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 20th 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.
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