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.

A Greek choir in the liturgy (from the UNESCO report)

 

 

“UNESCO Recognizes Byzantine Chant as Part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” So it was proclaimed last December, upon the  motion of the governments of Greece and Cyprus. 1)  Well, UNESCO has spoken, so it must be right!

According to the ruling:

Highlighting and musically enhancing the liturgical texts of the Greek Orthodox Church, (chant) is inextricably linked with spiritual life and religious worship. This vocal art is mainly focused on rendering the ecclesiastical text; arguably, the chant exists because of the word (‘logos’), since every aspect of the tradition serves to spread the sacred message….In addition to its transmission in church, the Byzantine chant is flourishing due to the dedication of experts and non-experts alike – including musicians, choir members, composers, musicologists and scholars – who contribute to its study, performance and dissemination.” 2)

(Above) a mural from Cyprus. As the UNESCO report commments, although instruments are prohibited in the Orthodox divine liturgy, there exist depictions of  their use both in and outside of  church. (From the UNESCO report)

 

And from the nominating proposal (in somewhat obscure English):

Psaltic art accompanies and enhances musically the Divine Liturgy, the performance of the Sacred Mysteries (Sacraments) and, in general, all rituals of divine worship. It occupies a central role in the religious and social life of the community of Orthodox Christians, interwoven with the most important events in a person’s life, such as baptism, wedding, and funeral, as well as with the observance and celebration of religious festivals, such as Christmas, Easter, and Lent. The importance of the service rendered by the choirs of chanters cannot be stressed enough since, on certain occasions, they chant up to seven or eight hours per day, for days on end.

 

The functional elements of Byzantine chant, its unequalled lyricism, and its multifaceted nature (language and verse, music and rhythm, vestments and ritual, etc.) render it a powerful socio-cultural expression, an essential trait of the collective and personal identity of the bearers. As one of the main components of the Liturgy, the chant contributes dynamically to the self-determination and self-awareness of the communities of the bearers.

 

Preserving rituals and sacred texts through chanting prior to the spread of the printing press, the art was vital in safeguarding the Ancient and Medieval Greek language. 3)

 

I don’t think we can say the same for the status of plainchant (or of  the Latin language or ecclesiastical music in general) in the Western Church. In fact, the traditions  singled out for praise above directly conflict with the policies and practice governing liturgical music that prevail in the Roman Catholic Church. And I don’t know what “Catholic” country would promote the Catholic musical heritage in UNESCO (some countries have nominated various religious processions – presumabably as “folklore”).

 

See “Icons of Sound: Lost Voices of Hagia Sofia” by Cappella Romana – an initiative trying to recover the musical traditions of Constantinople’s cathedral rite.

 

1. SOURCE
2. UNESCO Statement (w/ Pictures)
3. “Nomination file No. 001508 for inscription in 2019 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”

 

Freiburg Cathedral: The great past of Germany. Ida Görres lived in Freiburg and her funeral service was held at the cathedral.

Görres continues as our witness for the immediate post-Conciliar period. But we now encounter her in letters exchanged with a priest friend, Paulus Gordan OSB, a monk of the Abbey of Beuron, between 1962 and 1971. This correspondence was only published in 2015  – decades after the author’s death. The style of these private letters differs radically from the soporific, lecturing prose of Broken Lights. Görres’s language here is colorful, making much use of colloquialisms, slang and dialect.  Capitalization of entire words, liberal use of the exclamation point and frequent underlining further emphasize the author’s  often excited discourse. Of course, these letters are in Görres’s own language, while I had to make do with a translation for Broken Lights. ( The translations are my own; I have given the date of the letter from which a quote was taken ).

The letters Paulus Gordan sent to Görres have not been found. From the evidence of Görres’s reactions to them, however, he seems to have been your average complacent member of the clerical establishment. His main message is that there are no problems or emergencies, everything is under control, don’t get alarmed, “keep calm and carry on.”  His personal theological opinions, as reported by Görres, were progressive – he seems to have thought that his own order’s founder was “mythical”; entertained the idea of each order replacing devotion to its founder with exclusive devotion to Christ; and raged against those ignorant obscurantists opposing the Council.  Is it any wonder that in 1968 he received a high Roman post in the Benedictine Order working directly under none other than Rembert Weakland OSB?

The image of this collection’s title derives from the hopes of those who, like Ida Görres and Paulus Gordan, initially celebrated the “creative destruction” of the Council, the breaking down of walls,  regardless of the consequences. In her early letters,  Görres and Gordan  applauded (with some trepidation)the destructive forces loosed by the Council,  for, so Görres hoped, the Church would rise again like the mythical Phoenix from the ashes of the consuming fire, as it had done so often in the past! (I am not certain of the soundness of our letter writer’s grasp of ecclesiastical history.)

By 1966, however, she was not at all so sure:

No man can even guess what will be swept away and buried by the avalanche that has been set in motion. Nor, whether what will spring up as new life out of the ruins – we will not experience it –  will be really a new form of phoenix or simply something other, totally foreign, not-identical, that doesn’t involve us at all. (January 21 ,1966)

For from the beginning of this correspondence she was traumatized by the new phenomena of the 1960’s, great and small.  Some examples:

An article appeared in a Catholic publication, supporting womens’ ordination and finding that the legend of “Pope Joan” reflects an “age-old” wish of Christendom. Görres calls it ”a brazen Goebbels-like distortion of history!” (February 10, 1966).  The editor’s open support of  these views stood in stark contrast to the treatment of an article of her own on the same subject in another publication, where letters to the editor supporting Görres’s position  – which we gather was different from the first-mentioned article – were suppressed.

I have nevertheless the deepest skepticism when monks’ vows can be so easily annulled. …The pendulum has swung immoderately to the  consideration only of the purely subjective instead of, as the case earlier even to the point of cruelty, the objective.  (February 15, 1968)

Now everything at once has to be cut down to the late 20^th century. Why really?… Just as in ten years one will probably  have a fit of cramps over the greater number of churches built today  – but by then they will stand, cast in concrete and having cost millions, as a permanent horror of the incarnated soul of 1960-70 – and will remain. (November 4, 1968)

One of the strangest and most questionable traits of the present age is just this rage against the “sacred” in all areas. No abuses can really explain this rage  –  I sense behind it so much the diabolical offensive.”(March 7, 1968) Later in the same letter, however, she astutely ties it to “democracy.”

(Görres received a letter from an acquaintance visiting India who reported) that on the ship were ten Catholic priests who mostly concelebrated “in an incredible competitive tempo to see who could talk the fastest” –  so much so that friend travelling with her, who wanted to turn to Christianity, was so disgusted that she decided not to concern herself any more with Catholic Church but rather to approach Protestantism. (April 7, 1968)

Görres was disgusted with the invitation of her “Pan-European” brother Richard to take part in some kind of St. Benedict ceremony in Subiaco. Her brother told her of the event over the phone, laughing loudly. “The old mocker and cynic, who believes in nothing but himself and his “Pan-Europe”(whatever that is).  … He visited the pope a few years ago and the picture is hilarious. He made a face like that of a patronal lord of olden times who has just condescended most graciously to visit his village priest.” (June 19, 1970)

A special cross for Ida Görres was the departure from the priesthood or religious life of acquaintance after acquaintance who had, she thought,  in their lives harmonized Catholicism and ecumenism, modernity, etc. One American Jesuit, well-known to her, who left that order to marry, actually used the later Bergoglian term “Lord of Surprises” in justifying his actions! (April 21, 1969)

Yet,  we must remember that Görres largely confined these thoughts to private correspondence. Outwardly, Ida Görres, a classic “professional Catholic,” continued to fulfill the role assigned to her by the Church establishment; that of the mildly progressive but obedient daughter. In these very years, for example,  she published books and articles about “Saint” Teilhard de Chardin as she once did about St. Theresa of Lisieux – it was almost self-parody. She wrote a review attacking Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Trojan House in the City of God  – although privately she agreed with much  of what he wrote. It seemed that after the Council  criticism of the existing Church  – as in Broken Lights  – was no longer desired. Unless, that is, it emanated from the progressive wing.

Finding herself to be more and more some kind of “conservative,”  Görres  looked about for like-minded religious and intellectuals. She quoted a message to her from Mother Theresa: “Write for the very simple people, tell them what the Council really wanted….The Council must have been really a great thing since the devil makes much effort to confuse and erase its sense”  ( July 27,  1968.) Neither Görres nor Mother Theresa adduces any evidence for this statement which later became an article of faith among conservative Catholics.

But Görres’s new hero was one Joseph Ratzinger. “By the way I have found my prophet in Israel!”  She praised him effusively: “he can become the theological conscience of the German Church” – and contrasted him favorably with the “compromised” von Hildebrand.  (November 28, 1968) At least initially, Fr. Ratzinger does not seem to have reciprocated the interest of his garrulous admirer.  An initial communication from Görres received a cold, formal reply. And Fr Ratzinger was not at all amused when Mr. and Mrs. Görres “dropped in” at his dwelling to visit him.  A second meeting in the town of Regensburg apparently went much better but no details are provided. (July 15, 1970)

Things came to a head in 1970 with the start of preparations for the Würzburg Synod (1971-75) which would set the course of the “German Catholic Church” for decades. Invited to participate, Ida Görres now would have to assume a public role instead of  remaining an observer and commentator. She had the misfortune to experience firsthand how far affairs had progressed in Germany since the Council.   Görres was by now completely out of step with the times, a “dinosaur” ( she compared herself to Rip van Winkle). We can sympathize with our author’s hurt vanity when someone, meaning to be kind,  told her she had read in the 1930’s a few things by Görres and how much it had influenced her….

Again and again Görres lamented the lack of character and strength exhibited throughout this synodal process by the clergy religious and especially the hierarchy.  In a kind of “listening session” early on,  she and a few other members of the synod had to sit “in the dock” before a crowd of 100 students “not paper tigers, but paper sheep, without initiative,  fire or insight and only spouting clichés.”  The attending student chaplain declared “they would not let anyone ‘take intercommunion away from us‘ – which they were already practicing.” (December 4, 1970)

“The bishop is a poor silly goose, really pathetic. He sat fearful, defensive, intimidated and only gasped when something displeased him.” ( December 20, 1970).  There was much talk but no real conversations or exchange of ideas. She was shocked that an assembly of this kind was supposed to make decisions. Görres objected to the practice of selecting synod participants by their membership in this or that group or class: women,  students , workers, youth etc. ( a practice that has become normative everywhere today).   “The bishops are ‘as silent as eggs’ as the Japanese proverb has it“– one of them indeed was “soft as wax.” (February 15, 1971).   On the other side of the fence were “choleric personalities, dynamic,  impatient, terribles simplificateurs, demanding  immediate action and lacking the patience to think things thorough in a multifaceted analysis. Goethe: “nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance.’ ”  Under the circumstances, Görres had to play too often the role of the enfant terrible – “but the reaction was not hostile, mocking or even lenient-tolerant  – just  totally non-comprehending.” (May 11, 1971)

In the second official session of the synod Görres collapsed and died. She fell, as her fellow hagiographer Walther Nigg put it,
“on the field of honor” (in other words, on the battlefield). Her funeral took place in Freiburg cathedral – she and her husband had been living in that town for many years.  Fr. Joseph Ratzinger gave the homily.

As we have seen, the status of the Church in Germany in the 1950’s – a nation so influential at Vatican  II,  was a most unlikely foundation for spiritual renewal. On the contrary, the  climate prevailing among the elite was not of emerging sanctity and sacrifice but of  intellectual conceit,  carping criticism, deference to modern society and dissatisfaction with the entire remaining body of “Catholic culture” ( the “Catholic milieu” or the “ghetto”).  It made inevitable the crisis that exploded as soon as the Council gave these tendencies official approval. Almost immediately symptoms of disintegration manifested themselves in almost every aspect of Catholic life.

In this maelstrom, a minority of Catholics like Ida Görres very much wanted to retain their progressive credentials and remain a part of the establishment yet nevertheless couldn’t close their eyes to events and facts.  Görres could no longer engage in wishful thinking and fables about the advantages of destruction and rebirth or conceal from the general public – and herself –  the facts of the scale of the “avalanche”  overwhelming the Church. She and like-minded people rejected Traditionalism and the strict defense of the Latin Mass which were just then in their infancy. Some of the positions and alliances which Görres did privately endorse later became part of the repertoire of  “Conservative Catholicism.”  But for Ida Görres none of this support had yet materialized. She succumbed, abandoned by the hierarchy at their own synod. We have seen in our own time how her fearful vision of the Catholic Church being transformed into something utterly alien has become so terribly true, at least for Germany.

Within a few years she was completely forgotten. But she has left us a precious record of those days – a record not just of facts but also of surprisingly  prophetic insights.  A legacy doubly important as these same issues and the same leadership continue to haunt us today – and not just in Germany.

 

(Above) Ida Görres

 

Broken Lights: Diaries and Letters 1951-1959
by Ida Friederike Görres

Translated by Barbara Waldstein-Wartenberg (The Newman Press, Westminster 1964) (German edition: 1960)

“Wirklich die neue Phönixgestalt?”  Über Kirche und Konzil: Unbekannte Briefe 1962-1971 an Paulus Gordan

by Ida Friederike Görres

Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz (Editor) (Be & Be Verlag, Heiligenkreuz, 2015)

 

You may wonder why I speak of the “collapse” of the German Church. Hasn’t the German Catholic Church – their theologians, their charitable organizations and above all their government money –  acquired unprecedented influence over the entire Catholic Church under Pope Bergoglio?  I am referring, however, to a transformation that took place between 1945 and 1971, in which the Church in Germany acquired an entirely different substance while retaining the hallmarks of the past:  institutions, folklore, pretty churches and orchestral masses. A “sea-change” which would  – except for certain pockets of resistance – eventually almost extinguish the practice of Catholicism in that country.

Ida Görres is an important witness to this transformation – initially, as a committed supporter of change,  then, as an aghast observer of calamity. Her background may be surprising: born in 1901 into Austrian nobility (her brother was the one-Europe, one-world agitator Richard van Condenhove-Kalergi; her mother was  Japanese). She had married  Carl-Josef Görres;  I have found no reference indicating he is a relation of the great 19th century Catholic journalist and thinker Joseph von Görres.  A committed Catholic writer, Ida Görres was best known for her hagiographical works of the 1930’s and 40’s  – for example, on Mary Ward and Theresa of Lisieux.

From 1950,  she was compelled to live as an invalid – so most of the first book we are considering,  Broken Lights,  takes the form of reflections on her reading.  In her diary and letters Görres rambles over all kinds of topics, but returns again and again to her own vocation of hagiography. She discusses many saints and holy people,  major and minor. And even the living: for example, there is a reference to Mother Theresa some 15 years or more before she became generally known in the English-speaking world (p. 196). I certainly would like to know more about some of these figures!

The general tenor of Ida  Görres’s remarks is one of unease and dissatisfaction with the Church.  She seems on the quest of a new “core” underneath the inadequate exterior of contemporary Catholicism, a pearl under the ugly shell of the oyster:

Nothing saddens me more at the moment than the pitiable mediocrity and flatness of Catholic Christendom – I can hardly find one redeeming feature anymore. (p. 51)

And, of course, there are references to the Catholic “ghetto.”

Perhaps as a result, Ida Görres ranged widely afield in her reading: Jewish texts, gnostic writings, mystical and spiritual literature of all kinds,  novels –  but also Newman and C.S. Lewis. I cannot say that everything she says on this mass of reading is  insightful – she excoriates Simone Weil but has some semi-positive words for The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale!

Even in her chosen field of hagiography, the strongly Catholic figures that that once fascinated her are now found to be inadequate or at least in need a radical reinterpretation:

In one way Mary Ward has grown rather strange to me, remote.  For her external story represents a model belonging to the very earliest phases of my spiritual life, a model now outdated; the typical zealous figure –   almost zealot – of the Counter Reformation.

I have been ruminating on Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini, surely a classical example of that special, perfectly genuine and lawful brand of Christian piety which can be completely unintelligent… In 67 years of holiness truly lived… there is no record of a single “unforgettable sentence”… Completely devoid of self-reflection. One feels almost inclined to say: if animals could be holy, they would be holy this way. (p. 364)

For me, the attitudes, as revealed in his book, of our author and, even more so, of some of her dialogue partners reflect negative characteristics of  German Catholicism that have remained until the present day: the striving to appear smarter, not to be holier,  than others; the constant assertion of an allegedly enlightened present over previous years of ignorance and conformity; the resulting compulsion to jump on the band wagon of current secular trends; and, finally, resentments against the concrete manifestations and heritage of a (at that time, still extant) Catholic culture.

Now it would be unfair to regard Ida Görres as a mere scribe for the platitudes prevailing in 1950’s Catholic intellectual circles. Here and there she exhibits flashes of brilliance, makes pointed observations, dissents from the intellectual mainstream. Such as in her extensive reflections on marriage – both mystical and concrete, e.g.: If marriages are going to remain deliberately sterile, then there is no longer any logical, conclusive argument against homosexuality (p.112).  Or her decidedly un-Maritainian view of the United States:  For me America is a symbol: symbol of the sort of ”modernism” I cannot endorse or acknowledge and can only accept with inner protest…. (p. 321).  Or her repeated expressions of her joy in the (old) liturgy: I just revelled in that High Mass at Beuron Abbey on All Saints’ day. Once again “the liturgy as drama”, nothing purposeful about it,  praise and thanks giving to God as art pour l’art, as natural as the liturgy of the angels before the heavenly throne, devoid of all pastoral instructional “consideration” for the congregation which, for that very reason, was carried away by it all, borne on its wings. (p. 329)  This,  in the face of one of her acquaintances denouncing this very celebration as mere “spectacle,” “play acting with the congregation just spectators.”

And, finally, what of this weirdly prophetic passage,  resonating so clearly at this very moment:

(Referring to actions supported by the Rockefeller Institute in the Philippines)   Most extraordinary how nowadays the craze for health can authorize super democratic – professionally democratic – people to resort to the kind of cold-blooded sanitary terror enforced in… areas stricken by epidemics and pestilence. These shock-troops coolly did things which, done in a political cause, would be branded as the most flagrant infringement of human rights of every kind. Here they are apparently taken for granted, indeed even regarded as humane and commendable: houses broken into by force, families torn apart, removal of the sick, destruction of property, houses and furniture etc. … the author’s casual comment: “our educational campaign against these deep-seated prejudices was like a conversion to a new religion” is much more telling than he knew: a new cult and a new scale of values was indeed introduced here. (pp. 259-260 )

Towards the end of the book Ida Görres does sense that she had fallen behind the current tide:

I know you (and lots of other people) think I’m too “Right-wing”, “Papist” , conformist, old-fashioned, too submissive to the clergy. (p. 313)

Yet she nevertheless reaffirms her faith in the “Church to come” and views herself as a transitional figure:

The Church of Today, which is as much my concern as the Church of Tomorrow is that of the reformers. In me the present Church in changing if only in one tiny fragment, into the Church  to come – that is the nucleus and meaning of my destiny (p. 315).

This book witnesses that the German Catholic Church of 1959 was in a  “pre-revolutionary” situation (much like that of France in 1789).  And just as in 1789, the Vatican and the bishops didn’t seem to comprehend what was going on. The “good old days” of Pius XII really didn’t exist. The old landmarks had become obscured  –  the new had not yet come into view. Therefore, the title of Görres’s book in the original German is well chosen: Between the Ages (or Times).

A word needs to be said about the 1964 English-language edition. By that year, the Catholic Church in England was itself being rocked by first wave of the Vatican II changes. Four years after its initial publication, Ida Görres‘s book was furnished with a new title emphasizing not just transition, but the collapse of the old order: Broken Lights.  And some not very accurate comments provided on the dust jacket simplified and radicalized the message of the book:

Her particular interests center on the discrepancies between the beliefs and practices of Catholics, between the conventional, false images of God and His true Revelation and upon the many manifestations of the ultra, ultra Catholic conservatives with tight, closed, prim, authoritarian and infallible views.

.

 

Una Voce: The History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce

Leo Darroch
(Gracewing, Leominster 2017)

I have long been interested in the story of American Catholic Traditionalism. Una Voce: the History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce is an account of Una Voce, one of the main protagonists in Europe,  written by a former president of that organization. I find it an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the survival of Traditionalism – yet some major reservations and qualifications are necessary.

To start, this book might be more accurately titled “Materials for the History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce.” For Darroch’s book is in no way a complete history of the Una Voce federation, let alone that of post-Vatican II Traditionalism. Rather, it is the story of the center or headquarters of the Una Voce organization, its status reports and above all its discussions over the years with Vatican representatives. The president of Una Voce (international) freely admits that at times he has very little idea of what is happening in the local chapters, where much of the actual work of the federation in education and publication was being done. Some of these, such as the UK and German chapters, were established early and continued to play a major role throughout the period covered by this book. Others, like the United States organization,  flowered early, vanished and reappeared in different reincarnations.

One would very much like to hear more of the experiences of the main national chapters. The Latin Mass Society of the UK, for example, was involved in the granting in 1971 of the only real concession  to the Traditional Mass made by Rome prior to 1984/88: the “English” indult. (This book, however, makes clear how extremely limited this concession was.) There is also mention that in some chapters a more defiant attitude regarding celebrating the Old Mass continued to exist  “under the radar screen” of the international headquarters.

The format of this book may also be challenging for readers other than dedicated historians. For the text consists largely of verbatim reports, interviews, minutes of meetings and letters, at the expense of a coherent narrative. Questions of substance and procedural intricacies, fundamental discussions of principle and bureaucratic trivia are freely mingled here; critical issues arise and are then suddenly dropped in mid-stream. On the other hand, a chief contribution of Darroch’s book is indeed the generous selection of excerpts from the original documents!

We have spoken of the president of Una Voce. This book is indeed largely  the history of one man, Eric de Saventhem,  the founding president of the International Federation, who sustained the efforts  of the federation’s center with his energy, persistence – and, probably, financial resources. It is to his credit, first,  that at least some central point of contact was retained for the “Uniate” ( basically, “non-Lefebvrian”) Traditionalists. Second, Una Voce preserved throughout the decades its advocacy of  the pre-Conciliar Mass and never deviated into the so-called Latin (Novus Ordo)Mass that gained such a hold on “Conservative Catholics” in the US. Third, de Saventhem left us such memorable and visionary statements of principle as:

A renaissance will come: asceticism and adoration as the mainspring of direct total dedication to Christ will return. Confraternities of priests, vowed to celibacy and to an intense life of prayer and meditation will be formed. Religious will regroup themselves into houses of ‘strict observance.” A new form of ‘Liturgical Movement” will come into being, led by young priests and attracting young people, in protest against the flat, prosaic, philistine or delirious liturgies which will soon overgrow and finally smother even the recently revised rites…

It is important that these new priests and religious, these new young people with ardent hearts, should find—if only in corner of the rambling mansion of the Church—the treasure of a true sacred liturgy… (Address to the Una Voce United States chapter in June 1970)

How could the aspirations be better articulated – and so early on! – for a movement that would demand so much personal sacrifice with so little hope of success over so many decades?

De Saventhem had, however, far less success as a would-be ecclesiastical politician. His attempts over the decades to obtain some kind of concession or deal from the Roman authorities
with whom he was in fairly regular contact had, by his own admission, absolutely no success prior to the indults of the 1980’s. And, as we can infer from this book, the concessions of the Indults were entirely due to the efforts of Archbishop Lefebvre, not those of Una Voce. Indeed, de Saventhem’s bureaucratic maneuvers and proposed compromises served only to undermine the credibility of a movement allegedly based on the highest principles. Inevitably, wishful thinking seems to color de Saventhem’s reports. At times, he grasped for signs of papal favor (under Paul VI!); on other occasions he talks of parties in the Vatican more or less sympathetic with the Tradionalist cause.   One feels thrust back into the era of the Cold War Kremlinologists, who in search of the will-o’-the -wisp of détente, constantly sought to identify alleged “moderate” and “hardline” factions in the Soviet leadership. It was a futile endeavor for Una Voce as well: the rudeness, arrogance and duplicity of the Vatican and the hierarchy in general is laid out here in great detail. One should read this book to understand the FSSPX’s well-founded distrust of the Vatican. There is also abundant evidence of the vacillations of Pope John Paul II.

Archbishop Lefebvre, on the other hand,  after a late start even subsequent to the foundation of Una Voce, focused on preserving the celebration of the Traditional mass at all costs and, increasingly, regardless of ecclesiastical permissions. To do that he began by training missionary priests in his own seminary adding schools, communities of sisters and  affiliates such as Traditional Benedictines, Dominicans and Redemptorists – and, finally, in his most dramatic step, bishops. It was a course of action that had been put on the table in the early days of the formation of Una Voce but not adopted (at least not by the federation’s headquarters).  De Saventhem seems to have been in communication now and then with the Archbishop whose movement, in contrast to the static situation of Una Voce, continued its steady and relentless growth.

Of course, this was not just a case of mistaken tactics on the part of de Saventhem.  More fundamental factors were in play, whether or not the main players of that era could or would have been willing to articulate them. De Saventhem remained in practice wedded to an “ultramontane” ecclesiology wherein the liturgy was the creation and property of the papacy. Therefore, the principal focus of Una Voce’s center was  “negotiations with” ( for most of this period, more accurately: “supplication of”) the relevant Roman authorities. Archbishop Lefebvre, however, given his background as a missionary, must have sensed the radical loss of faith underlying the developments of the 1960’s. While Una Voce – or at least its central leadership – saw saving the Mass as a bureaucratic exercise, Lefebvre understood it as a spiritual problem, a challenge of evangelization requiring the radical refounding and reconstitution of Church institutions. Of course, Archbishop Lefebvre’s  policy was also superior from the purely secular perspective of negotiation tactics (he was, after all, conducting his own discussions with the Holy See).  For while de Saventhem could only talk to the Roman prelates of the personal attachment of some of the faithful to the Old Rite, citing petitions and surveys, Lefebvre commanded a growing institutional following that was causing acute embarrassment to Rome. Something had to be done!

The indult of 1984 and even more so the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei of 1988 combined with  Archbishop Lefebvre’s ordination of bishops in that year changed all this. A large number of Lefebvre’s priests and affiliates could not follow him in the latter action. Suddenly,  Una Voce acquired substantial institutional and clerical allies. Now there was indeed more to talk about at the Vatican as Ecclesia Dei was rolled out! Furthermore, the hostility of the Roman authorities softened somewhat and there was a new dialogue partner – the Ecclesia Dei commission. Nevertheless, Una Voce had to contend with the unabated hostility to Traditionalism of other ecclesiastics in and outside of the Vatican who would continue to defy implementation of the 1988 Indult.

 

The most dramatic incident of the post-Indult years occurred, however, under the presidency of Michael Davies, who succeeded de Saventhem in 1995. For it was under his watch in 2000 that the future conservative hero, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, launched out of a clear blue sky an underhanded attempt to impose “adaptations” derived from the Novus Ordo on the Traditional liturgy. Davies and Una Voce, exhibiting greater firmness than the preceding Una Voce administration had shown, resolutely opposed this move. The initiative, which would have destroyed non – FSSPX Traditionalism, was quietly allowed to die. Here Una Voce did indeed show its worth.

 

There are many other gems and curious facts scattered about the pages of this book. It is admittedly incomplete. Yet, if you want to get a sense of what in particular early Catholic Traditionalism was like – and the forces it had to contend with – it’s a great place to start

We had previously reviewed Professor Daniel J. Mahoney’s somewhat ambiguous assessment of the Bergoglio pontificate in a book of his published in 2018:

The Idol of Our Age.

Now, however, Prof. Mahoney has dispelled ambiguity in this devastating article in National Review which neatly summarizes a variety of critiques of  Pope Francis and his entourage:

Pope Francis, Wayward Shepherd

“The religion of humanity, and the accompanying dictatorship of relativism, are deeply ingrained in the Church of Rome, and at the highest levels of the Church at that. Providence may save the Church from becoming a branch of the religion of humanity at prayer, but only if faithful Catholics allow themselves to become righteous and truth-telling agents of our loving and provident God.”