For more than half a century, CUF's work has shaped the wider Catholic renewal in America — in print, in the apostolates it helped launch, and in the company it has kept.
CUF's James Likoudis and Kenneth Whitehead wrote the definitive lay response to the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre. First published in 1981 and still in print, it defends the papacy, the Second Vatican Council, and the reformed Mass — a question as live today as ever.
When hundreds of theologians publicly rebelled against Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, CUF's founders rose to bear public witness of fidelity to Peter, to the Church, and thus to Christ. That witness remains CUF's reason for being.
Two of the most fruitful apostolates in the American Church grew out of CUF under president Curtis Martin: the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, and Emmaus Road Publishing.
Drawn from a talk by Madeleine F. Stebbins, the founder's wife, given for a CUF conference in 2004.
Stebbins gave his first speech as CUF's founder in September 1968 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, arranged by Brent Bozell, editor of Triumph magazine and savvy about the media, who had a television crew with a national hookup and reporters there. But the idea of a movement was in the minds of many lay people long before that. When the faith was being attacked, distorted, and watered down from all sides, and the Second Vatican Council was misinterpreted, misapplied, and hijacked almost from the beginning, it was felt that something ought to be done.
The proximate impetus was the massive revolt — mostly by theologians — against Paul VI's Humanae Vitae. No sooner had the encyclical been issued, the Pope's signature scarcely dry, when hundreds of theologians publicly rebelled, making lengthy statements of non-acceptance to the media before they could even have read it. Yet Lyman insisted the new movement was not merely an ad hoc committee to defend one encyclical. Its purpose was to defend and advance the whole faith.
"To deny one part is to tear down the whole. The revolt against Humanae Vitae was only a symptom of a much deeper malady — a loss of faith at the root, which had to be overcome through God's grace, with prayer, study, and the spreading of the faith."
Madeleine F. Stebbins, on her husband's visionHere he was greatly influenced by John Henry Cardinal Newman, whom he loved "as a disciple loves his master." Newman opposed the clericalism of the age — the attitude of an English monsignor who asked, "What is the province of the laity? To hunt, to shoot, to entertain. These matters they understand, but to meddle with ecclesiastical matters they have no right at all." Newman disagreed. He pointed to the years after the Council of Nicaea in 325, when the divinity of Christ had been defined, yet most of the bishops "either were silent, vacillated, prevaricated, or made compromises with Arianism" — while the faithful laity held fast for nearly sixty years.
"The divine dogma of Our Lord's divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the 'Ecclesia docta' — the Church of those who are taught — than by the 'Ecclesia docens,' the teaching Church."
John Henry Cardinal NewmanIt was the witness of the laity that saw the Church through that crisis and weathered the storm. "This," Madeleine Stebbins observed, "is precisely our task now: to transmit the faith."
"I must tell you something I have never before made public," Madeleine Stebbins told her audience in 2004. In 1971, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre — then still in good standing with Rome — visited the Stebbins family for about five days, together with another priest from his newly founded seminary at Écône. Lyman served his Mass one morning at Holy Family Church in New Rochelle and was so deeply impressed by his piety and reverence that he almost felt like asking the Archbishop to be his spiritual director. That same evening, in their living room, Lefebvre told them stories of Pope John XXIII "going back on his word" and other scandals in the Vatican — really, just gossip — repeatedly referring to Paul VI as "Montini."
"I didn't like it at all. He had no business spreading such gossip. I didn't like the spirit out of which it came at all. I will have nothing more to do with him."
H. Lyman Stebbins, 1971 — who later judged there was "a schismatic spirit in him which was potentially dangerous"Fifty-five years later, as four bishops prepare illicit consecrations within the Society Lefebvre founded, the founder's judgment reads less like memory than prophecy.
Lyman turned more and more in his later years to St. Catherine of Siena, who lived through her own calamitous time — the popes absent from Rome for nearly seventy years, then the schism of an antipope against Urban VI. She never denied that there were bad shepherds; she used the worst case to make her point.
"Even though the pope were satan incarnate himself, I may not lift up my head against him, but I must always humble myself … for in no other wise can I obtain a part of [the Blood]."
St. Catherine of SienaShe did not criticize the Pope; she spoke to his conscience, "with a fire of love for him whom she called 'our sweet Christ on earth,'" and in this way brought him back to Rome. And against the impulse to denounce, she warned:
"Give not ear to what the devil whispers to you, that it is your duty to speak against the bad shepherds of the Church … the judgment upon them belongs to Him and not to you nor to any other creature."
St. Catherine of SienaWhen CUF and Stebbins were accused of being too obedient to the Holy Father, he answered with a line his apostolate has never forgotten.
"When I stand before the judgment seat of God after I die, I cannot imagine that the reproach will be: 'You were too docile and too obedient to my Vicar on earth.' I can imagine many other reproaches, but not that one."
H. Lyman StebbinsIn the 1970s Madeleine Stebbins asked the saintly Marthe Robin, in France, what our attitude toward bishops should be. The answer was clear: "Do not criticize them, but help them." Lyman saw a model of this in Frank Haggerty, a CUF chapter chairman in Hartford, Connecticut, who with his wife Eileen befriended their quite liberal bishop, offered to help him, and showed him that they were with him. Slowly, after gaining his confidence, they were able to draw his attention to the harm of poor catechesis and bad sex-education programs — and, astonishingly, the bishop listened, and to a great extent remedied the situation.
That is the CUF spirit: to help bishops, to pray for them, to encourage them to use their authority rightly, to applaud them when they do, and to tell them of our concerns respectfully. Lyman wanted this spirit of sentire cum ecclesia — thinking with the Church; for "to have the mind of Christ, it follows that we must have the mind of the Church." And against the temptation to complain, he posed instead the question that became the apostolate's working rule: "What can I usefully and fittingly do about it?"
Over the years, CUF's Advisory Council and Episcopal Advisors have included some of the most respected names in the Catholic renewal.
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