Intelligence in Danger of Death

By Marcel De Corte

Translated by Brian Welter

Introduction by Miguel Ayuso

Arouca Press, Waterloo ON Canada 2023 (Originally published in 1969; reissued in 1987)

We have been recently reading some of the intellectual “first responders” to Vatican Il. These authors had to confront the initial impact of the revolutionary changes of the Council and formulate a response. Their task was daunting. For what could be more challenging than to come to grips with this unprecedented, even unimaginable situation: the Roman Catholic Church overthrowing its seemingly immutable liturgy, structure, and even its morality and doctrine? Thomas Molnar, Dietrich von Hildebrand, the other contributors to Triumph magazine, Cristina Campo, Bryan Houghton – it was a remarkably talented, intellectually “diverse” group who nevertheless shared the ability to look facts in the face. Their first reactions often have a freshness and force that often was missing in the subsequent decades – when “conservatives” felt they had to be ecclesiastical politicians and “nuance” their positions. Only with Martin Mosebach’s Heresy of Formlessness (2001) and, even more so, in the literature published after the accession of Pope Francis did direct speech in defense of Catholic Tradition more generally reemerge. 

We must add the Belgian philosopher Marcel De Corte to the number of these early critics. His Intelligence in Danger of Death, however, is far broader than a discussion of the Council. De Corte sets out to analyze the situation of the Western world in the 1960s. The reforms of the Council were a characteristic phenomenon of that world. Now De Corte situated these upheavals in Church, society, and intellectual life in a broad philosophical framework – that of Thomism and Aristotelianism. In other words, the catastrophes of the present – for De Corte saw them as such – proceeded from philosophical error. In the case of the Catholic Church, that involved departure from its inheritance of philosophical realism. But De Corte enriches his philosophical considerations with perceptive observations on the facts of his times. In this and many other respects the thought of De Corte resembles that of Thomas Molnar.

De Corte’s overall theme is the decline, or rather the marginalization, of the intellect. While the intellect is disparaged, the creative function of the mind (De Corte calls it the poetic) is exalted. The result is the loss of contact with reality since the external world becomes the creation of the mind.

De Corte divides his book along three broad headings. First, he considers the pursuit of utopia by intellectuals which replaces the real world with an artificial world of technology. The wise are replaced by experts and technicians who can provide practical solutions. De Corte quotes Joseph Stalin’s description of engineers of the soul. “Everything is determined according to decisions inspired by ‘specialists.’” The intelligence is sidelined in favor of Marxist praxis or liberal pragmatism. (pp. 31-32)

One thinks of parallel observations found in Thomas Molnar’s Decline of the Intellectual (1961).

Second, he treats of the idolization of science and the application of the scientific method to all aspects of existence. This is of course valid criticism. I had difficulty following De Corte, however, where he seems to critique the theoretical approaches of modern science in favor of philosophical realism of the ancients. It seems to me that modern science is a post-1300 A.D phenomenon that requires new philosophical considerations.

Third, De Corte gives us a creative analysis of today’s tidal wave of information: “information that deforms.” The information culture of today inevitably involves manipulation and vulgarization. News and propaganda are indistinguishable. How can man’s intellect come to an understanding of anything in the ceaseless torrent of images and sounds? How can a man enter into a real fellowship with others when he is constantly engaged by ( = is connected to) the central producers of the media which occupy all his time? De Corte, moreover, was writing before the internet had arrived….

How does De Corte apply these concepts to the Catholic Church of the 1960s?  More than most commentators, he clearly identifies as a defining fault the loss of reality by the hierarchy since the Council. He writes of:

A parallel hierarchy contemptuous of its values of truth, which are then removed from the true hierarchy; the extraordinary isolation of this hierarchy from the real world and the real man, the curtain of illusions of chimeras, of mirages even of visions that blind it, even sometimes …. its most eminent representatives.

The mere concept of a “pastoral” Council implies the abandonment of realism, of contemplation, of the intellect. De Corte: 

The first [key element] is, without any possible doubt, the orientation imprinted by the recent Council of the Universal Church which relegated to the background the values of contemplation to the benefit of the values of action. These in turn, in the post-conciliar mentality, were sidelined in favor of the values of fiction and the will to power. These two falls were fatal. Right from the first meetings when the majority of the fathers rejected the scholastic-styled schema on the definition of the Church, under the pretext that it was inaccessible to the modern mind, truth had to yield to efficiency, the intelligence to the will, and the eternal to the temporal.

…

In becoming engaged in the “pastoral” path, in aggiornamento, and in adaptation to the “modern world” following the Council, many clergymen were moved to sacrifice the values of the truth for the values of efficiency. To reach contemporary man it is necessary to drop the parts of dogma to which his mentality can no longer give its consent. … That is the abyss into which the clergyman who subordinates contemplation to action and action to the will of power topples into.  This abyss of iniquity no longer has the smallest place for the intelligence.

The second key element that we would equally like to underline in contemporary Catholicism is parallel to the first: it is the subversion of the liturgy. Let us rest content with bringing out what is, in our opinion, the essential point, which is the abandonment, even the proscription, of Latin…. 

Why is this an issue?

Ultimately, for the believer, it is not by chance or arbitrary decree that Christ was born in a given place, at a given time, within the orbit of the civilization of the intelligence and realism of the mind. The disposition of Providence is obvious: Greco-Roman civilization is the sole civilization that, having confidence in the human intelligence in its capacity to be measured by the real and to understand it, had the universal reach…. Christian civilization, which in a way sublimated this civilization, is its most perfect expression.

After the Council:

In many cases, pastoral work and liturgy were abandoned to the bilious zeal of innovators, the darkness of an intelligence gorged on illusions, and the will of clerical power. This work and liturgy have incited the faithful to work with all their strength in collaborating with those who dream of changing man and the world.

(All these quotes are taken from pp. 60-66)

Has not John Lamont recently written of the indelible relationship between the Christian faith and the civilization in which it arose ? 1) We note, too,  the passionate tone of De Corte’s remarks: this is no dispassionate participant in an academic debate! For the foundations of the Christian faith are at stake.

Admittedly, any primarily philosophical approach also has limitations. It is conducive to determinism, historical reality becoming the inevitable function of an intellectual process. Hegelianism is the classic example, but Thomists are not immune to this temptation. Historical reality so often takes its own twists and turns!

In his 1987 preface to the reissue of Intelligence in Danger of Death,  De Corte could review the continued disastrous progress of the “paradigm shifts” (to use a current cliché) of the post-World War II era. And he recognized that, on the Church front, John Paul II was no solution but rather part of the crisis. Indeed, De Corte wrote that the crisis was still in its early stages. And now, nearly 40 years after that preface? In the last few years, the “woke” ideology has triumphed in the West. Regarding the Church, De Corte’s fears and warnings have proved so terribly true – in contrast to the continuing fantasies of the Church establishment. 

De Corte (quoting Charles Maurras!) does, however, offer this hope:

‘It is characteristic of the intellectual to lead the reaction to hopelessness. Faced with the threatening horizon, the national intelligence [ De Corte clarifies: the universal intelligence] has to become connected to those who try to do something beautiful before sinking.‘

It is the optimism of a philosopher who has faith in human intellect, in the priority of contemplation over action and in the objective existence of the real.

1. Lamont, John, “Dominican Theologian attacks Catholic Tradition (Part 4): what is at Stake in the attempted Suppression of the TLM?” Rorate Caeli (accessed 9/25/2023)
2. P. 66, quoting Maurras, Charles, “L’Avenir et L’Intelligence” at 87, Romantisme et Révolution (Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, Paris, 1924)

Cantantes in Cordibus is the schola for the Traditional Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows in Jersey City. Please support this fine choir.

Last night a concert of the music of William Byrd took place in the splendid, resonant and historic setting of Most Holy Redeemer Church, East 3rd Street, New York. A good-sized audience heard a superb performance of Bryd’s music, both sacred and secular. The church was an ideal acoustical environment for this kind of smaller scale, somewhat melancholy music. The warmly applauded performers were Charles Weaver, Elizabeth Weaver, Terence B. Fay and Grant Herreid.

Do I need to point out that Charles Weaver is the Music Director at St. Mary’s, Norwalk, where Elizabeth Weaver and Terence Fay sing with him each Sunday at the Solemn Traditional liturgy? Throughout the evening Charles Weaver interspersed historic commentary which highlighted Byrd’s deep ties with the Catholic recusants (Byrd was one of their number). Indeed, he had a specfic connection with the manor of the Paston Family in Norfolk where some of the music heard last night would have been performed. Edward Paston was, moreover, not just a patron but an artistic collaborator of Byrd; a poem written by Paston in honor of the Catholic Queen Mary and set by Byrd was performed last night. For it is an amazing fact that in their clandestine celebration of the prohibited Mass the Catholic recusants of Elizabethen England often created magnificent music and art. As Julian Kwasniewski points out in an essay distributed last night with the program:

Although I have spoken primarily of his life as a musician, Byrd’s life as a recusant Catholic should serve as inspiration for Catholics today, who face varying degrees of persecution not only from secular governments, but from within the Church’s hierarchy itself. Figures like Byrd remind us that the creation of great art is possible even in times of adversity. 1)

Since 2011 we at St. Hugh of Cluny have often covered events at the grand Church of Most Holy Redeemer, formerly Redemptorist, formerly German. Indeed, this Society has sponsored some of them. Today a young priest of the archdiocese leads this parish in the midst of what some might consider one of the city’s more inhospitable surroundings – half party land, half “underprivileged” neighborhood. Yet, under Fr. Sean Connolly, the church looks better than ever before and the parish is sponsoring an ambitious program of musical performances. 2)

(Above and Below) Most Holy Redeemer is an endless source of insights into the Catholic devotional life of the past ( and, as is the intention of this parish’s current management, of the future as well). Since 1914 the lavishly decorated shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is supposed to be the center of this devotion in New York City. 3)

(Above and below) The chapel-shrine of the relics includes those of St. Datian, a romam Martyr, enclosed in a wax image. His relics were brought to New York in the 1890’s amid great rejoicing.

(Above) Catholic devotions of an “earlier age” – that of the poor souls in purgatory. (Below) This modern, somewhat expressionless statue used to adorn (protected by a cage) the facade of the nearby Nativity parish, victim of a recent Archdiocesan downsizing. Most Holy Redeemer parish is now “Most Holy Redeemer-Nativity.” 4)

1. Kwasniewski, Julian, “Not a tame Byrd: Remembering a great recusant composer,” Catholic World Report (7/2/2023)
2. See, e.g., “Solemn Mass of St. Nicholas at Most Holy Redeemer Church,” (12/6/2019); “The Churches of New York IX: Vierzehnheiligen on the East River,” (3/27/2011) both on the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny.
3. “Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help,” East Village Catholic (Accessed 9/17/2023)
4. “The Churches of New York XII: Lady in a Cage,” Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (7/14/2011)

A full congregation at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, was treated to a beautiful Solemn Vespers with Seven Copes for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on Thursday evening. (Nearby, the San Gennaro Festival was in full swing.) Very Reverend Enrique Salvo was the celebrant, assisted by six priests. Assisting in choir was the Most Rev. Pierre-André Dumas, Bishop of Anse-à-Veau and Miragoâne, numerous clergy and members of the Order of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. The Basilica Schola Cantorum and Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Jared Lamenzo, performed the sumptious Solemn Vespers K 339 of Mozart and other pieces by Mozart, Bellini and Cherubini. Our Society was a sponsor of this ceremony.

Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life

By Peter A. Kwasniewski

Foreword by Fr. John A. Perricone

TAN Books, Gastonia, NC, 2023

The indefatigable Peter Kwasniewski has given us yet another book relating to Catholic liturgy and culture. Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence, however, differs in certain important respects from Kwasniewski’s other recent works. It deals with music and especially sacred music. It arises out of the author’s own experience as a music director and as a composer. Kwasniewski’s other books testify eloquently to his warm admiration for the traditional Roman Rite. While his love for the Latin mass is evident in this book as well, Kwasniewski reaches out here to a “broader” audience. He discusses how good music has a role to play in the home and in the Novus Ordo mass as well.

The style of this book is concrete and often colorful. Throughout the book,   Kwasniewski offers specific suggestions and recommendations. Although this work at various points does address theological and theoretical issues, Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence never loses its character as a practical handbook for recovering the role of music in the world and in the Church.

Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence, as the title indicates, is divided into three major themes. The first, good music, discusses how to develop or rediscover good taste in music.  The second, sacred music, deals with the music that is appropriate in the sacred liturgy of the Catholic Church and how to enable its performance. Finally, and to some perhaps enigmatically,  Kwasniewski argues for the place of silence in the liturgy.

Kwasniewski starts with the need to break away from today’s popular music in order to develop one’s own ability to appreciate great music. The author offers concrete recommendations as to what media to use and what composers to listen to. This part of the book is particularly intriguing. For how can someone appreciate the role of music in the liturgy, for example, if he has never internalized the basic structures of western music? For, as the author states, “the prevailing western popular culture is impervious to and, at times, subversive of, the process of Christian inculturation.” I myself have often reflected on how in earlier years a child would have heard classical music or music derived from it in cartoons, film scores and pop and band concerts. Today, where this is lacking, it is much more difficult to appreciate more demanding and elaborate art forms like opera which are  totally alien in the current musical context. No wonder the audience for opera in the United States continues to diminish.

Kwasniewski next turns to the role of music in the liturgy. Not unexpectedly, our author argues strongly for the preeminent role of Gregorian Chant in the liturgy of the Church. He makes ample reference to the statements of the magisterium over the years in support of Chant up to and including Vatican II. I only have  this reservation, however – the entire culture of the Catholic Church is currently governed by the repudiation  of all such authority-  including, in this instance, that of the supposedly sacrosanct Council! 

Consistent with the style of this book, the author discusses in detail what Chant exactly is in relation to other kinds of music, and how to establish the performance of chant at the parish level. He demonstrates that this is completely feasible – rebutting claims that such music is too demanding or unintelligible for parish use. Kwasniewski is a harsh critic of the “Contemporary Worship Music” that has dominated celebrations in the Novus Ordo for decades. And he gives good reasons for banishing guitars and pianos from the church.

Regardless of this book’s practical focus, Kwasniewski does not necessarily neglect theory. For example, he shows that bad music has a deleterious effect on the souls of those who hear it relentlessly. Thus, establishing a high mutual culture is not a luxury, but a necessity for the restoration of a truly Catholic spirituality. Of course, this is entirely in accord with the considerations of Plato and Aristotle regarding the effect of music on the soul of man.

Finally, we come to the role of silence. An aspect of a fine music culture is the necessity at times to be silent. For example, in the Western liturgy even in elaborate musical settings silence prevails at the most sacred moment,  that of the consecration. 1) And from an early stage both in the West and in the East large portions of the liturgy –  like the Western canon –  began to be said silently. Indeed, recurring moments of silence in the liturgy are actually most conducive to participation by the congregation. Obviously a particular target of these reflections is the Novus Ordo liturgy which fills every moment with readings, responses, or music.

This thesis of the  book, moreover, is most consistent with the recent experience of the traditionalist movement in the United States. I am perhaps not as confident as Kwasniewski that immediately before the last Council a high level of music performance could be frequently found. But clearly in much more recent times, St. Mary’s parish in Norwalk,  or the Saint Gregory Society in New Haven  (to name just two institutions) have achieved an extraordinary level of musical perfection. At these places which celebrate the Traditional mass,  inspiring music is not a show, but an an integral part of the parish worship. Here, Chant, polyphony and more recent sacred music may be performed by professional singers, parish choirs and children’s groups – sometimes all together. The wonderful musical culture found in these fortunate locations has contributed greatly to the success of these apostolates and has radiated outwards. The value of good music is of course not only its pragmatic effectiveness. But these few examples powerfully support Peter Kwasniewski’s arguments that great music is necessary and can and should become a part of ordinary Catholic life.

1. I know there have been and are exceptions…..

A New Jersey priest and commentator writes:

A pall hung over the gathering of the leadership of 14 religious orders of Charity Sisters in Halifax, Nova Scotia, last month. Among them were the New York Charities who, in April, decided to eventually dissolve their community and will no longer accept new members as they are on a “path to completion.”

Sister Maureen Shaughnessy, the General Superior of the separate New Jersey Charities who was at that meeting, told me: “We’ll be facing the same decision in the next 10 years.” She had served as the head of the order from 2003 to 2011 when there were about 500 sisters in the community. Yesterday, she started her second four-year term after finishing one that began in 2019. Today there are 164 N.J. Charities with the average age of 83. 1)

I have previously covered the decision of the New York Sisters of Charity to, in effect, go into liquidation. 2) The New Jersey “Charities,” as the article quoted above calls them, find themselves in a similar situation. As the joint letter of the two institutions reproduced below indicates, their latest response to the crisis seems to be exploring some kind of combined operations:

In business, a combination of two failing companies usually ends up saving neither of them. But the main problems this letter reveals are not so much faulty tactics of the moment, but fundamental weaknesses. In the joint statement, I note no reference to God or Christ. The sisters, however, do commit to “live into” Pope Francis’ “vision” in Laudato Si’. The issues the sisters identify as critical are entirely secular: climate change, homelessness and immigration. Proposed actions include reducing “our carbon footprint with a focus on our food print,” creating committees and task forces. I cannot imagine that any woman interested in religious life would be attracted to such an organization with these goals couched in this kind of language.

Indeed, in the entire Summer 2023 issue of New Dimensions (the sisters’ publication from which the above letter is taken) only a handful of clearly, specifically Catholic passages stand out. Such as where the founder of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth is quoted as stating in 1859 that “the principal end (for) which God has called and assembled the Sisters of Charity is to honor Jesus Christ, Our Lord, the source and model of all charity, by rendering him every temporal and spiritual service in their power in the persons of the poor… .” 4) Or where a half dozen young, apparently Vietnamese and African sisters from a variety of orders ( but no Sisters of Charity), while visiting the Blessed Miriam Teresa’s “crypt.” speak of their faith and their appreciation of her life and writings. Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, a Sister of Charity, died in 1927. 5)

I should add that this situation is entirely endorsed by Church authority. Neither the Vatican nor the local bishops, as far as I am aware, have decreed an apostolic visitation or even discussed reforms or sanctions regardless of the status and conduct of these declining religious institutions. Indeed, the opposite is true: in 2015 a Vatican investigation of the LCWR (to which both groups of Sisters of Charity discussed here belong), was terminated (with the direct participation of Pope Francis) with practically no action taken.

1. Santora, Rev. Alexander, “What’s next for Sisters of Charity as members age”?, NJ.com( 7/2/2023). In the 1960’s there were up to 2,000 sisters.
2. “On a ‘Path of Completion’: The Sisters of Charity of New York,” The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (5/1/2023)
3. New Dimensions, Summer 2023 at 4 (A publication of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth).
4. Id. at 14
5. id. at 16