In 2019 Herder Korrespondenz published the following “polemical discourse” of which I translate excerpts.1) This interview sent representatives of  German Church into incoherent rage. 

Lucas Wiegelmann is the interviewer. I assume our readers know of  Martin Mosebach. Thomas Sternberg is a politician and quintessential member of the establishment of the German Catholic Church. He is the president of the (lay) Central Committee of German Catholics which is in the forefront of the current “Synodal Path” agitation. I will only comment that at this very moment the Synodal Path proponents are speaking far less favorably of the papacy than in this interview. The Vatican’s recent prohibition of the blessing of homosexual couples has touched off only the latest of a series of clashes with “Rome.”

…

You’re saying that Peter was the first Pope?

Mosebach: Of course!

Sternberg: Excuse me, but I can’t  agree with that. It’s simply nonsense! The papal office developed with the times. There  were bishops relatively early in the Church. A certain theological precedence crystalized around those bishops who had dioceses in the government centers. …..

…

Do you have a favorite pope in history?

Sternberg: I especially admire Paul VI – the greatest reforming pope of recent history.

Mosebach: The most terrible pope of recent history.

Sternberg: Just in his first appearance he sent a signal. He sold his tiara to an American museum and donated the proceeds to the poor. ….He viewed himself as the bishop of Rome, as the first among bishops……It was also fitting that he radically pruned  the court ceremonies of the Vatican….The guards were abolished,  the diverse ranks and special offices, the ostrich feather fans – all that was eliminated.

Mosebach: Paul VI did what a pope has no right to do. With his reform of the of the mass he destroyed the organically developed Catholic liturgy and left us an order of worship 2) that obscures the Eucharistic mystery. Paul VI abused papal authority. You yourself have said that up to the middle ages the early papacy was characterized by deciding controversies. Therein is the area of responsibility of the pope, not the unleashing of religious and political forces. It’s a passive authority. The office of Vicarius Christi would place completely insuperable demands on everyone who would understand it as an active office. This office can only be exercised in a passive manner. It’s an office that Mr. Everyman has to be able to assume. Peter, not Paul, became the first pope. If genius and charisma were essential, this office would be madness. By the way, the old pomp, which Paul VI abolished, accomplished exactly this – it covered up the person of the pope. When the pope entered, one didn’t see the little old man anymore because he was hidden under the mass of brocade. Then,  in the 20^th century this cult of the solitary man in white developed under the influence of the news media – the Pastor Angelicus shining out over the masses.  The pope as charismatic leader, however, contradicts Catholic Tradition. The pope isn’t free, he is subject not just to the gospel but to the entirety of Tradition. Only within this can he act (take the initiative), and in the end that means he cannot act at all. And, indeed, he absolutely shouldn’t!

…

Mosebach: It’s clear: the entitlement to infallibility only exists when the pope speaks in submission to Tradition. When he doesn’t do that, then he is simply not authoritative. He possesses his authority by being a mere submissive mouthpiece of the eternal, that existed before him.

Sternberg: With this formulation you open the door to resistance against the pope. The judgment whether something is accord with Tradition or not depends very much on the historical convictions, knowledge and perceptions of the individual.

Mosebach: You are probably thinking of Cardinal Lehmann, who once reinterpreted the papal directive to exit advising on “pregnancy conflicts”  (abortion) as a directive to remain doing it. He supported this with the infamous words: “I’ve learned how to handle texts.” Especially Jesuits are very much engaged in handling Tradition in this way. I almost have the feeling that Pascal’s cruel caricature of the Jesuits in “Lettres a un Provincial“ has only been vindicated truly and completely in our days. In that book Pascal wrote this beautiful sentence about the Jesuits: “Ecce patres, qui tollunt peccata mundi.”  One would think he is talking about Francis. But these maneuvers, these cunning ideological reinterpretations, collapse after a certain amount of time. What endures is the great block of Tradition by means of  which a believer can take the measure of something. First of all a glance in the gospels suffices. The gospels are radical. Every line of the gospels denounces that cunning that would make Christianity acceptable. But everyone can also take the measure of something using, for example,  a gothic cathedral – if you stand before Notre Dame de Paris and ask if this or that encyclical, this or that papal address stands comparison to this building? And if not, it’s certainly not the fault of the cathedral.

…

Francis wants precisely that, going forward, Rome doesn’t have to decide everything. In Evangelii Gaudium he writes: “I also don’t believe that one should expect from the papal magisterium a final or complete  answer  to all questions concerning the Church and the world.”

Mosebach: Pope Francis is trying here in a somewhat unclear manner to address a mistaken development. The First Vatican Council in the document Pastor Aeternus confirmed, in the midst of a political crisis, the infallibility of the pope in questions of faith and morals. It thereby launched  through in part dramatic formulations an exaggeration of the papal office that didn’t correspond to Catholic Tradition.  Especially in the post-conciliar papal theology the papal office was exalted to an extent that doesn’t survive a comparison to Tradition. This omnipotent papacy, which seems to have imitated the absolutist fantasies of Joseph de Maistre,  has revealed its full danger really only now, when suddenly everything is supposed to depend on this one very special personality Bergoglio. Perhaps Catholics should be thankful for this situation, because it makes more urgent the correction of such exaggerations. Leading the papacy back to its old constraints would be fortunate for the Church. The Pope as supreme judge, who decides controversies in submission to Tradition – that suffices.

…

Sternberg: …The papacy has acquired a totally new coloration with Francis….…I really very much admire Francis’s opening to the perception of other people. The way he treats disabled people, the way he really lifts people out of their wheelchairs and always goes first to them instead of to officials. …

Mosebach: But you must certainly know, Herr Sternberg, that that’s part of the ritual of modern dictators: kissing children, soothing the sick, visiting field hospitals and so forth. Since publicity has existed, since we have had propaganda,  rulers have displayed themselves in this manner. It was old fashioned, almost touching in its rootedness in the past when the papal court still had its ostrich feather fans. The strong men of the modern age – a Hitler or Stalin – have used far different stylistic means to exhibit themselves in the best light. It’s the same with the current pope. A football stadium, where tens of thousands zero in on a solitary white form in the middle – that’s a far more totalitarian language than the ponderous, old-fashioned  court etiquette of the past!  Then there’s the utilization of the sick in their wheelchairs! Lined up a row,  they are now used to demonstrate our charity and mercy towards them! A shiver runs through me when the reigning Holy Father always speaks of the “tenderness of God.” I’d just like to roll up and die! The tenderness of God – that, in the face of the hard language of scripture! It’s a reprehensible downplaying, a deception, to deprive the faithful of the Rex Tremendae Majestatis from the regrettably abolished Dies Irae. Permit me too here to call attention to the close connection between kitsch and heterodoxy.  

Sternberg: I really have to object strongly here, because I have experienced it differently….

1. „Käme es auf Genie an, wäre dies Amt ein Irrsinn“ Herder Korrespondenz Spezial 1/2019
2. Gottesdienstordnung: The German word here refers to the regulations governing worship services (agenda) of the German Protestant (Lutheran) church.

By Peter Seewald

(Droemer Verlag, Munich 2020)

(This review is of the German original. All quotations are my own translations. Ignatius Press has published in 2020 the first volume of an English translation – SC)

We are fortunate that Pope Benedict XVI is with us still. Indeed, even though by now he has been “Pope Emeritus”  longer than “Pope” we have heard much from him on several fronts just in the last year or so:  his journey to the side of his dying brother in Germany, his dramatic book written with Cardinal Sarah. Last year appeared Benedict XVI: a Life, a quasi-authorized biography by Peter Seewald including new interviews with Benedict. How premature then was the title given to the English language edition of Peter Seewald’s last (2016) book of interviews with the Pope Emeritus: Last Testament!

I confess that I have never been a fan of Peter Seewald’s work. For starters, his style is excessively colloquial, even coarse at times, and studded with English borrowings  and outlandish  formulations:  (“the psychedelic sound of Gregorian chant”; Spindoktor (sic – referring to Ratzinger’s role vis-à-vis Cardinal Frings!)). Seewald easily falls into hyperbole:

“There are moments of world history in which time positively stands still. The (rotation of the) earth around its axis stops.” (referring to the day of Pope Benedict’s resignation)

In other passages, however, he serves up undigested academic or theological jargon. And everywhere he bombards the reader with an endless series of facts. It seems nothing can be mentioned without an explanatory parenthetical, clause or sentence. The longer digressions can be massive, covering every conceivable subject connected, however remotely, with Joseph Ratzinger. I could easily see this book abridged by at least 25% without doing any harm to the narrative.

But more problematic than his style is the inadequate historical context for Ratzinger’s life. Peter Seewald seems to derive most of his historical knowledge from German magazines and newspapers – nowadays a decidedly myopic perspective. As a result, the author’s endless historical digressions generally offer just platitudes and commonplaces, not real insights. As an example of Seewald’s historical judgment, again and again the significance of an author or his book is demonstrated to his satisfaction by the number of copies sold.

 But that’s not the only media-related problem in this book. Seewald’s declared purpose is to defend Joseph Ratzinger against a negative image of him created by the media (“prejudices, underhandedness and even outright disinformation”). Seewald takes up the cause of the Roman Catholic Church as well. Yet, by assuming the role of defense attorney, isn’t Seewald allowing these same media enemies of Ratzinger and the Church to lay down the “rules of the game”? For example, in the poisonous German media culture it may be a laudable undertaking to demonstrate that Benedict – and the Catholic Church – are not Nazis.  I submit that structuring an apologia around demolishing such absurd claims contributes little to our understanding of the role of either Pope Benedict or the Church.

All too numerous are the errors of fact and questionable assertions. Did rock n’ roll fascinate Germans five years after the end of World War II (before it even was invented in the US)? Does Nono el mondo mean “grandfather of the world” in Italian? At the ordination of Ratzinger did Cardinal Faulhaber process into the church to the motet Exicocaelibus magnus? During the war, when Joseph Ratzinger served as a Luftwaffe auxiliary, did he and his unit directly operate a Freya radar (“developed by Konrad Zuse”?)? Did Bishop Richard Williamson’s father die in the concentration camp Sonnenburg in 1944, after helping Jews escape from the Nazis (just like Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s father did)? “In the two thousand years of Christianity no really ruling successor of St. Peter had had the courage to take this step.” (referring to Benedict’s resignation) Such things do not inspire confidence in an author.

Yet Seewald’s lengthy narrative does keep moving – often with the aid of (sometimes artificial) cliffhangers. Seewald may be deficient in judgment, but here and there Benedict XVI: A Life does offer startling anecdotes and revealing comments. And if his overall tone is adulatory, Seewald doesn’t avoid some of the more problematic aspects of Benedict’s career. Seewald obviously can’t follow all of his hero’s opinions – even those restated in this book (such as Benedict’s still rosy assessment of the Second Vatican Council). And Seewald can be informative even when he goes off track. For example, he reminds us of John Allen’s initial hostile account of Cardinal Ratzinger – and how it changed when the cardinal became pope. The descriptions of towns, schools and landscapes connected to Joseph Ratzinger’s early life can be evocative. Seewald’s detailed account of the coordinated media campaign against Pope Benedict is important reading,  describing a trial run of the tactics employed by the civil establishment in the subsequent, infinitely more massive assault on President Trump.

Finally, what alternatives to Seewald does Benedict really have for a German-language biographer/dialogue partner/ publicist? Certainly the overwhelming majority of “serious” writers on religion in the German press and academia are either inveterate enemies of Benedict or unreadable – and very often both. But so much for our author – what of the story of Pope Benedict that he tells? In an account spanning some 90 years, I can only pick out a few topics that hopefully would interest the readers of a Traditionalist blog.

Ratzinger’s childhood inspires some of the best pages in the book. Born early on Holy Saturday, (as Seewald notes, at that time the Holy Saturday liturgy took place in the morning) the young child would seems destined to a spiritual career. The first residence of the Ratzinger family, as described by Seewald, seems like a fairy tale of faith and traditional German Catholic culture despite (or partially because of?) the economic constraints of that time. The young Joseph Ratzinger was introduced at an early age to prayer – but also beautiful music, splendid liturgies and glorious nature. It seems that Joseph Ratzinger’s simple, severe and devout policeman father was the greatest influence on him. – “his teacher, his spiritual master, his literary mentor.” 

From my own experiences I could sympathize with Joseph Ratzinger when he later entered a Catholic “high school”  (we would say) where, as seems universal in such Catholic institutions, sports were heavily emphasized. Like me, Ratzinger was totally incapable in this field, but he was able to manage his way through it all more sucessfully than I.

After the war, Joseph Ratzinger entered the seminary with his brother, and later attended the university in Munich. According to Seewald, the nascent West German state represented  the very essence of Catholic social doctrine. Yet despite this purported early influence, the Church soon encountered problems in the postwar world the origin of which Seewald does not explain. Increasingly, members of the theological faculty have problems with “Rome.”  The local population, even in supposedly Catholic Bavaria, was not necessarily receptive to Christianity. At this early stage Ratzinger began to gravitate towards the liberal wing of the church. Curiously, however, he at first rejected the liturgical movement – but later grew comfortable with it. 

Early on Ratzinger had also settled on becoming an academic. He had, however, an almost career-ending conflict with a certain Professor Schmaus when the latter rejected his Habilitation book (in Germany a necessary step to obtain a teaching position at a university). Naturally Seewald calls Schmaus a “bigwig,” vain, easily taking offense – and, of course, previously friendly to Nazis. This incident also features prominently in Seewald/Ratzinger’s Last Conversations(aka Last Testament), but here we learn that Schmaus’s  opposition to Ratzinger was far more fundamental and militant than I had supposed from that account – Schmaus held the young theologian to be a nebulous modernist. Through skillful tactics Ratzinger worked around this obstacle and in 1958 he received his first professorship. 

From this beginning Ratzinger steadily rose to prominence among German theologians – and he was reckoned to the progressive wing. In an early essay,, he speculated on the salvation of all kind and helpful people, and, according to Seewald at least, by 1959 he sported a “black suit and a black tie.”   Commenting on this era,  Ratzinger makes the claim – startling in view of his later experiences – that “I always was very much interested in politics.”  

Ratzinger of course eventually became one of the main spokesmen and leaders of the progressives at the Second Vatican Council. Yet I still don’t get a good sense from reading this book what his specific objectives actually were.  He is quoted as endorsing such such vague but sweeping propositions as repudiating the “armor” of scholastic theology and advocating that the Faith must find “a new language and a new openness.”

Seewald can’t help but label the Conciliar enthusiasm of the early 60’s as “naïve,” specifically referring to Ratzinger’s liturgical expectations of that time. Indeed, Seewald cites sources – including, I may add, many of my own favorites – who profoundly dissented, if for different reasons, from the Conciliar euphoria, men like Alfred Lorenzer and Hubert Jedin. Pope Benedict himself is untroubled by any second thoughts about the Council. Going forward, defending what he viewed as the true legacy of the Council against the post-Conciliar “Council of the media” became his mission. Almost immediately, therefore, the Second Vatican Council – the opening to the World, the saving reconciliation with modernity – had become just one more non-intuitive set of dogmas that required endless further defense and interpretation (or hermeneutics)

As the Council ended, Ratzinger took up a new position at the University of Tübingen. There he taught side-by-side with Hans Küng – which is likely why he transferred there in the first place. It seems that gradually Ratzinger’s views began diverging more and more from the those of majority of the intellectual leadership of the German Church. As described by Ratzinger,  this was the natural development of his growing understanding of his colleagues’ theology and objectives. Why Ratzinger did not discern these problems with Küng, Rahner etc. earlier is not addressed in this book. The relationship with Küng eventually deteriorated into outright enmity – at least on Küng’s part. Throughout the rest of Seewald’s book, Küng has the role of a recurring demonic figure and hostile commentator on Ratzinger’s career.

In 1968 Ratzinger moved again from Tübingen, dominated by Küng, to the more congenial surroundings of the University of Regensburg in his homeland of Bavaria. By this time the deficiencies of the Conciliar regime were manifest. As Seewald reports, only two years after the conclusion of the Council the percentage of Catholics regularly attending Mass in Germany was plummeting.  Conversely, by 1970 the number of those exiting the Church in Germany had skyrocketed. At this time Ratzinger began to be considered the “theological savior” of Germany by the conservative remnants of the Church.

In 1977, Ratzinger was appointed to the prestigious see of Munich. Aside from a very brief curacy in the early 1950’s, it was his first pastoral experience. In this role Ratzinger does not seem to have distinguished himself from the rest of his bureaucratic and/or progressive colleagues in the “German Catholic Church.”  We read, for example, how he facilitated a typical progressive stunt of setting up a child speaker to publicly challenge John Paul II on a papal visit to Germany. And then there was Ratzinger’s patronage of the controversial lay “movement” Katholische Integrierte Gemeinde. To some extent Ratzinger retained his connection to this group even after he had become Pope. By 2019 the KIG had collapsed in scandal.

 In 1981 Ratzinger was named prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. For the next 24 years Ratzinger exercised this office. He assumed the role of the “bad cop” for John Paul II and earned the opprobrium of much of the world media as a result. He was a loyal subordinate even when he disagreed with the Pope’s actions. Ratzinger did express reservations, for example, regarding the mammoth spectacles John Paul II loved. And he at first refused to participate in the ecumenical Assisi event. But nothing came of this – and Ratzinger of course later attended later Assisi meetings himself.

There are also early indications of Ratzinger’s limitations as a leader. Seewald reports that he really never developed effective relationships or networks within the Vatican bureaucracy – despite all the years he served there. A specific incident illustrates some of Ratzinger’s difficulties – the one event described in this book which I personally witnessed. The Vatican had issued in 1986 a letter on “The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,”  essentially reiterating Catholic doctrine. Shortly thereafter, Cardinal Ratzinger gave an address in the Lutheran church of St. Peter in New York. Seewald describes how a crowd of homosexuals in the audience attempted to shout down Ratzinger. What Seewald doesn’t mention, however, was that Ratzinger’s presentation was entirely devoted to questions of Biblical exegesis, in connection with a closed-door conference on this subject he was holding shortly thereafter.  Even though the homosexual issue was dominating the media, Ratzinger apparently hoped to just ignore it in his address. His uninspiring appearance and delivery only stirred up the demonstrators all the more. And the “40 policemen” that Seewald mentions only deigned to intervene after the address had been thoroughly disrupted. 

And of course in 2005 Joseph Ratzinger ascended the papal throne as Benedict XVI. For the next 8 years he was to lead the Church through crises caused by all the things which had been swept under the rug in previous papacies. Seewald (and Benedict XVI?), however, seem to regard the main challenge of  Benedict’s papacy as maintaining a good relationship with the press – primarily that of Germany. The subject is nearly obsessive. Seewald even attributes to the media attacks over Bishop Williamson the beginning of the end of Ratzinger’s’ pontificate.  But obviously much more than inadequate public relations work was at fault in Benedict’s papacy. The man who could set a new liturgical course with Summorum Pontificum and at least start to sanction some of the worst, previously untouchable,  abusers was otherwise incapable of transforming his ideas into practice. That would have required well-planned, detailed implementation,  finding and promoting competent and loyal supporters, confronting opposition directly, and ceaseless personal advocacy. 

Seewald recites revealing examples of Benedict’s problematic style as ruler. Pope Benedict arranged for Archbishop Vigano to be sent as nuncio to the U.S – a step down in status –  after the Archbishop had clashed with Cardinal Bertone. Of course that wasn’t a punishment, the Pope Emeritus assures us, for Vigano’s zealous activity in attempting into bring order into Vatican’s  financial affairs. “Although Vigano certainly was right in many things be created a climate of general suspicion of all against all, so he couldn’t stay.” – so Benedict.  Ettore Gatti Tedeschi, another would-be financial reformer, met an even worse fate: summary dismissal amid uncorroborated accusations – once again, after running afoul of  Bertone. A year afterwards, in a characteristic gesture, Pope Benedict declared his continued trust in Tedeschi –  but refused to reinstate him. We have subsequently seen the effects of this laxity in the oversight of the Vatican finances,

Then, there was the strange business of Ingrid Stampa, a former  housekeeper of Ratzinger who had inserted herself in the papal  palace. She obtained the keys to the papal apartments and often showed up unannounced in his office. As described by Seewald, she was adept at manipulating Pope Benedict, when necessary with hysterical displays and fits of rage. She assumed more and more authority,  blocked the advancement of rivals in the curia and even had a favorite of hers made Cardinal. Apparently she had to hand back her keys to the papal apartment only after the explosion of the “Vatileaks” affair.

Perhaps we should say something here about the topic of this book that should be of the greatest interest to Traditionalists. Amazingly, Seewald writes very little about Ratzinger’s liturgical principles, the Traditional Mass and Summorum Pontificum. That’s because our author has no sympathy for the subject  – he calls Archbishop Lefebvre an “apostate” (abtrünnig). I have mentioned, however,  the late adherence of Ratzinger to the liturgical movement. As a professor in Regensburg,  Ratzinger was horrified by the introduction of the Novus Ordo. Such a thing had never been done in the entire history of the Church! – lamented Ratzinger. “It did us extraordinary damage. For now the impression formed that the liturgy was not preexisting and given, but something ‘made.’ ”

Of course, years later, as Pope, Ratzinger did do something about it by issuing Summorum Pontificum. Seewald comments in his inimitable style that: “no measurable changes in the liturgical framework of the Church were produced by Summorum Pontificum – much less developing into a mass movement. Benedict’s readmittance (to the Church) of the ‘Old Mass’ basically corresponded to the trend to rely on ‘Classico” and “Traditionale” after adulterated wine, poisonous foodstuffs and the fast food madness.”

But others felt and continue to feel differently. As Seewald himself writes: “Cardinal Koch even considers (Summorum Pontificum) the most important decision of all of this pontificate. With it, something enduring had been created, which the 80-year old pope had pushed through against all resistance. And he did this simply because for decades he had held this rectification for right and necessary.” Indeed, it was Benedict’s one success in legislating, implementing and defending a major change in the life of the Church. A change that, contrary to Seewald’s perspective, has indeed generated its own movement throughout the world. 

But then Pope Benedict resigned. Of cause the reasons for this  incredible step are not explicitly articulated in this book. The following extraordinary “reign” of Benedict as  “pope emeritus” – which by now exceeds the time of his own papacy – also receives, perhaps unsurprisingly, scant coverage.  Pope Benedict, ever the man of the establishment, is quoted as supporting and admiring his successor (as he has already stated in previous books).  I don’t think many people are convinced by that.

So, in 2019 when Bergoglio had set off another crisis – the threatened introduction of married priests, female deacons and even female priests, Cardinal Sarah and Ratzinger collaborated on a book defending Catholic Tradition in these issues. I am sure that this – combined with other, behind-the-scenes activity – helped put the brakes on the drive for change to the priesthood. Yet, in a typical foolish spectacle, after the anger of the Bergoglian faction exploded, Pope Benedict withdrew his name from the book (as co-author)  – even though he did not withdraw his contribution. It is quintessential Benedict, as described again and again in this book – the inability to confront opposition resulting, at least in appearance, in an apologetic compromise. 

So Seewald leaves us with the impression of a man of intelligence, spiritual insight, scholarly attainments, artistic sensitivity and having the best of wishes for the Church. But reverence for the institution and the lack of leadership skills often negated his gifts and virtues, ultimately leading to a disastrous decision that plunged the Church once again into the very moral and institutional chaos from which Benedict had striven to rescue her.  

But of course, as Seewald himself argues elsewhere on other issues,  Benedict’s character was not the main cause of his papacy’s difficulties. I have already alluded to some of some of these objective underlying problems of strategy and tactics.  But the fundamental issue with the Church between 1977 and 2013  – the period when Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop, Cardinal, and Pope –  was the inherently contradictory nature of both the legacy of the Vatican Council and the Church’s clerical culture. Apocalyptic hopes and conformism; yearning for a leader in the format of the secular figures of the last century yet anxiously avoiding conflict (and the appearance of conflict) within the Church and with the world; dreams of great transformations combined with bureaucratic complacency – really, I don’t think anyone could have pulled it off. 

The following is a translation of a review by Veronica Rasponi that appeared on Corrispondenza Romana of Professor Roberto de Mattei’s just published book (in Italian)  called “On the Moral Liceity of the Vaccine”. As many Catholics who know and love the Catholic Tradition and the Traditional Mass know, Professor de Mattei is one of the most important leaders of the Traditional Movement not only in Italy but throughout Europe.  His conclusions are very important for those who are weighing a decision whether to receive one of the Covid-19 vaccines.  He concludes, after a rigorous discussion using the methodology of some of the greatest moral theologians of the Church, that the vaccine is morally licit.  In that conclusion he is in agreement with the recent statements of the Pontifical Academy for Life and of the Congregation of Doctrine and Faith. The review below offers highlights of what Professor de Mattei writes in his book. All the quotes are from de Mattei himself unless noted.

Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

The anti-Covid vaccination is today at the center of a debate that is both political and medical, but often also in the sphere of morality. This debate is taking place in an atmosphere that is often emotional, thus distorting the terms of the question. It is timely, therefore, that Professor Roberto de Mattei has made a contribution to this debate with a study called On the Moral Liceity of the Vaccine. This study is being presented as “a clear and thorough answer to those who consider the vaccine against Covid-19 illicit in itself.”

The problem in short is this: “from the view of both Catholic and natural morality, is it licit or not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, given that the vaccines now available use cell lines originating from aborted fetuses”? In receiving these vaccines, or, if I am a medical doctor, in injecting these vaccines, am I making myself complicit with abortion, thereby committing a grave sin?

Professor de Mattei first of all distinguishes between the scientific and the moral problem.  To examine this crucial point, he calls to mind the principles on which moral theology is based, discussing the teaching of Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori and of the most trusted moral theologians of the nineteenth century, down to the Magisterium of John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor. On the basis of these premises,  one must study the problem of cooperation with evil, applying this to the concrete case of the current vaccines using fetal cell lines.

There are basically two theses that deny the liceity of the anti-Covid vaccines.  The first thesis considers the vaccine illicit in terms of its relationship to the abortion industry; the second considers it illicit because it may be  a threat to one’s physical health.  Professor de Mattei confronts thoroughly both theses.  He also confronts other objections, reminding everyone of  his own sense of responsibility.

The position that Professor de Mattei takes is not that different from that of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith as expressed on September 8, 2008 and December 21 2020, but he distances himself from statements made by some prelates on December 12, 2020.  At the same time he distances himself forcefully from many positions that are diffused on the internet that have no basis either in science or in theology or in morality.

Quoting the author:

“The Church is not a liquid society, but an institution that issues juridical and moral norms, to which one needs to adhere, as long as they do not enter into contradiction with the continuing Magisterium of the Church, with the teaching of the Popes, and with the doctrine of the Gospels.  A position that is proposed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith is not in itself infallible, but should be considered at the very least probable, or the most probable among other possibilities.  The Church has condemned whoever affirms that “it is not licit to follow a probable opinion or the most probable among those that are probable.” This is the case with respect to the liceity of the vaccine against the Coronavirus. We are experiencing a sad chapter in contemporary history whose weight we must bear, but we must do so with a deep trust in Wisdom and divine Goodness that never allows us to find ourselves confronted with a moral situation that is unsolvable.”

This deep study by Professor de Mattei has gathered much support in the international community. Among these supporters are Professor Giorgia Brambilla, considered one of the most respected voices in Catholic bioethics in Italy, and Doctor Thomas Ward, president of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, one of the most strenuous opposers of abortion in Great Britain.  Professor Brambilla writes:  “Confronted with the timely question of the liceity of the vaccine against the Coronavirus, the consciences of many are crushed and weakened by certain approaches that, on the basis of a false heroism, spread views that are unnecessarily rigid and at odds with Morality. This compendium, in coherence with the Magisterium of the Church, analyzes in a clear and complete way this difficult moral question, responding in an efficacious manner to the various theses that are involved.  There was a real need for this study.”

Doctor Ward affirms in turn: “I am profoundly grateful to Professor Roberto de Mattei for his lucid and authoritative clarification of the liceity of using or administering Covid vaccines during this pandemic.  Dissipating courageously the confusion caused by the promotion of personal opinions in opposition to the coherent, proven and true moral doctrine of the Church, he has defended the consciences of doctors and Catholic health workers who are pro-life, and he has protected the consciences, the health and life of old people and of Catholics with pre-existing conditions who through fear of gravely offending God  would have been led to think that they did not have the moral option to use the vaccine.”

.

Arcadi Nebolsine died last year on August 21 at the Westhampton Care Center  (Long Island) after a long illness. He was 87. For an obituary see HERE.

What can I say about Arcadi Rostislavovich Nebolsine? He was my dear friend for so many years. I first met him in the company of his own great friend, Thomas Molnar, in the early eighties. I visited him regularly every year after that – and even more frequently after I had moved back to the New York area in 2002.  I saw him the last time in 2020 in a nursing home out on Long Island shortly before he died.

His impressive, formidable appearance was certainly out of the ordinary. And Arcadi spoke with an accent all his own – a mélange of American, British and vaguely European. He may have been a character, yet he was no eccentric or pseudo-intellectual. Rather, he projected the image of a cultured European gentleman.  Indeed he could be quite the bon vivant when the occasion presented itself.  His own parties after Easter and Christmas (according to the Julian calendar, that is) always drew a crowd of guests from the Russian exile community and many others who know Arcadi well.  For Arcadi had an amazing army of friends who shared his passions for art and culture. And he would attend the gala Petrouschka ball of the Russian nobility society. 

The basis of his culture was a profound knowledge of Russian literature and philosophy. But no aspect of European culture and music was foreign to Arcadi. In particular, Arcadi was a great admirer and collector of the works of 20^th century English Catholic and Christian authors: G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and T.S. Elliot. Next
to his Russian literary studies, it was, so to speak,  a second fundamental point of reference for him. Indeed, Arcadi very much regretted not having had the opportunity to get to know C.S. Lewis better when he studied at Oxford in the 1950’s. At the time, he had been put off from exploring the Christian alternative – insofar as it had any visibility – by the social climbing antics of the Catholic chaplain and the eccentricity of the local clerical leader of the Orthodox….

Over the years, Arcadi and I would often meet and dine together for an evening of wonderful conversation. Since Arcadi always had some difficulty in getting around, our excursions were restricted to places in the vicinity of his apartment on East 86th Street. One such spot was the Heidelberg restaurant – along with Schaller & Weber, the last remnant of German and Central European Yorkville. Arcadi would inevitably order a couple of Martinis – with plenty  of olives – and an immense Schweinshaxe. Then he would unfailingly request a side of preiselbeeren  – only to he told they only had available cranberries ( the same answer the waiter had given him for over twenty years.)

In our conversations we would inevitably go over his latest cause. For Arcadi was always campaigning for something. Let me give you a brief hint of the range of his interests.

He was a great champion of the preservation of traditional art, cities and landscapes  He was always highly critical of modem invasive restorations – such as the renovation of the Sistine chapel – which substituted aggressive, bright colors for the subdued palette of the past. For his spiritual homeland, Russia, he helped organize a society for the preservation of Russian art and monuments. In particular, the fate of St. Petersburg was of grave concern to  him.

For it was the baroque and neoclassical styles that were dearest to Arcadi’s heart. Now that may seem surprising – but, as Arcadi liked to point out, non-Russians generally know nothing about the classical element in Russian culture: the poetry of Pushkin or the neoclassical architecture of the St. Petersburg of 1800. Who outside of Russia knows, for example,  that the Kazan cathedral of that period in that city was conceived as variation on St. Peter’s in Rome? And it was Arcadi who revealed to me that Nikolai Gogol  – the most passionate protagonist of the pro-Russian, pro-Orthodox  tendency in Russian culture,  had also written the most sympathetic account of the city of Rome and of the Catholic culture that still survived there in the 1840’s. 

In his struggles for the preservation of culture he developed and applied the concept of an ecology of the beautiful – uniting in the landscape nature and the works of man ( architecture). St. Petersburg, situated in a flat landscape by the waters of the Neva river under a limitless Northern sky, was for him a cultural ideal. Again, contrary to the notions of outsiders, he saw the old imperial capital with its “Western” domes and spires as a Christian city reaching up to heaven. He worked with local activists to prevent its desecration by modern high rises.

Similarly, Arcadi’s enthusiasm for the Austrian baroque was boundless. In the United States, he was drawn to the beaux-arts tradition that had flourished before 1914. Arcadi had less use for certain other periods and styles – such as those of the Victorian Age or the imitation “Slavic” architecture or Nazarene style icons of the same period in Russia. For more recent innovations, he had no understanding at all.

A second country dear to him was Portugal, where he often spent part of the year. He often spoke of the wonderful Portuguese landscapes, architecture  and people, and of his friend the pretender to the  Portuguese throne. He knew Fatima and its message well and also wrote an essay about the Azores and its “enchanted” landscapes, villages and small towns.  (The Azores, 1996 (untranslated)).

On a subject that should be of interest to the readers of this blog, Arcadi had a keen understanding of the liturgy and could always make a quick comparison of the Latin  (Traditional Catholic, that is) and the Orthodox rites. I first heard from him criticism of the 1955 changes to the Easter Triduum in the Latin church. He had had years ago contacts in Europe with circles of supporters of Archbishop Lefebvre. Regarding the whole question of revising the liturgy,  the Russian Orthodox Church had gone through a stage after the Revolution  in which  liturgical experimentation was encouraged by the authorities (the so-called Living Church). It was quickly dropped even in Soviet times, and Arcadi regretted that in Russia any otherwise harmless adjustments to the liturgy were no longer possible given the association of such changes with Communism. 

There were amusing differences between us illustrating the contrast between the Orthodox and Catholic perspectives. I had commented to Arcadi that I had read that if the Patriarch of Moscow would ever propose Vatican II – style changes, he would be deposed. Not at all, said Arcadi – in Orthodoxy nobody would listen to him in the first place .

His knowledge of all things Catholic was great, but the Second Vatican Council and John Paul II were insuperable barriers to any further interest he may have had. Although Arcadi was of the opinion that very little separated (Traditional)Catholics and the Orthodox. A few minor things like the papacy and divorce, to give a couple of examples…

Towards the end of his life he was working hard on trying to find a doctrinal formula that could serve to unite West and East. As in his efforts for the preservation of monuments, the gigantic nature of such a task never deterred Arcadi.

His own written output was small but select. Aside from his remarkable dissertation on poshlost, Arcadi left us a series of essays published in Russia and, as far as I am aware, untranslated: On Silver (1995) On Gold(1995),Le Soleil Inconnu (1996-97) and On the Colors (1996). He summarized his thoughts in The Metaphysics of the Beautiful: an Introduction to the Ecology of Culture (2003, also untranslated) It is an audacious synthesis of theology, philosophy, liturgy, literary criticism, environmentalism, travelogue and art history- focusing naturally on Russia but including much else besides.

Arcadi only enjoyed limited professional success to the United
States as a teacher. After Communism started to disintegrate, however, he found congenial friends and allies and a warm reception in Russia itself. There, people more easily appreciate Arcadi’s attempt to find a great synthesis or summary of what otherwise seem unrelated movements and disciplines.

As for poshlost, that was his arch enemy. Drawing on the writings of
Gogol and Dostoevsky,  Arcadi characterizes with this term those who are
simultaneously cowardly, depraved, lukewarm and banal. In other words, very much in the mood of today and characteristic of 21st century man. Arcadi’s other foes were big business, technology and globalism.

It is tragic that in such a culture as that of today,  true gentlemen like Arcadi R. Nebolsine, Thomas Molnar and Helmut Rückriegel  have departed  without leaving, it seems, any heirs or successors – at least in the US.  But we know, just from a survey of recent publications of a rising generation,  that this perception is false.  Arcadi Nebolsine will always find disciples – inspired by his vision of culture and humanity. And I look forward to the day when, following Arcadi’s last wishes,  East and West Christendom will fully unite once more. May his memory be eternal!

You’ll be glad to know Martin Mosebach has been hard at work. He has written a new novel and his published statements continue to generate controversy and even hysteria in a Catholic Germany slouching towards apocalypse along the Synodal Path. Let’s look at Mosebach’s recent reflections on “Catholic literature,”  taken from a lengthy interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin.  Invigorating and certainly controversial, these remarks are, by the way, entirely consistent with his previous writings on the subject.

Interviewer: You are a Catholic, and in your essays battle against the modernization of the rites of the Church. You like to formulate slogans like: “We believe with our knees or we don’t believe at all.” Did you ever have an experience of spiritual enlightenment in your life?

Mosebach: No, my religious roots were never that deep, although they always existed. The connection with the Catholic religion began to grow only after I was thirty.

Interviewer: Your novels take place in religiously indifferent milieus. To struggle with faith, to experience a conversion, to suffer martyrdom, to be shattered by guilt, to receive absolution from a mortal sin: why doesn’t any of this appear in your works?

Mosebach: I’m not a friend of what is called “Catholic literature.” Propagating religion in the form of a novel seems to me to be a dangerous undertaking. Allow me a perhaps mildly scandalous comparison.  Just as in pornography an image of sexuality is created,  projected by the lustful imagination and omitting anything that could disturb it, likewise “Catholic Literature” is in great danger of adjusting the world to Catholic doctrine. My nightmare image of such literature is the death of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited: the old sinner who nevertheless crosses himself as he breathes his last. I find something like this absolutely tasteless.

Interviewer: Why do you consider humor “a sign of the Catholic world view”?

Mosebach: A sense for the comic presupposes a pessimistic image of man and history. Because an optimist aims at the perfection of the good, he can be neither absurd nor cynical nor playful. His expectations, projected into the future, are more important to him than the understanding of present reality, which can captivate despite its frailty. The foundation of the Catholic world view is the conviction of the irreformable imperfection of the fallen world of original sin, in which every kind of grand and lofty endeavor at some point fails miserably. T.S. Eliot called the Catholic religion the “philosophy of disillusion” – not to expect from the world that which the world cannot give. Thus, comedy is the really Catholic form of literature.

Interviewer: Why then is the clergy united in its lack of interest in fiction?

Mosebach: Literature has tasks different from those of theology. It lives from contradictions, imagination, invention, and suggestions. Theology must keep all this at a distance – which it regrettably doesn’t always do.

“I like attacks better than boredom…Moreover, there is no right to be read.” Interview with Sven Michaelsen, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin p. 8-15 (March 5, 2021). Translation – SC.

What can we say about evangelization today? What should the Church do in a time of apostasy and decline?  And what is the relation of the Traditionalist movement to all this? Two noted apologists of the establishment  – defenders of the Faith – recently wrote on the interaction of Evangelization, Traditionalism and Christendom. 

In From Christendom Times to Apostolic Times,  George Weigel tells us in First Things that:

Look around you and recognize that ours are apostolic times, not Christendom times. Christendom, as Fulton Sheen said in 1974, is over.

“Christendom” connotes a situation in which society’s cultural codes and the manner of life they endorse help transmit “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Places like that existed within living memory; I grew up in the last, fleeting moments of one, in the urban Catholic culture of 1950s Baltimore. That form of “Christendom” is now long gone. Throughout the Western world today, the cultural air we breathe neither transmits the faith nor is neutral about the faith; the cultural air is hostile to the faith. And when that hostility captures the commanding heights of politics, it aggressively seeks to marginalize the faith.

In Christendom times, a “missionary” is someone who leaves a cultural comfort zone and goes to proclaim the Gospel where it’s not been heard before. In apostolic times, Redemptoris Missio (John Paul II’s encyclical on the missions -SC)teaches, every Catholic is a missionary who has been given the mandate to “go, make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). In apostolic times, “mission territory” is not an exotic travel destination; it’s everywhere. Mission territory is the kitchen table, the neighborhood, and the workplace; the mission extends into our lives as consumers and citizens.

Now I fully agree with Mr. Weigel that ours is a culture hostile to the faith – that Christendom is no more. After all, apologists both Catholic and friendly to Catholicism have been making that point since at least – well,  Novalis’ Christendom or Europe (1801). I should mention, however,  that his characterization of today’s culture does conflict sharply not only with the rapturous embrace of modernity by the Second Vatican Council as well as recent popes and bishops but also with the de facto “neutral” assessment of the Opus Dei movement. Does not Redemptoris Missio, Weigel’s “blueprint” for mission, also, here and there, still reflect this optimism?

It’s also undeniable that every Catholic needs to be a missionary today and his mission territory is all around him. But after making this most valid observation, Mr. Weigel then draws a contrast between such an “apostolic age” and the “comfort zone” of Christendom. Our author has indeed often critiqued in the past the alleged inadequacy of Christendom and its pre-Conciliar pockets and successors. The source of such views is of course the ferment leading up to the last Council with its attacks on the “Catholic Ghetto,” and the ”Constantinian Church.” 

Internal and external mission, however, was always integral to Christendom. Now by this term I mean a society where the religion of the Gospel is made the defining constitutional element of state and society. In such a society,  the Catholic, Orthodox religion gradually informs all aspects of life: the social structure, the arts, the economy, the laws, the cuisine, the technology,  the dress of the people – nothing was exempt from Christian influence. It resulted in a transformation that took generations, even centuries. A new Christendom cannot be recreated or restored by our efforts in our own days – after all, it took over 700 years to form the first one. And the task is never complete – total conformity of the World to the gospel is never achieved – not even in the 13^th century Europe, not even in the baroque age of Italy and Germany. Christendom is inherently never static and is always in need of renewal. Catholic culture, however marvelous, of itself is insufficient: Prague is one of the most perfectly Catholic cities in the world yet it is now inhabited by a people largely atheistic. 

A brief review of history bears this out. It was, after all,  from Christendom, both East and West, that the territories and peoples outside the Roman empire were converted –  starting with Ireland in the West, then Anglo-Saxon England, then Germany, the Slavic and Hungarian peoples and, by 1050, Scandinavia as far as Greenland.  During and after the crisis of the Protestant Reformation,  new missionaries  – Jesuits and others –  converted many in Asia and in the new world – concluding with the California missions of the second half of the 18^th century. And after the intervening chaos of the French revolution, after which Christendom was, so to speak, on life support,  we encounter the great missionary revival of the 19^thcentury. 

The external activity was matched by internal evangelization. The Benedictine monks of the 7^th century were eventually succeeded by Cluny and the Cistercians – all three representing not withdrawal from the world but the launching of mighty spiritual movements within it. In the 13th century, the friars of the new mendicant orders evangelized the rapidly growing cities  – and advanced as far as China. Later, the Jesuits acted not just as apostles to the heathen – an even greater focus of their efforts was education and internal mission in Europe. These missionary endeavors left a stamp on many landscapes of Europe that lasted even until the Second Vatican Council. Even in 19th century New York City – increasingly remote from Christendom – we read of the many missions preached by the Paulists and the Redemptorists in the city’s parishes. Finally, the catalogue of the saints and blesseds of Christendom shows that internal evangelization was not just the province of monks or priests but was shared by the laity: kings and servant girls, high court officials and peasants.

The contrast to the evangelization required of us today is not Christendom, but various abuses that developed after it fell. There was, for example, the ultramontane emphasis on a centralizing clerical culture. And then came the “Conciliar Church”: the average US parish that is its product is hardly evangelical. That John Paul II had to devote paragraphs of Redemptoris Missio to defending the very concept of mission only demonstrates its perilous state by 1990.  And what are we to make of the repeated utterences of the current bishop of Rome against “proselytizing”?

Actually, in recent years it has been the growing Traditionalist movement that has displayed the greatest initiative in evangelizing those both inside and outside the Church. It has done this primarily by involving Catholics in the liturgy in one way or another. In doing so,  it has revived and employed cultural achievements inherited from Christendom: the music, the vestments, the philosophy and the art (insofar as that is possible today ). None of these are ends in themselves but are means to revive the faith of Catholics and lead others to it. The effect is to activate those organizing these liturgies – and then to attract others won over by what they have seen or heard.

As an example, we have these testimonies from the diocese of Brooklyn in the Brooklyn Tablet:

“Our congregation is made up of many professionals, young people. A great number of young families come with their children. I would say that almost every year we’ve had one or two children wanting to make their communions in the old rite. Also, we have at least maybe two or three baptisms during the year. I’m surprised to see, almost every Sunday, we have new faces here. You know, and those new faces are young people,” Cardillo explained.

……

Bongiorni, 28, has been serving on the altar for ten years. He’s part of a close group of about two dozen young Catholics who met at the Traditional Latin Masses and started the Latin Mass program at St. Finbar Church, Bath Beach, along with Father Michael Gelfant, then the pastor, last year.

What is the reaction of the professional evangelizers of the establishment to this? For that, we turn to auxiliary bishop Robert Barron – a would-be modern-day Fulton Sheen. Now Bishop Barron has little use for Traditionalists. Last year he hosted a closed door meeting with “Catholic media professionals”  – one wonders who they were – on,  among other things, the dangers of “Radical Traditionalism.” Just recently Bishop Barron wrote in his blog on The Evangelical Path of Word on Fire:

(Speaking of the late Cardinal George)  Thoroughly imbued with the missionary spirit of Vatican II, the Cardinal knew that a hyper-valorization of any particular period of Church history, be it the American Catholicism of the 1950s or the European Catholicism of the thirteenth century, would seriously undermine the Church’s present capacity to engage the culture in which it finds itself.

In recent years, a fiercely traditionalist movement has emerged within American Catholicism,… In their anger and frustration, some of it justified, these arch-traditionalist Catholics have become nostalgic for the Church of the pre-conciliar period and antipathetic toward the Second Vatican Council itself, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and particularly our present Holy Father.

I have argued that the extreme traditionalist Catholicism of the present day is self-consuming, for it attacks the very foundations of Catholicism itself. If both of these characterizations are true, then these two critical movements are essentially moribund. I have tried to situate Word on Fire on the path of an evangelical Catholicism, the Catholicism of the saintly popes associated with Vatican II, a living Catholicism.

So the real problem for evangelization is a “fiercely” “extreme” “radically” Traditionalist  movement? Obviously this movement, that Bishop Barron calls “essentially moribund,” is in fact gathering steam, otherwise he would not be writing a diatribe against it.

But how is one to respond to a document like this? To point out the fallacy of a “missionary spirit of Vatican II“?  – by the establishment’s own statistics, mission, both internal and external, is in a crisis.  That to talk about “the Church’s present capacity to engage the culture in which it finds itself” verges on the ludicrous, given the total alienation of Christianity from the present lords of the media and academia? That the frequent references to the alleged “anger” and “frustration”  of the “spitting-mad” Traditionalists is obviously a copy of the rhetoric of the last few years directed against supporters of Donald Trump? 

Of course, these same Traditionalists are described as “nostalgic” for things that, given the age of the great majority,  they never could have experienced (including the 13th century!). Examining the list of authorities to whom Bishop Barron pledges allegiance, one would never guess that among them exist drastic, unacknowledged differences (e.g. Cardinal George – or Bishop Barron’s’ own ordinary Archbishop Gomez –  and Pope Francis). These same greats are all post-Conciliar, demonstrating that Bishop Barron has now adopted the progressive  “hermeneutic of rupture” (using Benedict XVI’s terminology) as his own.

Strangest of all from the perspective of evangelization is for Bishop Barron to imply that  “the authority of the pope and … the legitimacy of an ecumenical council” are “the very foundations of Catholicism itself”  – the most ultramontane, institutional formulation imaginable. This kind of rhetoric is only geared to a closed, internal audience. I can’t see positions like this serving as the basis for evangelizing anyone.

It is disheartening  that this post of Bishop Barron – like the recent alleged summary by the French bishops of the responses to the Summorum Pontificum questionnaire  – could have been written, but for the references to the internet,  40 years ago. And Bishop Barron is not just speaking for himself. For Traditionalists, the only path is to carry on as before, trusting that divine providence will continue to foster their increasingly thriving communiites. In so doing they are truly accomplishing a great contemporary work of evangelization.

By Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

I have written many Letters to the Editor in my lifetime to the New York Times and to the Wall Street Journal—bona fide credentials of my moderate and centrist persona—and now I feel compelled to write this letter to you to respond to your recent article called “The Evangelical Path of Word on Fire”. I am a Catholic priest, soon to be an octogenarian. It would seem more prudent at this time in my life to lay aside those things that threaten the peace and equanimity that one should strive for at this stage of my life. But alas, my Southern Italian genetic makeup does not make it easy to live a laid- back life at this time when I should give oneself over to contemplation and remembrance of things past.

I have followed your career in the Church for some years now, with a good deal of admiration for your stand against what you call liberal Catholicism.  St. John Henry Newman, that great opponent of liberalism in religion, would approve of your battle against “beige Catholicism”.  Your many instructional DVDs show clearly that you understand the important role of Beauty in the Catholic faith.  You are obviously of man of real faith who loves the Church.

Your brief article refers to two types of Catholics that manifest themselves at this time and that you consider to be aberrant, for very different reasons, from your understanding of Catholicism , which you speak about as Evangelical Catholicism. The first is “liberal Catholicism”, which has predominated since the years after the Second Vatican Council.  You describe this type of Catholicism as “culturally accommodating…unsure of itself..a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled.”  You agree that, in the words of Cardinal George, that liberal Catholicism is “a spent project”.

You go on to criticize what Cardinal George called “Conservative Catholicism” that “takes refuge in earlier cultural forms of faith expression and absolutizes them for all times and all places”.  But the main part of your article deals with a movement that has arisen in the past several years.

“In recent years, a fiercely traditionalist movement has emerged within American Catholicism, finding a home particularly in the social media space.  It has come about partly, as a reaction to the same beige Catholicism that I have criticized, but its ferocity is due to the scandals that have shaken that Church the past thirty years, especially the McCarrick situation. In their anger and frustration, some of it justified, these arch-traditionalists Catholics have become nostalgic for the Church of the pre-conciliar period and antipathetic toward the Second Vatican Council itself, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and particularly our present Holy Father.”

You conclude that the attitude of these radical Traditionalists are leading to their “stepping outside the confines of the Church”. You characterize this type of Catholicism as “self-devouring”, the manifestation of which is their constant anger at anyone who dares to challenge them.

I think that you see yourself as a Via Media between Conservative and Liberal Catholics.  But I must caution you about espousing any Via Media, as Cardinal Newman himself would caution you from his own experience with this way of thinking.  The problem is not your espousal of a vigorous Evangelical Catholicism. The problem is that you are a child not merely of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, but also and more importantly you are a product of the Novus Ordo world.  Your understanding of the Liturgy, “the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed”is based on a form of the Mass that is both a radical break with the Tradition and also a product of the 1960s, a form that has relevance now only to the two generations that followed the Council.  Surely one of the reasons for the precipitous decline in regular Mass attendance—in some diocese less that 15%–is that for those young men and women growing up now the Novus Ordo Mass has no relevance to what they are seeking spiritually.  They are seeking the Bread and Wine of heaven, not the product of a blender that looks and tastes like baby food. 

   You are too young to have had any experience of the Church before the Second Vatican Council.  You were six years old when the Council ended.  You were a small child when the constant liturgical changes were shaking the Church, and you were only 11 when the Novus Ordo Missal of St. Paul VI was promulgated and the Traditional Roman Mass of at least 1500 years was suppressed.  What little you  heard about the Traditional Mass was highly filtered by those who welcomed the suppression of the Traditional Mass and the imposition of a liturgical form never seen before in the Catholic Church. I remember quite well CCD teachers who thought it their duty to suppress all reference to the Traditional Mass and to a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and to deny that the Mass is a true and real Sacrifice.  

Yours is the generation for which the Traditional Liturgy was “canceled”. Cancel culture, so au courant right now, was anticipated years ago in the immediate post-Conciliar age with regard to the liturgical life of the Church.  But “cancellation” cannot work in a Church that is connected to eternity and the Eternal God.  My own discovery of the Traditional Roman Mass was a shattering spiritual experience in my life as a priest that bore much good fruit in my ministry and that filled me with a joy that nothing can take away.  The many seminarians and young priests who are attracted by the Traditional Mass are fortunate in that they are of a generation for whom the Traditional Mass was un-cancelled by authority.  These men, and many women, both religious and lay, have found a pearl of great price and that makes them very happy, spiritually happy, indeed.

I deplore the negativity of so many who call themselves Traditional Catholics. Your understanding of Traditional Catholics at least in part from those whose rantings you often see on social media who seem to be living in an alternative universe and are angry at the Church and angry about everything that makes up this post-modern world in which we live.  But I would suggest that these malcontents are not Traditional Catholics at all but what I call Rad-Trads.  They confuse adherence to the Traditional Roman Mass with a blanket condemnation of the present parlous condition of our society and, sadly, a condemnation of all who lead the Catholic Church today.  You are right in saying that these Catholics—who yet are not to be condemned but prayed for within the charity of our Lord—are often not interested in Evangelization, which is a fundamental imperative for the Church given to her by our Lord. 

 But you must see—and here again your sitz im leben puts you at a real disadvantage—that much of their angst is due to the turmoil within the Church and society of the past fifty years.  You did not experience, as did I, the collapse of religious education in the post-Conciliar period, the collapse of the Religious Orders, and the near collapse of the priesthood.  The bringing to light—that light fought against by those chosen by Christ to lead his Church—of the gross and systemic sexual corruption of the clergy confirmed for many Catholics that something had gone terribly wrong in the years after the Second Vatican Council.  In this way the distrust of the hierarchy and clergy by so many Catholics is manifest in a special way by those you call arch-traditionalist Catholics.  

Yes, Evangelization is the central issue.  But as Pope Benedict XVI knew, you cannot evangelize the world with a Novus Ordo Mass whose roots and rationale are locked in the 1960s.  That is why he issued the Motu Proprio that un-cancelled the Traditional Roman Mass. It is indeed ironic that you who understand so well the role of beauty in the Christian faith, you who understand that one of the names of God is Beauty, refuse to acknowledge that the very heart of the Church’s liturgical life has been emptied out by the disastrous reforms after the Council that had little to do with Sacrosanctum Concilium and everything to do with those with itching ears and a puffed up sense of their own intelligence and afflicted with the mid-century hatred of the past combined with a grossly sentimental understanding of the Christian faith ––they had never heard that Newman called sentimentality the acid of religion—-nearly destroyed the organic whole of the Liturgy of the Catholic Church.

Now when you read that last paragraph you will be tempted to write me off as another Rad-Trad.  But I am not.  I am a happy man who loves the Catholic Church and her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I rejoice that so many young seminarians and priest are discovering for themselves the beauty and depth of the Traditional Roman Mass.  I rejoice that so many Catholic families have discovered what worship of God means as they experience it in the Traditional Roman Mass.  And these people are truly evangelical.  They do not take the attitude that “we have found what we like and what suits us and the rest of the Church can go to hell”.  Not at all. They are joyous and welcoming, and they are evangelical in the truest sense.  If you met them you would like them, and you would see that they want the same thing as you do:  to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ throughout a world that so needs to hear this Good News. 

In today’s New York Times there is an Op-Ed called “Influencers are the New Televangelists.”.  It is written by a woman who describes what she and many others, especially women, have plugged into on the internet: a “gospel (that is) an accessible combination of self-care, activism and tongue in cheek Christianity (“Jesus loves me this I know, for he gave me Lexapro.”)  The author describes her realization, strengthened by what she has been going through in the pandemic, how the pandemic “has opened inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe.” She ends her piece with these words: “Contrary to what you might have seen on Instagram, our purpose is not to optimize our one wild and precious life. It’s time to search for meaning beyond the electric church that keeps us addicted to our phones and alienated from our closest kin.”  And she asks: “May we actually need to go to something like church?”

I would say to her that going to a typical Catholic parish Mass on Sunday is most probably not where you find reverence, humility and awe.  There you will most probably see a man standing at  table in funny clothes claiming to be speaking to God while facing the people to whom he is not speaking.  You would find a layman or a laywoman  doing readings that    often mean very little to those listening.  You would encounter music that is woefully mediocre and sentimental that could not possibly inspire reverence and awe.  You would listen to a sermon that consists of an opening joke to get the people convinced that what else will be said is not serious, followed by a summary of the day’s gospel, and a conclusion that is summarized in “have a good day”. You would see people in the pews who are dressed not for an experience of awe and reverence but rather to go to an informal lunch after Mass.  You would see little that could not be streamed and therefore has little to do with the terrible fact of reality.  

Bishop Barron, I think you ought to write less and talk less and get out more and meet people. And by meeting people I do not mean leading conferences and giving important talks.  I mean listening to not only your fans but to all sorts and conditions of men and women, and I would hope that you would venture even to sit “in choir” in a parish in your diocese that offers the Traditional Roman Mass and to see what you see and hear what you hear. But you must put aside your mid-century prejudices that you mistake for a new manifestation of Truth.  The big advantage of the Traditional Roman Mass is that you can relax. You don’t have to be on stage. You don’t have to deliver a brilliant sermon.  You don’t have make the Mass relevant to the congregation.  You just have to be willing to “play in the fields of the Lord.

Oremus pro invicem.

Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

A Beautiful window by the famous firm of Franz Xaver Zettler. Along with those of its main competitor in Munich, Mayer & Co., the firm’s windows adorn innumerable Catholic churches in the United States – but this example is in the Trappist abbey Tre Fontane, Rome.

La splendida vetrata «Madonna Assunta» all’Abbazia delle tre Fontane di Roma.

La trascurata e splendida vetrata «Madonna Assunta» di Zettler all’Abbazia delle tre Fontane di Roma.

The (Brooklyn) Tablet recently carried an informative article by Joaquin Badajoz on the devlopment of Traditionalism in the Brooklyn Diocese:

Latin in Mainstream TV Series and the Newly Thriving Mass of the Ages (The Tablet p.29, 1/30/2021)

Despite the title, the article deals almost exclusively with the blossoming of the Traditional Catholic liturgy. As Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon (“known for its massive Latin Masses” ) says to the interviewer:

“There is a definite increase in the youth interest in the Extraordinary Form Mass…. One thing anyone who attends or celebrates the Extraordinary Form Mass notices is the high percentage of young people and young families that are present.”

Archbishop Sample believes young people are looking for a more supernatural experience.

“The beauty of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass offers them a transcendent experience which touches hearts and minds,” Archbishop Sample said. “The reverence, the ceremony, and the sacredness, all contribute to this.”

And Vincent Bongiorni, 28, who has been serving at the altar for ten years and helped organize a Latin Mass at St. Finbar’s parish, witnesses:

“My generation is growing up in such a chaotic time where the oneness of God is more evident in the traditional form to us. This Mass connects us to thousands of years of Catholic worship. It’s like coming home to a family that’s awaiting us. Our chaotic culture doesn’t exist in that Mass. The culture of our work, our social life, our entertainment. This Mass supersedes that. You feel that sense of completion that makes our minds focus on God. And it’s almost like therapy in a sense.”

I am grateful to Joaquin Badajoz and The Tablet for this most favorable report – but not everything is perfect. Badajoz focuses on interest in the Latin language as the main motivating factor in the revival of the Traditional Mass – it is much, much more than that (as the people he interviewed make very clear)! Our author seems to think that the 1984 “special indult” Quattor Abhinc Annos is the governing decree authorizing the Traditional Liturgy – he mentions Ecclesia Dei only in passing and Summorum Pontificum not at all. Indeed, the procedures of the Brooklyn diocese as set forth in this article seem to be very much an indult-style regime.

But please read the article! And below, from The Tablet, is a schedule of the Latin Masses in Brooklyn and Queens.

TRADITIONAL MASSES IN THE BROOKLYN DIOCESE:

• Our Lady of Peace Church
  522 Carroll St., Brooklyn
  Every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. (Low Mass. Sung Mass on Certain Solemnities)
• St. Josaphat Church
  34-32 210th Street, Bayside
  Every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. (Sung Mass)
• Divine Mercy Parish, St. Cecilia Church
  84 Herbert St., Brooklyn
  Every Sunday at 7:00 p.m. (Low Mass. Sung Mass on 1st Sundays)
• Transfiguration-St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish, Transfiguration Church
  64-25 Perry Ave., Maspeth
  Every Sunday at 12:30 p.m. (Low Mass)
• St. Finbar Church
  138 Bay 20th St., Brooklyn
  First Sundays at 3:00 p.m. (Sung Mass)
• St. Fidelis Church
  123-06 14th Ave., College Point
  First and Third Fridays at 7:15 p.m. (Low Mass)

Thanks for the tip to Prof. Walter Petrovitz.

The following poem was written by a monk of the Monastery of San Benedetto in Monte, Norcia, Italy.  Today is Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of the “porch of Lent”.  This Sunday marks the “burial of the Alleluia”,  when the Alleluia of the Mass is replaced by the Tract.  The very word Alleluia is also no longer heard in the chanting of the Office, until the Easter Vigil.  This poem is a wonderful gift for each of us who love the Traditional Mass to deepen our own faith as we prepare for Lent.

Posted by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

From every mountain, hill and vale
Let Alleluia ring!
And may each woman, man and child
This Alleluia sing!

Alas! But little time is left
With Alleluia near;
We from thee soon shall have to part,
Oh, Alleluia dear!

Until Septuagesima
Will Alleluia last;
From that grave moment on we must
From Alleluia fast.

Then, in woe we shall, bereft
Of Alleluia mourn,
And clad with deepest sorrow wail,
From Alleluia torn.

Then will our drooping eyes, deprived
Of Alleluia weep,
And we’ll in penance far away
From Alleluia keep.

Then will our days be difficult,
When Alleluia flees,
For better heaven’s realm the heart
With Alleluia sees.

In one sole manner can we with
No Alleluia cope,
If on this journey we go forth
In Alleluia’s hope.

Thus, we must always mindful be,
With Alleluia ceased,
That on that Day of days we shall
With Alleluia feast.

On that most sacred Day our mouths
Will Alleluia fill,
And joy our hearts, for nothing will
Our Alleluia kill.

Then jubilation will come forth
In Alleluia’s sounds,
And merrily repeat itself
In Alleluia rounds.

Then filled our every limb shall be
With Alleluia’s might,
And on all faces mirth shall shine
With Alleluia bright.

Then nothing will our sturdy hearts
With Alleluia fear,
When finally, after the race
We Alleluia hear.

Then, rapt in bliss, we’ll dwell secure
In Alleluia’s spell,
And every tongue from East to West
Will Alleluia tell.

Then shall the music of the spheres
With Alleluia rhyme,
And heaven will its rhythm move
To Alleluia’s time.

For then, O Christ, the mournful tomb
Will Alleluia burst,
And Thou, Triumphant Victor, shall
Sing Alleluia first!

But, for now, until we hear
That Alleluia bell,
We must with mournful joy thee bid
Fare, Alleluia, well!