The Ugly Face of the Catholic Establishment

Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy in Defense of the Traditional Mass and the Faithful who Attend it

Peter A. Kwasniewski, Ed.

Os Justi Press, Lincoln, NE 2023

Hardly had I finished reading one book from Os Justi press (1) when there appeared a new entry in their series “Os Justi Studies in Catholic Traditionalism.” In this series, edited by the indefatigable Peter Kwasniewski, Os Justi offers serious commentary on current Church issues of special relevance to the Catholic Traditionalist movement.

In 2022 John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy published a series of articles defending Pope Francis’s war against Traditionalism (collectively, the “Synoptic Look”).2) Peter Kwasniewski has now assembled in Illusions of Reform a volume of responses. The heart of Illusions of Reform is two series of articles by Jane Smith and Peter Kwasniewski that set out a detailed, comprehensive critique of the Synoptic Look. There follow essays from a range of writers, many associated with Traditionalism, discussing one or the other aspects of the Synoptic Look. Two of the contributors (Peter Kwasniewski and Alcuin Reid) were directly denounced by Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy in the Synoptic Look.

I think the contributors to Illusions of Reform did a good job in refuting the assertions and calumnies of the Synoptic Look. If the contentions of Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy trickle down to the bureaucrats of the Roman Catholic Church in rectories, schools, organizations and parishes, Illusions of Reform will provide to the Traditionalist faithful a handbook of responses. Moreover, the authors of the essays in this book sometimes exceed their immediate task of responding to the Synoptic Look and break new ground. I was intrigued, for example, by Peter Kwasniewski’s argument that the fresco of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (and other similar paintings for monastic refectories) helped lead to an incorrect theory of a versus populum celebration of the mass.  Alexander Battista observes that the Synoptic Look’s theological condemnation of the Traditional Roman liturgy also applies in large part to the eastern rites of the Catholic Church, which (still?) remain in good standing with the Vatican. And there is Alcuin Reid’s contribution, in which he confronts the invective directed against him in one section of the Synoptic Look. 

It seemed to me, however, that debating the assertions of the three authors is of limited utility. For this response (and even the title Illusions of Reform) presumes that Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy are proposing for public discussion their scholarly, if mistaken, opinions. As Alcuin Reid writes, it’s clear that these authors had no interest in dialoguing with anyone or of convincing anyone. It is instructive that the authors of the Synoptic Look refused permission to reprint their essays in Illusions of Reform and likewise rejected the opportunity to rebut the critical essays published there. Similarly, they made no attempt in their own essays to “engage with” any of the literature critical of the Council or the Novus Ordo that has appeared over the last 60 years.

Indeed, the analytical framework of Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy leaves hardly any room for dialogue.  For the position of the authors, identical with that of Pope Francis himself, is that Vatican II is the work of the Holy Spirit, the liturgical movement is the work of Holy Spirit, the new mass is the work of the Holy Spirit. Thus, any attempt even to question any of these items is to directly oppose God. As is stated in the Synoptic Look, for some people (the Traditionalists):

 there can be a danger of loving a form of the Mass more than one loves Jesus (3)

 (A startling claim – from a charismatic, even Protestant perspective?). It’s remarkable how easy it is for members of the Catholic establishment to discern the will of God in this world! It’s almost as easy as was their ability in the 1960’s to identify the signs of the times.

And this same Holy Spirit seems completely capable of contradicting Himself.  One of the most extraordinary aspects of Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy’s essay is their extended argument that the Traditional Mass was theologically flawed; that Catholics, prior to the Council, prayed to “God” instead of to “Christ” or the “Trinity.” Thus, it would seem the Holy Spirit abandoned the Church and the bulk of the Catholic population to theological error for untold ages. I recall hearing such arguments in the distant past but never with such insistent radicalism. 

If the theology of the authors of the Synoptic Look excludes rational discourse, to argue with them over historic facts is likewise useless. For example, regarding the origins of liturgical movement, it is said:

Like almost all renewal movements in Church history, such as the rise of the Franciscans and Dominicans, the liturgical renewal movement was from the ground up. In this case, it was initiated and primarily grew from within a monastic setting…. (4)

Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy thus believe that the liturgical movement between 1900 and 1950 and the emergence and expansion of the mendicant orders in the first half of the 13th century are historical phenomena of comparable origin and significance. It’s clear that any recourse to historical reality with authors exhibiting historical judgment of this kind would be futile.

In my view, Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy’s opus closely resembles the DEI declarations found universally nowadays in the publications of corporations, governmental units and educational institutions: a demonstration of loyalty to the ideology of an establishment rather than an honest expression of personal or scholarly opinion. But if the content of the Synoptic Look is unimportant, nevertheless, who wrote it, where it’s being published and the style in which the message is conveyed are important.

Now all three authors of the Synoptic Look are certified members of the Catholic establishment and at least two are currently in the current employ of Catholic educational institutions. Moreover, they seem relatively uninvolved in the Catholic progressive movement otherwise dominant on Catholic campuses. Their loyalty to the establishment is thus pure, unaffected by further demands for change. Given the policies of Francis over the last ten years, it an increasingly rare stance among “Catholic Conservatives!”

Professor Cavadini is director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame University, the publisher of the Church Life Journal in which appeared the essays of the Synoptic Look. 5) What is this Institute? It (or its predecessor) was founded in 1970 by a noted radical priest of that era, Monsignor John J. Egan, who remained associated with it for many years. (6) In the course of time, the Institute seems to have been absorbed into the broad mainstream of the so-called American Catholic Church. It advertises itself as a facility to ”form and empower” Catholic leaders. It appears, however that these leaders are mainly fellow bureaucrats in the employ of the Church. Indeed, the Institute itself seems to have an extraordinarily large number of administrators. If we peruse the news items on the Institute’s website we see only a happy world of more grants from secular foundations, more money from Notre Dame alumni, more nebulous, undemanding articles and more programs. 

The McGrath Institute is thus emblematic of the modern Church establishment:  bureaucratic, self-satisfied, pontificating, discoursing solely with fellow members of its own isolated world but directing abuse and invective against officially designated adversaries. Yet, since the Council, the forces represented by the Institute have been the consistent winners within a Church otherwise mired in steep decline. It is they and their more radical colleagues who have spearheaded the synodal path, first in Germany and now throughout the entire Church. Yet clearly such entities are incapable of communicating with, let alone evangelizing, either the outside world or the non-practicing majority of Catholics. To outsiders, they are the ugly face of official Catholicism. It is the Traditionalists, so much despised by them, that can mobilize individual imitative and commitment and unlock the evangelizing force of the Christian faith. I think this contrast will be patently obvious to anyone who reads both the Synoptic Look and Illusions of Reform – which I highly recommend.

1. Joseph Shaw’s The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity.
2. Now these essays are assembled and available at: A Synoptic Look at the Failures and Successes of Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms, Church Life Journal (12/1/2022).( the “Synoptic Look”) This title is a pseudo-objective replacement for the more aggressively anti-Traditionalist titles of some of the original posts (“The Way forward from the Theological Concerns with the TLM Movement,” “Papal Responses to the emergence of the TLM Movement”).
3. Synoptic Look, “Theological and Pastoral Concerns with the Tridentine Mass Movement”
4. Synoptic Look, “The Rise of the Liturgical Renewal”
5. https://mcgrath.nd.edu
6. “History and Mission”