in which the council may have fallen short. In addition to articulating both the successes and failures of Vatican II, these celebrations have provided the framework by which to discuss the impact of the council on the life of Holy Mother Church as well as positing what impact the council may have on the future of the Church.

In addition to these celebrations, in his Christmas address of 2005, then Pope Benedict XVI provided a significant hermeneutic (or lens) through which to view the work of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke about the hermeneutic of continuity between the work of the council and the life of the Church before and after the council. The “hermeneutic of reform,” of renewal, sees “the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”

And then he noted that certain sectors of culture and society sought to separate Vatican II from the history of the Church and promoted a hermeneutic of discontinuity focused on the spirit of the council, not the truths of the documents themselves: “The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts…. In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.”

This gap between the texts themselves and the allusive spirit of the interpreter created an opportunity to respond to every whim in the life of the Church.

The framework provided by both Pope Benedict and the Church’s historical celebrations creates the context for an overview of the first document promulgated by the council fathers, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. It can be rightly argued that this document more than others suffered under the hermeneutic of discontinuity presented to the world in the context of the spirit of the document opposed to what the document actually outlined and promulgated. Despite the confusion sometimes created by this misreading of the document, Sacrosanctum Concilium remains integral to the Church’s organic development of the liturgy.

The council fathers wisely began the deliberations of Vatican II with the sacred liturgy precisely because of its significance in the life of the Church. The liturgy is “the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, No. 2).

After articulating the nature of the liturgy, which is to build up and strengthen the body of Christ, the document prepares to articulate principles whereby the liturgy may be renewed chiefly so that the liturgy may be that source which imparts “an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful” (No. 1). Before providing concrete principles by which this renewal should be governed, the council fathers exhorted a respect for and adherence and obedience to the tradition of the Church.

Jesus’ Priestly Office

The principles used to assist the Church in liturgical renewal involve, first, an understanding of the nature of the sacred liturgy. At the heart of what the Church celebrates in the sacred liturgy is a continuation of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ and an expression of His mission to bring about salvation and reconciliation for the whole world.

The Church’s perennial teaching is that the redemptive work of Christ continues in the life of His spouse, the Church, who cooperates concretely in the mission of the Savior through sacramental life. The council states: “Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, ‘the same now offering, through the ministry of the priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross,’ but especially under the Eucharistic species” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, No. 7).

The council fathers are able to define the liturgy as “an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ” (No. 7). Through His priestly office Christ is able to sanctify men who are in turn able to fittingly adore God. The liturgy as an action of adoration and sanctification allow men to experience here on earth a foretaste of the glories of heaven and consequently requires from the faithful knowledge and spiritual understanding of what is happening when they are present at the sacred liturgy.

Renewal

Having established foundational principles for the renewal of the sacred liturgy, the document articulates norms for its renewal based on more general aspects of the nature of the liturgy: the communal nature of the liturgy, catechetical and pastoral aspects of the liturgy.

The document concludes the articulation of norms by mapping out the adaptation of the liturgy to the cultural realities in which it would be celebrated. The remaining sections of the document are given over to a discussion of each of the seven sacraments and sacramental realities beginning with the most holy Eucharist. Here the council fathers offer a re-articulation of traditional Catholic theology regarding each of the sacraments and applying the principles set forth at the beginning of the document.

After addressing each of the seven sacraments, the document addresses the importance of sacred art and furnishings. So, too, the council fathers give attention to the liturgical year, the Divine Office and sacred music.

The significance of Sacrosanctum Concilium comes not only from the comprehensive discussion of the whole of the liturgical life but also from the various misunderstandings about the sacred liturgy that developed as a result of a misreading of the document.

Chief among these misunderstandings regards the “full, conscious, and active participation” of all the faithful. This has been understood more often than not as an exhortation to involve more lay faithful in the work of the liturgy when the document makes no specific reference to how this might be implemented.

Furthermore, having already articulated the importance of tradition in rooting and guiding the renewal of the sacred liturgy, this particular phrase, having already appeared in magisterial documents, involves an interior preparation and awareness and has very little to do with exterior functions.

The document speaks eloquently about the importance of the ongoing use of and formation in the Latin language (see No. 36). While allowing the use of the vernacular in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, there is a clear exhortation for the preservation of the use of Latin in the liturgy.

Finally, while it has become normative to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass facing the congregation, nowhere in the documents was it suggested or mandated that the Church abandon the ancient practice of celebrating holy Mass ad orientem — that is, facing the east.

Clear Directions

While the spirit of Sacrosanctum Concilium has been trumpeted to allow a variety of abuses to sacred celebrations, the document itself has provided the Church with clear directions to better assist all the faithful in fruitful celebrations of the sacred mysteries.

The exhortation for better knowledge of the rites and rituals of the faithful has provided the impetus for many in the post-conciliar period to strive for greater knowledge about the rituals so that they might more deeply penetrate the mysteries celebrated therein. So, too, the exposure to more sacred Scripture has brought the richness of biblical language more comprehensively into the liturgy.

As the Church now moves beyond these historical celebrations and reflections, she is presented with an opportunity to return to the actual content of the document itself and to authentically execute the desire of the council fathers for a deeper appreciation of the Church’s liturgical life. With the pontificates of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, who has publically committed himself and the Church to the liturgical insights and direction of his predecessor, the Church will be able to more authentically engage the dynamics of liturgical renewal articulated by the council.

The understanding of the council fathers that the celebration of the Church’s liturgical life was the source and summit of all her activities is still very much operative today as it was at its promulgation.

What Sacrosanctum Concilium provides, within the framework of restored tradition and sound doctrine, is the opportunity to assist the faithful in experiencing more deeply and richly the incarnate wisdom and love of God.

Msgr. C. Eugene Morris, a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese.

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18 min read

Church History

Getting To Know The Fathers of the Church

Marcellino D'Ambrosio

August 10, 2022 7:54 am August 10, 2022

18 min read

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18 min read

Almost as soon as a person begins any serious exploration of the Christian heritage, he or she invariably runs across references to “the Fathers of the Church,” or the “early…

Almost as soon as a person begins any serious exploration of the Christian heritage, he or she invariably runs across references to “the Fathers of the Church,” or the “early Church Fathers.”

One gets the clear impression that these people are important. Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic writers all tip their hats to them. Official documents of the magisterium extol their authority (see, for example, Dei Verbum, No. 23).

But often the reader is left a bit bewildered. Who precisely are the Fathers of the Church and why do they matter? And if they are so important, what’s the best way to get started learning about them?

First of all, let’s make it clear who the early Church Fathers are not. The apostles and other heroes of the New Testament era stand in a class all their own. They are not regarded as Church Fathers. Neither are great theologians and Doctors of the Church from medieval or modern times, such as St. Thomas Aquinas.

So, if these venerable writers are not Church Fathers, who are, and why do they bear this title? “Church Father” is not a formally conferred title, as is “Doctor of the Church.” There is no complete, official list of the Fathers. Instead, the designation results from popular acclaim and long-standing tradition that came about in this way: In ancient times, teachers were commonly regarded as intellectual fathers. Some early Christian teachers put their teaching into writings that continued to guide the community of the faithful long after their passing. In disputes over doctrine and the proper interpretation of Scriptures, these early writers were cited as “the fathers” or “the Fathers of the Church.” This popular title stuck and the designation over time was expanded to refer to all the great orthodox Catholic authors writing about faith and morals from about A.D. 100 to about 800.

St. Ignatius of Antioch Shutterstock

This time period is not as arbitrary as it may seem. It is roughly coterminous with the first seven ecumenical councils of the Church, which defined and defended the two most fundamental dogmas enshrined in the Creed — that we believe in one God in three persons, and that Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, is true God and true man. This is the time period in which the canon of Scripture was clarified and the great liturgical traditions of the Church — including Roman, Byzantine and Maronite — took their distinctive form.

The Catholic teachers and writers of this period played a role that can never be played again, transmitting and witnessing to the ancient apostolic tradition and giving a decisive, classic shape to that heritage.

Most of these writers were saints. Some of them, such as Tertullian, fell noticeably short. Saint or not, none of them are personally infallible. If they should agree on anything, it would be rather remarkable, since this disparate group spans seven centuries and three continents. But their teaching does agree on a great many points, and this is a testimony that such teaching did not originate with them, but is rather being passed down to us through them. It is in their consensus (consensus partum) that the Church, from the earliest times, has regarded them as infallible commentators on Scripture and the unwritten apostolic tradition.

Their importance to apologetics and dogmatic theology goes without saying. When people claim that devotion to Mary is a medieval invention, you can conclusively prove otherwise simply by going to the Fathers of the Church. The same can be done when Jehovah’s Witnesses allege that Constantine invented the divinity of Christ.

But just as we read Scripture for more than apologetics purposes, so with the Fathers. We would agree with the late Cardinal Jean Daniélou, S.J.: the Fathers “are not only the truthful witnesses of a bygone era; they are also the most contemporary nourishment of men and women today.” One of the greatest ways to grow in the spiritual life and be imbued with the Catholic spirit is to read the writings of the early Church Fathers. In approaching their work, we should not simply be looking for information, but formation — to receive from them an authentically Catholic vision and a truly passionate zeal for holiness.

Where to Begin?

But then comes the next problem. A lot can be written by hundreds of men over 700 years. St. Augustine alone wrote more than 4 million words. One medieval monk quipped, “He who says he has read all of Augustine . . . lies!”

So, how can we get started in reading the Fathers? Where is the best place to begin?

Fortunately, a reading plan has already been laid out for us by the Church. In the revision of the Divine Office mandated by the Second Vatican Council, the late-night hour of “vigils” was transformed into the Office of Readings which can be done at any hour of the day. For each day, it includes one of the longer psalms, broken up into three parts; a page-long reading from the Bible; and a non-biblical reading about a page long, most usually from one of the early Church Fathers. This patristic excerpt is either a commentary on the biblical reading, the liturgical season or the saint of the day. Thus the Office of Readings is a ready-made collection of, as it were, the Fathers’ greatest hits, an introduction to the most accessible, inspirational and instructive nuggets from the patristic gold mine.

Intimidated by the complexity of the Divine Office? Not to worry. The Office of Readings is rather simple to follow and is more easily accessible than you might think, both in print and electronically (see sidebar). It is the most accessible entry into the world of the Fathers.

What’s Next?

So you’ve read and loved the excerpts and are now ready for entire works. Now what do you do?

Begin at the beginning. The “Apostolic Fathers” are the earliest of the Fathers and are known as apostolic because their life span overlapped to some degree the life span of at least some of the apostles. In some cases, there is evidence that some of these Apostolic Fathers, notably St. Polycarp, had personal contact with an apostle.

St. Augustine (Renata Sedmakova/Shutterstock.com)

Beyond the simple fact that they came first and laid the foundation for later Fathers, there are two other good reasons to start with them. One is that they have undisputable apologetic value as witnesses to unwritten apostolic tradition.

Second, they are, for the most part, simple, pastoral men like the apostles and are therefore easy to understand. You don’t need to take a course in Platonic philosophy to make sense of their writings. In fact, many of the documents of this period follow the same basic format as what we’re already familiar with in the New Testament — pastoral letters and “acts” of the martyrs.

Of course, it would be helpful to read a brief bit of background before delving right into the documents. There are several convenient sources of such information. But beware of making the mistake of spending so much time preparing that you never actually read the texts. The great thing about the Apostolic Fathers is precisely that there really aren’t too many necessary prerequisites to reading them.

With all due respect to my dear Jesuit friends, the original St. Ignatius (d.c. A.D. 110) was not the one from Loyola, but from Antioch. He is without a doubt the most passionate and inspiring among the Apostolic Fathers, the easiest author to read and to share with others. He was the second bishop of Antioch after the apostles, witness to the tradition of Sts. Peter, Barnabas and Paul. It was probably only about 15-20 years after the final edition of the Gospel of John that Ignatius was arrested and sentenced to die for his faith in Rome. He was marched overland from Syria through what is now western Turkey all the way to Troas (Troy) where he was put on a ship to Italy. As he passed through the Asian countryside, he wrote short letters to the various congregations of the region. They provide a fascinating window into the soul of a martyr, a fiery testimony of the love that drove the martyrs to lay down their lives as witnesses to Christ.

The goal of this article was simply to answer the question of who the Fathers of the Church were, why they are important, and how to begin exploring their writings.

Though I, like many, can’t help but roll my eyes over the uproar created by “The Da Vinci Code” many years back, we are indebted to Dan Brown in a way.

He reminded us that the early Church is terribly important. On its authority and fidelity hang the very reliability of the Scriptures and the Creeds shared by all Christians — Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox.

Of course, the events of “The Da Vinci Code” concerning what went on in the early Church is total fabrication. So where do we go for the truth? Simple. We need direct contact with the primary sources — that is, documents written by those who were actually involved in the events in question. Fortunately, abundant documents survive from the first eight centuries of the Church. We refer to those who wrote them as the early Church Fathers. By the way, contrary to the allegations of the characters in “The Da Vinci Code,” the documents we have from this era are not falsified or interpolated. Scholarly tools have existed for centuries that are particularly effective at detecting forgeries and dating documents to within a few decades of when they were written.

The good news is that there are thousands of documents and hundreds of writers. The bad news is that there are thousands of documents and hundreds of writers. Few of us have time to read them all. In fact, it is difficult to know where to begin.

The Church has put together a collection of short selections from the Fathers in the Office of Readings. These are the best introduction. The next step would be to read the Apostolic Fathers, the earliest of the post New Testament writings which have particular apologetic value given their proximity to the apostles.

Scripture, Liturgy, Biography

The Apostolic Fathers (ca. A.D. 95-150) were a lot like the apostles — simple men, without much formal schooling. That makes their writings easy to understand. But once we hit the middle to late second century, we run into very different kinds of writers. Justin had been a philosopher before his conversion, while Tertullian was a lawyer. Both were deeply cultured men, and concepts from the philosophy of their day, Stoicism and Platonism, surface frequently in their work. The same is true with Fathers from the fourth-to-fifth-century Golden Age, such as St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa.

So, is there any hope that the ordinary Joe or Jane can read these authors and make heads or tails of them?

Absolutely. And here’s why. Many of the most high-powered thinkers among the Fathers were also pastors. And many of their writings were originally addressed to the faithful as homilies, catechetical orations and lives of the saints. Though such writings are chock-full of insight and inspiration, they are delivered in words intended to be understood by everybody.

So my advice to those wishing to sink their teeth into the rich fare provided by these later Fathers is to focus on their exegetical and catechetical writings rather than the more philosophical treatises written for a more learned audience. What follows are a few concrete suggestions.

St. Basil and the Holy Spirit

Following the Council of Nicaea, there was a great deal of doctrinal confusion. One group of churchmen in the east said that while they accepted Nicaea’s definition of the divinity of Christ, they would not go beyond it to affirm the same of the Holy Spirit. After all, they pointed out, Jesus is called “God” (the New Testament Greek word is Theos) several times in the New Testament.

But the Scriptures never explicitly use the term “God” referring to the Holy Spirit. These “sola scriptura” bishops, called “pneumatomachoi” (fighters against the Spirit), therefore resisted the doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three distinct but equal persons.

St. Basil the Great responded to these heretics in the form of a short treatise that relies not on difficult philosophical concepts but on a common-sense examination of Scripture and the liturgy.

He demonstrated that Scripture constantly teaches the distinct personhood and full divinity of the Holy Spirit, but that it does so implicitly, as it does not explicitly call the Spirit “God.”

He then made one of the clearest cases against sola scriptura in early Christian literature, showing that Christians had never, from the time of the apostles to his day (ca. 370), relied exclusively on the text of the Bible to tell them how to pray and what to believe. He pointed to many liturgical traditions, such as the sacrament of chrismation (known in the West as confirmation), which had always been celebrated in the Church but were not clearly and explicitly spelled out in Scripture.

He also pointed to the fact that the Church had always, as far as anyone could remember, prayed the Trinitarian doxology — “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit” — which clearly assumes the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer demonstrates the law of belief) is a principle first clearly argued by St. Basil.

Therefore, to deepen your understanding of the work and person of the Holy Spirit, provide insight into the relation between Scripture and Tradition, and acquaint you with one of the greatest Fathers of the Eastern Church, pick up “On the Holy Spirit,” a short book by St. Basil, available in paperback from St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Two Great Lives

In defending the divinity of Christ during the Arian crisis of the fourth century, St. Athanasius of Alexandria had received constant support from the most famous hermit of the Egyptian desert, St. Antony. Personally inspired by Antony’s story and example, Athanasius decided the world needed to know about him.

Without the internet, or even the printing press, Athanasius’ “Life of Antony” quickly became the rage throughout the Christian empire, which was copied, translated and passed from hand to hand.

It inspired many, including Augustine, to a deeper conversion to the Gospel and even to embrace religious life.

Antony, a hermit, was the “godfather” of religious life in the East. A few centuries later, St. Benedict established a communal form of life that made him the godfather of monastic life in the West.

Only a couple of generations after St. Benedict’s death, one of his monks was elected as successor of St. Peter.

Known as Gregory the Great, this monk-become-pope found time to write his “Dialogues,” the second book of which is a life of St. Benedict.

I vote that you put Athanasius’ “Life of Antony” and book two of St. Gregory’s “Dialogues” at the top of your reading list as a great way to get acquainted with two of the greatest monastic saints and two of the greatest Fathers of the Church.

Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes from Texas.

The Great Augustine

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This presentation of the Fathers would not be complete without a discussion of how to break into the writings of the most famous Father of the Western Church, the great St. Augustine. Many praise Augustine, but virtually no one has read all of his works (he wrote more than 4 million words!). It’s hard to know where to enter the forest of his vast literary output. His “Confessions” is a classic of Western civilization as is his massive tome “The City of God.” But keep in mind that “Confessions” is not an autobiography in the typical modern sense of the word. It is a spiritual reflection on his past life, written soon after his accession to the episcopate, but it takes the form of a long, extended prayer to God. And its last few chapters ascend into the philosophical stratosphere, losing all but the heartiest astronauts. Is it to be attempted? Yes, but it is not really a beginner’s slope. And “The City of God” is definitely not the first Augustinian peak to be attempted either.

So, where to begin? In my opinion, it is his homilies and commentaries that are perfect for everyone — meaty enough for the most experienced, but simple enough for the novice. After all, his sermons are for ordinary people and are intended to help them understand and apply the Scriptures to their lives. Who cannot use a bit more of that? His commentary on the Psalms is fabulous. And, since his favorite topic is love, I especially recommend his homilies on the First Letter of John. Given that Augustine is the most influential teacher of the faith in the Western Church before St. Thomas Aquinas, he cannot be neglected by anyone wishing to tap into the Church’s ancient heritage.

Fathers of the Church

Greek Fathers

St. Anastasius Sinaita (d. 700)
St. Andrew of Crete (d. 740)
Aphraates (fourth century)
St. Archelaus (d. 282)
St. Athanasius (d. 373)
Athenagoras (second century)
St. Basil the Great (d. 379)
St. Caesarius of Nazianzus (d. 369)
St. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215)
St. Clement I of Rome, Pope (r. 88-97)
St. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386)
Didymus the Blind (d. c. 398)
Diodore of Tarsus (d. 392)
St. Dionysius the Great (d. c. 264)
St. Epiphanius (d. 403)
Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 340)
St. Eustathius of Antioch (fourth century)
St. Firmillian (d. 268)
Gennadius I of Constantinople (fifth century)
St. Germanus (d. 732)
St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390)
St. Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395)
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (d. 268)
Hermas (second century)
St. Hippolytus (d. 236)
St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107)
St. Isidore of Pelusium (d. c. 450)
St. John Chrysostom (d. 407)
St. John Climacus (d. 649)
St. John Damascene (d. 749), last Father of the East
St. Julius I, Pope (r. 337-352)
St. Justin Martyr (d. 165)
St. Leontius of Byzantium (sixth century)
St. Macarius (d. c. 390)
St. Maximus the Confessor (d. 662)
St. Melito (d. c. 180)
St. Methodius of Olympus (d. 311)
St. Nilus the Elder (d. c. 430)
Origen (d. 254)
St. Polycarp (d. c. 155)
St. Proclus (d. c. 446)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (sixth century)
St. Serapion (d. c. 370)
St. Sophronius (d. 638)
Tatian (second century)
Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428)
Theodoret of Cyrrhus (d. c. 458)
St. Theophilus of Antioch (second century)

Latin Fathers
St. Ambrose of Milan (d. 397)
Arnobius (d. 330)
St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)
St. Benedict of Nursia (d. c. 550)
St. Caesarius of Arles (d. 542)
St. John Cassian (d. 435)
St. Celestine I, Pope (r. 422-432)
St. Cornelius, Pope (r. 251-253)
St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258)
St. Damasus I, Pope (r. 366-384)
St. Dionysius, Pope (r. 259-268)
St. Ennodius (d. 521)
St. Eucherius of Lyons (d. c. 450)
St. Fulgentius (d. 533)
St. Gregory of Elvira (d. c. 392)
St. Gregory the Great, Pope (r. 590-604)
St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367)
St. Innocent I, Pope (r. 401-417)
St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. c. 202)
St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), last Father of the West
St. Jerome (d. 420)
Lactantius (d. 323)
St. Leo the Great, Pope (r. 440-461)
Marius Mercator (d. 451)
Marius Victorinus (fourth century)
Minucius Felix (second century)
Novatian (d. c. 257)
St. Optatus (fourth century)
St. Pacian (d. c. 390)
St. Pamphilus (d. 309)
St. Paulinus of Nola (d. 431)
St. Peter Chrysologus (d. 450)
St. Phoebadius of Agen (fourth century)
Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 410)
Salvian (fifth century)
St. Siricius, Pope (r. 384-399)
Tertullian (d. c. 222)
St. Vincent of Lérins (d. c. 450)

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