The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays of a Traditional Catholic

By Joseph Shaw

Os Justi Press (Lincoln, NE, 2023)

Mr. Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and president of the International Una Voce Federation, offers us a book of reflections on the Church and society of today and especially on the position of the Traditional Catholic Movement. Even though the author taught philosophy at Oxford University for many years, The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity is no abstract treatise.  Our author, by virtue of his office, is squarely in the midst of the liturgical wars of today. Shaw returns again and again to the refutation of attacks launched against Traditionalists by their enemies within the Church. The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity serves, first of all, as a valuable arsenal of information and arguments for the Traditionalist. And this is an honorable role! Wasn’t the City of God also inspired by the need to respond to contemporary calumnies against Christians after the fall of Rome?

Shaw, however, goes far beyond the role of a controversialist. He works to understand what is happening in the Church today.  In contrast to most commentators on liturgical issues, Shaw knows that the Church is embedded in history and in society. As the title of this collection of essays indicates, liturgical questions cannot be severed from other theological issues and from the daily life and experience of the faithful. This book develops these interactions and influences.  Shaw sets the controversies and deviations of the moment in a broader historical, philosophical and sociological context. This deeper understanding will be necessary to the Traditionalist in the continued conflict between the Church establishment and Catholic Tradition – a struggle that may last years, decades or even generations.

Mr. Shaw divides his work into three sections: The first, “Liturgy,” deals with the liturgy, its meaning and function. The second part, “Crisis,” addresses issues of conflict within the Church -not just the struggle over the Traditional Mass but also clerical sex abuse and sex education. Finally, “Family” explores underlying sociological causes of the dysfunctions Shaw has described. Certainly, “Family” is the broadest topic and the most controversial, given the author’s frank discussion of the role of feminism and feminization in the current crisis of Church and society. I recall that Cardinal Francis George of Chicago came a cropper when he dared to express critical thoughts regarding feminism.

Let me give a few examples of the “Shavian” insights. The author’s discussion of “active participation” is among the clearest I have ever read. The Conciliar reduction of participation to comprehension is fundamentally flawed:

However, saying that understanding texts and ceremonies aids participation is not the same as saying it is necessary for participation.  Still less is it to say that participation is aided by changing prayers and ceremonies to make them easier to understand.  … A poem or a painting can engage us powerfully without knowing very clearly what it is about. An explanation may well enhance our participation in it, but we would not be inclined to say, of those who do not have the benefit of such an explanation, that they were incapable of real participation in, say, William Blake’s poem Jerusalem or the Wilton Diptych (p.25)

A related theme is the Catholic establishment’s claim that only “elitists” can “get anything” from the beauty and sacrality of the Traditional Mass. It is obvious from the life of Traditional parishes today  – as well of that of the entire Church until the 1960’s – that beauty and sacrality appeal to all groups of the Catholic population, regardless of income, education, race etc. In contrast, it has been the most educated and wealthiest segments of the Catholic population who have been most hostile to the Traditional liturgy. Shaw quotes here the disdainful and scurrilous remarks of the egregious Fr. Reginald Foster – the Vatican’s Latinist!  – on the liturgical role of Latin 1) (pp. 72-73). Indeed, Shaw points out it is this clerical “elite” that has convinced itself that the unlettered “masses” cannot participate in the Traditional Mass.

Speaking of Latin, Shaw finds that, well before the Council, the Church had difficulty articulating a principled and coherent defense of the liturgical role of Latin. (p.83). As in so many other issues, the current Traditionalist’s understanding of the purpose of Latin in the liturgy is far more sophisticated than that of his pre-conciliar forbears. Or it at least can be – if he reads the growing literature (like this book) on the subject!

Rebutting Pope Francis’s relentless denunciations of “rigid” Catholics, Shaw finds the origin of this calumny in a pseudo-Freudian analysis of the rise of Nazism. The Frankfurt school made the historically false claim that the intact family and the society associated with it created a mythical “authoritarian personality” that allegedly spawned fascism.  This is the dubious source of Pope Francis’s constantly repeated characterization of “rigid” priests and laity as being diseased.

There have been studies over the years linking some of the current deviations of the “Conciliar Church” to a centuries-long process of “feminization” of Catholicism as found in devotions and schools of spirituality. Shaw develops the intriguing argument that the Novus Ordo, with its exclusive emphasis on verbal communication, reflects more clearly a feminine sensibility, whereas ritual and mystery appeal more to a masculine sensibility. Perhaps! – but I don’t see any disproportionate rush of the “devout sex” to the Novus Ordo. (pp. 236-371)

As one who has given some thought to the disastrous effects of ultramontanism on the Church, I particularly welcomed Shaw’s perceptive commentary on the subject:

We know, with hindsight, that the centralization of the Church has made her painfully vulnerable to the capture of central institutions by corrupt individuals or misguided ideas. It is no new thing in the history of the Church for there to be corruption in Rome (as I write the trial of Cardinal Becciu is ongoing) (It still is! – SC). What is new, and disastrous, is the diminishment of alternative sources of influence, initiative and prestige, from which Roman problems could be addressed without being cut off immediately by the very people causing the problems. I have in mind things like monastic reformers, reforming bishops, fearless preachers, or even the Holy Roman Emperor.

….

[W]hat the Church needs in dealing with a unified threat is not the brittle strength of the centralized control center, but the flexible resistance of ten thousand little platoons with the self-sufficiency and initiative to carry on guerilla warfare even when the enemy has won the big battles. What at needs, in fact, is the family. (pp. 277-78)

Shaw’s observations are entirely in accord with both human and spiritual wisdom. Did not Machiavelli make the same point regarding the weakness of rigidly centralized states? Later, in the first half of the 19th century, the German Romantics wrote of the need to foster intermediate corporations situated between individuals and the central authority of the state.  And even the papacy in its most explicitly ultramontane phase propounded this Catholic understanding of subsidiarity. Joseph Shaw’s insight, however, is to identify the hierarchically organized, so-called “traditional” family as the specific cell of resistance in the war for the defense of the faith. Regardless of all the forces seeking to destroy ii, the family still possesses unique strength, for it is both a natural and, in Christian marriage, supernatural institution. But in the battle for the faith the family cannot function in isolation as an individual atom but must always remain in union with others as a member of the Body of Christ. 

I hope the above conveys the flavor of Mr. Shaw’s book. Do I need to add that it is all well and clearly written? I would recommend this book to the Traditionalist looking both for arguments in his current struggle for survival but also for an analysis of the overall causes of the current crisis. It is this deeper understanding that will help preserve us from mistakes and deviations arising from purely reactive and opportunistic stances.

The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity is available HERE.

1. Fr. Foster was (perhaps unwittingly) echoing Heinrich Heine, who in the 1830’s sneered that the prostitutes of Paris spoke better French than the canonesses (aristocratic ladies) of Germany…..