Décadence: Vie et mort du judéo-christianisme

(Decadence: the Life and Death of Judeo-Christianity)

By Michel Onfray

(Flammarion 2017)

In Decadence, Michael Onfray seeks to set forth a “philosophy of history” outlining the origins and end of Christendom (or Judeo-Christianity, as he calls it). Onfray is the French equivalent of the representatives of “New Atheism” in the English-speaking world. For his guiding lights, our author draws on on Nietzsche, the ancient epicureans, and the atheist writers of the enlightenment and of the 19^th century. For example, Onfray lists as a primary source for much of this history Francis (sic) Gibbons ’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Onfray’s style is colorful, if at times a bit ranting and not free of errors. His analysis is not so much a detailed review of historical facts but usually presents  a discussion of one or more representative texts from each topic he covers.

The first half of the book – covering developments from the time of Christ until the 16^th century – describes the birth and flourishing of “Judeo-Christianity.” You have heard the substance of these chapters often before: “Christ” was a fiction, St Paul was a neurotic who hated the body and women, Christianity was invented by Constantine to cement his rule and adopted by the masses seeking relief from their suffering state. From these beginnings the Church promoted violence, war and hatred of the body, persecuted Jews, witches and women, massacred native peoples in the Americas etc. In a later period, Fascism and specifically Hitler appear as a creation of Pius XII (the triumphant proof? Mein Kampf was not put on the index of prohibited books) It is all very familiar and moreover seems to recycle material from Onfray’s other books (notably his magnum opus Atheologie).

In the second half of his work, the author narrates the post medieval period of “Exhaustion.” The edifice of Christendom started to wobble when certain enlightened individuals started to read certain non–theistic texts from antiquity, to understand science and to think for themselves.

Based on what you have read so far of his views you would expect Onfray to be a celebrity honored by The Guardian, the New York Times and Le Monde, and to be a regular speaker on the French broadcast media and the BBC. Indeed, his books have been best sellers in France and elsewhere in Europe. But in the final post-1789 sections of his work “Senescence” and “Decay” Onfray departs from the establishment’s “politically correct” narrative. His view of the French Revolution and its campaigns of extermination is decidedly unfavorable. Nor does he admire Marxism and the innumerable massacres it brought about. As the story moves into a time of which the author has direct experience his criticism intensifies. He doesn’t think much of structuralism, Freudianism and other fads of the French intelligentsia. The same is true of the cult of “contemporary art.” The result of these ideologies is a European incapacity to either recognize reality or to defend itself. Onfray is particularly harsh on the intellectuals’ current love affair with Islam: he spends many pages recounting the misdeeds of the “religion of peace.” But like Houellebecq, he contrasts Islam’s vitality with the senescent nihilism of contemporary Europe.

The chapter entitled “Christian De-Christianization: the Imminent Paraclete of Vatican II” will be of particular interest to the Traditional Catholic. For Onfray views Vatican II as a major contributor to the current nihilist crisis – particularly by its changes to the liturgy. For example:

“This destruction of the sacred, this massacre of transcendence, this trivial descent on earth by the Divinity culminated in the new “stage design” of the mass. For centuries the tabernacle, which contains the Holy Ghost, had been set on the altar, which stands at the end of the sanctuary. There the priest celebrated the mass before this sacred object. The celebrant, clothed in priestly vestments, had his back to the faithful because he was facing the Sacred, in the presence of the Divine, gazing at the Holy Spirit, in direct contact with the Divinity, in the sight of the consecrated host and thus of the real presence of the Body of Christ. This location proves to be eminently symbolic because it is the place of the rising sun, in other words, the direction from which Christ will come at the final judgment. …

The liturgical changes of Vatican II abolished this arrangement in favor of a new set design: an altar is built in the choir between the sanctuary where the Holy Spirit is found and the nave where the mass of the faithful prays. This time the priest turns his back to the tabernacle, thus to the rising sun, thus to the second coming of God and thus to God himself – all in in order to face the people which from now on can look at him face to face. Certainly the priest is closer to his flock but that is at the price of a greater distance from God.  Of the realm of the symbolic and of allegory it’s terrible: in order to bring people closer to God Vatican II realized exactly the opposite.” (page 517)

These views accord with conclusions previously reached by numerous other observers – both Catholic Traditionalists and secular. We have covered many of them in this blog. Onfray renders us a real service by detailing for us the incompatibility of Christianity with the ”modern world. ”

The civilization of rock and of comic books, of movies and television, of nightclubs and of nicotine addiction, of the birth control pill and of divorce, of alcohol and narcotics, of the refrigerator and of the automobile, of the atomic bomb and of the Cold War, of free love and of leisure, of money and of objects, advances while crushing everything in its path. Vatican II couldn’t do anything about it. It even seems that, having wanted to be a remedy, the Council exacerbated the disease. By making God a pal to slap on the back, 1) of the priest a buddy to be invited to share a vacation, of symbolism an old fashioned thing to be abolished, of the mystery of transcendence a banal immanence, of the mass a show imitating the layout of a television broadcast, of ritual an affair drawing indiscriminately on the success of popular hits or on the naive art of the craziest believers, of the message of Christ  a simple labor union tract, of the soutane a theatrical costume, of other religions spiritualties as valid as that of Christianity, the Church precipitated the movement forward which proclaimed its own fall. (page 518)

Yes, Onfray’s view of the modern world is a dim one. The key prophets of the current age turned out to be not Rousseau, Marx or Tocqueville but Orwell and Huxley. He describes the incomplete cathedral of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona as the symbol of the end of Christendom – the Christian equivalent of Chernobyl, the ruin of the contemporary technological age. The modern age cannot finish even this one church after a century. For Onfray it is the summit of irony that it was Pope Benedict XVI who consecrated this “ruin of Christianity”.

“La Sagrada Familia remains a ruin and the Pope who consecrated it has resigned. Rome is no more (even) in Rome.” (page 21)

Yes, we can agree with Onfray that historical Christendom is well and truly dead! But where I would beg to differ from him is this: I see Christianity continuing in a thousand places. Whatever the public profile and political influence of the institutional Church may be, Christianity continues. And whatever buffooneries are taking place in Rome right now, the real Rome continues in the celebration of the Traditional Mass.

1. tutoyer “to address with familiar ‘tu.’”

(The translations are mine for which I request the reader’s forbearance.)

For those travelling in Massachusetts, Mary Immaculate of Lourdes is a good church to know about. We visited this church yesterday for the 10:30 am Sunday Traditional Mass. Well-attended, with an altar boy count to rival St. Mary’s Norwalk, and a choir that skillfully performed all of the ordinaries of the Palestrina Missa Sine Nomine (including the Credo). Close to the Massachusetts Pike and I-95—we’ll remember this church for our next trip.

The bulletin says this about the parish: “A canonically open parish of the Archdiocese of Boston, which has a Traditional Latin Masss apostolate. Both the ordinary form of the Roman Rite and the extraordinary form are celebrated here with the blessing of His Eminence Sean Cardinal O’Malley.”  The church also offers daily Traditional Masses.

It’s a beautiful Roman-style church with exquisite stained glass windows.

Many windows are copies of familiar paintings—here is Raphael’s Sistine Madonna
.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary with the church itself in the background.

St. Agnes

The maker of the windows, from Munich

(Above) In the Rome office of HLI in 2006.

Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula died early yesterday morning after a long illness. I had first met Fr. Barreiro (I will refer to him as such herein regardless of his status at any one time)as a seminarian in the 1980’s in New York. Trained as a lawyer, he had served in the delegation of Uruguay to the United Nations (one of his main activities being the promotion of the superiority of Uruguayan beef).  He began to study for the priesthood at Dunwoodie seminary of the New York Archdiocese. Later, I would visit him at the first parishes he served in in New York City. We had so many wonderful conversations about the Church, European,  Spanish and Latin American history, literature and politics. Fr. Barreiro was an inexhaustible gold mine of knowledge on all these topics and on many more besides. On all these matters he not just amassed ”factoids” but had formed well-reasoned opinions (with which you might or might not agree). These interests continued to the very end of his life – less than a week before his death Fr. Barreiro discussed with me the eccentricities of the late Duchess of Alba in Spain, and gave a detailed critique of Dreher’s recent book The Benedict Option, pointing out some of its fallacies.

Ordained in 1987, he always approached his priesthood with great seriousness. I recall a friend of his asking for his opinion of a certain individual “assuming for the moment you aren’t a priest.” But Fr. Barreiro said that it is exactly that he could never do – a priest is a priest all the time, you can never set the priesthood aside. At the same time, he took a dim view of clericalism.  We had visited the now – destroyed church of Our Lady of Vilna (site of the first (Novus Ordo) Latin masses celebrated in New York since the 1960’s).  The pastor recently had installed some large stained glass windows from a destroyed Lithuanian parish in Brooklyn – windows grossly out of scale for this very small church. “That’s what you get when a priest takes charge of the decorating the church’” said Fr. Barreiro, “instead of consulting laymen who know about art.” It’s an observation I have seen proved out many times since then. (By the way, Fr. Barreiro himself had very fine artistic taste.)

Fr. Barreiro was unfailingly polite and had a warm personality – a stark contrast to the affected, off-putting demeanor of certain of his Traditionalist clerical colleagues. He made many devoted friends who remained faithful to him for decades. He was comfortable dealing not just with clergy or alleged ”intellectuals,” but also with people of all walks of life who would come to him for counseling. Over the years he supported to a number of priests in various ways who were later active in the Traditional cause.

Fr. Barreiro had a great sense of dignity and propriety – sometimes manifested in a humorous way. We were wandering through city one summer when he was still a seminarian. He needed a light (he smoked but I didn’t) but at the time almost every local purveyor of tobacco products handed out matchbooks containing advertisements for prostitutes. Fr. Barreiro absolutely refused to use such a thing – so we had to stop in a half dozen or more such shops until he found a matchbook without the offending ad! And when he was transported from the hospital to Rosary Hill a week before his death, he insisted on being fully dressed in clerical attire.

Father Barreiro pursued his love for the Traditional Mass and for furthering his studies in Rome. There, after obtaining his doctorate, he became associated with Human Life International (HLI) and led for many years their Rome office from its beginning. His well-stocked library was a great resource for anybody in Rome who needed to know about pro-life issues. But he did so much more. He celebrated mass for a Traditionalist congregation in Rome. Like other priests of that generation who had received the “normal” training in the Novus Ordo and subsequently became supporters of Tradition, Fr. Barreiro remained very uncomfortable with the singing demands of the Traditional liturgy. Yet I can testify that he could do it – if pressed!

Fr. Barreiro spoke at conferences and wrote many books, sermons and articles – such as this paper he gave in 2011 on Summorum Pontificum at a conference sponsored by the Society of St Hugh of Cluny in 2011. To the end he remained a great friend of this society.

All his life Fr. Barreiro was deeply interested and involved in many organizations and causes of Catholic Traditionalism and of the European right: Carlists, monarchists, the Roman Forum, the ”restored” Knights Templar, etc. From the perspective of Catholics more in line with the political and ecclesiastical “establishment” such causes may seem “Quixotic” – given Fr. Barreiro’s background, a perhaps complimentary expression. But by now we must acknowledge that on so many issues these non-mainstream movements have proved right and the advocates of working through the existing establishment dead wrong.

(Above) At the headquarters of the “restored” Knights Templar at Poggibonsi near Siena (the Archbishop of Siena is the cleric behind the sacred ministers). (Below) with the master of the knights.

Fr. Barreiro was a man of strong opinions on controversial matters with a streak of stubbornness, which now and then brought him into conflict with various ecclesiastical authorities and other Catholic thinkers. But at the same time he could be very prudent and disposed of not inconsiderable diplomatic skill and talent. So, for example, he took care not to disclose, even in private conversation, the extent of his commitment to the Traditional mass until after his ordination. In 1989 Father Barreiro married Jill and me in Princeton, which was (I believe incorrectly) reported as the first “official” nuptial traditional mass celebrated in the United States in over 20 years. Fr. Barreiro had astutely managed the negotiations to make that seemingly impossible mass a reality.  It was not totally surprising that Fr. Barreiro was made Monsignor in 2004 and even served as interim president of HLI in 2010-11.

He was fortunate to spend his last days in Hawthorne, New York, at Rosary Hill, a beautiful facility under the care of Dominican sisters. Up to the last day of his life he remained perfectly in command of his mental faculties. He here enjoyed the visit of so many people, including many  parishioners of Saint Mary’s parish in Norwalk where he had served for almost a year. It was touching to see how great an impact he had left on so many people of the parish in so short a time. It is a great sorrow to lose such a true friend and a completely dedicated priest. But in return we will have, I devoutly believe, a great friend in heaven.

(Below is a formal obituary. A search of this site will bring up more sermons and news of Fr. Barreiro over the years.)

Funeral services are scheduled Tuesday, April 18, for Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula , who died Thursday, April 13, 2017, in Rosary Hill Hospice, Hawthorne, NY. He was 69.
Msgr. Barreiro was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Oct. 22, 1947, the son of the late Antonio Barreiro Brunel and Margarita Blanca Carámbula Regules. Schooled in Uruguay, he obtained a law degree and joined the diplomatic service of his country, where he was eventually stationed at the United Nations in New York City from 1978-1983.
He entered the Seminary and College of St. Joseph (Dunwoodie) in 1983, and was ordained priest by John Cardinal O’Connor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Nov. 22, 1987.
After parish work in New York, he entered the University of the Holy Cross in Rome, where he earned a licentiate and eventually a doctorate in 1997. In September 1998, he was appointed the first director the Rome bureau of Human Life International (HLI), founded in that year. In 2010-11 he briefly served as interim president of HLI. In 2004 he was named chaplain of his holiness by Pope John Paul II.
In April 2016, he became the parochial vicar at St. Mary’s Church, Norwalk, where he ministered especially to the Hispanic and other ethnic communities that make up the parish.
From the day of his ordination, Msgr. Barreiro was always an avid supporter of the restoration of the traditional rites of the Church, and was a regular celebrant of what is now called the Extraordinary Form.
Msgr. Barreiro’s body will be received into St. Mary’s Church, 669 West Ave. at 1 p.m. Monday, with Vespers of the Dead at 8 p.m. A Solemn Requiem Mass in the Extraordinary Form will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Burial will be at St. John’s Cemetery, Norwalk.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Mary’s Church, 669 West Ave. Norwalk, 06850 or Human Life International, 4 Family Life Lane, Front Royal, VA 22630.

Celebrating Mass at St. Mary’s Norwalk, this past fall

A recent Baptism at St. Mary Church, Norwalk (courtesy of Susie Salazar)

(Above) The towers of the cathedral of Bamberg (early 13th century) seen on a dark winter day.

We have heard, endlessly repeated over the decades, that the Traditional mass constitutes a barrier to those “outside”: the young, those not practicing their faith and non-Catholics. It is supposed to lock these devoted to it in an inaccessible “ghetto.” Is this true? A now obscure episode of German literary history enables us to test these claims – almost under laboratory conditions.

In the summer of 1793, while the French revolution and its wars were ravaging Europe, the young law students Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and his friend Ludwig Tieck set out on a series of journeys from the South German university town of Erlangen. They would have an epochal effect on German culture. They traveled through the wild, hilly uplands of Franconia – deep valleys, mysterious caverns, ruined castles and bizarre mountain formations – helping to ignite the Romantic enthusiasm for nature. They explored the winding streets and many medieval monuments of the ancient, almost fossilized but still intact city of Nuremberg, rediscovering the Middle Ages. In palaces, churches, monasteries and cities they studied paintings and sculptures, launching a cult both of the Italian Renaissance and of the age of Albrecht Dürer. But what concerns us is another trip, this time by Wackenroder alone, to investigate not nature or the artifacts of the past, but the Catholic world of his own time. He undertook a journey to the nearby city of Bamberg.

Although a little over 26 miles removed from Erlangen, a trip to the Catholic world of Bamberg was to Wackenroder much the same as a journey to Afghanistan or Burma might be to us. Such was the consciousness of the religious divide in the Germany of that era. Moreover, Wackenroder and Tieck both hailed from Berlin, a stronghold of Protestantism and of the Enlightenment and the most extreme antipode to the Catholic principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. Wackenroder himself seems to have started his journey with no great knowledge of Catholics or liking for them. Indeed, he was of the opinion that Catholics were biologically distinguishable from Protestants:

The character of the Bambergers, in general, is supposed to be ingenuous, dull, and superstitious – and involve frequent beer drinking. As in all Catholic countries, the numerous holy days invite laziness. The general Catholic national physiognomy is very striking and characteristic especially of the women. They are mostly small, anything but beautiful and have a snub nose.

However, the Catholic Church that Wackenroder encountered in 1793 was not that of the desiccated services of the post-Pius X reforms, let alone the cold minimalist rituals we see Bamberg today, attended by only a handful of worshippers. No – it was the Catholic Church bathed in the last golden glow of the setting baroque sun. It was a world of processions, relics and devotions, of overflowing public and popular piety, of splendid masses accompanied by orchestras, gunfire salutes and trumpet blasts! Bamberg was at that time a separate principality of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by a prince-bishop (an institution so characteristic of the old German Empire!). In Wackenroder’s day, “enlightened” bishops had recently taken steps to reduce the number of processions, to cut down on holydays and to restrain the popular enthusiasm. But much still remained!

He was struck by the superabundance of art in the Cathedral:

Inside, the cathedral contains an indescribable richness of old paintings, tombs and reliefs. One finds similar things in all Catholic churches but not always in such abundance….One can study these all the easier because all Catholic churches are usually open the entire day except in the afternoon; and one doesn’t disturb the few people who are praying at different times in the churches.

(Above) The Cathedral still houses a multitude of priceless medieval artworks. But the lavish abundance of Wackenroder’s day is gone – largely because of the “purification” (the stripping of baroque art) in the 19th century.

(Above and Below)Among the artworks in the cathedral mentioned by Wackenroder is the tomb of Sts Henry and Kunigunde by Tilman Riemenschneider

Wackenroder continues:

In this cathedral so curious and ancient for me, I attended with the greatest interest on the feast of Saint Henry (the patron saint of Bamberg- SC) High Mass that was held on Sunday from 9 to 10 after the preaching, and on every major feast…. In the streets, flowers were on sale everywhere, which everyone brought into the cathedral. Before the church a woman sat, selling rosaries and scapulars. I bought for myself a rosary for three Kreuzer and a scapular.

As I entered the venerable church I found it already almost full. I pushed forward up to the main altar and waited now for the solemn scene. Oh! – truly I had not expected very much. Everything was new for me. The ceremonies, which every minute always changed, made an ever stronger and wonderful impression on me the more they were mysterious and unintelligible. I was standing among nothing but Catholics: men, women and children. Some were constantly reading prayer books; others prayed the rosary while standing, yet others reverently knelt right next to me.

Here I found proved so clearly what Nicolai relates: that fixed raising of the gaze in prayer, which suddenly blazes up to heaven without resting on earthly objects; the making of the sign of the cross in holy zeal; the heartfelt firm striking of the breast which, with expressive glances towards heaven and with deeply felt sighs, shows such special depth of feeling. …One is totally initiated into the Catholic faith here and almost driven to participate in all the ceremonies.

Now on the high altar, adorned in red, a mass of candles was lit. Everyone who passed this altar genuflected. Now four or five clerics in splendid vestments, embroidered with great flowers in green and gold, with red and white, appeared on the steps of the altar and began the High Mass. It was entirely in Latin, but is available to the people in German translation. The High Mass itself consists of a great number of ceremonies, precisely organized but unintelligible to me. Now this or that cleric sang, with a hoarse, monotonous and unpleasant voice, prayers or selections from the bible – now before the altar, now from a pulpit across from the altar. There, lower clerics in simple choir robes with black collars stood at his side, carrying candles. Now a cleric did this or that on the altar; now they changed places, knelt here or there, on this or that step, now the organ interrupted them at every second or third word and accompanied their chant, of which I could understand only isolated words that were often repeated: a “dominus vobiscum” and an “in saeculo saeculorum.”

Now, accompanied by violins, etc, arias and choruses were sung in other parts of the church; now the Host on the altar was incensed with a silver thurible hanging from chains; now a cleric took the Host to the other end of the church and returned, always preceded by a soldier with his musket. For, right next to me on the high altar stood four soldiers. On the sides sat the canons in white choir robes and red collars; the cleric with the thurible also approached them, swung it upwards before them and incensed them – which impressed me greatly.

The most solemn moment, however, was when another cleric showed to the people the monstrance (a gleaming crystal case in which the Host resides). At this moment a bell was rung, the soldiers presented their arms, took off their hats and fell to their knees. The whole congregation fell down and crossed itself, blaring trumpets rang out, which were lost amid the long drawn out sounds of horns. I also fell to my knees, for otherwise I certainly would have exposed myself to the indignation of the people; moreover it would indeed have taken an effort to remain standing in isolation, for a whole world knelt down around me, and everything prompted me to the highest devotion – to do otherwise would have been as if I didn’t belong to the human race.

We will pass over the other artistic experiences and investigations of Wackenroder in Bamberg. But we must mention his participation on subsequent days in public processions, which impressed him greatly. On one such occasion, one of the natives raged at him for not taking off his hat – something like that can befall young ladies today who walk into certain Traditional masses wearing trousers…

Wackenroder’s impressions of individual Catholics and their clergy, however, were mixed. One day (in a subsequent visit to Bamberg with Tieck):

A procession of Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans and Capuchins left the church. I saw some venerable and really ideal old men among them.

Several Catholic clerics and other friends, moreover, were very kind and helpful hosts to Wackenroder during his stay in Bamberg. Yet:

The Catholics that I knew were not orthodox and themselves smiled over the peculiarities of their religion.

Wackenroder himself had to endure the company of one insufferable enlightened character who yearned to break out from Catholicism.

On a second journey to Bamberg, Wackenroder and companions wanted to experience the Benedictine life in the nearby monastery of Banz. To their distress, they quickly found that, in that stronghold of the Catholic enlightenment, the traditions of medieval hospitality had vanished….

Among our author’s most positive experiences of an individual Catholic was a visit to a school for girls, where Wackenroder admired a sister of the order of the “English Ladies” conducting a class. 1)

(above) Wackenroder found this painted false cupola, “tasteless.” (in the church of St. Martin – at that time, the Jesuit church). But might this not have been the inspiration for Wackenroder’s later description of the dome and columns of the Pantheon in Rome? (see below)

Four years later, in 1797, appeared Wackenroder’s Outpourings from the Heart of an Art-Loving Monk – the title alone reads like a fantastic Romantic manifesto. In this book Wackenroder alludes several times to his experiences in Bamberg, above all in one crucial chapter describing a young German painter encountering the Catholic mass. Wackenroder shifts the time from that of his era to the early 16th century, the place from Bamberg, the “German Rome,” to the real one, and the church from an early Gothic cathedral to the Pantheon. Instead of the sober, almost scientific prose of the accounts of his travels, the style is florid, exalted, and enthusiastic – in a word, Romantic. (Indeed, my edition claims the following passages were actually written by Tieck; the two friends often contributed to each other’s works.)

I went recently into the rotunda (the Pantheon – SC) for it was a great festival and a splendid Latin music was going to be performed – but really above all to see my beloved again among the praying crowd and to hover in the presence of her celestial devotion. The splendid temple, the huge mass of the people that again and again pressed in and surrounded me ever closer, and the dazzling preparations – all this induced in my soul a wonderful attentiveness. I was most solemnly disposed. Even if I wasn’t thinking clearly and lucidly, as usually happens in such a tumult, my very soul was stirred as if something very special was about to happen within me. At once everything grew quieter. Above us began the all-powerful music – slowly, fully, expansively – as if there blew an invisible wind above our heads. Like the sea it surged forth in ever-greater waves, and its sounds drew my soul completely outside of my body. My heart pounded, and I felt a mighty yearning for something great and sublime that I could embrace. The full Latin chant that, rising and falling, forced its way through the tones of the music like ships sailing through the waves of the sea, raised my soul ever higher. And, while the music pervaded my entire being and ran through all my veins, I, who had been sunk in thought, raised my eyes and looked about me. The entire temple appeared alive before my eyes – the music had intoxicated me so! At that moment the music stopped, a priest advanced before the high altar, raised the host with an enthusiastic gesture and showed it to all. Everybody fell on his knees, trumpets blared out indescribable, all-powerful sounds and solemn prayers resounded everywhere. All those pressed tightly around me fell to their knees. A secret miraculous power drew me too to the floor, and I couldn’t have resisted with all my might.

And now, as I knelt with bowed head, and my heart soared within my breast, an unknown power lifted again my gaze. I looked around me, and it seemed clearly as if all the Catholics, men and women, who, kneeling, now meditated, now gazed up to heaven, crossed themselves reverently, struck their breast and moved their praying lips – as if all were praying to the Father in heaven for the salvation of my soul, as if all the hundreds around me prayed for a lost one in their midst and drew me over to their faith in silent worship but with irresistible force. Then I glanced to the side at Maria, and I saw a great holy tears spring from her blue eyes. I didn’t know what was happening within me, I couldn’t stand her gaze any more, I turned my head sideways, my eyes fell upon an altar, and a painting of Christ on the cross looked at me with indescribable melancholy. The mighty columns of the temple rose, worthy of reverence, before my eyes like saints and apostles, and looked down on me with their capitals full of dignity. The endless vault of the dome bowed down like the all-embracing heaven over me, and blessed my pious resolutions.

I could not leave the temple after the end of the celebration, I fell down in a corner and wept, and then passed with a contrite heart all the saints, all the paintings – it seemed that only now could I really contemplate and revere them. I could not resist the force within me – dear Sebastian, I have now crossed over to your faith, and my heart feels happy and light. It was art that had all-powerfully drawn me over, and I can say that only now can I understand and grasp art.

It’s clear that here Wackenroder has built upon the details of what he himself saw in Bamberg but has transfigured them in a new literary form. The emphasis, moreover, has shifted not so subtly from religious ritual to the aesthetic power wielded by art: the architecture, the paintings and above all the music – even leading to a conversion! There is romantic subjectivity too, as the artist’s tearful beloved becomes a Madonna figure leading to Christ. But let’s not be critical: didn’t Vladimir Soloviev point out that St Vladimir chose the Orthodox faith for Russia because the beauty of the ceremonies of St. Sophia impressed him so? And, aside from any aesthetic experiences, the unforgettable impression made on the writer by the open and unashamed devotion of the simple Catholic faithful is the same both in this story and the original account.

Other than what we can surmise from these writings, we know of no conversion in the case of Wackenroder himself. He died in 1798, aged only 24. But he has left for us a marvelous description of a Catholic liturgy, which on one special day made such an indelible impression upon him. For this Mass, so foreign to him, and that he could not “understand,” had clearly communicated to him the most profound sense of worship and of the Divine. Such is the transformative power, both in 1793 and today, of this Mass – the Mass of Tradition!

(Above and below) The Bamberg town hall, located on an island in the midst of a river and built in a medley of styles, impressed Wackenroder.

(Above and below) Wackenroder and his companions had disagreeable encounters with modern Benedictine hospitality in the monasteries of Banz and Langenheim. Strangely, though, he never mentions what is today the most famous work of ecclesiastical architecture in that vicinity: the grand and prominently situated pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen. ( the “fourteen holy helpers”)

All the quotations are from Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, Werke und Briefe (1967 Verlag Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg) (reprint of the 1938 edition with the inclusion of one additional letter)

1) “English Ladies” (Englische Fräulein) a order of teaching sisters founded by Mary Ward in the 17th century but by far more widespread in Germany than in England.

The Council of the Bookkeepers: the Destruction of the Sensuous; a Critique of Religion

by Alfred Lorenzer

Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1981

It is a rare pleasure to return once more to a book, which I had first read so many years ago. As far as I am aware, Alfred Lorenzer’s Council of the Bookkeepers is the first attempt to analyze, in a rational framework, the Second Vatican Council in the context of the political, economic and sociological developments of the contemporary Western world. What has happened since 1981? To what extent has time validated the author’s conclusions?

Our author introduces his book with “this is the book of an atheist written for readers that probably in the great majority are also atheists.” (p. 9) But may not an atheist have decided advantages over the believer in writing about the affairs of the Roman Catholic Church? For the contemporary Catholic author inevitably feels compelled to defer to some “infallible” authority – the pope, the Council or the entire episcopacy – which remains beyond analysis and criticism. We have seen this clearly in the “theological” discussion of hermeneutics of “reform in continuity” or “rupture” as applied to the Vatican Council. Closely connected with the foregoing, most “professional” Catholic writers have difficulty in registering the full range of facts – especially those that seem to contradict their conclusions. Now any observer of the contemporary academy can testify that the limitations on thought found there are also great and growing ever stronger. Nevertheless at least the theoretical possibility of apprehending reality still exists.

After his introduction, Lorenzer cites Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and proceeds to rage against a recent document of the German Bishops conference attacking the liberalization of abortion. (How many of those have there ever been?) Presumably this is to establish the author’s “street cred” with his left-wing readership. For, as we shall see, his conclusions are not at all what one has come to expect from either secular or Catholic progressives.

At the risk of oversimplification, I would attempt to summarize the author’s point of departure as follows. Psychological analysis establishes the importance of symbols in the development of the human personality. Of the greatest importance is the “presentative” character of the symbol. In other words, the sensuous symbol offers itself to the observer as a whole, as something to be freely explored and understood. The author contrasts this with the didactic, rational, “discursive” nature of modern communications, especially, under modern civil society, of advertising. In the latter, opinions and ideologies are imposed upon the recipient. The loss of symbols creates a personality which cannot mature, and thus necessarily remains unemancipated and unfree.

Now the Council and specifically the decrees on the reform of the liturgy substituted a didactic, discursive approach for the previous symbolic essence of the liturgy. The new function of the mass was to deliver content to the assembled congregation. In so doing, the office of the priest or “presider” paradoxically acquired a greatly increased importance. In other words, far from fostering an allegedly “mature” laity, the Council actually had exactly the opposite consequence. This corresponds to modernity and its endless bombardment of its denizens by advertising.

The Council itself instituted the disastrous tendency of reinforcing the central authority instead of reducing the hierarchy as had been so often rhetorically invoked…. The reform of the curia “in the spirit of the Council” produced a stripped down, effective organization on the model of a large business enterprise with an age limit for all the top managers (except the pope himself). If the pope previously had been a sacred figure in the solitude of the apostolic palace, distant from the events of the world, who in his remoteness “proclaimed,” “reaffirmed” and “expressed concerns,” Paul VI insisted on his (political) influence on his travels to the UN and to focal points of political events…. John Paul II gave to this exercise of power the practical and effective form by flexible adaptation to a modern leadership style. (For example) accompanied by a horde of reporters, on his flight to Puebla, he granted the journalists “a conversation – previously unheard of in this form – of one and a half hours.” …. John Paul II provides on a daily basis new examples of this transformation of the pope from a sacred and remote “successor of the prince of the apostles” to a popular leader:

“The pope drops the old fashioned “We” in his addresses. He tries on cowboy hats and mountain climbers’ caps. He abolishes the “sedes gestatoria.” (but) walks on foot through the crowd and answers their applause with de Gaulle-like gestures. He takes “a bath in the crowd.” He is driven in a jeep through St Peter’s Square….. (pp.74-75)

And Lorenzer rightly insists that “the twofold structural change in hierarchical behavior – renunciation of the traditional, solemn image and the strengthening of directing authority – is no invention of John Paul II. ..It is undoubtedly is not a characteristic specific to a personality but typical of a structure. (p. 76)

As we see from the above, Lorenzer has the merit of not merely propounding theories but of illustrating them throughout by practical examples. He quotes from insightful observers like Pier Pasolini and also tells us what he himself has seen in the churches of Europe and Latin America. They provide a scathing indictment of the Council’s liturgical and cultural devastation – in particular,  in the sixth chapter ”The Vandalism of the Second Vatican Council.”

In the Church there took place – at least unwittingly – a profound dissolution of religious values. As a consequence, the masses of middle and south Italy were handed over to the power of the media and therefore of the ruling ideology: to the hedonism of the consumer society. (p. 179 (quoting Pasolini))

What does Lorenzer mean? In the reform of the liturgy he sees the loss of the sensual and the symbolic in favor of the ideological transmittal of texts. Put more in technical terms:

Let us stress that the council, with its reform of the liturgy

1. destroyed the liturgy as work of art; and
2. “ideologized” the liturgy and thus twisted, through substitute rituals, the old reciprocal relationship between presentative symbolism and sensual- symbolic forms of interaction into an indoctrination affecting the very physical body. (p. 193)

Historically, every detail of a church was invested with symbols,  from the great works of art (architecture, painting, sculpture, music) to the creations of artisans (candles, floral arrangements, ex votos). But all circled around the altar and the celebration of the liturgy.

The cultic “ accessories” on every baroque altar are constitutive elements of the work of art. Just removing the altar linens ruins the altar. (p. 205)

All that is gone now. In the new liturgy:

Nothing of what celebrant does or omits is hidden from the “spectator.” … Not only does the microphone make public every rustling and every breath. The image the public sees is closer to the setup in front of a TV chef than to the liturgical forms of even the Calvinist churches. (p 192)

The utensils of a strange, archaically exaggerated lecture hall take the place of the old sensuous symbolism: sacrificial stone and druid’s chair, microphone and loudspeakers (which are never absent even where the church is tiny and has room for only a couple of dozen people) (p. 206)

Furthermore, the altar of gothic or baroque churches is often moved forward to the front of the sanctuary or into the crossing of the transept, destroying the entire harmony and equilibrium of the interior, centered as it was on the original position of the altar. In other churches the old altars are simply destroyed.

Even where churches have been preserved as museums there is no relief:

In Tepozotlan in Mexico is one of the most beautiful monasteries of the Churriguerescan (elaborate baroque) style of the 18^th century – arranged as a museum of religious art. But whoever hopes to find at least one authentically preserved church amid the mass of those destroyed by the Council will be disappointed. … The restorers have contributed their own form of spatial destruction – specific to their trade: the very last corner of the church vaulting is illuminated by electricity, so that the interior has entirely lost its atmosphere. The original mixture of light has been replaced by electric sources, which run along the ledges like absurd garlands of light. And naturally the altars are bare…. (p. 210 )

Is not St Patrick’s Cathedral the best New York example of precisely such actions?

Lorenzer helps us to understand many of the things we ourselves have experienced over the last 50 years. His analysis anchors the Council firmly in the secular trends of the dominant “Atlantic culture” of Western Europe and North America. It clarifies why at all times the Church establishment has seen the FSSPX and the Traditionalist movement in general as a greater threat then all the forces of the Catholic progressives, which, on paper, might seem to the outsider to be more in conflict with Church doctrine. It explains why liturgical movements such as “reform of the reform” must inevitably fail, because they tack on to a fundamentally alien body the trappings of a prior symbolic system. It is also makes clear that a clergy, who created the new system in the 1960’s and now, 50 years later, are largely the product of it, would be utterly unreceptive either to reform of the reform or the traditional liturgy. Most importantly, his analysis furnishes a convincing explanation of the radical decline in Catholic religious practice since the Council.

Further confirming Lorenzer, we now have a pope who has dropped the last vestiges of a “religious style” and has assumed an almost totally secular approach both in content and form. His controlling initiatives (like climate change, migrants, ecology and divorce) are difficult or impossible to distinguish from the views of the secular establishment; the style of his public appearances and interviews is a more radical development of those of John Paul II.

Of course, when we return to a text that we have not read for years we do encounter defects that had slipped our mind. The many lengthy digressions, particularly those in which the author expounds his psychoanalytic theories, make for difficult reading. If Lorenzer laments the then current lack of interest in psychoanalysis, he should have examined the passages he himself wrote as evidence of one obvious cause. Lorenzer also does at times fall into a more conventional leftist discourse, fulminating about “fascism” and seeing the products of the “conciliar church” as a “mask” for political objectives.

Statements similar to Lorenzer’s observations on symbols, desacralizing modernity and liturgy have of course been made by others over the years. He himself cites Max Weber who in turn reaches back to Hegel, Schiller and the Romantic poets. In The Stripping of the Altars, (1992) Eamon Duffy described how, starting under Henry VIII, changes in ritual practice produced changes in religious belief in 16th century England. One also thinks of the discussion at pp. 23-41 in Fr. Uwe Michael Lang’s recent Signs of the Holy One (2015) – some of the sources quoted there pre-date the Council of the Bookkeepers. Finally, at the 2015 New York Sacra Liturgia conference one speaker – whose name escapes me – noted the significance of the reversal by Pius XII of the order of Lex Orandi and Lex Credendi. By asserting the primacy of the Lex Credendi over the Lex Orandi, Pius XII had – even before the Council – identified catechesis or indoctrination as the primary task of the Liturgy.

A critique of the ideological positions of the German left is outside the scope of this review. But it is instructive to see how in this work the pseudo–economic and pseudo-medical foundations of Marx and Freud have entirely disappeared. (Cf. Paul Gottfried’s  The Strange Death of Marxism: the European Left in the New Millennium (2005)). And Lorenzer’s mix of psychoanalysis, Marxism and (unacknowledged) Americanism by today has hardened into an ideology that dominates Germany and Europe. We doubt that our author would have been totally happy with that. In the Council of the Bookkeepers no system escapes his criticism – not just the capitalist west, but also the “really existing“ socialism of the Soviet bloc, Western leftism and even Latin American liberation theology. I feel sorry for Alfred Lorenzer! He seems to have been one of the few leftists – like George Orwell – who, while sincerely believing the “liberating” promises of progressive doctrines, could never look away from the facts. But, by so doing, has not the author, without necessarily admitting it himself, taken his first step away from modernity and its ideologies? In conclusion, does that not leave us with at least a slim hope:

Maybe the end of the Church has already been sealed by the “treason” of millions and millions of the faithful (particularly the peasants who have converted to secularism and consumerist hedonism). Maybe the end has been sealed by the “decision” of the rulers who are meanwhile certain of getting in their clutches the ex-believers – given the affluent conditions and an ideology that has been imposed on the masses. An ideology, moreover, that does not even feel it to be necessary any more to act as such.   That may be. But one thing is sure: the Church has certainly committed many awful mistakes in the long history of its regime, but she would commit the worst of all if she passively stood by while she was liquidated by a power that mocks the Gospel. In the context of a radical, possibly utopian or – here one really has to say it- eschatological perspective, it’s clear what the Church has to do to avoid an inglorious end. She has to go into opposition. (p 180 (quoting Pasolini))

Letzte Gespräche

Benedict XVI (with Peter Seewald)

(Droemer Verlag, Munich 2016)

At times, given the non-stop chaotic news emanating from the Vatican, one forgets that the “Pope Emeritus”  is still with us. Benedict, it seems clear now, will be remembered for two things. First, he promulgated Summorum Pontificum, in which returned the traditional liturgy to an official position within the Church. For that we – and the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny – owe him eternal gratitude. But, second, he resigned the papacy, enabling a takeover of the Vatican by the left that is plunging the Catholic Church into an ever-expanding existential crisis.

Last year, Benedict issued another book of interviews with Peter Seewald. 1) If I had access to the archival background, I would be very much surprised not to find that this book, like its 2011 predecessor Licht der Welt (Light of the World), had originated as a specific response by the Vatican to a threatening public relations issue. In 2011 it was the adverse criticism by the media (and one or more European governments?) of Benedict’s statements on condoms, his lifting of the excommunications of the FSSPX bishops and in general, his unacceptable (to the secular establishment) “conservatism.”  Today, it’s the growing opposition to the policies of Pope Francis, particularly among those Catholics that were the greatest fans of Benedict

Much of what I would say about this book I had already considered writing years ago about Pope Benedict’s last interview with Seewald. Perhaps the greatest significance of this kind of book is that it appears at all. For by adopting the interview format, Benedict conforms to the requirements of Western civil society by placing himself on exactly the same level as the interviewer.2) The papal interview, introduced by John Paul II, has been carried to its ultimate extreme by Pope Francis. Indeed, for Bergoglio the allegedly impromptu interview has become a key vehicle for initiating and accompanying revolutionary change in the Church – while signaling his complete conformity with the ideology of the Western secular establishment.

Our conclusion, that a book like this illustrates the relative superiority of media power vis-a-vis the Catholic hierarchy, is further reinforced by the rhetorical style of the two partners in this “conversation.” Seewald is self-assured, even forceful, often conducting a dialogue with himself and drawing his own conclusions, which he then proposes to Benedict for comment and approval. The voice of Benedict, on the other hand, is colorless, dry and often monosyllabic. Except for certain instances we will discuss below, his style is emotionless and bald.

This is not at all to say that Seewald is an intelligent, insightful, forceful interviewer. Far from it! His entire view of the world – and all the questions he poses to Benedict – seem derived from the reading of German newspapers and magazines. All too often his tone is now fawning, now pretentious. He frequently concentrates on trivia – like what make of car Ratzinger was driving on a certain occasion. But to give the devil his due, Seewald here and there does raise certain obvious and uncomfortable issues with Benedict – but usually does not try hard enough to probe beneath the bland responses of his papal interviewee.

Now the main message of Last Conversations is simple: There are no issues, conflicts or rivalries – at least not within the Vatican. All decisions Benedict has taken have been correct.   Does Benedict regret, for example, even for a minute, his own resignation? “No, no, no. I see every day, that it was right.”  Did he resign under the pressure of intrigues and adverse events? Certainly not – everything was in order when resigned. Seewald: “Was there an aspect (of the resignation) that you perhaps had not considered – that only afterwards has become clear to you?” “No.” The gay lobby within the Vatican? Only a small group which Benedict already had neutralized by the end of his pontificate. Vatileaks? All the fault of one rogue butler!

Pope Francis? According to Benedict, he has such a straightforward way with people; his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium and his interviews show he is a “thoughtful man.” Seewald: ”So you don’t see anywhere a rupture with your pontificate?” “No. … Naturally, there are perhaps new accents but no contradictions.” And is Benedict satisfied with the papacy of Pope Francis so far? “Yes. A new freshness in the Church, a new happiness, a new charisma that appeals to people – that is already something beautiful.”

And so on and so forth. It doesn’t make for compelling reading – and often seems to conflict with known facts and the statements of highly placed individuals (such as Pope Francis). In this respect, isn’t this book a continuation of the mainstream “narrative” of the post-conciliar Roman Catholic hierarchy, as refined during the years of John Paul II? The clergy labor to project the outward appearance of omniscience, unity and infallibility, while problems are denied or swept under the rug. This style of public relations management, moreover, is very similar to that of present–day government bureaucracies and business corporations. Before 2007-2008, didn’t our finance industry swear all was in order and proceeding according to plan – and then the bankruptcies and takeovers were announced. For the difficulty is what perhaps starts as a tactic to manage the perceptions of the public, employees and other institutions inevitably becomes an article of faith of the manipulators themselves. In Church, business and government the inevitable outcome is growing disassociation of the leadership class from reality.

The earlier Ratzinger of the 1980’s did acknowledge a crisis – at least liturgically. His Ratzinger Report was a precious spotlight on the liturgical disaster of the Church – a disaster that was otherwise denied by the entire establishment. Later, regrettably, Ratzinger seems to have felt compelled to resume the role of the company man, the ecclesiastical bureaucrat.

At times the inability of the team of Pope Benedict and Seewald to focus on the issues produces real stylistic gems:

Seewald: “That means that you didn’t receive in advance the first apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium?”

Benedict: “No. But he sent me with it a very nice personal letter in his tiny handwriting. That is much smaller than mine. Compared with him, I write really large.”

The Pope Emeritus maintains a remote and serene air. One would get the impression that Benedict had been a distant observer, rather than a direct participant, in the often-tumultuous events of his pontificate. A failure to get one scholar to endorse his candidacy for a professorial position in 1955 perturbs him more than the breakdown of the Church. It’s left to the troops on the ground – the families and a minority of the parish priests –  to deal with and “get excited about” the closing of parishes and schools, the wave of clerical scandals, the alienation of the next generation and most of their contemporaries from the faith.

Now Pope Benedict is primarily a scholar, you say, not a man of action. In the case of a man with such a distinguished academic career and over thirty years of experience at the highest levels of the Vatican, one would look forward to perceptive reflections and judgments on the Church, the world and our age. But you will be very disappointed – there are precious few of them in this book. We might also expect from Benedict, who has demonstrated such eloquence on things of the spirit, spiritual insights as well. These are limited to a few pages   – and sometimes cry out for further development, given the present situation of the Church:

“If a pope only received applause, he would have to ask himself if he was doing something wrong. …There will always be contradiction and the pope will always be a sign of contradiction.”

Readers may be surprised to find that at least half of Last Conversations is devoted to a miniature biography of Ratzinger leading up to his election as Pope. I frankly found little of interest here – but there are compensations. In the discussion of Vatican II, for example, Benedict entertains the question of whether the council was worth it, before of course reaffirming it was the right thing to do. Then there is an appreciation of German scholars who offered the first resistance to the chaos enfolding the Church after the Council, names that Catholics should better remember today: Hubert Jedin, Paul Hacker. But in the case of Hacker, the contacts chilled when he started to criticize the Council. And as for the “other side?” Benedict does exhibit a decidedly cool attitude towards Rahner and Kueng. In contrast, he finds Johann Baptist Metz to have been a true son of the Church. And what who was largely responsible for the post-conciliar crisis? “Journalists!”

Pope Ratzinger does not totally preserve his calm in this book. He has some unexpectedly harsh words for the German Church that so consistently opposed him during his pontificate.  But, I submit, to attribute all the problems there to the Church tax and the bureaucratic mentality of clerical and lay functionaries does not tell the whole story.

And what of the topic that probably interests our readers most – the liturgy? As to the “reform of the reform,” Seewald frankly asks why so little happened in the realm of the liturgy – where Benedict had full authority.

“You can’t do that much institutionally and legally. The important thing is that men learn inwardly what liturgy is and what it really means. That‘s why I have written books.” 

Benedict even denies that the few steps he did take – such as introducing communion on the tongue at papal masses – had any policy significance beyond the merely practical. But, Seewald asks: couldn’t you just have spoken an “authoritative word?” Benedict’s succinct answer: “No!” Is it surprising, therefore, that ROTR went nowhere under Benedict?

In the case of Summorum Pontificum, however, the Pope Emeritus miraculously gives a clear and convincing restatement of its rationale:

(It was not at all a concession to the FSSPX) “It was important for me that the Church herself be inwardly at peace with her own past. So that that, which once had been sacred, is not now wrong. …(M)y intention, as I have said, was not tactical – for me it was a matter of the substantive issue itself.”

Of course, the currently reigning bishop of Rome has expressly contradicted this only a few weeks ago.

Last Conversations reveals that the personality of Joseph Ratzinger was indeed very ill-suited to an office requiring the capacity to lead, manage and rule. That is even truer in the chaos of a post-conciliar Church led by incompetent, rebellious and often treacherous clerics and in the sights of an increasingly hostile modernity.

But the failure of his pontificate is not at all just the story of a well-meaning man who lacked leadership skills or (as he says in this book) the “ability to judge people.” It is the institutional failure of a Vatican and a hierarchy increasingly remote from reality and, sensing their own weakness, avoiding confrontation with both the secular world and contrary movements within the Church itself. It is a tragedy that Ratzinger’s many valid insights and initiatives for a reform of the Church clashed so greatly with this clerical culture of which he himself was so much a part.

In retrospect, we should not have been surprised that the outcome of this conflict was capitulation (Benedict’s resignation) and the ascendancy of a diametrically opposed movement. But Benedict has left to us his one great achievement, his true “last testament” – Summorum Pontificum. And to evaluate its effects will take more than a slim book of interviews. Only future generations will know the end of the story.

1. This review is based on the original text and all the quotations are my own translations. I think that’s probably fortunate – given that the ( I hope inappropriate) title Last Testament: in His Own Words  has been bestowed on the translation.
2. As the late Thomas Molnar noted when John Paul II initiated this practice.

Helmut Rückriegel(on right)

Today a friend asked me for the contact information of Helmut Rückriegel; I soon found to my great sorrow and surprise that he had died on January 25 of this year! I unfortunately only had a few occasions to meet Ambassador Rückriegel. He would visit New York where his son lived. I would meet him in a restaurant in the company of his friend Arkady Nebolsine. Helmut Rückriegel was a true Christian gentleman. A man of great culture, he had represented his country in various assignments – notably in Israel and Thailand. Possessed of a keen intelligence and a great sense of the real, he had the ability to understand and appreciate the merits of other peoples and cultures without falling into the servile obsequiousness so typical of the West and particularly of Germany today. Devoted to the Church and to the Traditional mass, he was utterly without the “churchy” Catholic’s cant and fawning airs. Ambassador Rückriegel had put his practical talents to use in promoting the Traditional Latin Mass – he held a leading role for years in the Una Voce Federation. To me he seemed a reminder of a bygone age, of the former greatness of German culture – which in its great days had sought to comprehend and embrace all the cultures of the world. I regret so much that through my own fault I had not had the chance to get to know him better!

Martin Mosebach has written the following obituary.

Obituary for Helmut Rückriegel by Martin Mosebach

An extraordinary man has left the earth. Standing at the grave of Helmut Rückriegel his friends conceive the whole truth of the discernment that with the death of a man there is a whole world that perishes. What pertains to everyone is most evident for such an overabundant nature as it was with our deceased friend Helmut. He was allowed to live a long life, and, we can say, to live in mindfulness and intensity. He finished the wine of life completely and entirely, including even the very last and then most bitter drops. Furthermore it was granted to him to maintain his entire strength of mind until his last moment; in complete alertness he witnessed his time and all its phenomena until the last moment. His participation in the world was insatiable; he was a pious Christian – the archaic term ‘piety’ in its comprehensive meaning like the antiquity knew it –  was fitting for him. A life in the presence of the supernatural and a joyful discovering of this supernatural in the inexhaustible statures of the created world – but without suppressing the reality of the mortality of all life on earth, he lived as if there was no death.

Until his painful last sickbed he was seized with the fascination of languages – recently he started to learn Turkish, a language that is extremely far from all Indo-Germanic familiarity – joyfully entering into a totally different kind of thinking and feeling. I always wondered why he, whose sense of language was infallible, did not write himself. But in return his sentiment for the great German poetry was so profound that the verses of Goethe and the Romantics, of Hölderlin and Stefan George constituted deeply and totally his inner life. He was the reader and reciter that poets desired, drawing from a great pool effortlessly the most remote lyric creations to engender an awakening to melody and life.

His artist’s nature became apparent in the invention of his garden that he created in Niedergründau, the village where he came from, after the end of his working life: he cultivated rambler roses, growing into the old, partly withered apple trees high as a house, to create real snow avalanches of white blossoms; in May and June they were phantasmagorias of surreal, sheer beauty. Here, the gardener who planted hundreds of sumptuous roses, turned into a wizard. ‘Il faut cultiver son jardin.’ are the last words of Candide, Voltaire’s wicked satire in which the hero, after having underwent the horrors of a world falling to pieces, is forming the conclusion of his experiences. And it was in this awareness that Helmut created his garden. The experiences of this great connoisseur of the art of living had made him learn, no less clear than Voltaire’s Candide, that the earth is not a peaceful place, not a paradise.

As a pupil and young man during the years of Nazism he thanked his teachers for the discernment that Germany was ruled by criminals; in these years he also experienced the Catholic Church as a place of resistance against the despotism. As a diplomat he travelled widely; but his most important positions for him were in New York and Israel – in the Holy Land, this small spot of earth, where also in his life all spiritual and demonic forces that agitate us as well today, collide; there he found the proximity of the truth of his faith, especially there, where it seemed to be completely unreachable. And very early he discovered for him the obligation to serve the Roman Catholic Church, his mother, for whom he saw himself as a faithful son, in her great crisis in which she had fallen after the Second Vatican Council. Helmut Rückriegel, who loved the oriental Churches, especially the Orthodoxy, the friend of many Jews, who – together with his friend, the great Annemarie Schimmel, admired the Sufism; he was a Catholic, as ‘the tree is green’ to say it with a word of Carl Schmitt. From his universal culture, from his enthusiasm for the masterworks of language, from his detailed knowledge of history and the cultures of the world Helmut Rückriegel was convinced that the Roman Church was – by its cult which has been transmitted from the late antiquity – a melting pot of all beauty and holiness that is possible on earth. In a decades-long friendship with Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI., he helped to ensure that the Church did not completely abandon this treasure that belongs not to her alone, but to the whole mankind.

Helmut Rückriegel the diplomat must occasionally have been rather undiplomatic – he was full of passion, a battler who did not spare himself and his adversaries. A man made for being happy – but still often enough desperate of the vainness of all struggles of the best, putting up resistance against the spirit of the times. The old Helmut Rückriegel did not become wise of age – a wonderful trait he had and that conjoined him with his younger friends. A consistent one, also in his matrimony that lasted nearly fifty years: after his rich life that she shared for so long with him, Brigitte Rückriegel accompanied him faithfully unto death – for this long companionship and the synergy during the working years in many positions she is, as she told me, profoundly grateful, and Helmut’s friends have today to be grateful to her for all that she did for him, especially during the darksome days.

The cosmopolitan German patriot Helmut Rückriegel embodied the best aspects of Germany; to have known him is for me and certainly for many others an infinite well of encouragement and hope.

Source: International Federation Una Voce

Das Leben ist Kurz

Zwölf Bagatellen

by Martin Mosebach

(Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2016)

In the United States Martin Mosebach, the liturgical essayist, is well known. Martin Mosebach, the novelist and writer, is far less known. After all, it was only two years ago that one of his novels, What Was Before, was translated into English for the first time. Mosebach has now published Life is Short: Twelve Bagatelles, a collection of his shorter and shortest fiction. If it were only translated, it would be for the American reader an ideal concentrated introduction to the style of Martin Mosebach.

Life is Short gathers previously published short works. In general, I would categorize them as “prose poems” rather than short stories. Rather than presenting a narrative or character, the miniatures in Life is Short describe an object, capture a mood or a moment – often in an indirect, indeterminate way. One thinks of such remote antecedents as Arthur Machen’s Ornaments in Jade (1897) or J-K Huysmans’ Drageoir aux Épices (1874). Mosebach’s style, however, if “poetic” in the use of sound and images, is more restrained and precise. And, as in Mosebach’s novels, here and there is satire and even comedy.

As to things, Life is Short offers numerous descriptions of objects as diverse as a bicycle, a pigeon egg or the wreckage of an (apparently) abandoned barber shop. Mosebach endows mere things with new significance, even (in the case of the bicycle) a life of their own. As William Carlos Williams put it:

“So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow….”

But has not this kind of imagery always been a particular excellence of the author? One remembers so well the sacred cow in Das Beben, or the descriptions of a nightingale and later of the cockatoo in Was Davor Geschah.

These “bagatelles” also capture fleeting, uncertain and sometimes deceptive moments of life such as a boy’s exhilarating bicycle ride downhill after a hard day at school or the glimpse of a mysterious stranger sitting in a train compartment by a rider standing on the platform. If life is short, even more brief are the few moments that allow us insight into in it.

Some of the pieces in Life is Short assume the form of a short story. A tale of an artist and her friend discussing the components of a still life unexpectedly turns unsettling, even menacing. A visit to a dying deserted French town climaxing in a mysterious late night conversation leaves the story’s narrator perplexed as to what he as seen or imagined.

Yes, life is short – but art is long. If you want to get to know Mosebach the artist, this is a good place to start. But what of Mosebach the Catholic advocate, the inspiring writer on the liturgy? In the following brief final section of “Vinusse: Eight Wine Labels and a Prologue,” the author does more explicitly present liturgical and theological themes in an anecdote that takes place in his own backyard, near Frankfurt. It’s a tale that also leaves us with a kind of commentary on the meaning of this little book.

The Wine of Sacrifice

The biretta of the monsignor hung from the hat rack in the foyer. Its glowing crimson pompom was the only sign of baroque pleasure in color in the severe scholar’s dwelling. The old theologian regarded not as old-fashioned ballast, but as extraordinarily meaningful, that, as is often the case in the Rheingau, a vineyard was attached to the rectory. In this way a gift, the purity of which he well knew, entered the gothic chalice with which he offered the sacrifice.

The walls of his study were covered up to the ceiling with brown rows of books. The complete edition of Migne’s church fathers, bound in black-waxed linen, was ready at hand. The afternoon sun created small foci of light in the wine glasses that stood before us.

“This wine is the best that wine can become” said the cleric. “Firne-wine. Once upon a time these wines were desired but today nobody understands anything about them. People believe they have gone bad. And indeed they taste totally different. In many of my Rieslings the Firne sets in just after six or eight years, with others only after twelve or fifteen.  The wine grows darker and there develops a taste of fine Spanish snuff tobacco: a hint of turpentine, a breath of noble resin pervades the wine like a marriage, made only in the imagination, between wine and incense.  Maybe the wine, impatient and desperate at having to wait for its use in the Sacrifice, undertakes itself an attempt at auto-transubstantiation.

He hadn’t joked, but nevertheless smiled.

“Wine, after all, has been meant for sacrifice from the beginning. When wine was offered in the room of the last supper in Jerusalem that was done not out of the inspiration of the moment but in conscious remembrance of the mysterious, almost prehistoric priest-king Melchizedek, who had likewise made an offering of bread and wine. The matter of a sacrifice is not at our disposal. It is very true: visible things are not the final reality, but a kind of writing, by aid of which the invisible appears. An alphabet has letters that cannot be switched. Like all heresies, the idea arose early on that other substances could replace wine. Around 200 A.D. there was a sect in the Near East – the Aquarians – that in the Christian sacrifice used water instead of wine. To his everlasting fame, St. Cyprian of Carthage put the Aquarians’ madness in its place. Although my Firne – wine is only twenty years old, the Firne endows it with an ancient character. Therefore, with it I greet Saint Cyprian and his struggle against godless anti-sensuousness.”

(O Deutschland double a desperate name!
O world wide of its good!
But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town,
Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood:
From life’s dawn it is drawn down,
Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.)*

Cardinals Kasper, Marx, Lehmann and Schoenborn – all from the German – and “Greater German” – world, have been among the most vocal protagonists of Amoris Laetitia and of the process leading up to that document. They (rightly) see it as confirming and endorsing their own opinions and longstanding course of action. Their own surveys, however, have shown that these policies have brought Catholicism in the German lands to the brink of extinction. Truly it is The Wreck of the Deutschland! It does seem now that the catastrophe, which has overwhelmed the Church in Germany (and Western Europe) will spread worldwide. Continuing the nautical metaphor, Luc Perrin says:

The good ship Kasperic – like its ancestor the Titanic – is sinking: in the midst of exhilaration and slowly by reason of divine mercy but nevertheless it is taking on water. The music of the orchestra is lively and joyful; the dancers on the bridge are laughing and twirling but the water keeps rising. Yet in the radio room a sailor is tapping out “mayday, mayday, mayday.” There are vessels in the distance on the Catholic sea and lifeboats on the Kasperic. I am more focused on scrutinizing the ocean and launching the lifeboats than letting myself be swept away by the music of the ball…

Source “Le Forum Catholique.”

Yet this same German world has now provided us with the first clear responses to Amoris Laetitia. Athanasius Schneider (what a name!) an auxiliary bishop of German origin from Kazakhstan, has said the first clear episcopal words amid the universal cowardice of the Catholic hierarchy (to the extent, that is, that the bishops don’t actively support Amoris Laetitia)

Analyzing some of the affirmations of AL with an honest understanding, as they are in their own context, one finds that there is a difficulty in interpreting them according to the traditional doctrine of the Church. This fact is explained by the absence of concrete and explicit affirmation of the constant doctrine and practice of the Church, which is founded upon the Word of God and was reiterated by Pope John Paul II.

Text of Bishop Athanasius Schneider.

And now the German philosopher Robert Spaemann speaks out loud and bold:

Article 305 together with note 351, however, in which it is stated that faithful “in an objective situation of sin” “by reason of mitigating factors” can be admitted to the sacraments directly contradicts article 84 of Familiaris Consortio of John Paul II.

The concentration on the above-mentioned passages is, in my view, fully justified. You cannot expect, in a papal magisterial document, that people delight in beautiful passages and ignore decisive sentences, which change the teaching of the Church. There is here only a clear yes or no decision. Give communion or not give communion – there is no middle ground.

The consequences (of Amoris Laetitia – SC) can already be foreseen: destabilization and confusion from the Bishops’ conferences to the individual pastor in the jungle. A thrust for secularization and a further decline in the number of priests in many parts of the world are also be expected.

“Ein Bruch mit der Lehrtradition”

So if the push for Amoris Laetitia largely rests on the support of the higher clergy of the German-speaking countries, the first unambiguous criticism of it – at least from parties who cannot be ignored – also comes from this culture. Perhaps, God willing, the Germans, having very largely contributed to the present crisis, will be among the first to show us the way out of it?

(Thanks to Sandro Magister’s Chiesa and Settimo Cielo)

* Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland II 20. (Martin Luther and St. Gertrude were both born in Eisleben, Germany)

In a New Light

Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert

By Susannah Rutherglen and Charlotte Hale

(The Frick Collection, New York

In Association with D Giles Limited. London, 2015)

Not many visitors to the Frick Collection fail to notice a remarkable early Renaissance panel: St Francis in the Desert (also known as St. Francis in Ecstasy). The saint turns away from a dark hermitage at Mount La Verna where he has been engaged in meditation. He rises up to behold a divine light transforming both himself and the resplendent landscape that a spreads out before him. It seems that only through withdrawal and asceticism has St. Francis first been empowered to perceive the beauty of the world about him.

In a New Light is devoted entirely to this work, one of the masterpieces of Giovanni Bellini (1424/35 – 1516) the first supreme master of Venetian painting. The work was created in a society in which the contradictions of later ages had not yet emerged. In was a world in which theology, artistic technique, business and politics, public and private devotion were inextricably intertwined and “mutually enriching” (to apply a recent phrase). The patron was a leading man of the day – but not of the nobility. Both patron and artist belonged to the same lay confraternity. “The size of the panel, the care bestowed on its autograph design and the use of high quality ultramarine in the sky bespeak the work’s prestige and expense.”

It was a work intended for a private home or chapel. St. Francis in the Desert was:

“Among the most detailed of Bellini’s larger pictures, suggesting the work was intended to be scrutinized close up in an intimate setting rather than viewed from afar in a communal one. In the context of personal religious devotion, highly polished works….invite the spectator to embark on a meditational voyage, with the incidental discovery of minute details a reward for prolonged engagement and attentive viewing. (p. 123-24).

For the fact is that the incredible naturalist detail of mountains, towns, clothing plants and animals does not detract from the spiritual significance of this painting but reinforces it. The same can be said of the other innovations of Bellini: the use of oil paints, the depiction of the effects of natural light and of perspective and most obviously the creative departure from the usual iconography of the stigmatization of Saint Francis. Maureen Mullarkey has recently written  insightfully on the difference between the “sense of the sacred” embodied in Isenheimer Altar of Grunewald and the “technically” focused, realistic art of Titian. In the case of Giovanni Bellini, however, such a contradiction does not yet exist:

The perceptive treatment of natural light furthers an essential aim of Bellini’s art: to create an illusion so convincing as to draw the spectator into authentic visionary experience, the sense that divinity has become fully and actually present in this world. (p.105)

As the authors state, summarizing the art historian Millard Meiss:

The golden effulgence at the panels upper left hand corner was, (Meiss) argued, the symbol of an “unseen power” that miraculously sealed Francis’s flesh with the stigmata and transformed him into the likeness of God incarnate. Bellini’s spreading landscape supplied a true receptacle for this hallowed light, drawing all creation into ecstatic transformation.

Yet this painting depicts not the stigmatization of St. Francis, but his transfiguration. Francis has indeed become an Alter Christus – but only by first participating in Christ’s suffering. Indeed, In a New Light is almost a course in itself on Franciscan mystical theology of the late middle ages.

Other chapters in this book by the authors and several other contributors tell us all about the history and context of the painting. Its well-documented path from Venice to New York is laid out. The technical findings from the recent restoration are presented. By comparing St Francis in the Desert with other works by Bellini and his contemporaries the authors propose dating the work to 1476-78. And Michael F Cusato OFM traces the picture back to Franciscan vernacular texts that were circulating in Italy at the end of the 15^th century. He argues that the painting is not a direct product of the observant friars themselves but of the lay Franciscan environment of urban Venice.

So much can be learned from just one painting! In a New Light is a thorough guide. But before reading about this painting you should first visit the Frick Collection and contemplate St. Francis in the Desert for yourself…