I have been meaning for a long time (two years to be precise!) to provide an updated report on where we think the Church stands and what the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny intends to do in the upcoming year. That task kept being deferred. But I think I now owe you are an accounting of where we are today. I am especially thinking of our loyal supporters and contributors.

By now traditionalist Catholics have suffered over 3 1/2 years of persecution. They have been segregated from the rest of Catholics, regulated and restricted. Their Masses are arbitrarily suppressed. They are routinely denounced by various spokesman of the official Church – including of course Pope Francis himself, who not only calls them enemies of the Holy Spirit but also mentally ill. In individual dioceses, orders and parishes the Church establishment continues its attack – sometimes coordinated by the papal nuncios. Throughout this campaign of annihilation, the hierarchy, the Catholic religious orders and the Catholic educational institutions have absolutely refused any “dialogue” with traditionalists. Often the Church does not deign even to publish the actions it takes against the traditionalists. It is entirely an exercise in brute force. The war against Traditionalism has become a core initiative of the papacy of Pope Francis.

If we consider only the clergy,  the persecution to a significant extent has been effective. Priests have abandoned the celebration of the traditional mass; traditional parishes or masses of long standing have been abolished or displaced without resistance. Yet many traditional masses continue to be celebrated openly. And many others have “gone underground” or at least do not call attention to themselves. These traditionalist activities have attracted favorable media attention – even, here and there,  (by mistake?) in the diocesan press.

Now of course we were aware of the reports last year concerning a more definitive prohibition of the traditional mass being prepared by Pope Francis. We did not engage in that discussion, above all because we have no special knowledge  of the facts in Rome. Based on prior disclosures, we believe that ideas or drafts for such a prohibition have existed and have been circulated at the Vatican for months and even years now.  Whether such a measure will be adopted will depend on the sudden and arbitrary decision of the Pope. He has decided up till now not to proceed further down the path of persecution, but that is no guarantee he will not reverse himself tomorrow. Given how the Church is governed, there is little point in speculating on this subject.

Furthermore, I think such speculations highlight one of the worst aspects of the Roman Catholic Church today: the exclusive focus on the Pope and his entourage. On blogs and online media, we read more about opaque personnel moves in the Vatican, the opinions of Francis’s favorites and the day-to-day utterances of Pope Francis than we do about the faith, canon law or the principles of morality. I see no reason to contribute to such abuses. 

The Twilight of the Conciliar Church.

We find ourselves in a late stage of the regime of the Catholic Church that was established starting with the Second Vatican Council in 1962. We’ve already discussed in the past the most fundamental principles  of this system. First, ultramontanism: the concentration of all governance and spiritual authority in the papacy, combined with an understanding of the rest of the Church as a ministerial bureaucracy under Vatican control. Second, Vatican II:  not any specific text of the Council, but the general principle of openness to the world (that is, the political, social and cultural regime dominating the western world by the 1960s). This was associated with a revolutionary rejection of the Catholic liturgy, morality and culture as they existed prior to1962.

Under Pope Francis these two cornerstones of the post-Conciliar Catholic culture have fused and have been pushed to a new extreme. At least within the Church bureaucracy, the only rule of law, morality and liturgy is the arbitrary will of Francis as expressed at any one time. The Pope contradicts not only the decisions of his predecessors but even his own rulings of the immediate past. The Pope removes or protects prelates or clerics without any explanation or accountability. He and his Vatican directly manage the affairs of individual priests and parishes. 

As to the Council, the decisions and utterances of Francis, the synodal path of Germany and the “Synod on Synodality” embracing the whole Church have reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to an ongoing, open-ended series of changes in doctrine, liturgy and morality. The substance of the Church’s message at least at the highest levels has been reduced to a copy of the secular agenda of the quasi-totalitarian culture of the liberal West. (At least as it existed prior to Trump’s election!) 

But the roots of the present situation predate Francis. In 1962 a new culture of conflict was introduced into the Catholic Church.  In the movement for updating (aggiornamento),  a party was established in the Church that demanded immediate and complete accommodation to the world of today and its morality. It was opposed to a second tendency or faction which wanted to restrict the Conciliar innovations to certain discrete areas while leaving basic Christian moral rules and the basics of Catholic theology intact.  ( A third group, that dissented from the decisions of the Council,  was excluded from the conversation.) 

Thus, with the Council, a struggle broke out within the governing and teaching institutions of the Church itself. Progressives were pitted against those who wanted to “conserve” earlier rules and structures of authority (or at least go slow on innovations).  By its very nature, no resolution of this conflict was possible. For given the hostility of the modern world to the Catholic faith – an animosity that only continued  to grow – achieving the progressive ideal could only mean the liquidation of the Catholic Church.  A substantial part of the establishment was unwilling to do exactly that. The result of this conflict, drawn out decade after decade, has been chaos and lawlessness within the Church

Pope Francis has embraced this conflict and has aggressively confronted, in word and deed, the entire spectrum of enemies of Catholic progressivism – Conservative, traditionalist and middle-of-the-road. They range from individuals posting on social media, alternative Catholic news sites, individual bishops and even cardinals. And, after Fiducia Supplicans, even an entire continent joined. We cannot say that the Pope has succeeded in eliminating them. 

For the reach of the Pope’s authority and the progressive cause to which it is wed today have definite limits. First, the very nature of the regime of Francis entails a high degree of confusion and incompetence. No effective leadership structures have been established, rather, doctrinal concessions to progressive demands have been made and individual adversaries have been targeted,  demoted or destroyed. But the chaos which Francis seeks to create functions as a barrier to any consolidation of his regime. 

Second, Francis depends on the goodwill of the secular media and of the Catholic progressives. It is they that create a favorable or at least neutral public image for Francis throughout the world. It is they that make sure the glaring faults of his regime are buried or at least minimized. For these services a price must be paid: continued progress on the accommodation of the Church with the secular world of today. Given this dependence on external and internal allies, the regime of Francis is only a limited totalitarianism.

Third, the Church is dependent on the laity to provide both funding and congregations. In today’s society,  the Catholic Church is unable to compel anyone by penal sanctions to either participate in or contribute to the Church. Even in Germany lay participation is ultimately voluntary. Here too the Francis regime feeds on itself – under any empirically quantifiable measure the Catholic Church is in drastic decline: the level of religious participation and understanding of Catholic doctrine among the laity, the number of priests and religious, the number of parishes etc. And this is especially so in the “advanced” nations of the West which have long served as the model for the Conciliar Church. These trends have already required drastic reductions of parishes, schools and religious foundations in places like Germany, the United States and the Netherlands. Even the merging of dioceses has commenced.  More losses will inevitably follow.

Regardless of what is officially claimed,  the rites of the Conciliar Church, as they are celebrated in the vast majority of locations, have been ineffective in retaining people in the Church, let alone finding new members. The mind-numbing banality and uniformity of the Novus Ordo and its music are in no way an attraction but a deterrent.

How is the Church establishment addressing these crises?

Pope Benedict’s response was increased tolerance of the Traditional Mass and encouragement of traditional elements in the Novus Ordo. Both initiatives have been expressly rejected by Francis. More recently the Church has deployed, often outside of the liturgy,  selected practices and forms of a prior era. Relics of saints brought from Europe are being paraded around dioceses in the United States. A new jubilee year in Rome with the appropriate indulgences has been proclaimed. And, of course, there is the “eucharistic revival” – the attempt to revitalize eucharistic piety or just the awareness of what the Eucharist represents. Tabernacles are being returned to the center of churches. Monstrances are prominently displayed as a new kind of Catholic “icon.” Eucharistic processions –  in the United States until very recently exclusively the province of conservative and traditionalist Catholics – are now conducted with great fanfare. And, last year,  a grand (and expensive) eucharistic conference was held in Indianapolis.

A second official response to religious collapse is to foster the charismatic movement. So, last year’s eucharistic conference was also accompanied by charismatic services and performances. Charismatic meetings and encounters are held regularly.

But how effective will be these initiatives? The establishment may be fostering eucharistic processions and rites – but at the same time Cardinal Cupich,  who is held out to be great friend of the Pope, continues to call into question all these practices. Thus, the underlying conflicts within the Church, such as those on the nature of the Eucharist, remain unresolved –  the “new conservatism” is more a matter of appearance.

As for the charismatic renewal, its presence remains limited. Its close connection with evangelical Protestantism is problematic in a country, like the United States, where in many places the evangelicals a strong force (and competitor).  For example,  I would see the development of charismatic ministries as  prompting the departure of as many Hispanic Catholics as it wins or retains. The charismatics’ encouragement of unrestrained emotionalism is hardly propitious, in the context of the numerous occasions of Catholic faith leaders abusing their spiritual authority over gullible followers. 

Thus, the culture of the Conciliar Church will continue. Conflict, lawlessness and pervasive dishonesty are its hallmarks.  It is any wonder that we increasingly read of apocalyptic expectations?  That the question of whether and to what extent Francis is pope no longer is reserved to an eccentric fringe but is ever more widely discussed.  That more and more appeals to divine intervention are being made?

 Misunderstandings and Weaknesses of the Traditionalists.

Obviously, these times have been traumatic for traditionalists. Based on a total misinterpretation of what had happened within the Church after Vatican II, most of them previously viewed themselves as defenders of the papacy –  at least as it was defined in 1870. To have such an exalted notion of the Pope and then to be denounced and persecuted by him “with magisterial authority” is obviously a severe blow.  Many bishops and priests who had been favorable to the traditionalist movement, quickly became indifferent or even turned into persecutors after Traditionis Custodes.

Traditionalists had very much underestimated the continuing commitment to Vatican II and its implementing decrees among the clergy, the religious and their lay acolytes. 1962-65 indeed had unleashed an authentically  revolutionary movement. Admittedly, that elan largely had dissipated by the time of Francis. Many of the first wave of participants had died or left the Church. Yet in the institutional Church the dream remained of a grand opening to a superior modern world, and concurrently,  of the need for a violent rejection of traditional Catholic culture in all its aspects. This was no mere intellectual exercise – adhering vocally to “the Council” offered career opportunities in Catholic education, media and administration. 

During the era of Summorum Pontificum I can testify to numerous encounters with the clergy and Catholic religious who showed a continuing violent hostility to the traditional mass and the culture associated with it. This hostility was also shared by that minority of the laity that had associated themselves with these priests and religious. For, given the dearth of vocations to the religious life and to the priesthood,  many of the Catholic institutions – parishes, schools, colleges and dioceses – are in fact run today by lay bureaucrats who have been nurtured in the attitudes of the makers of the 1960’s revolution.

To expect that this culture would change because of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio was extremely naive. The implementation of Summorum Pontificum was very uneven:  in some parishes and dioceses near miraculous results were achieved. In others there was no real change from the situation after 1988 in which the Traditional Mass was permitted as a matter of episcopal grace under severe restrictions. 

The Traditionalists’ dilemma also reflected a continued misunderstanding of the constitution of the Church –  in particular its de facto organizational form as a modern bureaucracy, imposing rules from the top and demanding obedience.  Traditionalists underestimated the continuing effectiveness of papal power within such a bureaucracy. They had been misled by the ineffectual attempts of Popes Paul VI, John Paul, and Benedict to restrain the progressive Catholics. They didn’t consider that those progressive forces occupied key positions of power in the Catholic Church and had important relationships with the secular forces, above all the media. They also didn’t fully appreciate that the three popes above mentioned agreed in varying degrees with aspects of the progressive ideology. 

Traditionalists, on the other hand, had no such allies. They have virtually no representation in the mainstream Catholic religious orders and educational institutions.  The secular political world and its media often view them as reactionary political adversaries.  So, when Pope Francis launched his persecution, there was limited public resistance. Regardless of what his liturgical, moral, and theological convictions might be, it is very difficult for a Catholic priest or bishop to publicly stand up to the policies of Francis.

The Traditionalist Movement Continues

Yet, the traditionalists have carried on. The Ecclesia Dei congregations are still functioning and still training and ordaining seminarians. The traditionalist masses continue, sometimes, as in a dimly remembered past,  on a clandestine or unannounced basis. Alternative forms of Catholic liturgy such as vesper services have been proliferating. And should we fail to mention the courageous support given to the traditionalist cause by individual bishops and cardinals throughout the world? This support is not just in words but by direct participation in traditional liturgies. 

Among the laity,  the current generation of traditionalists has come to its convictions as a product of personal spiritual development,  through the conscious participation in the traditional liturgy. Their faith is the product of conscious choice not conformity to some outside culture.

In finding and developing their faith they enjoy a whole range of supports that did not exist in the 60’s and 70’s. A host of Catholic sites, blogs and podcasts provide contemporaneous coverage of news in the Church. These sources also provide access to orthodox Catholic spirituality. It is true that, especially for the more narrowly defined traditionalist world,  many of the best sources are still not to be found in English but in the French, Italian, German and Spanish languages.  To become an informed traditionalist, it’s a great advantage to be a polyglot too!

Accompanying this this is a veritable avalanche of new books  – now available in English – on Traditionalism and related movements. They include detailed analyses of the Mass, music and rites of the Church. Noted scholars have given personal  witness of their commitment to Catholic Tradition. Even the history of Catholic traditionalism has by now acquired its own literature. Most of these works have appeared since 2020. The contrast with the meager intellectual support the establishment has been able to drum up in favor of Traditionis Custodes is remarkable.

A whole spectrum of special events now exists in which the traditionalist can participate: pilgrimages, retreats and conferences of every kind. Recall how the overflowing 2024 pilgrimage to Chartres made such a strong impression on the secular world and stunned the Church. Instead of rejoicing in the success, the immediate reaction of the ecclesiastical authorities was to discuss banning the pilgrimage from the cathedrals in Paris and Chartres! But that is a restriction the pilgrimage has lived with before. In the United States, similar if smaller pilgrimages are scheduled this year for Auriesville, New York and Clear Creek, Oklahoma.

Thus, the era of Traditionis Custodes, if a time of sorrow and tragedy for so many,  is at the same time an era of growing understanding of the cause for which traditionalists fight.  Resources unknown to their forbears are available to them. These aids, in addition to the goad of persecution,  permit a far clearer understanding of what it means to be a traditionalist. The position of traditionalists today is thus very different from that which prevailed between 1965 and 1978 – the previous highwater mark of the ecclesiastical assault on the traditions of the Church.  

What is Catholic Traditionalism?

Traditionalism is not primarily an esthetic movement. For decades traditionalists celebrated the mass of their forefathers without the aid of beautiful music, splendid vestments or churches. Traditionalists have developed important and growing links with “right-wing” political movements – yet political engagement has played a subordinate role in traditionalist life.  In this regard, the contrast is remarkable with the “Conservative Catholics” of the United States and even more so with the relentlessly secular political orientation of the progressive Catholics (and Pope Francis). Similarly, traditionalism by now has no connection with nostalgia – if it ever had any! Traditionalism is not attached to any one period or era of the past – neither the age of Pius XII nor the Middle Ages –  in contrast to the exclusive focus of the Conciliar Church on the modern world of Western Europe and the United States.

Rather, traditionalism is a movement for the recovery of the Catholic faith lived through the ages and concretely experienced in liturgy, in morality and in theology. It is a vision that sees the faith as encompassing and transforming all aspects of human life –  yet it does not proceed from politics or “Catholic social doctrine” nor does it primarily rely on the techniques of publicity, agitation or argumentation. Rather,  it grows through offering the experience of the dignified and complete celebration of the Traditional Mass and other liturgical functions. This is not an individual quest, but takes place in congregations, orders, parishes and communities. In the so-called ”secular age,” traditionalism retains a holy hope for the recovery of the Church and of the sacred. Traditionalists understand that now they can only be a minority movement, but their ambition is to transform the entire Church.

The Role of the Society of Saint Hugh of Cluny

What is the role of this Society in the present day? Let me first summarize our activities in 2023 and 2024. As you can see, the Society sponsors a blog which seems to be widely read. We have sponsored a whole series of solemn masses, usually in connection with a classical Catholic school in Connecticut. We have acquired and made available additional vestments for the dignified celebration of the Traditional Mass at local parishes. We have helped to sponsor in New York and Princeton solemn vespers with outstanding music and magnificent ceremonial. We have sponsored very well received lectures  by John Lamont and Marie Meaney. The Society has joined the CISP (the “International Coetus Summorum Pontificum”), and since 2021 the Society has been represented each year at the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage in Rome (not at the expense of the Society!)

We thank all those who contribute to support these efforts. Much more could be done and perhaps we should more actively seek out donors. The main constraint on the Society’s mission, however, have always been not the lack of funding but the lack of personnel. In 2023, for example, we tried to organize a large-scale conference in Connecticut. In the world of Traditionis Custodes, finding a venue is challenging. And bringing off our usual format of combining lectures with the celebration of a traditional liturgy is even more so. Several key speakers could not in the end attend. With all these complexities, by the time a suitable venue was found it was too late to proceed with the conference. I suspect with more (human) resources devoted to the project some kind of resolution could have been achieved.

Going forward, we envisage continuing the path set forth above. The Society will sponsor more conferences and liturgies. Our primary area of activity will remain in and around the greater New York area. We of course welcome suggestions from  readers as to projects and events the Society should support. With this in mind, we look forward to continuing our successful activity in the course of 2025.

By Marie Cabaud Meaney

(Marie Meaney has summarized for us the presentation she gave on November 9, 2024 for the St. Hugh of Cluny Society. SC)

Biographical Introduction

Simone Weil is not someone one might expect to hear about at a society centering on the liturgy. For this French philosopher was not a Catholic; she came from an agnostic, Jewish French family. Only in the aftermath of several mystical experiences did she come close to the Catholic Church (though she had already felt attracted to the liturgy earlier on). But she had
always had a great sense for beauty and its significance; and after encountering Christ, the supernatural became the focus of her thought. Hence, I believe she can teach us something about these matters.

In hindsight, she thought that she had always been Catholic de facto, if not de iure. For she shared the Catholic worldview, always sought the truth and the good, lived charity to a heroic degree, chose poverty, and embraced chastity. As she would come to see later on, she had loved God implicitly and obeyed His commands without knowing Him – thus proving Christ’s prediction that at the Last Judgment some who did not know Him will be surprised to sit at His right hand for having served Him.

For a long time, she had embraced agnosticism, believing that the human mind could not reach God. That God would descend to man came as a complete surprise to her in November 1938. It was when she was reciting George Herbert’s poem “Love” that “Christ came down and took her,” as she writes in her famous autobiographical 4th letter to Father Perrin (to be found in Waiting for God).

Though astonishing, this mystical encounter had been prepared in various ways. There were three “contacts” with Catholicism that truly mattered. During the academic year of 1934-5, she had taken time off from teaching to be employed among factory-assembly line workers to understand from the inside their working conditions. Attracted to Communism, she hadn’t kept
her concern for the oppressed on a purely theoretical plane but wanted to gain insights based on experience in order to find workable solutions (she would later criticize Communism scathingly). Given her bad health and natural clumsiness, the work on the assembly line was particularly
grueling for her. She came out of this experience, broken in body and soul. As she writes: “There I received forever the mark of a slave, like the branding of the red-hot iron the Romans put on the foreheads of their most despised slaves.” To recover, she went with her parents on a holiday
to Portugal in September 1935 where she witnessed a religious procession in a poor fishing-village, perhaps on the feast-day of Our Lady of Sorrows. The people were singing hymns of such “heart-rending sadness” that “there the conviction was suddenly borne in upon me that Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and I among others,” as she explains. This was not a Nietzschean position about the weak resenting the strong and trying to control them through a restrictive morality, but rather the realization that Christianity recognizes suffering by showing affliction’s true face as Christ’s Passion.

In the Spring of 1937, she travelled to Italy, where, in Assisi, “alone in the little twelfth-century Romanesque chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, an incomparable marvel of beauty where Saint Francis often used to pray, something stronger than [her]self compelled [her] for the first time in [her] life to go down on [her] knees.” Though her kneeling-down was not yet prayer, it was a definite step in that direction, i.e. the implicit acknowledgement of someone infinitely holy and good calling for this posture of reverence.

A year later, in 1938, she spent Holy Week at the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes, which is famous for its wonderful liturgy and Gregorian chant. Non-believers were known to go there for the beauty of the liturgy. She writes: “I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration, I was able to rise above this
wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words. This experience enabled me by analogy to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of
affliction. It goes without saying that in the course of these services the thought of the Passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all.” That Christ’s Passion left its mark on her came through the liturgy and implies already a kind of union with Christ through the Cross.

There too, she was introduced to the Metaphysical Poets, and in particular to George Herbert’s poem “Love III” depicting a dialogue between the soul and God, ending on a Eucharistic note. She would recite it during her violent headaches, thinking it was merely a beautiful poem without realizing that it “had the virtue of a prayer.” As she succinctly states: “It
was during one of these recitations that… Christ himself came down and took possession of me.”

After this, everything changed and nothing changed. Everything changed in that she now knew that God existed; hence, the supernatural was going to become the main focus of her philosophy. Nothing changed in that she’d already led a highly moral life – so there was no moral turnaround. Nothing changed in that it didn’t lead her to engage in any steps towards the Catholic Church, nor did she start to pray. A mystic who doesn’t pray is a surprising combination, nay even seems like a contradiction in terms. But she was fearful of auto-suggestion and therefore resisted giving her intellectual assent to her experience for the sake of the truth, knowing that “if one turns away from him [Christ] in order to go towards the truth, it will not be long before one falls into his arms.”

But this changed, when she decided with Gustave Thibon in September 1941 to learn the “Our Father” by heart in Greek. Thibon was a thinker and gentleman farmer whom she met during her exile in the South of France, where she had fled from the Nazis with her parents to the unoccupied zone. Remembering her promise a few weeks later, she did so, reciting the prayer
from then on with the utmost attention at least once a day. Each time, she would have another mystical experience, where her spirit was transported beyond time and space, where she experienced a silence “which is more real than a sound,” and where “Christ is sometimes present in person.” And after having met the Dominican priest Joseph Marie Perrin in June 1941, who raised the question of baptism with her, she went to mass every Sunday, and often daily. Weil also frequently spent hours in Eucharistic Adoration.

The question of baptism haunted her for the rest of her short life. She left France with her parents for the US in May 1942, though she would have preferred to stay in France, to continue helping in the Resistance and suffering with the oppressed and persecuted. She applied for and
obtained a position in the Free French Government of General de Gaulle in London. She arrived in the UK at the end of 1942, but died on August 24th, 1943 from tuberculosis, overwork, exhaustion, and malnutrition. 1)

I will now turn to Weil’s reflections on beauty that are significant in and of themselves, but also in terms of their importance in the liturgy, even if she didn’t reflect much on the latter.

Beauty

Every time we experience authentic beauty, “there is a real presence of God,” Weil writes in her notebooks, for “it is like a kind of incarnation of God in the world of which beauty is the mark.” “Beauty is therefore nothing else but God who comes to seek man,” as she states in “God in Plato.” More precisely, the beauty of the world is that of God Himself, rendered graspable to the senses, while all other beauties are reflections.

When you ask people to define beauty, they have a very hard time doing so and will often say that it’s in the eye of the beholder and therefore purely subjective. Or they will state that the experience of beauty is due to a chemical reaction, such as hormones set in motion. But even
without a reductionist approach, one can find it difficult to capture it in words. It is not surprising therefore that “when one reflects on the beautiful, one is stopped as by a wall.” Weil therefore sternly states in her notebooks that “Everything that has been written on this is miserably and obviously insufficient, for this study needs to start with God,” for the simple reason that beauty is God. By taking Him out of the equation, one ends up doing injustice to it.

Beauty is “a reflection of the supernatural in the natural,” which doesn’t mean it exists disassociated from us (Prechristian Intuitions). For it occurs as a relationship between our senses and this world. It is meant to be enjoyed by human beings and even by all rational beings in the universe to whose sensory perception it is geared, is Weil’s claim. But beauty is real and of its own kind (sui generis). It cannot be explained by anything else but itself and is its own criterion.

Beauty as Sacrament

Yet beauty has an incomparable role to play. Weil even compares it to a sacrament, since it unites God and human beings. Without beauty, therefore, human beings would be lost. Those who have never experienced beauty “could perhaps reach God by no other means.”

Though there are a number of openings to the supernatural, “the beauty of the world is almost the only way through which one can let God penetrate” people’s lives in the West, as she writes in “Implicit Forms of the Love of God.” Yet, “the white race has almost lost its sensitivity towards the beauty of the world.” If it was bad in Weil’s day, one wonders what she would say
today.

But this sense of beauty, “even if mutilated, deformed, and sullied, remains indestructibly in the heart of man as a powerful motive.” If rendered “authentic and pure, it would transport in one fell swoop secular life at the feet of God” and make a “complete incarnation of faith” possible.

However, this isn’t easy, for it means abstaining from using beauty for one’s own gratification. Therefore, “only those can be saved,” she states in her notebooks, “that something compels to stop when they would like to approach that which they love, those in whom the sense of beauty has put contemplation.” This detachment is motivated by beauty itself, by the
realization that beauty is fragile, at least in this world, and can be destroyed and debauched. It implies a renunciation of one’s selfishness or a “decreation,” as Weil calls it, that comes down to a painful death to self.

Beauty and the Liturgy as Metaxu

Beauty is one of the metaxu, the bridges or “holes” in the fabric of our artificially secularized world, that lead to the supernatural. The supernatural is obviously not the demonic, but is “that other reality,” namely the absolute good which turns out to be the triune God, Love
itself.

It has its own laws that can be drawn up and are just as certain, if not more, than scientific laws. If someone directs all his attention and love towards the absolute good, then he will eventually perceive it; it will “descend upon him” and shine “through him upon all that surrounds him.” However, this will not happen primarily through perception or reason (though these can confirm it) but through the heart, of which Pascal already said that it “has its reasons which reason does not know.”

Another manner to get to “touch the supernatural,” another metaxu, is through the liturgy. In a time where people have lost their roots, the liturgy is key to give them back these roots, as Weil states in “Le christianisme et la vie des champs.” In “Human Personality,” she compares the human person to a tree that has roots both in the sky (the supernatural) and in the earth (their culture, traditions, and history) that have so often been lost through industrialization and secularization. The supernatural is often accessed through those cultural roots: through customs, art, literature, architecture. But when these have disappeared, been disfigured, or remain
inaccessible, then the supernatural in the form of the liturgy becomes even more essential in helping people grow these roots again (though Weil mainly thinks of farmers in “Le christianisme,” it is applicable to all).

Conclusion

The cult of ugliness seems to reign everywhere. Unfortunately, beauty has often even been removed from our churches and our liturgy. But the beauty in the liturgy is essential, as Weil is implicitly saying, in drawing people back from the secularized and uglified universe they live in, giving them roots to grow and the capacity to understand what life is truly about – not a comfort-zone that tends to our desires and need for distraction, but a heroic choice between good and evil, for God or against Him.

 © Marie Cabaud Meaney

1. All quotes in this section were from Weil’s fourth letter to Perrin that is to be found in Waiting for God.

For more elements regarding Simone Weil’s thoughts on the supernatural, see my analysis in: https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/spaziofilosofico/article/view/9964

For Weil’s thoughts on beauty, see my chapter in the forthcoming volume: Amazon.com: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Simone Weil (Bloomsbury Handbooks): 9781350341623: McCullough, Lissa (Editor)

We read that the New York Archdiocese (in a message from the vicar general, Msgr. Joseph P. LaMorte) )has advised that “there is no need for” altar rails when “restoring places of worship.”.

Archdiocese of New York dismisses increased requests for altar rails, claims ‘no need’ for them.LifeSiteNews (1/7/2025)

Some pastors have been inquiring about reinstalling an altar rail. According to current directives there is no need for it. The General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM) specifies that the normal posture for the reception of communion is standing. To install an altar rail would be to suggest a posture other than the GIRM’s stated norm. 1)

Now only last month Cardinal Cupich of Chicago had stated his displeasure at the faithful kneeling when receiving communion. His argumentation, insofar as he relies on authority at all, resembles that of Msgr. LaMorte. I would be surprised if these developments are unrelated.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credenda, The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (12/13/2024)

 What Cardinal Cupich and Msgr. LaMorte don’t bother to mention is that the GIRM specifically provides for kneeling at Communion. Furthermore, in the United States, the bishops had tried to make standing mandatory – this was changed at Vatican insistence in 2004 (Redemptionis Sacramentum). A position paper of the New York Archdiocese (On Receiving  Holy Communion), upon which Msgr. LaMorte relies for authority does mention the relevant provision of Redemptionis Sacramentum but gives a distorted presentation of the history and current legal status of the issue which exclusively favors standing. (Moreover, it also denies to kneeling and reception of communion on the tongue any special Eucharistic reverence). 2)

Of course, the original (and current) purpose of the altar rail is to mark off the sanctuary or chancel from the nave. It is the descendant of the medieval rood screen or the Eastern iconostasis. It does not primarily derive from the mode of receiving communion. The topic of the altar rail, involving separate ideological issues and ignorance as to what the Vatican Council and the Church actually decreed,  is a separate subject altogether. 

In the Archdiocese of New York itself, as recently as 1998,  a new church (St. Agnes) was built featuring an altar rail. However, as I wrote in 2011:

(C)an the “language” of Catholic traditional art indeed express the modernistic, non-traditional and ever-changing nature of the new liturgy? To point out just one example, by setting up a communion rail, the builders of the new St. Agnes intended to memorialize the return of the traditional mode of receiving communion – kneeling and on the tongue – to the Novus Ordo liturgy. Yet not too many years after the completion of this church, the US bishops tried to mandate receiving communion standing as obligatory in the Novus Ordo. 3)

If I were in a Novus Ordo parish yet desperately seeking to preserve traditional practices of piety, I would be worried. For it seems that some hierarchs would welcome revisiting and overturning  the compromise regarding the posture when receiving communion established in 2004. Cardinal Cupich, after all, has also effectively banned celebrations ad orientem in the novus ordo, which seems to contradict the liturgical books (if not the liturgical practice).4)  And this time there would be no resistance from the Vatican, for Cardinal Cupich enjoys the best of relations with the bishop of Rome. The war of Pope Francis and the progressive establishment against Catholic Tradition is by no means limited to the Traditional Mass!

Yet nevertheless the struggle goes on. As Msgr. LaMorte notes:

No one is sure where the impetus for this (altar rails– SC) is originating, but it seems to be picking up a bit of  steam. 5)

Could it be originating from man’s innate sense for beauty, truth and reverence? A sense that keeps breaking through and making itself felt despite all the official ideologies and attempts at manipulation. Just last year at the church of Corpus Christi in Manhattan, the tabernacle was restored to its old place of honor in the center of the sanctuary – supposedly at the express direction of Cardinal Dolan.  Yet the bulletin of this same parish had published earlier a statement – again by Cardinal Cupich – summarizing ideological reasons why the tabernacle shouldn’t be placed in a central position in a church! 6) The endless ideological conflict that defines the post-Conciliar church continues. Catholic Traditionalists, however,  long ago concluded there is a better way….

1.  Combined Mailing, Archdiocese of New York (December 2024). This entire publication, apparently intended for priests and religious of the archdiocese, is most interesting in its tone and subject matter.
2. Archdiocese of New York, On Receiving Holy Communion.
3. The Churches of New York VII: the Reform of the Reform, The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (4/13/2011)
4. Msgr. LaMorte recently assumed the duties of pastor at Holy Family parish in New York City. Under the prior pastor, Fr. Gerald Murray,  the Novus Ordo service was celebrated ad orientem. I recently observed that the parish is now back to the “mainstream.”
5. See footnote 1 supra.
6. A Visit to Columbia, The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (11/16/2023) (all links accesssed 1/10/2025)

We have observed an increasing attraction of Eastern Orthodoxy for “conservative” Catholic spokesmen dismayed by the post-Conciliar drift in the Western Church. This blog has commented on the cases of Alessandro Gnocchi, Rod Dreher,  and Michael Warren Davis. That list, moreover, is not exhaustive. Now the New York Post takes up the topic, looking mainly at why men convert from Protestantism to Orthodoxy:

Schlott, Rikki, Young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves (12/3/2024)

Christenson, who works as a fundraiser for nonprofits, attends Saint Mary’s Orthodox Church in Falls Church, Virginia. Conversion (from Protestantism to Orthodoxy-SC) means that he now must frequently attend confession, recite prescribed prayers, and endure extreme fasting, sometimes over 40-day stretches. Weekly services are also highly ritualized and regimented, and can last up to two hours.

Christenson’s story isn’t just anecdotal. As more and more Protestant churches unfurl Pride flags and Black Lives Matter banners in front of their gates, young men are trending toward more traditional forms of worship.

 A survey of Orthodox churches around the country found that parishes saw a 78% increase in converts in 2022, compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019. And while historically men and women converted in equal numbers, vastly more men have joined the church since 2020.

Father Josiah Trenham, an Orthodox priest, attributes this to the “feminization” of Western Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant)

“The feminization of non-Orthodox forms of Christianity in America has been in high gear for decades,” Trenham explained.

He points to the fact that the vast majority of attendees at most Christian churches are female, and many services are accordingly dominated by emotional songs, swaying, uplifted hands, and eyes closed in ecstasy.

“Men are much less comfortable [in those settings], and they have voted with their feet, which is why they’re minorities in these forms of worship,” he said. “Our worship forms are very traditional and very masculine.”

Other witnesses cited in this article speak of the stability and unchanging nature of Orthodox ritual, of the beneficial challenges Orthodoxy imposes on its members and of the freedom of the Divine Liturgy from the personality of the priest/preacher. As one convert concluded:

“One might say Orthodoxy itself is more masculine, especially when compared to the more feminized forms of Christianity that exist today where the emphasis is on emotional experience, feeling good, and appealing to the self.”

Although this article deals mainly with Orthodoxy as an alternative to Protestantism, do I need to point out the similarity of the “Western” services described above to the Novus Ordo? Indeed, the “Synod on Synodality” and Pope Francis have committed to increase the presence of women within the Church. And did not some Orthodox churches and churches of the East (like the Copts) speak out forcefully against the errors of Pope Francis in Fiducia Supplicans when most Roman Catholic bishops (outside of Africa) were silent or even supportive of the Vatican?

These are all valid points. Those tempted to explore this path, however, should be aware that there is much more involved in such a conversion than what is described above. For a dominent tendency of Eastern Orthodoxy today posits an unbridgeable theological gulf existing between the churches of the “West” and “East.” According to this line of thought, the abyss dates back at least to the 4th century. This position is reflected in the conversion process. A convert to Orthodoxy from Catholicism will be required to expressly abjure the entire Western (Roman) Church: all its saints, liturgy, history, philosophy, art and literature.1) I doubt many Catholic traditionalists are ready to take such a step or to adopt such preposterous notions of ecclesiastical history. After all, have the traditionalists not made, often at great personal cost, a commitment to cultivate and defend these very things?

Certainly, I am not claiming that everybody in the Orthodox world has such exclusivist views. But I am afraid their prevalence makes it unlikely that Orthodoxy can be the answer to the spiritual crisis in the West anytime soon.

1. See the book referenced above by Alessandro Gnocchi. Michael Warren Davis also posted this year on his substack a testimonial setting forth the reasons for his conversion to Orthodoxy, which was endorsed by Rod Dreher. It no longer seems to be available online. (checked 12/3/2024)

Dimes Square is back in the news! This emerging outpost of bohemianism – yet with a traditionalist Catholic  flavor –  is the subject of a recent article in The Christian Science Monitor. 1) “Dimes Square” is a downtown area bordering Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The author of this piece, Leonardo Bevilacqua, describes this scene and some of its main personalities:

The Dimes Square scene began to include a number of artists with more conservative and religious visions. Writers, filmmakers, and fashion designers have been dabbling in pre-Vatican II Catholicism. They play the church organ rather than DJ at nightclubs. Instead of free love and polyamory, they espouse commitment and monogamy. And the flip phone is a favorite accessory – a statement against the herd and its iPhones. 2)

The nonconformists of Dimes Square are distancing themselves not just from the “establishment” but from the “official” counterculture, symbolized by “Brooklyn”: 

“I certainly don’t need to tell you that this place is also, emphatically, not in Brooklyn,” wrote the leftist Substack blogger Mike Crumplar in 2022, with a bit of snark. “You already know how Brooklyn is too political, too woke, too soft, too soy, too consumed by cancel culture…. 3)

And one focus of this movement is the traditional Mass:

“Leftists see greatness, and they see beauty, and they’re threatened by it, and they want to destroy it,” says Salomé, who says the Tridentine Mass is “the greatest work of art” for its superior musical composition. 4)

But is this link between “bohemianism” and Catholic tradition all that strange? Hadn’t Joris-Karl Huysmans established the connection as long ago as the 1880’s? A link that was maintained by a long succession of writers and thinkers in France and elsewhere.  

Inevitably, the renewed interest in Catholicism among the downtown bohemians is decidedly for traditional Catholicism. For is not the present Catholic Church establishment itself the incarnation of “bourgeois” conformism and philistinism? Didn’t Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose countercultural and anti-establishment credentials are impeccable, describe the mission of the Catholic Church, confronted (and subjugated)by the “modern world” and its ideology, in the following stark terms? 

Maybe the end of the Church has already been sealed by the “treason” of millions and millions of the faithful (particularly the peasants who have converted to secularism and consumerist hedonism). Maybe the end has been sealed by the “decision” of the rulers who are meanwhile certain of getting in their clutches the ex-believers – given the affluent conditions and an ideology that has been imposed on the masses. An ideology, moreover, that does not even feel it to be necessary any more to act as such. That may be. But one thing is sure: the Church has certainly committed many awful mistakes in the long history of its regime, but she would commit the worst of all if she passively stood by while she was liquidated by a power that mocks the Gospel. In the context of a radical, possibly utopian or – here one really has to say it- eschatological perspective, it’s clear what the Church has to do to avoid an inglorious end. She has to go into opposition. 5)

Now Salomé, quoted above in the Christian Science Monitor article, plays the organ at Most Holy Redeemer Church, the grand building that until 2019 was the center of the Redemptorist Order in New York City.  The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny was instrumental in returning Catholic tradition to Most Holy Redeemer after many decades. Such as by sponsoring Solemn vespers with Bishop Athanasius Schneider in 2013. Or subsequently,  Solemn Masses on St. Nicholas’s feast day (2019) (with a visit from Krampus!) and Epiphany (2020) 6)

I wrote the following in 2023 on the occasion of a splendid concert of the music of William Byrd:

Since 2011 we at St. Hugh of Cluny have often covered events at the grand Church of Most Holy Redeemer, formerly Redemptorist, formerly German. Indeed, this Society has sponsored some of them. Today a young priest of the archdiocese leads this parish in the midst of what some might consider one of the city’s more inhospitable surroundings – half party land, half “underprivileged” neighborhood. Yet, under Fr. Sean Connolly, the church looks better than ever before, and the parish is sponsoring an ambitious program of musical performances. 7)

For within the limits of Traditionis Custodes, Most Holy Redeemer parish after 2020 celebrated the TLM on a regular basis. A brief search of this site will demonstrate that.  And repairs were made on the building itself after decades of neglect – most recently the tower was restored. The tower now has a functioning clock, carillon and lights (the color of which can be changed for the liturgical season). 8) Thus, this parish had entered a period of restoration – in the liturgy, in the restored splendor of the building, in the attention paid to musical excellence. 

Now the young pastor of Most Holy Redeemer has been transferred to bigger, if not better, things in the Bronx.  The pastor of Immaculate Conception parish has been appointed the administrator of Most Holy Redeemer and St. Brigid. He is also now the administrator of Most Precious Blood shrine/church in Little Italy. And this territory includes that of three other parishes that have been completely erased since 2010: St. Emeric, Nativity and Mary Help of Christians. That is a lot to cover! 9)

Will the renewed stirrings of the traditional faith at Most Holy Redeemer and ”Dimes Square” continue to develop? Some are wondering:

However, it’s unclear whether (the pastor of Immaculate Conception – SC)will continue traditional Latin Masses at Holy Redeemer…  10)

But I certainly hope and believe the religious and cultural momentum can be sustained. After all, shouldn’t an essential characteristic of tradition be its independence from the personalities of those who preserve and celebrate it?  In the recent past, moreover, the St. Hugh of Cluny Society has also repeatedly sponsored traditional masses at Immaculate Conception parish (and at Most Precious Blood as well). 11)  As in the past, the St. Hugh of Cluny Society is ready to offer whatever help we can give. 

(Above and below) the interior of Most Holy Redeemer church one recent afternoon. (Photo 8/22/2024). Surrounding the church are still, for the time being at least, the buildings of the former Redemptorist center.

1. Bevilacqua, Leonardo, “Rebels with a religious cause: Meet New York’s avant-garde conservatives,” The Christian Science Monitor ( 6/24/2024) (accessed 8/27/2024). I have to confess I had no idea The Christian Science Monitor was still in existence – if nowadays primarily online.
2. Id.
3. Id. 
4. Id.
5. Quoted in Lorenzer, Alfred, Das Konzil der Buchhalter at 180 (Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main, 1981). Lorenzer’s work is a vehement attack on the liturgy and culture of the Second Vatican Council from a non-religious perspective. See my review “The Council of the Bookkeepers”(1/26/2017)
6.  The Society of St. Hugh Of Cluny,   Vespers at the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, New York (1/13/2013); Solemn Mass of St Nicholas at Most Holy Redeemer Church,  (12/6/2019);  Epiphany Solemn Mass at Most Holy Redeemer Church (1/7/2020).
7.  The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny,  Byrd Fest,  (9/17/2023)
8.  Joy, Stacie, “Purple reign: Marking Holy Week at Most Holy Redeemer, ” East Village Grieve (3/24/2024) (accessed 8/29/2024) (with links to earlier posts describing and illustrating the restoration process)
9.  Joy, Stacie, “Father Seán is leaving the East Village,” East Village Grieve(6/17/2024) (accesssed 8/29/2024)
10. Reinholz, Mary, “Rev. Sean Connolly’s transfer from Most Holy Redeemer leaves ‘a void,’” The Village Sun (8/5/2024) ( This piece, while enthusiastic, contains a number of factual errors) (accessed 8/29/2024)
11. E.g., The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny,  “High Mass at the new Chapel of Immaculate Conception parish,”  (2/1/2015)

I recently heard that erstwhile Catholic writer Michael Warren Davis has joined the Orthodox Church. Now over the years I have had to take issue with articles by Davis that touched on Catholic traditionalism. I disputed Davis’s self-identification as a reactionary, even a “trad.”   For in these writings Davis took aim at Catholics of the past and present ( Triumph magazine, Joe Sobran, ordinary traditionalists in the pews) while displaying great understanding for secular and ecclesiastical  establishments (National Review, Archbishop Gregory,  Pope Francis).  1)

I also had a mixed reaction to Davis’s very latest article, a review of a book on the Jesuits.   Davis there takes some clever shots at the Jesuit order and the current papal regime. Yet he leads off with a serious misinterpretation of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and his review features several startling errors (the latter,  of course, not necessarily Davis’s fault). A more substantial problem for the reader is the difficulty of separating Davis’s own views from those of the author of the book being reviewed. 2)

On YouTube Davis is now claiming he came to Catholicism from “theistic Luciferian Satanism.” And after Latin Rite Catholicism. he seems to have joined briefly the Melkite Catholic community before finally turning to Orthodoxy. Obviously, Davis is a man who unfortunately has experienced significant vicissitudes in his spiritual life. I hope he can find a degree of peace in Orthodoxy. On YouTube he does read a statement which makes a presentation of Orthodoxy more positive than those of some other Orthodox converts from Catholicism. 3)

Of course, Orthodoxy is not without its own issues. Certain representatives of major Orthodox churches in the United States, for example,  want to import into Orthodoxy features of Vatican II Catholicism and even of modern secular society. Outside the United States,  political issues wrack the Orthodoxy world(e.g., the ongoing ecclesiastical conflict in Ukraine).  Davis, however, seems to be well aware of those problems.4)

Is the conversion of Davis not another example of the crackup of conservative Catholicism? For despite his “trad” pretensions,  Davis really represented the conservative tendency within Catholicism: advocating aspects of traditional Catholic morality, faith and liturgy while simultaneously showing reverence for the hierarchy and the papacy. Under the current pope,  this balancing act became increasingly unsustainable. As the old song goes: ”Something’s got to give.”   

Undoubtedly,  many more Catholics are considering the step Michael Warren Davis has now taken.   The “fault” for this, however,  resides squarely with the pope, the Catholic hierarchy and the clergy. It is their outrageous and scandalous conduct that motivates some faithful to seek in Orthodoxy respect for Christian tradition, a reverent and beautiful liturgy and, above all, a focus on the spiritual, on the union of the individual and the community with God.  The Eastern Orthodox Church, which Davis has joined,  is not necessarily the answer  – much more should be said on this subject, pro and con. Orthodoxy will always remain an attraction for a minority. Yet,  at some point, on some issue and in some way we all may be forced to decide between loyalty to the clerical establishment or to the truth. And it is the leadership of Roman Catholic Church which has created such a situation  – making distinctly possible for everyone a previously unimaginable choice.

1. See, in sthughofcluny.org, , “Sobranistas without Sobran” (2/21/18); Sediziose Voci (6/14/21): Papal without a Pope: Recent Manifestations of Conservative Catholicism (10/21/22).
2. Davis, Michael Warren, “Jesuit Plots” at 55 The American Conservative (July/August 2024).
3. Barrel Aged Faith,  “Satanist to Orthodox Christian” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFnYUkfgSmk (accessed 7/12/2024);“Why this Catholic Writer became Orthodox” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6jdGZH1HRQ (accessed 7/12/2024). For a book by another convert to the Eastern Church see “Orthodoxy?” at sthughofcluny.org (2/28/23)
4. Davis, Michael Warren, “The CIA’s Man in Constantinople” (The American Conservative, 4/23/24).

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend services several times at the Church of Saint-Eugène, Paris. This is a diocesan parish. Here the Traditional Mass is celebrated and a splendid musical culture is cultivated led by several noteworthy musicians. The Traditional Sunday Mass (the main Mass of the day) was thronged by an overflowing congregation of all ages – a rarity in France! The music, although in a style somewhat unfamilar to me, was of course most impressive. The Novus Ordo is also celebrated but in a manner extremely traditional. Even the parish bulletin grappled fearlessly with major issues of the day.

It was here that the late Nicholas Krasno – a long-standing member of this Society – sang in the schola. Indeed, it was the opportunity, after Summorum Pontificum, to attend and sing in such a church that inspired him to join the Roman Catholic Church. For it was after Summorum Pontificum that a Catholic could, at least in some places, regularly experience the fullness of the traditional liturgy in ceremony and music.

And perhaps for Nicholas Krasno there were additional factors that explained his attachment to this church. For does not Saint-Eugène in several respects resemble Krasno’s former beloved Anglican parish of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City? Both are 19th century recreations of the style of the high French Gothic. Both used innovative construction methods, the earlier Saint-Eugène was built around an iron framework, while Saint Mary the Virgin was the first steel-framed church.

(St. Mary the Virgin) is in fact the earliest ecclesiastical use of constructional steel – a technique that had been first tried for office buildings in Chicago only 4 years previous. 1)

Both churches feature beautiful windows and decoration. In both the musical culture was fostered:

The musical program of St. Mary’s expressed an unabashed preference for works of the great musicians of the Roman Church: favorite composers included Beethoven,Haydn and Weber, and most of the French romantic school – Gounod, Franck. Faure and Guilmant. 2)

And both were despised by modernist taste – only to experience a reassessment in more recent years.

1. Krasno, Nicholas, A Guide to the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City at 17( 2nd edition revised, New York, 1999). The architects, Napoleon and Pierre Le Brun, were Roman Catholic. For Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile#History.

2. Krasno, op. cit. at 63- 65. Of course, in the Roman Catholic Church these works later fell victim (in the US) to the strictures of Pius X.

Sacred Heart Cultural Center in Augusta, Georgia, was the Jesuit church of the Sacred Heart, built between 1898 and !900. It formerly was a center of Catholic faith, life and education in what was once a not-very-Catholic part of the United States. The church was closed and abandoned in 1971. For years the buildings lay vacant and were repeatedly vandalized. In 1987 the buildings were purchased and reopened as the Sacred Heart Cultural Center. Over the years, great efforts have been made to restore the bulding and windows. It now functions as a cultural center and as an “event venue,” especially for weddings.

(Above and Below) Sacred Heart. The very elaborate exterior brickwork reminds me of a somewhat earlier (1880’s) church in New York City, Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Hell’s Kitchen.

The church – now the “Great Hall” – is grandly dimensioned. It has been nicely restored and painted , except for the communion rail, visible in old photographs – but that may have already disappeared before 1971.

The pulpit with its sounding board or tester. The original pulpit in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, had a similar feature.

The Center is particularly proud of the stained glass windows, most of which were creations of the firm of Mayer, Munich. The windows were installed at the time of the building of the church or shortly thereafter. Mayer provided windows to inumerable Catholic churches in the United States especially from the 1890’s to World War I. Indeed, Mosy Holy Trinity, the (still functioning) Catholic parish in downtown Augusta, also has a set of Mayer windows which it is currently restoring. The design of the windows of Sacred Heart closely resembles that of certain windows that can be found in, for example, Holy Innocents parish (installed twenty-five years or more after completion of the church), or Holy Name of Jesus parish (both New York City). The artists of the Mayer windows, however, while often relying on a common repertoire of designs or patterns, seem to have taken care to vary the details for each commission.

When the Jesuits left Sacred Heart in 1971 all this was left behind – good riddance, they undoubtedly thought. Nowadays, as church after church is closed in New York City and elsewhere, the windows, altars, stations of the cross, etc. are usually salvaged for disposition to other churches seeking to upgrade their modernistic buildings. The parish of St. Theresa, not too far from Augusta, is a very good example of this recycling.

In the former baptistery a small museum of Catholicism has been set up. It explains to visitors what once was done within these walls. Similar Catholic museums exist in Victoria, British Columbia and in Zurich. The materials published by the Sacred Heart Center that I have seen do treat the practices of those who used to worship here with respect.

(Above) This is a sanctuary lamp. (Below) The final sign for Sacred Heart Church. Note it is “post-conciliar” ( A Vigil Mass on Saturday is scheduled).

We applaud the Sacred Heart Center for the care and respect they have shown to this church, abandoned by its original spiritual leaders and congregation. It’s impressive to encounter this degree of appreciation for these old Catholic churches, which are still scorned by the clergy, at least in the Northeast. Yet we weep to see the art of the Catholic faith turned from its purpose and treated as a relic of some distant past. In this respect, the secular management of this Center is completely aligned with, for example, the New York Archdiocese, which has often described its architectural heritage as “museums.” Finally, we firmly hope that a recovering Traditionalism, made stronger through persecution, will continue as part of its mission the revitalizaion of the splended Catholic churches of the past. For after all, as Proust wrote of the French cathedrals, these grand old buildings were created for one purpose: the celebration of the Traditional Mass.

By George A. Kendall

(“The liturgy from Hell,” Chronicles Magazine, 38-40 (February 2024))

George A. Kendall settles accounts with the Novus Ordo regime in a blazing article – and suggests a path going forward. It’s a forceful response to the increasingly rabid attacks on traditionalists in Catholic media in Europe and the United States. 1)

The Chronicles editor comments:

George Kendall tells us that for much of his life he has been a conservative Novus Ordo Catholic but says traditionalist arguments have recently convinced him.  He writes: “I am deeply indebted to Peter Kwasniewski…..for helping me to clarify my thinking on the Church’s need to restore her ancient liturgy.”

I would add that George Kendall wrote regularly for The Wanderer. For those of us familiar with that publication in the past (I don’t think I have read it since the mid 1990’s) Kendall’s change of position is almost unimaginable. For The Wanderer, one of the original “Conservative Catholic” publications, used to define itself by opposition to Catholic traditionalism and uncritical exaltation of the papacy.  Not that it did them any good, in my experience, in their relationship with most of the clergy!

Let me give you some excerpts from Kendall’s article.

53 years ago, in 1969, a terrible act of vandalism was committed against the Catholic Church, an assault, not only on the Catholic faithful but on the very heart of the Church, the Eucharist, hence an attack on Christ himself. That crime consisted in the scrapping, on orders from the pope, of the Traditional Latin Mass, not only getting rid of the Latin language but butchering many of the texts of the liturgy, carving it up into a liturgy different in kind from the traditional one. 

…..

Then, in July 2021, Pope Francis issued his infamous document on the liturgy, titled Traditionis Custodes (“Guardians of Tradition”), which was, in fact, a wholesale attack on tradition. The new document takes away the hope of correcting Pope Paul’s mistake ( the Novus Ordo- SC),  seeking to suppress the old Mass by regulating it to death, contradicting Summorum Pontificum which stated that no one in the Church had the authority to do such a thing.

….

Kendall squarely addresses the question of authority:

Does anyone have the authority to do what Pope Francis has tried to do in Traditionis Custodes?…..  I find it hard to imagine that the Holy Spirit guided the development and continuation of the Latin Mass for so many centuries, then suddenly decided to make a U-turn, guiding the Church to adopt a wholly different and incompatible liturgy. The Traditional Latin Mass has the authority of the Holy Spirit behind it. The Novus Ordo does not. Just as clearly, neither the Novus Ordo itself nor Traditionis Custodes has legitimate authority behind it, and we are not obliged in conscience to obey either.

…..

The strategy of the Catholic faithful should be to forget about Vatican politics and to work at the local level (the diocese and the parish) to establish as many Latin mass communities as possible. Ideally they should exist under the authority of the local Bishop, where that is possible. Where it is not, we’ll have to go underground, operating in secrecy,  perhaps celebrating the mass at one another’s homes, using canceled priests. ….

Kendall recognizes that this goes against authority but:

When the Pope or Bishop tells us we must comply with Traditionis Custodes, which is an attack on Christ and on his Church, we can and must disobey.

…

Kendall sees two advantages to this course of action:

First, as the number of Latin mass communities grows throughout the world, the number of Latin Mass Catholics in the world will increase. 

Second, the number of Novus Ordo Catholics will continue to decline, as it has for the last 50 year. Novus Ordo Catholics have a problem reproducing themselves because they typically have small families, while traditional Catholics who still adhere to the prohibition against birth control affirmed in Paul VI’s  encyclical Humanae Vitae have bigger families. This is also because the children of Novus Ordo Catholics tend to abandon the faith.  I am constantly meeting young people who tell me they were brought up Novus Ordo Catholic but “don’t go anymore.” 

……

Kendall’s article is eloquent witness to the unheard-of stress on the Church created by the Francis papacy.

ADDENDUM: In another article in the same issue of Chronicles, Anthony Esolen has this to say:

But even if all the traditionalists were kindly and reserved, and even after they have amassed all the historical evidence for their liturgical claims and argued cogently about both the beauty and the spiritual effectiveness of the Tridentine rite – and I speak here as someone who does not attend that rite – it would not matter. They are opposed not because the rite in question is ugly but because it is beautiful, and the opponents sense it. They are opposed not because they are all hypocrites when they kneel but because most of them are not hypocrites; they are opposed not because they pretend to believe but because they believe too ardently. They’re the last people a priest whose faith has shriveled up wants to be near.

Esolen, Anthony, “Culture War, whether we like it or not,” at 17 (Chronicles Magazine, February 2024)

1. We will address some of these attacks in subsequent posts.

The “Declaration” Fiducia Supplicans authorizes “ordained ministers” to give blessings to couples in “irregular situations” and same-sex couples. By issuing Fiducia Supplicans Pope Francis returns directly to the project of transforming Church teaching on issues touching on sexual morality – a mission set aside temporarily in 2021 in favor of the war against liturgical traditionalism. But over the last two years these questions continued to be agitated, with the Pope’s approval, by the Synodal Path in Germany, hierarchies and individual bishops in Western Europe and finally by the Synod on Synodality worldwide. Fiducia Supplicans (“FS”) rivals Amoris Laetitia and Traditionis Custodes as Pope Francis’s most radical act.

The ”Presentation” to FS reveals the fundamental assumptions underlying the document. First, FS confirms Pope Francis as the source of Catholic teaching on morality, in line with the extreme understanding of papal power that had emerged by the time of Pius XII. FS is based on Francis’s “pastoral vision”; his statements are a “decisive element” for the work on this document – the curia is, after all “primarily an instrument at the service of the successor of Peter.” 20 of the 31 footnotes reference documents of Francis. Of the rest, the oldest reference is to the 1985 edition of Pope Paul VI’s “Divine office.” So, the entire history of Catholic tradition and magisterium on these issues is ignored, along with the directly relevant passages of Scripture. 

Second, the Presentation to FS, as well as the text, presents a “modernist” celebration of progress, creativity, spontaneity, evolution, expansion, and development. FS offers a “specific and innovative contribution,”  “permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings.”  FS “implies a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church.” All this, while claiming to remain firm on what it calls the “traditional doctrine” of the Church regarding marriage.  

Indeed,  in this choice of words, can we not detect a distancing from the doctrine and discipline of marriage with their “fixed nature,” which FS claims to preserve intact? Is there not a sense that the “informal” “non-liturgical blessings” it introduces may be superior to merely liturgical provisions? For do not informal blessings “inhabit a realm of greater spontaneity and freedom” compared to the “impoverishment” produced by “ritualization?” This is entirely in line with the previous statements of Pope Francis, and for that matter the philosophy of the post-conciliar liturgy, with its love of freedom from “rigid” rules and spontaneity. 

FS claims to do all this by invoking the magic word “pastoral.”  By qualifying its provisions as pastoral,  FS claims to be able to avoid any discussion of the traditional understanding of marriage or of the liturgy. “The Church, moreover, must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to ‘a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism.’” But isn’t this radical distinction between the pastoral, on the one hand, and doctrine or discipline, on the other, unsustainable? Because the “praxis” – the “doing” – and doctrine and Church law must be in harmony. Didn’t Christ call the divergence of practice from the precepts of God’s law “hypocrisy?“

For, in substance, the praxis advocated by FS directly contradicts the consistent prior teaching of the Church. Regarding same sex-couples,  did not the immediate predecessor to Cardinal Victor Fernandez, the author of FS, explicitly reject the possibility of such blessings as recently as 2021? Does not the giving of blessings to couples as couples endorse their relationship as free from moral censure? Certainly, a reading of FS using the ordinary sense of the words would lead one to think so.  Picking up an argument from Amoris Laetitia, FS quotes:  “Pastoral charity requires us not to treat simply as ‘sinners’ those whose guilt or responsibility may be attenuated by various factors affecting subjective imputability.” Thus, in the situation of the “irregular relationships” treated by FS there really is no “objectively immoral” situations that can be discerned the ordained minister. Moreover, “Pope Francis proposed a description of this kind of blessing that is offered to all without requiring anything.” Thus, the couples in irregular relationships do not have to repent, let alone change their lifestyle. 

Similarly, FS emphasizes the ”non-liturgical” nature of the blessings it introduces as a key to distinguish such blessing from the sacrament of matrimony. According to FS, a non-liturgical blessing – aside from its other claimed advantages cited above – is free from any association with the liturgical blessings associated with matrimony. But this reasoning is totally specious. For FS in fact spells out a set of ritual or “semi-liturgical” rules of its own. The “spontaneous” blessings in FS are public acts with the participation of an “ordained minister.” 

“This is a blessing that, although not included in any liturgical rite, unites intercessory prayer with the invocation of God’s help by those who humbly turn to him.”

 “These non-ritualized blessings (should) never cease being simple gestures.”

“In a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely.”

“Such a blessing may instead find its place in other contexts, such as a visit to a shrine, a meeting with a priest, a prayer recited in a group, or during a pilgrimage.”

FS further states it would be wrong to “expect the same moral conditions for receiving a simple blessing that are called for in the reception of the sacraments,” yet Pope Francis himself insisted in Amoris Laetitia that the Sacrament of the Eucharist could indeed be received in spite of the recipient’s lack of “perfection.”  Thus, the Pope himself has blurred this allegedly significant distinction between “simple” blessings and sacraments. 

By reiterating the need to avoid “scandal,” FS itself confirms that it will inevitably be the occasion of such scandals. For FS was issued in a specific historical context. Regarding same-sex marriages, for years massive agitation for the rights within the Church of same-sex couples has been taking place in the secular media. And the overwhelming majority of Catholics – including, I understand, of the bishops as well  – get their information on the Church from the secular media.  The whole world knows by now that the German Synodal Path has been fighting for same sex marriages or blessings. Various bishops and bishops’ conferences in Europe have implemented rituals for such blessings. So, almost everyone, within and outside of the Church, understands that FS as a total reversal of the Church’s position in response to these pressures. I understand that President Biden, for example, has welcomed FS.

What will be the consequences of FS? In Europe the forces advocating for the relaxation or the abolition of the church’s rules on sexual morality are celebrating. They will now move on to the next issue: married priests, women priests and deacons, lay participation in the election of bishops, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, etc. As to the rituals for same sex marriages they already have in place,  FS will undoubtedly incentivize the European bishops not only to retain them but to expand their use. Regardless of FS’s supposed restrictions on “rituals” similar to marriage, why should they back down now after such a great triumph?

The reaction of other bishops’ conferences (like that of the US) has been much more restrained, even cold – they have seized on the language in FS to assert that nothing has happened and thus avoid the issue. Of course, that was the intent of the casuistry of FS in the first place! The big news is that several episcopal conferences outside of Western Europe and the United States have publicly distanced themselves from FS. Thus, we may be seeing the beginning of an “Anglican” situation developing in the Catholic Church, where the believers on the outskirts of the Church adhere to the principles they have been taught( or nurtured under persecution), while the unbelieving leadership of the Church in Western Europe, the United States and much of Latin America pursues further accommodation with the world.

As for the clergy, I fear that what is set out in FS as a possibility will soon be compulsory. In Western Europe, episcopal conferences and individual diocese have already issued rituals for the marriages of same sex couples. There have already been statements of European bishops  that no priest can refuse to give the blessings authorized by FS. The conflict of conscience for those who cannot accept FS will be immediate and drastic. In the US, however, I anticipate the following scenario developing very shortly. Couples in “irregular” situations or same-sex couples will seek out priests who they know would be reluctant to give such blessings –  for example, at parishes that still celebrate the traditional mass, priests of the Ecclesia Dei institutes or of Opus Dei etc. – and present themselves for a blessing. If this is refused they will immediately turn to the New York Times, the Vatican or the just the local bishop. In both Europe and the United States, assuming Francis remains in office, a new persecution similar to that of the traditionalists under Traditionis Custodes but even broader in scope may arise. 

For the laity the long-term results will be disastrous. Just like the progressives, they will assume that in the case of restrictions on actual conduct imposed by the Church, every conflict between the Church and the secular world will ultimately be resolved by capitulation by the Church.  This will affect not just contributions but every aspect of Catholic life. The level of compliance with Church’s moral teachings will sink yet further. And how could a man commit to the diocesan priesthood in the knowledge that, based on the evidence of FS, he not only will have to follow its rules, but the priesthood itself might well be radically changed? Thus, depending on how long Francis lives (and the nature of his successor) a truly horrific scenario of conflict will materialize. This possibility alone should motivate the bishops to take a more forceful stance.