Editor’s Note: It is easy to get discouraged at the state of the Church these days, particularly at the decline in the number of Religious sisters from 181,000 in 1965 to about 47,000 today, which Fr. George Rutler blames partly on those orders which “accepted bad advice from misguided and misguiding theologians and leaders. Bishops often have been at fault, timorous about correcting error, cheerily giving out diplomas while the spiritual foundations of the school sank. It took a courage usually lacking to point out that serious mistakes were being made, and many Religious, due to their errors, abandoning community life and even Religious habits, and replacing doctrine with secular dogmas about ‘Peace and Justice’ and even ‘climate change’ — all witness to the dictum, attributed to various sources, that ‘insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results’.”
Writing in his weekly bulletin at the Church of St. Michael in New York City, Fr. Rutler said that there is good news, too. He cited the example of Thomas Aquinas College, which “has emphasized quality over size since its founding in 1971 and has become one of the best regarded colleges in California. This year, it is opening a beautiful additional campus on a historic site in Massachusetts. Its California chapel, built in the Spanish Mission style, is a magnificent witness to Catholic heritage, as is the new chapel planned for Christendom College in Virginia, which was founded just a few years after Thomas Aquinas College.”
Although both colleges are primarily lay institutions, said Fr. Rutler, “Thomas Aquinas has produced 60 priests, 44 consecrated Religious women and men, and 26 seminarians. Christendom boasts so far 80 priests, 55 Religious, and 22 seminarians.”
Q. I always thought that the archangels were the highest rank of angels since Michael is called the Prince of the Heavenly Hosts and he thrust Satan and all his demons out of Heaven. Yet, when you see the ranking of angels, the Seraphim and the Cherubim are ranked number one and two out of the nine groupings. How can that be? — D.M.D., via e-mail.
A. There are nine choirs of angels, as you say, with Seraphim and Cherubim leading the list, followed by Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Archangels, and Angels. Michael, whose name means “one who is like God,” is one of three archangels mentioned in the Bible. The others are Raphael (cf. the Book of Tobit) and Gabriel (cf. Luke 1, where Gabriel describes himself as one who “stand[s] before God”). Michael is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments. In Daniel 10:13, 21, he is cited as “one of the chief princes” who came to help Daniel in his battle with the king of Persia. In the New Testament, Michael is mentioned as arguing with the Devil over the body of Moses and telling the Devil, “May the Lord rebuke you” (Jude 9), and there are these verses in the Book of Revelation (12:7-9):
“Then war broke out in Heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in Heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.”
This “Prince of the Heavenly Hosts,” as he is described in Pope Leo XIII’s Prayer to St. Michael composed in 1886, is seen to have four duties in the Church: waging battle against Satan and the other fallen angels as the leader of the Army of God; saving the souls of faithful from the power of Satan, especially at the hour of death; protecting the People of God; and leading those who have died to present their souls to Jesus for the Particular Judgment.
Despite being listed in the second-lowest rank of angels, Michael has played a major role (“one of the chief princes”) in salvation history. So we pray, “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
Q. Is there any way to know how many dioceses in the United States still stand after the “Lamb of God”? In our Diocese of Cleveland, we have been standing since 2003, and this norm has been reaffirmed by our bishop and his Presbyteral Council. I know that Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Ore., has changed the posture in his diocese to kneeling. He said that the General Instruction of the Roman Missal [n. 43] makes kneeling the norm unless the diocesan bishop determines otherwise. He also said that he wanted to align his diocese with the majority across the United States. — Name Withheld, Ohio.
A. We don’t know how many dioceses in this country require the faithful to kneel after the Agnus Dei at Mass, but we suspect that Archbishop Sample is correct that it is a majority. To get the exact number, however, you would have to poll the dioceses. Perhaps someone has already done that and, if so, we would be happy to have that information.
Q. There seems to be some dispute surrounding the martyrdom of St. Oscar Romero. Was he knowingly involved in Liberation Theology (a facade for Marxism) in El Salvador? — B.H., Arizona.
A. St. Oscar Romero (1917-1980) was the archbishop of San Salvador when he was assassinated by an unknown gunman while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital on March 24, 1980. No one has ever been prosecuted for the killing. By all accounts, he was not a supporter of the Marxist version of liberation theology, but rather of a preferential option for the poor. Romero supported a spiritual liberation, not a material liberation, explaining that “the liberation of Christ and of His Church is not reduced to the dimension of a purely temporal project. It does not reduce its objectives to…a material well-being or only to initiatives of a political or social, economic, or cultural order, much less can it be a liberation that supports or is supported by violence.”
Following the murder in 1977 of a personal friend, the Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande, who worked among the poor, Archbishop Romero said that “if they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.” He became more outspoken and wrote to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, urging an end to U.S. aid to a government engaged in “the injustice and the political repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights.”
Romero’s weekly sermons were broadcast across El Salvador each week as he listed disappearances, tortures, repressions, and murders. These sermons were the main source of the people’s knowledge of what was happening in the country. Speaking after receiving an honorary degree at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium on February 2, 1980, the archbishop said that it was important to note why the Church was being persecuted. He said that “not any and every priest has been persecuted, not any and every institution has been attacked. That part of the Church has been attacked and persecuted that put itself on the side of the people and went to the people’s defense. Here again we find the same key to understanding the persecution of the Church — the poor.”
Before his death, Romero anticipated the danger of assassination, saying that he was willing to accept martyrdom if his blood might contribute to the solution of the nation’s problems. “As a Christian,” he said, “I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.”
There was some dispute over whether Romero was truly a martyr, but the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints unanimously recommended his canonization, saying that his assassination “was not caused by motives that were simply political, but by hatred for a faith that, imbued with charity, would not be silent in the face of the injustices that relentlessly and cruelly slaughtered the poor and their defenders.”
Pope Francis elevated Oscar Romero to sainthood on October 14, 2018.
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