Solzhenitsyn’s Legacy

I first encountered Daniel J. Mahoney when I reviewed his 2018 book The Idol of Our Age.  There he expressed guarded criticism of Pope Francis but still felt the need to “balance” his negative comments. In an article written for National Review two years later Mahoney was far more direct in his characterization of Francis. Today Mahoney is speaking out loud. After cataloguing with prophetic urgency the Vatican’s misdeeds in theory and practice,  he concludes:

 Today, papalotry is not an option for faithful Catholics. To fundamentally “change the Church,” as Francis surely intends, is to undermine her authority and her very raison d’être. The Catholic faith is not the religion of humanity, and the Holy Spirit is not an agent of the Historical Process, no matter what some Catholic progressives think. As with the Arian crisis of the fourth century, when most bishops succumbed to heresy, the task of Catholics is to defend the truth unalloyed. We owe the papal office filial respect. But no pope is an oriental potentate. His “private judgment” cannot take precedence over the moral law, the apostolic inheritance, and the unchanging teachings of the Church. Today, alas, unthinking papalotry reinforces theological and moral subversion. Self-deception of this kind only lead to the abyss. At this critical moment, Catholics have an obligation to see things clearly.

Mahoney, Daniel J., The Church over the Abyss. (Americanmind.org 9/20/2022)

Now Daniel Mahoney has done significant scholarly work on the legacy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for whom he professes great admiration. Pope Francis and Solzhenitsyn – these are mutually exclusive personalities:

“either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.”

Curious – I had just reacquainted myself with how another thinker, Thomas Molnar, had in 1980 been inspired by Solzhenitsyn (as opposed to any of the representatives of the official Catholic Church) in formulating his thoughts on the relationship of Church and State. Rod Dreher too has moved from the self-satisfied, quietist Benedict Option (2018) to a Solzhenitsyn-inspired assault on the current apocalyptic state of the West as exemplified by Live not by Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020). That transformation includes increasingly savage attacks on Pope Francis – for whom, by the way, Dreher had initially expressed admiration. For Dreher’s current views see, for example, “Pope Francis, McCarrick and Maciel” (The American Conservative, 5/29/2022). The prophetic voice of the great Russian writer lives on!