Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass

by Peter Kwasniewski

Angelico Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2020

It’s amazing for a traditionalist “old-timer”  – which I guess I now am – to experience the breadth and maturity of American Traditionalism today. The best evidence of that, in addition to the ever growing number of Traditional Masses, parishes, monasteries, and internet apostolates of all kinds, is the extraordinary new literature on the old rite. Earlier this year the English translation of Fiedrowicz’s authoritative The Traditional Mass appeared. Now Peter Kwasniewski gives us Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright. It is an open, unabashed and unashamed  apology ( in the early Christian sense) for the Traditional Roman Catholic liturgical life.

The first noteworthy thing about Reclaiming our Roman Catholic Birthright is that we have this book in the first place. With the conspicuous exception of Martin Mosebach’s landmark 2002 Heresy of Formlessness  – and perhaps  Fr. Claude Barthes’s more specialized 2011 La messe : Une Forêt de Symboles  – I do not recall previously encountering such books on the liturgy itself from the Traditionalist perspective.  Moreover, I am not sure such works were published even before the Vatican Council. For the pre-conciliar works I have seen tended to be either picture books or descriptive manuals – sometimes with an apologetic (in the contemporary sense!) flavor. The vision that the Traditional Mass  – as it then existed – was the central point of  Christian life and could be even a “selling point” for the Church to evangelize its own flock and the rest of the world seemed to have been obscured. 

Now Kwasniewski eloquently and passionately advocates the celebration of the Traditional Mass. He concentrates more on the advantages of the old rite, not the deficiencies of the new.  Furthermore, Kwasniewski does not shrink from the conclusion that the old rite is intrinsically  superior to its successor; that it should be once again the norm for all Roman Catholics. What is implicit in Mosebach’s and Fiedrowicz’s works is here boldly proclaimed:

From this vantage we can see, more clearly than ever. the vital spiritual, psychological and sociological need in our time for the usus antiquior. The reintroduction of the traditional Mass is not merely a matter of superior aesthetics, rather it concerns all of the crises we face us a society, as a race, as a planet.

In many ways Reclaiming our Roman Catholic Birthright  complements Fiedrowicz’s work. The latter is primarily a description of the Mass and a historical account of its formation, while Kwasniewski systematically presents the arguments why we should frequent and love this Mass – and how to defend it from its enemies. It is remarkable that Kwasniewski draws overwhelmingly on the insights and experience of the last few years under the reign of Pope Francis; indeed, much of the book reflects articles of the author and others from just 2018 to 2020! Could there be any better evidence of the vitality of today’s Traditionalism? Most of this material appeared first on the internet, once again demonstrating the decisive role it plays in the Traditionalist movement.

The solid grounding of this book in experience of the current liturgical practice of the old rite is everywhere evident, such as where Kwasniewski  points out that young children can be better behaved at a lengthy Solemn High Mass than at less elaborate liturgies, because there are so many more things to see and hear. This observation exactly agrees with my own experience in the now distant pre-Vatican II days. Back then he usual Sunday mass I had to attend was a low Mass organized for the pupils of the parochial school. The music was limited to four English hymns. How dazzled I was by the parish Solemn Mass the few times I had the good fortune to be taken to it by my parents.

Kwasniewski reminds us of the continuing  hostility of large parts of the Catholic clergy and laity to the Traditional Mass. Much of Reclaiming our Roman Catholic Birthright is therefore devoted to discussing and refuting the arguments against the Traditional mass. Kwasniewski, in my view correctly, attributes this opposition less to the strength of rationally formulated arguments but to the perception that the celebration of the Traditional Mass is a repudiation of the “Vatican II event”  to which, voluntarily or not, the members of the Church Establishment have irrevocably committed themselves. One more reversal of their liturgcial principles would be an incalculable mental blow. 

As an illustration, Kwasniewski presents a kind of  dialogue with a representative “Conservative Catholic”, Msgr. M. Francis Mannion. (who elsewhere has described the Traditional Mass movement as “idolatry”!) Msgr. Mannion is of the view that the Traditionalist movement will “fade away” if  young people can’t “understand the language” (even if they are doing exactly the opposite of that right now).

Let me digress a bit.  Msgr. Mannion cites in support of this assertion a “study” by Professor George Demacopoulos of Fordham University (naturally!) that supposedly concluded that Greek Orthodox parishes in the United States are losing members (especially the young)because of the use of Byzantine or liturgical Greek, instead of modern Greek or English. How similar to what was being touted in the Roman Catholic Church circa 1963! But, on closer examination, the support for Msgr. Mannion from the Orthodox quarter is not all that strong.  At least in his online post on this topic, Prof. Demacopoulos qualifies his view on the subject: the use of Byzantine Greek is just one contributing factor in the alleged attrition of the younger Greek Orthodox population in America, and in fact a number of other factors are more important.  I believe that significant Orthodox jurisdictions such as the Russian Orthodox Patriarchy and the parent Orthodox Church of Greece have emphatically rejected changing the liturgical language,  explicitly condemning the abandonment of Church Slavonic/Byzantine Greek, among other liturgical innovations. My conclusion is that those hostile to Catholic Traditionalism are grasping at straws to find reasons to support a position based not on facts or theology but upon ideological conviction reinforced by the fear of the consequences of being proven wrong.

One of the best parts of this book is Kwasniewski’s discussion of the view, explicit in the views of Msgr. Mannion, that direct communication of understandable texts is the most effective mode of liturgy. Rather, the transparency of the new mass, the absence of challenging symbolism, tends to decrease, rather than increase, participation by the congregation(much in the way we mentally “turn off” repetitive political harangues on television.) The Traditional Mass, in contrast.  affords many different ways to “actively participate” in the liturgy. I also liked Kwasniewski’s opinionated (the author’s word), argumentative and at times humorous glossary of liturgical terms appended to this book.

I can personally testify to the discomfort aroused among the ranks of the so-called conservative clergy and their lay hangers-on by  Peter Kwasniewski’s fearless and eloquent championship of the Traditional Mass. For he is just as convincing in person as on the written page! If you, however, are seeking a great one-volume exposition of the value and even the necessity of the Traditional Mass, you have found it with this book.

(Above and below) The somewhat arid appearance today of the late Gothic Frauenkirche in Munich, Germany. Reformers took the opportunity of repairing severe wartime damage to carry out a wholesale housecleaning. “They got rid of all the junk!” an otherwise esteemed professor told me gleefully once in my student days at Georgetown. It now turns out that not only was the 19th century art thereby lost of great value, but that real medieval works (such as in the choir) were mistakenly destroyed as well.

A most interesting article in Katholisch.de: “When the decoration disappeared – why so many old churches are so ‘empty.’ ”1) It tells the sad story of the so many churches in Germany after the Second World War. Innumerable churches had indeed suffered severe wartime damage from bombing and then from ground fighting. Yet the implementation of modernistic doctrines in art and architecture after the war completed the process – both in the damaged and undamaged churches. The champions of modern art thought that the church should be a  “bridge to God” and that churches overflowing with the art of many centuries didn’t serve this role. According to Professor Thomas Erne:

“They wanted to be modern, to go with the times. Churches had to be functional, everything else was superfluous.”…It seems to [Professor Erne] almost if the Church had been intimidated by the greatness of her own centuries-old cultural achievement.

The consequences were all too real: 

Magnificently carved altars were demolished, pulpits torn down, sandstone ornaments broken off, murals whitewashed. Images and statues disappeared and a great part of the often so richly ornamented “historicizing” furnishings went with them – final resting place unknown. So many an altar rail may have ended up as a garden gate for a vacation home.

I can personally testify to the presence of gilt baroque images of saints installed in upscale bars.

We should note that this iconoclasm and “purification” began well before the Vatican Council. It sprang from ideology. “Artistically, modernity wanted to exist only on its own: older approaches and traditions didn’t have a role to play anymore.”  Examples of such an architecture had been created as early as 1930 in Germany. “The walls are ostentatiously white and empty, not even a crucifix hangs on the end wall. The space, without images or decoration, very consciously celebrates the void.”

A particular target of the modernizers was the lavish ornamentation of the “historicizing” art of the 19^th and early 20^th century, which had sought to imitate – and often creatively combine – styles of diverse artistic eras.

In Germany today feelings are mixed. New ultramodern churches continue to be built. On the other hand, there is a growing recognition of the incalculable losses inflicted by modernity. And restoration attempts are being made in many churches to recover some of the decoration and furnishings that had been so heedlessly cast aside in the past.

But isn’t the postwar wave of destruction in church design and decoration the perfect equivalent of, and even prelude to,  the liturgical reforms of the 1950’s onward? Based on questionable theological and liturgical ideas, the liturgical reformers also strove to cast out the accumulated contributions of the past and free up the view to some “inner core “ of meaning. That’s not how things work – as we have belatedly realized! Baroque decorations are returning  to some German churches, in the very heartland  of Catholic modernity.  But how many more churches throughout the world have celebrated  the return of the Traditional liturgy – which had made all this art possible!

1. Hartmann, Christoph Paul, Als die Verzierung verschwand: Warum viele alte Kirchen so “leer” sind. Katholisch.de 7/31/2020

A Response to George Weigel

By Father Richard G. Cipolla

Recently George Weigel offered an Op-Ed titled  “A Paradox for the Next Pope” as part of the Wall Street Journal’s Houses of Worship series.  He quite rightly calls attention to several issues that will confront the successor of Pope Francis:  confronting and ending the terrible scandal of sexual abuse by clergy; reform of the financial structure and administration of the Church; and the challenge of supporting the vitality of the Catholic faith in those disparate places in which it found and at the same time embark on a program of renewal in those parts of the world, mostly Europe, where the Catholic faith is less than robust.

Weigel says:  “The past fifty years should have taught the Catholic Church that the only Catholicism with a future is Catholicism in full.”  And what Catholic with faith could disagree with that?  But Weigel, while correctly seeing that “aggressive secularism” is antithetical to the Catholic faith and is part of the reason for the parlous state of Catholicism in the West does not see that the root problems of the Catholic Church today lie in the deliberate ambiguities of the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the post-Conciliar radical assault, in the name of aggiornamento, on the heart of the Catholic worship that is the Mass.  The Catholic Church decided in the 1960s to become “modern” at the same time that Western culture turned its back on Modernism and embraced, with all of its ambiguities, Post-modernism.  The obvious increasingly irrelevant state of the Catholic Church in the West is not due mainly to secularism but rather to the failure of the Church to be true to herself and her founder, Jesus Christ, and instead trying to become relevant to a society that was already then and is even more now post-Christian.  

It is no accident that the horrific sexual corruption of the clergy during the 1960s and beyond occurred at that particular time.  The moral rot was there before that time, but the romanticism of the post-Conciliar Church that adopted the worst of the sentimental understandings of what it means to be human and a secular understanding of freedom opened up the gates that led to the mass of sludge the symbol of which is Uncle Ted McCarrick.  Even today we read with terrible pain the pain and suffering inflicted on young boys and men by this prince of the Church and by so many other priests of the Church.  

Pace George Weigel, the moral rot in the Church cannot be addressed merely by “creating safe environments for its young people.” The problem is much deeper.  The heart of the problematic situation in which the Catholic Church finds herself today is the failure of the Church hierarchy to stand up to that which is not Christian in our society.  But this “standing up” does not consist of vacuous and pietistical pronouncements from the United States Conference of Bishops, a group that models itself on already outdated modes of expression and communication.  

There is a real movement among young priests and among young men and women in the Catholic Church, especially, mirabile dictu, in our own country, whose basis is the rediscovery of the glorious Tradition of the Catholic Church: of the intellect, of the arts, of liturgy and above all depth of faith. These young Catholics have come back to the Church not because they are now married and have to have their children baptized. They are coming back because they have seen an alternative to the banal post-Vatican II way of worshipping God, modeled on a Brady Bunch culture that has no relevance today.  These young men and women have found meaning in what Pope Benedict called the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, a convoluted phrase  (that fools no one) for the Traditional Roman Mass.  These young people, both laity and priests, are rediscovering the Tradition of the Church, not in some merely aesthetic sense but at the level of faith, a faith that is relevant to the world in which they now live.  And the Church for the most part ignores this real flowering, for it goes against the mantra of “whatever happens in the Church is the will of God.” For the Catholic Church to admit a serious mistake by those who are “in charge” of the Church is very difficult, perhaps impossible.  But it is not impossible to let go of wrong turns in the road and to embrace once again that which is at the heart of Catholicism, worship of God in Spirit and in Truth in the Cross of Jesus Christ. 

This turn to the Tradition of the Church is not at all conservative in a normal understanding of that term.  It is rather a rediscovery of that which is at the heart of the Catholic faith, that is, in George Weigel’s words, “Catholicism in full”. 

Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

Pity the poor parish! Msgr. George A. Kelly devoted an entire book to the development of this institution, focusing on the church of St. John the Evangelist in New York City. 1) By 1973 Msgr. Kelly (who, appropriately enough for our age, is already listed as “Professor in Contemporary Catholic Problems”) had to record a decades-long decline of this parish’s membership. Those numbers of course now look good by 2020 standards. And the irony is that Msgr. Kelly himself, as pastor of St. John’s, was instrumental in completing the process of disrupting the parish community, by razing the old parish church and substituting a glorified hotel lobby in an undistinguished high rise. Since that time in New York City and throughout the United States an almost endless series of parishes have followed St. John the Evangelist into restructuring or oblivion.

In Germany things have reached an even more extreme state. In much of that country religious practice and new vocations verge on the nonexistent. The response of at least two dioceses – Trier and Freiburg – has been, in essence, to abolish the parish: substituting a few dozen larger groupings for hundreds of historical parishes in these traditionally Catholic regions (in Freiburg’s case, 1,000 old parishes). And in Trier it was further planned that each of these new units would be jointly led by a priest and a layman (woman).

After a recent Vatican attempt to rein in these developments was met with defiance, the Congregation of the Clergy issued last Monday the Instruction The pastoral conversion of the Parish community in the service of the evangelising mission of the Church. 2) Although prefaced by long paragraphs of Vatican II – speak ( “creativity,” “the Parish is called upon to read the signs of the times”) the actual operative provisions and the factual assumptions they reflect are sobering: the dearth of vocations, the need to close parishes, the search for alternatives to maintain ministries once exercised by priests etc. The Instuction’s basic message is to reconfirm the role of the parish and of the pastor in canon law and also, in theology, of the unique status of the priest. Further, the closing of a parish must be in accord with canon law and be determined individually with reference to the facts of the specific parish (no summary, diocese-wide restructuring is permitted). And please bear in mind these provisions are a reaction not to a crisis of some missionary territory (like the infamous “Amazonia“) but to catastrophic developments in the heart of formerly Catholic Europe.

The reaction of German Church has been apoplectic. German Church’s internet site has swarmed since Monday with articles by priests, scholars, laymen and bishops denouncing the new Instruction.3) Only a handful of bishops have (publicly) swum against the tide. It’s quite a change from their recent adulation of Pope Francis’s Vatican – and demonstrates that the fear that the “Amazonian” concepts would promptly be implemented in Germany was all too well founded.

The new Instruction, strangely enough, has not yet received much attention in the United States. I think, however, everyone working to save traditional parish life – or even his parish’s very existence – should give it a close read. For the concepts actually on the point of implementation in Germany have been at least toyed with here. For example, Cardinal Dolan has written how he could envisage a reform whereby the property of all Archdiocesan parishes would be transferred to the Archdiocese itself. Combined with the current strict enforcement of term limits for pastors, such a centralization of assets would in effect reduce all New York parishes to chaplaincies. The Instruction would seem to put at least a brake on the realization of such ideas.

Regarding the Instructions’s rejection of laymen exercising contol, jointly with a priest or otherwise, of parishes, since 2018 in the Bridgeport diocese one parish (St. Anthony’s in Fairfield) has been entrusted to the “decision-making authority” of a laywoman, while the clergy involved (Jesuits, not surprisingly) act as providers of “religious services.”

Eleanor Sauers has been involved with St. Anthony of Padua Church since 2002 as the director of religious education and as a pastoral minister. As of Jan. 1, she will become the parish leader, the first woman in the Diocese of Bridgeport to serve as such…. Officially, Sauers will be the parish life coordinator at St. Anthony of Padua, meaning she will oversee the daily administration of the parish while a team of priests will fulfill its sacramental needs, such as celebrating Mass. 4)

Eleanor Sauers’s role, however, would seem to directly conflict with the spirit and the letter of the recent Instruction, e.g.:

96. In that vein, it is the responsibility, first of all, of the diocesan Bishop and, as far as it pertains to him, the Parish Priest, to see that the appointments of deacons, religious and laity that have roles of responsibility in the Parish, are not designated as “pastor”, “co-pastor”, “chaplain”, “moderator”, “coordinator”, “Parish manager”, or other similar terms^[141] reserved by law to priests,^[142] inasmuch as they have a direct correlation to the ministerial profile of priests

In referring to the aforementioned faithful and deacons, it is likewise illegitimate, and not in conformity with their vocational identity, to use expressions such as “entrust the pastoral care of a parish”, “preside over the parish community”, and other similar phrases, that pertain to the distinct sacerdotal ministry of a Parish Priest.

For example, the terms “Deacon Cooperator” or “Coordinator of (a particular sector of pastoral care)”, “Pastoral Cooperator” or “Pastoral Associate or Assistant” seem to be more appropriate. 5)

The contrast of the Instruction with recent “Amazonian” synod is striking – at a very minimum it shows growing confusion and conflict within the Vatican. Will it stand up to the growing German resistance? I do not know – but clearly here, as in several other areas, Pope Francis’s progressive steamroller seems to have encountered unanticipated diffculties.

1. Kelly, Msgr George A. Kelly, The Parish: As seen from the Church of St. John the Evangelist New York City 1840-1973 (1973 St. John’s University, New York). Msgr. Kelly was the author of The Battle for the American Church, a foundational text of conservative Catholicism.
2. SOURCE
3. Katholisch.de
4. “Woman appointed to lead Fairfield Church“, Fairfield Citizen, 12/13/2018. See also “Connecticut bishop appoints laywoman to lead parish”, Crux 12/10/2018
5. See footnote 2 above.

The Lamp: A Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc.

Website.

Over the transom comes the latest attempt to establish a serious “Catholic journal.” We have covered here and there in this blog the previous ventures from the early 1970’s onward, after the demise of Triumph magazine.1) The most recent iteration was the US edition of the Catholic Herald, launched with great fanfare in late 2018. The aim was obviously to create a Catholic “big tent” publication – “orthodox” yet “inclusive” – but also offering incisive reporting and commentary on the state of the Church. Things fell apart from the very start as one “Catholic” would-be contributor first denounced the magazine’s management for alleged contacts with Steve Bannon and then indicted one of the magazine’s own writers for “antisemitism” – other contributors of course felt compelled to join the latter attack ( Taki, the gentleman in question, has contributed more good writing over the years than all of them put together). Next, Damian Thompson, the UK editor largely responsible for the recent rise in visibility of the Herald, was out the door, followed by the US editors (I gather Thompson’s caustic commentary on the current state of the Church did not endear him to the ecclesiastical establishment). The US edition folded (replaced by an online presence) and even the UK parent underwent a drastic crisis. What survives in hardcopy is a UK publication featuring admonitions to piety, harmless articles on the past glories of “Catholic culture'” and otherwise nothing that would give offense to the Catholic powers that be.

Into the resulting gap comes The Lamp. Its focus is cultural commentary – in particular, consideration of literary topics – rather than reporting on current events. We applaud the attempt to avoid polemics and to explore the “Catholic” aspects of life in all their many manifestations. The editor – at least as a matter of intellectual conviction – is laboring under no illusions regarding either the dire situation of the United States and of the Church today, or of his magazine’s capacity to singlehandedly save the day. That’s refreshingly realistic. We note further in places a curious Germanophile flavor of this publication. A poem of Goethe introduces the first issue; there is a “Feuilleton” section and a final piece, “Pestsäulen,”on a visit to Vienna. Most intriguingly of all, William Marshner – presumably he of the original Triumph team – is listed as “Kapellmeister“!

I regret to report, however, that the first issue falls short of the editors’ ambitions and would-be Catholic radicalism. I frankly didn’t find most of the contributions provocative, compelling or stimulating reading. They generally rambled over assorted uninteresting topics – for example, a lengthy review of a new translation of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea(s) which gives the reader no idea why John Senior included it among his “Thousand Good Books.” More modest yet more sucessful is P.J. Smith’s informative story of the beginnings of one Midwestern parish. Michael Hamill expounds to us how popes (at least more recent ones) are never wrong and when problems crop up it’s because the hierarchy, the clergy and the elites failed to support them. Amoris Laetitia? “If the pope wants me to take [that civilly remarried divorcees should receive holy communion] seriously, though, he is going to have to say it.” J.D. Vance tells us how, as a “conservative Catholic” writer defended his criticism of the pope, said gentleman was abruptly silenced when “a wine glass seemed to leap from a stable place behind the bar and crashed on the floor in front of us.” Thus Pope Francis is triumphantly vindicated.

I was also struck by a certain artificiality of style. “We were drinking white wine spritzers at a restaurant run by Jesuits” writes Susannah Black of a recent visit to Vienna. In view of the current state of the Church – especially in that city – it’s like enjoying sherry with the vicar in the rectory while the parish church burns down. For its hard to read of such things when in our country Catholic churches are (literally) burning, statues of Catholic saints are being smashed and the most violent anti-Christian rhetoric is endorsed by the secular media and educational powers. Here and abroad, governments freely order churches closed and regulate and even prohibit the administration of the sacraments. Unresolved sexual and financial scandals continue to percolate. Both the Vatican and the local hierarchies seem incapable of exercising leadership. And while all this is going on, the number of practicing Catholics, of priests and religious, of schools and parishes, continues to plummet. Yes, there is much to write about today – but a Catholic can hardly comment on these things dispassionately.

In the online introduction to the new journal the editor claims kinship with the above-mentioned Triumph magazine. But Triumph was virtually the polar opposite of The Lamp both in style and substance. At a time of upheaval much like our own, Triumph was forceful in its language and confronted directly the major issues of state and Church, regardless of the popularity of the views it expressed. The contributors to Triumph displayed passionate intensity and a willingness to take clear and even radical political positions. Not that everything they said was right or that all of their practical policy initiatives were sound. Yet their analysis of our age has stood the test of time far better than that of the establishment Catholic journals – or of their secular equivalents.

I hope these comments don’t discourage the reader from giving The Lamp a try. A good Catholc journal is so desperately needed! And the editors’ vision and statement of principles are admirable. But in this case more focus, more passion and more engagement with the reality exploding about us will do the publication good.

1. Of course all through these decades there have been Commonweal, America and the National Catholic Reporter. For decades these have been the most ‘Catholic” magazines in terms of the support of the ecclesiastical establishment , while their substance has been the least “Catholic” – derived as it is almost exclusively from the secular “liberal” media. In the distant past that was not always the case: Commonweal published Thomas Molnar.

The Traditional Mass: History, Form and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite 

By Michael Fiedrowicz.

Translated by Rose Pfeiffer

Angelico Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2020

A wonderful addition to any Roman Catholic’s library is the new translation of Fr. Michael Fiedrowicz’s The Traditional Mass. For the moment, it is the definitive handbook on the Traditional liturgy: what it is, how it arose, what it means and how to celebrate it. Perhaps most astonishing is that the author is a professor at the Theologische Fakultät (School of Theology) in Trier, Germany. He has published extensively in the field of patristics.

The first thing we note with pleasure is that the author is committed to the Traditional Mass. He writes as a passionate supporter, not a distanced observer, let alone an adversary. And he views the Mass as a whole: the texts, the music, the ceremonies, the readings all taken together. It is quite a contrast to most pre-conciliar authors (even Adrian Fortescue) who seemed to reduce the Mass to a jumble of rules and texts arising from historical accidents. Fiedrowicz does not hesitate to draw on the riches of the symbolic and allegorical interpretations (especially of the medieval liturgists) to demonstrate the unity and meaningfulness of the Mass. And of course he devotes many pages to the theology of this Mass.

Equally surprising – but so very welcome – is that Fiedrowicz approaches the Traditional Mass as a living rite of the Church (which, after Summorum Pontificum, it fully is – at least on paper). The author in fact draws heavily on the experience of the post – Vatican II, post-Novus Ordo era. It is heartening to see prominently among these sources the works of Martin Mosebach, who has so often appeared in this blog. Or those of Michael Davies, who fought for the Traditional Mass for so many years. Like Mosebach, these authorities are often not “official” liturgists at all. Certainly that is no detriment if the author’s purpose is not to win plaudits in academia but to describe and even advocate a cause very much alive. For Traditionalism has had to develop largely outside the domain of the Catholic academic establishment. 

Yet there is another reason Fiedrowicz cites the witness of artists: Mosebach today; Huysmans, Gertrude von Le Fort, Ida Görres and especially Claudel in years gone by: “ People of aesthetic sensibility, much scorned and suspect, are the recipients of a terrible gift: they can infallibly discern the inner truth of what they see, of some process, of an idea, on the basis of its external form.”1) Fiedrowicz discusses in his book the necessary link between the sacred and the beautiful

Fiedrowicz systematically outlines the case for the Traditional Mass, covering virtually every issue and objection a Catholic Traditionalist needs to consider and address. Most importantly, he shows that the Traditional Mass is in direct continuity from its earliest manifestations in the Fourth Century (and before) to its formalization at the Council of Trent. Fiedrowicz then illustrates “organic development” by looking at those additions that were made and how they proceed from the basic structure of the liturgy. He makes the case for Latin, as a “Sacred language,” the Traditional liturgical seasons and for celebration ad orientem. He explains the meaning behind the orations and the cycle of readings. There is even a lengthy discussion of all the various names for the Traditional Mass: the “classical rite,” the “Tridentine rite,” etc.! And in a very sensible and very un-German manner he sees this terminological issue as having secondary importance. Do I need to state that our author’s conclusions on the liturgy accord with what the advocates of Catholic Tradition have been writing over the last 50 years? The Catholic Mass, however, clearly summarizes all these positions is in one volume; in that respect it is a unique compendium.

Let me end this review with an observation I also made concerning the first English-language edition of Martin Mosebach’s Heresy of Formlessness. After considering the facts and conclusions so ably and compellingly presented by Fiedrowicz, is the Traditional Mass not a prerequisite for any real Catholic recovery? Do not the arguments Fiedrowicz presents inevitably lead to the conclusion that the Traditional rite should be made a rule one more for the entire Western Church? That it should no longer remain an option reserved for some kind of elite or subculture but become once more a common treasure accessible to all? So I would conclude! In the meantime, before that happy event occurs, I would highly recommend this book as the best systematic treatment of the Traditional Mass available today.

1. Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass at 214, n. 60 quoting Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness.

Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church

By Aldo Maria Valli and Aurelio Porfiri

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino

Chorabooks, Hong Kong, 2019

To comprehend the great events and trends of our time do we not turn first to the witnesses, even the direct participants,  for the most immediate and elemental insights? Didn’t Whittaker Chambers’s Witness and the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn bring about a long term change in the world’s understanding of communism –  regardless of what the American establishment and the European intelligentsia had been pontificating? The same holds true for the Church of today.

Witnesses of what is going on in the Church whose testimony I value have come from many perspectives and schools of thought. The witness of Catholic novelists (e.g., Alice Thomas Ellis, Martin Mosebach) has proven over the years to be particularly valuable. Then, we have the testimony of the “conservatives,” politically right-wing yet stalwart defenders of the Catholic establishment until confronted by developments that could no longer be swept under the rug (Mgr. George Kelly in the 1970’s, Philip Lawler and many others in the age of Bergoglio).  There are even those who started out in the camp of Catholic progressivism and moved to Traditionalism (Malachi Martin).  We have the “searchers,” the outrageous, the atheists and even the dedicated enemies of the Church who nevertheless offer important insights ( M. Houellebecq, M. Onfray, O.Fallaci, F. Martel).

Finally we encounter in Uprooted Aldo Maria Valli – a Catholic journalist, (born 1958) – and Aurelio Porfiri, a writer and musician (born 1968), cradle Catholics who have recently emerged from the heart of mainstream Italian Catholicism. For years they were closely associated with the ecclesiastical establishment.  Aldo Valli worked as a journalist for Avvenire, the mouthpiece of the Italian episcopal conference, and even was on close terms with Cardinal Martini, archbishop of Milan, the patron saint of Catholic progressivism. Aurelio Porfiri performed widely as a church musician. This slim book is a dialogue between them on the state of the Church and how they came to their current views of it.

Now for the not totally insignificant minority of Italian Catholics who still practice their faith, loyalty to the Papacy was and is of preeminent importance. Each Catholic country has, after all, its own personality. In complete contrast to France or Germany , but like pre-1988 United States Catholicism, being a Catholic in Italy was synonymous with loyalty to the pope, the hierarchy and the establishment. For until recently, the controversies among Catholics on the right over liturgy, pro-life witness and the state of the Church made no impression in Italy except for a tiny elite (Count Neri Capponi, Augusto del Noce). Only the far left of the Church could speak out loudly and distinctly. Both Valli and Porfiri speak emotionally of  the cult of the papacy and of the prior individual popes they had known who had meant so much to them even in their private lives.

Under Bergoglio, this state of mind ended. Indeed, Valli speaks of a “conversion,”  of the falling of a “veil” that had obscured his vision. In the case of Valli, reflections on Amoris Laetitia led to a sudden break with the ultramontane culture. Porfiri,  a church musician, had had a more gradual development of his views based on what he saw and heard week after week. Once he had the experience of a choir singing more traditional church music and asked himself: “Why has this music been forbidden to us”?  In both cases, our authors  suddenly realized that within the one institution of the “Church” there were in fact two entities: one modernist, the other still Christian. This insight led them to a re-evaluate their understanding of a whole series of topics.  Their exchange of ideas makes up the bulk of Uprooted. Let me quote from it!

The first topic they have to address is the ultramontane papacy. “The reigning popalatry was largely born with Pope John XXIII.” (From the opening of the Second Vatican Council) “the Pope was no longer simply head of the Catholic Church but a media personality whom the mass media bent to the logic of emotions and entertainment.” (With Pope John Paul II) ”…we had a pope who was praised more and more in his personality and less and less followed in his faith.” “…the consequences are devastating. Emotion prevails over reason, images over words…the World Youth Days were the triumph of this sort of narration. And yet while all this was happening, the churches were emptying, the faithful were falling prey to relativism imposed by the prevailing culture, traditions were being abandoned….” Then there is the cult of obedience associated with ultramontane papalism. “The insane papism we are witnessing in our days is the child of ignorance and manipulation.” (The cult of blind obedience) “means there is an absolute identification between the faith and the institutional church, which instead is meant to be at the service of faith.”

The liturgy? Aldo Valli speaks of  the innumerable “sloppy liturgies” with their “sentimental songs and music, liturgical abuses, exaggerations, excessive focus on the celebrant’s personality, misinformed laity, a lack of respect towards Our Lord, the absence of a sense of the sacred, contempt for silence, no reverence and all getting progressively worse over the last few years.” All features almost universal in the liturgical life specifically of the Italian Catholic Church! “In the course of a few decades we Catholics have allowed ourselves to be despoiled of a spiritual, religious and liturgical inheritance which was guarded and handed down for centuries and centuries.”

On the Church today: “Sometimes, even often, I no longer feel at ease in the Church, I feel like I am out of place and frequenting Catholic circles does me no good. I feel uprooted. …I understand that if you want to be accepted…you must uncritically embrace the narrative of a Church that is now liquid, as Vittorio Messori has said. But I don’t feel this way, it is not for me, I prefer a self-imposed exile living at the margins of official Catholicism, where what is exalted is charismatic and. Pentecostal religiosity, emotionalistic in the extreme, and clearly coming from a Protestant background. This is not the Church in which I feel my faith grows and becomes stronger.” Do I need to mention that both authors have paid a steep professional price for the positions they have taken? For the “Church of Mercy” is unforgiving!

Regarding clerical sexual abuse: “many maintain it is a question of discipline, when in fact it is a question of faith!”  “[O]nly if I believe in God who became man and died and rose for me, for the forgiveness of my sins, can I live in the light of divine law.” Both authors have very strong words about the current state of the Catholic clergy – both their lack of faith and their lack of knowledge –  and the terrible responsibility of these priests for the disastrous situation in which the Church finds itself.

An interesting chapter deals with homosexuality in the clergy and  the famous “gay lobby.” The authors perceive its influence in the recent “Synod on Young People” and in “a certain type of religious sentimentalism, deprived of virility and extremely feminized.” “Responsibility for this must be identified at different levels, from seminaries up to the highest levels of the Roman Curia.” Here the thoughts of our authors seem to confirm what Frederic Martel describes in his In the Closet of the Vatican – obviously from an entirely different perspective! 

There is so much more! Almost every sentence of this short book seemed to me a succinct summary of a feeling or an impression most of us have undoubtedly experienced. As I have noted, our authors have paid personally for “daring to name these things with a raised voice.” And they confess they are unable to offer any immediate solution for the Church. They do have a chapter on the positive role of social media –  indeed,  in the last ten years, Traditional Catholic Italian sites have achieved worldwide prominence.  But nevertheless Valli and Porfiri have to ask themselves the stark question: “Will we die as Catholics”? But, by telling the truth, by becoming witnesses, have they not gone far in laying the foundation for recovery at some time in the future in some way unknown to us?   For is not truth the prerequisite, the indispensable foundation,  for  everything else?

In the first half of 2020, life in the “ developed world” world came to a shuddering standstill. The pleasant cocoon surrounding the populations of Western Europe and the United States seemed to disintegrate and apocalyptic hysteria seized the upper hand. The media and forces of the establishment, for their own reasons and based on murky data, seized the opportunity to whip collective fears into a fever heat. Suddenly a culture devoted exclusively to money, sex, pleasure and bodily health had hit a road mine. The denizens of the global society without limits had to confront limitations – even, at least in their own minds,  the possibility of imminent death. Overnight a quasi-totalitarian regime was imposed, in which the state was empowered to regulate, in the greatest possible detail, public, business, religious and even personal life. (Here in Connecticut, for example, the governor devoted considerable efforts to deciding whether beauty salons can use blow dryers ). We are slowly re-emerging “from under the rubble” of the pandemic. Yet within days a new crisis has been ignited. 

As we have done almost every year since 2013, we will reflect upon the current status of the Catholic Traditionalist movement; its successes, failures and outlook. What are the next steps for Traditionalists seven years into the pontificate of Francis? Although we confine our efforts to the United States, of necessity these reflections will stray from the narrow confines of the “American Catholic Church” as appropriate.

Regarding the Church, we can only record the abysmal failure of the hierarchy, of the Catholic institutions and of the Pope. In the greatest domestic crisis in decades, the clergy have been silent, the state discontinuing  their “services” as “non-essential” – with their own concurrence. Nor did we see a wave of discontent about that among the laity, as, depending on the location, churches were locked, masses were suspended and some or all of the sacraments were withheld. Catholics died in hospitals and nursing homes alone without the presence of their family or clergy and bereft of prayers or the sacraments. The hierarchy took its direction from the media, the government bureaucrats, the scientists and, to the extent avoidance of liability was involved, the lawyers. Right now the dioceses of the New York area are issuing page after page of regulations on the resumption of masses and the sacraments, which are obviously more concerned with avoiding legal exposure that the good of souls.

The permanent damage of these days will be enormous. For in all honesty, is not sheer inertia the greatest force propping up the post-Vatican II Church among the laity ? How many of the minority which still regularly attends Mass will return after this interruption of months? And how many others will remember with resentment the passivity of their shepherds? At a minimum, an institutional decline that has assumed record levels under Pope Francis will only accelerate.

But where does Catholic Traditionalism itself stand? Before the grand shutdown, celebrations of the Traditional Mass had been growing by leaps and bounds both in quantity and quality. The movement had been successfully passed on to a new generation of priests and laity. Monasteries such as Silverstream or Norcia – situated outside the US but closely linked to US Traditionalism – were flourishing, overcoming incredible  obstacles of all kinds. At home, the celebration of the Traditional Mass had moved into cathedrals and basilicas. It seemed that each year brought new accomplishments. In the New York area, early 2020 saw not just one but two solemn pontifical masses celebrated by cardinals. Just recently even the New York Times had to acknowledge -viewed from their perspective of course – the new popularity of Catholic Tradition among younger “weird” Catholics. Meanwhile, Traditionalists assumed more and more the role of leaders of the overall Catholic right as their conservative allies (and erstwhile adversaries) fell into ever greater confusion and intellectual chaos in the face of the unshakably radical course of Pope Francis & Co. indeed, a sign of the maturity of the Traditionalist movement today is its independence  from the need of Vatican favor. If 15 or 20 years ago Traditionalist events such as the annual Chartres pilgrimage felt compelled to insinuate – falsely – in words and images that Pope John Paul II supported their endeavors I doubt anyone would make the same claim today for Francis!

Yet the great coronavirus panic largely brought the celebration of the Traditional Mass to a halt. We have seen the vitality of the movement, however, in the high number of Traditional Masses that have been streamed in these dark days. And Traditional priests- at least some of them- have been more willing than the others to bend the rules to keep at least some semblance of the sacraments available. Let’s also not forget that – even if it happened outside the United States – it was the  French Traditionalists, not the indifferent French hierarchy, which obtained in court the reversal of state measures restricting the celebration of the Mass in that country.  Nevertheless, Traditionalists too will face fallout arising from their conduct during the pandemic.

More regrettably,  the last year has seen an outbreak of bitter infighting among Traditionalists themselves on a national, regional and local level. Once more the FSSPX has become a target. A well-known Traditionalist parish in the Northeast has been torn apart by intramural conflict among clergy and laity. Conflicts have erupted routinely on all kinds of occasions. Some of this is a natural consequence of growth, as Traditionalists deepen their interaction with each other,  the rest of the Church and the world and encounter new and unanticipated points of friction. But much of the current agitation arises from sheer stupidity and inability to subordinate individual wishes and grievances to the common good of Catholic Traditionalism. 

The institutional adversaries of the Old Mass have hardly been inactive either. As the Traditional Mass gains greater visibility in the “Catholic public square,” the machinations and maneuvers of the Catholic establishment  against Traditionalism continue and even intensify. In some cases, perhaps unsurprisingly, the instigators of anti-Traditionalist vendettas were not the clergy but the aging laity of the Vatican II generation. Here a Traditionalist professor is forced out of a “Catholic” college; there a Traditionalist priest is dismissed from his parish and made chaplain of a nursing home.  Diocesan clergy committed  to celebrating the Traditional Mass are subject to all kinds of harassment and chicanery,  while certain priests who only occasionally celebrate the Tradional Mass continue to demand that they not be identified or photographed.  There were still instances where the Traditional Mass, even a Nuptial Mass, could only be celebrated on a semi-clandestine basis. (N.B. This was before the imposition of the current restrictions!). 

We have previously spoken of the hostility of the current pontiff to the Traditional Mass  – I don’t think anyone doubts that. Recently, however, speculation has revived once again that Bergoglio might be considering imposing restrictions of some kind on its celebration. This fear has been prompted by the circulation by the Vatican to the worlds’ bishops of a tendentious questionnaire on the status of the celebration of the Old Mass. Also, certain bureaucratic moves and restructurings (e.g., the abolition of the Ecclesiae Dei commission) in the Vatican lead some to think that a clique adverse to Traditionalism is consolidating its power. Curiously, some of the more recent developments took place after the release by the Vatican of optional new prefaces and saints’ commemorations for the Old Mass – a move seen at least by outraged progressives as an unacceptable acknowledgment of that Mass’s continued vitality. 

One might puzzle over the timing of such a hypothetical papal intervention. For the state of the Church and of the Vatican under Pope Francis is anything but good. As we have set forth above, regardless of what anyone is publicly saying, the Church will not emerge unscathed from Coronavirus.  Numerous Vatican scandals continue to seethe. All objective statistics regarding mass attendance, reception of the sacraments, vocations etc. show a Church in catastrophic retreat across the world. Concerns are mounting over the German “synodal path,” an initiative, after all, originally instigated by Francis, with worldwide ramifications. And the tensions over Francis’s “Amazonian” synod triggered not very well disguised opposition in the form of essays written by Cardinal Sarah and more importantly, the “pope emeritus.” I would be very surprised if those essays hadn’t played a role in temporarily putting the brakes on the seemingly triumphal progress toward married priests and women clergy.

It would not seem a propitious moment to set off an ecclesiastical civil war. But, as I wrote in 2014,  a moment like today, where Francis is confronting setbacks on other fronts,  would likely be the perfect occasion to launch an attack on Traditionalists. For, in addition to distracting from his other difficulties, such a move would certainly win the applause of most hierarchies and ecclesiastical bureaucracies – especially those of  Europe – as well as  of the secular media. But will it happen? Possibly, but the Traditionalist movement has had to live over the years with various threats from the Vatican, both known and not so well known, and by the grace of God has thus far survived them.

Yet what will be the outcome of all this? Will Traditionalism survive only as a Roman Catholic version of Anglo-Catholicism? Does not Pope Francis increasingly give the Church an “Anglican” face: a bureaucratic superstructure entirely focused on the secular, devoid of any specific spiritual and moral content, but to some extent tolerating the existence of “minorities”- the African churches, the Traditionalists – still loyal to a different and older morality, liturgy and theology? If so it would be a tragic and futile conclusion of a sixty – year struggle.

At times the temptation has indeed been great for Traditionalists to play the role of “High Church Catholicism”: preserving the Traditional Mass, often presented as a special event, but otherwise quietly accepting the present state of the Roman Catholic Church and of that of the society to which the Church in turn has conformed. Such Traditionalists, going beyond requisite and commendable prudence, have restrained their commentary on the pressing issues of the day. They have at times practiced self-censorship as the price of admission to the churches and institutions owned by the establishment.

But, by its very nature, the Traditional Mass rejects confinement within such a straitjacket. This liturgy can never be a private option or merely a psychologically beneficial ritual. By constantly recalling and representing the presence and active role of God, by making visible and vital once more the riches of art and history and by insisting on the role of reason, the Traditional Mass can never be a pliant servant of modernity. This Mass leads souls to contemplation yet paradoxically – or not?- inspires them to external works, setting off shock waves in art, politics and ecclesiastical life. Do we not see this in the “direct action” of Alexander Tschugguel (tossing Pachamama in the Tiber) in response to the highly symbolic adoration of fake idols in the Vatican? Or in the continuing active participation of Latin Mass congregations in the US pro-life movement? Or in the apostolic voyages of men such as Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Zen or Bishop Schneider, who take uncompromising public stands on the crucial issues of Church and society, regardless of the popularity of these opinions? Or even in one prominent Traditionalist blog’s transition from the futility of covering the day-to-day nonsense of today’s Church to a more immediately relevant, unapologetic advocacy for Donald Trump? 

It is now the time to advocate openly for Catholic truth in liturgy, morality and theology. As we have said, this may well lead in the short term to conflict – even a dramatic showdown – with the forces controlling the Catholic institutions. But to shirk this confrontation will mean only to involve Traditionalism in the overall collapse of the Catholic establishment. After this crisis, Traditional Catholics will need to work ever more diligently and learn to cooperate closely among themselves – despite the recent difficulties!. They will need to continue supporting the prayer of contemplative monasticism and the intellectual life of scholarship. They must maintain the commitment to liturgical excellence and completeness which happily has been so widely achieved today. And they will continue to foster vocations as priests and religious. 

They cannot shy away from the conflicts that will inevitably arise with a disintegrating hierarchy and secular society . They must take in stride being called mentally ill (Pope Francis) repressed homosexuals (Frederic Martel) “enemies of the Pope” (the establishment Catholic news media) and, of course,  “fascists” (everywhere in Europe), and know that it cannot be otherwise. As Pope Benedict so bitterly experienced, the old order will not go down without a savage fight. It will be a struggle in which the opponents of Catholic Tradition will continue to enjoy the full support of the secular world. Yet when they look at the numbers, Traditionalists are increasingly confident that the future is on their side, regardless of whatever drastic challenges the immediate future may bring. And for the vital majority of Traditionalists, the scope of their mission is no longer, as in 1970,  “saving the Mass” for a few,  but restoring integral Catholic Tradition in all its glory to the whole Church.

Paix Liturgique, Letter 746 (May 19, 2020)

(The decision by the highest French court of appeal in administrative law lifting restrictions on the celebration of Mass that had been imposed because of the coronavirus) prompts Paix Liturgique to make a few reflections:

It is because the faithful of the “extraordinary form” liturgy have requested it that the bishops of France, like Msgr. Aupetit, archbishop of Paris and Msgr. de Moulins Beaufort, president of the episcopal conference, will enjoy earlier than anticipated the right to celebrate Mass in the midst of their people. So it is: the initiative didn’t come from the bishops, or even from the “ordinary-form” Catholic associations, but from Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass – and also from that “bad boy” Jean-Frédéric Poisson. 1) In doing so, these Catholics never lost sight of the fact that they were not asking for “permission,” but were simply utilizing the procedural rules in force in France to loosen the vice-like grip of an illegitimate secular legislation

In asserting the freedom of the Mass, these Catholics of the Traditional Mass had been long used to a struggle that has continued for more than 50 years. De facto prohibited after the promulgation of the liturgical reform which followed the Second Vatican Council, the Tridentine Mass continued despite everything. It was celebrated by a substantial number of priests, which was subsequently multiplied because of the work of Msgr. Lefebvre and of the “recognition” which it was finally accorded by the Roman authorities. These Catholics have defended the freedom of that Mass with their feet (and frequently, with their cars, by driving many kilometers to attend it)and have paid with their person and their own money to defend the priests who celebrated it.  All this without any “disobedience” but, on the contrary, in total submission to the obligation on every Catholic  to confess one’s faith. A faith which, from the point of view of the liturgy, is expressed by the true religious Credo which is the Traditional Mass – in contrast to the new Mass which seriously blurs the expression of the sacramental sacrifice, of eucharistic adoration, of divine transcendence and of the sacerdotal hierarchy.

In the present circumstances of an eclipse of divine worship which will have lasted more than two months, a certain number of priests saw to it that the sacraments were still administered and the Mass said, under conditions the media called “clandestine.” These priests are in the majority “Traditionalist” priests, but also priests of parishes which are predominantly strongly “classic” and close to the Traditionalist world. They did this at the request and with the support of the faithful who regularly attend the Tridentine Mass. Very modestly, that can be explained by the strong theological understanding of the holy sacrifice of the Mass instilled in them by the liturgy which they practiced and which they knew so well.

The consequences of the health crisis will assuredly be most painful for the Church, especially in France. Such a resignation from their duties by the majority of the pastors, such an abandonment of the faithful involving the most precious good of all, the holy sacrifice of the Mass, cannot have anything but disastrous consequences. Much worse than the terrible economic and social crisis, which is brewing,  is the aggravated religious crisis which we are going to enter. Religion, especially in France, but also in Italy, Germany, and in many other places, will be even more marginalized. What is even more terrible, she has voluntarily accepted to let herself be marginalized. Let’s not at all pretend that the Traditional Mass is going to “pull the chestnuts out of the fire”; but we think that it’s possible that it will play even more a role as the last resort for a Catholicism in accelerated decomposition. The living expression of the centuries-old faith of the Church, it is in particular able to express that the religion of Christ is called to be that of the whole society. It is, in itself, and, one must hope, in the convictions of those who are attached to it, totally the opposite of a marginal and “locked down” act. It is destined to be, it wants to be, the celebration by Christ the King of the worship offered individually and in a body by the members of the terrestrial city on the road towards the celestial one.

Paix Liturgique (Thanks also to Le Forum Catholique)

Translated by Stuart Chessman

1. Jean-Frédéric Poisson is a Christian French politician whose “offenses” include speaking out once in favor of Donald Trump.

by Aldo Maria Valli  from Radio Roma Libera

Translated by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

 

The pandemic of the corona virus has brought us suffering and uneasiness, but has contributed to the ripping off of many masks.

 

One mask that has been ripped off is how the government has acted in the current crisis, just as we have been accustomed to see how government has acted in the last few years: the politics of superficial declarations, of disputes that are continual and meaningless. of continual electoral campaigns, of the quasi- theater only good for talk shows but in the end all fatuous and empty.

 

When confronted with an alarming situation, for each individual and for society as a whole, the apparatus of the government has shown  itself to be what it is: A debased theatrical event, or more to the point, a backdrop of paper mâché, before which dull and dreary figures of actors recite the lines of the farce that is the struggle for power that totally ignores the authentic functions of government, that is, the management of the res publica.

 

What should a government do if it does not operate to guarantee the safety of its citizens?  And what should it do to guarantee the safety of its citizens if it does not recognize that reality, to do what has to be done to give to the country a solid foundation and to confront in a timely fashion crises that arise?

 

In this case, instead, we have found ourselves in the presence of a government totally unprepared, that facing a situation of crisis has not been able to do anything other than to flounder like a ship in the midst of the sea.  No one, as it has now been seen, had prepared at all to confront the imminent danger, even as the first signs were readily apparent.  And the so-called Intelligence Community?  And those who are in place to meet emergencies?  And those in charge of crisis management?  Nothing at all.  A medical doctor, Professor Pasquale Bacco, who conducted a study on the diffusion of the Coronavirus in Italy, has said that he had advised the authorities already in the month of October 2019, but his warnings were not heeded as something important.

 

The strategy that was adopted was the “lock down”, shutting down everything, like hiding in a hole in the ground.  The simplest and immediate reaction.  Like primitive man who ran to find refuge in a cave to flee a ferocious animal.  The quality of a government shows itself in times of difficulty, and what we have seen is the non-existence of a government in the full sense of that word.  In fact, it placed itself in the hands of a techno-scientific committee.  It gave up its power and responsibility of governing and decision-making to a body that has nothing to do with governing.

 

Another mask that was ripped off is that of science as a panacea, as the grand resolver of every problem. The mask was ripped off of science as the certain answer, as absolute and incontrovertible Truth.  It makes me think of the words of an Italian politician who in the columns of an important daily newspaper accused scientists of being able to only offer hypotheses and no solutions.  “You have to give us answers that are certain!” shrieked this politician, showing his profound ignorance of the nature of science.

 

To be fair, serious scientists admit that facing a new problem they are able to only begin to do studies, looking at data and verifying hypotheses. Their answers, if and when they are announced, will be the fruit of this long and patient work.  Science knows above all that it cannot answer questions without verification.  Science is not a magic wand.

 

Another mask that has been ripped off is that of the false friends of liberty.  Those, confronting a situation that is complicated and dangerous as the one in which we find ourselves, do not know what to do except to put a bridle on anyone who does not think like they do, on those who do not accept as fact those explanations that are given, on those who do not accept the dominant opinions. We are seeing just how these enemies of freedom operate.  They organize frameworks against those that they proclaim to be “fake news” and then claim to decide from on high what is true and what is false, humiliating immediately any sign of questioning and branding as provocative anyone who does not fall into line with the narrative adopted by the majority.  Before this situation of danger due to the pandemic, these people who see themselves as important emptied out their mouths with demagogic hymns to democracy and freedom, but now, confronting a situation that is objectively difficult, they reveal themselves for who they are:  third-rate censors and inquisitors ( I called them third-rate because the true inquisitors at least had education).

 

With respect to information, another mask that has been ripped off is that of journalism that says that it is on the side of the man in the street, but in reality engages in psychological terrorism.  The journalist talks of service but, giving in to sensationalism, actually frightens the public.  It is that type of journalism that takes pleasure in alarming situations and stokes the situation, because they profit from  the number of their readers and the number of copies of their newspaper that are sold.  Instead of helping people to conduct a rational analysis of the situation, their only purpose is to stir up emotions.

 

Another mask that has been ripped off (and here we move on to the ambit of religion) is that of the happy clappy clergy who are all “peace and love”, all “we love each other”, and “it is not true that God punishes”, and “we do not judge” and “enough with dour expressions on faces” and “life is beautiful” and “faith is joy.”   These clergy, all ”Laetitia et Gaudium”, are always ready to polemicize against those who tell us that the life of faith in reality is also tragedy and battle, it is choice and judgement, because Jesus said that he came to bring the sword and not peace, because truth is not negotiable, and therefore to defend truth one needs to be ready to defend it, because the problem of death and of the eternal destiny of the soul is not something that can be avoided. But now, facing the danger of the pandemic what are we supposed to make of these discourses on peace and love, that avoid taking into consideration death, judgment, hell and heaven?  Right now, faced with the objectivity of suffering and restriction, what are we supposed to make of religion that is reduced to sociology and vague words of consolation, a religion that has forgotten transcendence and what is ultimately important?  Strange, but not too strange, for it is exactly these clerics, who are all ”peace and love”, who are those who seem most terrified of the virus, those least disposed to open up the churches.  Before all of this, they always laughed and smiled. Now they are terrorized.  A while ago they were jabbering about the “Church going out of herself”. Now they prefer to hide in a hole in the ground.  Now, instead of helping us to make sense of pain and death, instead of bringing us closer to God, they ask for obedience to the State and lock down our Lord, treating him as a bringer of plague, whom one must approach with a thousand precautions and as a sign of distrust, as if the Eucharist were not the Viaticum that sustains us and strengthens us, but rather a danger in itself.

 

If and when we get out of this situation, will we have learned anything?  Will we be less disposed to allow ourselves to be seduced by the hallucinations imposed by the guardians of thought?  Unfortunately, nothing lets us imagine that we will have learned anything.