Alice von Hildebrand R.I.P.

Alice von Hildebrand died on January 14.  I would like to offer a few remarks on her connections with the traditionalist Catholic movement both in the areas of morality and liturgy.

Certainly when I first encountered her in the 1980’s at conferences and lectures she did not appear to me to show any traditionalist liturgical sympathies.  I associated her with organizations such as Opus Dei and CUF (Catholics United for the Faith) which were and are anything but traditionalist. Her interests also seemed to be more on questions of personal morality and ethics rather than liturgy. For example, at a memorable conference sponsored by Opus Dei she and Christopher Derrick squared off on issues related to the nature of marriage. Her highly romantic views contrasted with his realism; her apotheosis  of marital love with his satisfaction at having been able to “muddle through”  his many years of marriage.

She had been for many years a professor at Hunter College. Strange,  how many Catholic writers and intellectuals in those years ended up at non-Catholic institutions (Dietrich von Hildebrand himself at Fordham was a noteworthy exception).  Alice von Hildebrand took retirement in 1984 – I heard at that time this was an action initiated by the university,  prompted by several prominent conversions among her students. Alice von Hildebrand in a memoir published in 2014 confirmed incidents related to conversions but made no causal connection between them and her voluntary decision to retire. 1) Thus, her secular academic career has some similarities with that of John Senior at the University of Kansas.

Alice von Hildebrand devoted much of her efforts over the years  to preserving the memory of her husband Dietrich von Hildebrand. Now,  Dietrich von Hildebrand was, among other things,  an early and outspoken critic of tendencies within the Catholic Church that erupted into a virtual civil war after the Second Vatican Council. For example, he – together with his wife – wrote a critique of the views contained in the novel Kranz der Engel of Gertrude von Le Fort. This 1946 novel was a very early example of Catholic situation ethics such as that later canonized in Amoris Laetitia.2)

Dietrich von Hildebrand was also an early critic of aberrations in Catholic liturgy, morality and theology in the 1960s. One of his main works in this area was the famous Trojan Horse in the City Of God  (1967) which received praise from noted intellectuals but induced fits of rage among members of the Church establishment. For example, the German writer Ida Goerres, outwardly conformist yet privately critical of post-Vatican II developments, was motivated to write a negative review of this book (which I have yet to find!) 

But Dietrich von Hildebrand  did not limit himself to the role of commentator. For example,  he was involved early in the organization of a chapter of Una Voce in the United States. He was one of the early contributors to Triumph magazine. And Roger McCaffrey provides the very important information that Vincent Miceli SJ celebrated a traditional Latin Mass in the home of Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand in the mid 1970s. At that time the traditional Mass was an affair of the catacombs! 3)

Alice von Hildebrand adopted a less public role on these issues – yet she was not inactive either. In 1993 Roman Catholic Books published The Charitable Anathema, a collection of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s essays on, among other things,  liturgical issues. I believe many of these forceful writings appeared first in Triumph magazine.  Alice von Hildebrand held the copyright to these works. We read here:

Thus I hope and pray that the Tridentine mass will not be abolished but will continue to be celebrated side by side with the new Ordo.  Furthermore, I hope and pray that in the course of time, its superiority, from the pastoral as well as the doctrinal standpoint, will be recognized by the Holy See, and that in the future the Tridentine mass will be reinstated as the official liturgy of the holy Mass in the Western Church. 4) 

Roger McCaffrey also informs us that Alice von Hildebrand helped to organize traditional Masses in Westchester county . 5)

In 2002 I returned to the New York area. For years we attended Sacred Heart parish in the town of Port Chester on the Connecticut border,  where an ”indult” traditional mass was celebrated each Sunday. Alice von Hildebrand was a regular member of the congregation. It was a low Mass; the priest was rather eccentric (to put it mildly) and I don’t recall if that parish had any music at all. But I think that humble service suited Alice von Hildebrand fine.  

In 2014 Alice von Hildebrand  organized a traditional Requiem in memory of her husband. Her own Requiem also will be in the traditional rite. Let us offer prayers for the repose of her soul. Her funeral arrangements: link

1. Von Hildebrand, Alice and Crosby, John Henry, Memoirs of a Happy Failure at 167-77 ( 2014 Saint Benedict Press, Charlotte, NC)
2. His position on von Le Fort’s novel can be found here: “To derive from the possibility of a ‘felix culpa’ the right to choose, under extraordinary circumstances, a sinful action, is one of the basic errors that we find in circumstance ethics, at least in its most radical form. … A typical case of this error is to be found in Le Fort’s “Kranz der Engel.” The Father Angelo who advises Veronica to accept a marriage outside the Church because in doing so she may eventually succeed in converting her fiancé, patently adheres to the principle, ‘The end justifies the means.’ He advises her to commit a sin in order to attain eventually an end of great value.” von Hildebrand, Dietrich, with Alice Jourdain, True Morality and its Counterfeits at 85 (footnote 4) (1955, David McKay Company, Inc., New York). Reissued as: von Hildebrand, Dietrich & Alice,  Morality and Situation Ethics, (1966, Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, IL) and available online from EWTN. (Readers may be amused by the new Vatican II-style preface to the 1966 edition written by none other than Bernard Häring) 
3. Alice von Hildebrand, Valiant Catholic (accessed 1/17/2022)
4. Von Hildebrand, Dietrich,  ”Belief and Obedience: the Critical Difference” in The Charitable Anathema at 33 (1993 Roman Catholic Books, Harrison, NY)
5.  Alice von Hildebrand, Valiant Catholic