Communion: Finding my Way back to Faith

by JD Vance

(Harper, New York, 2026)

288 pp.

In Communion Vice President JD Vance gives us an account of his spiritual journey from evangelical Protestantism to atheism to Catholicism. He tells us that this book was largely written by 2019. As we shall see, there is evidence for that. However, it has been updated for intervening events and, more importantly, the position of the author has radically changed. In 2019 he was a successful writer just embarking on a political career in his native state of Ohio. Today he is the vice president of the United States, with a real possibility of securing the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2028. I would thus expect that before publication every line of Communion would have been examined from that perspective.  The very fact of writing an autobiographical book in such a political context precludes an incisive, critical narrative of the author’s spiritual development.   

For Vance at the very least must avoid antagonizing any one of the groups that would be essential to his candidacy later. Thus, although Vance has obviously transferred his allegiance to Catholicism, he is careful to honor the evangelical community and culture from which he springs. He offers effusive praise to Pope Francis, knowing that, for the bishops as well as for many of those among the Catholic laity that still practice their faith,  devotion to the Pope is still a supreme virtue. And he favorably mentions the supposed highly religious nature of Israel. Vance must also avoid stepping on a land mine by violating one of the taboos of American pollical culture today.  For example, while praising Confederate generals, he is also compelled to mention the evil of the cause for which they fought. The result is that Communion is necessarily somewhat mild and muffled.

Having said that, I was nevertheless impressed by Communion. It seems to be an honest, modest account of Vance’s own experiences – of gradual transitions from his youthful faith to unbelief, from the ruthless economic culture of American competition back to faith and then to the Catholic Church. Some of his observations are unexpectedly profound.  And as we shall see, Vance does not shrink from making sharp criticisms of the contemporary order of society and of the world.

Vance eventually accepted the Catholic faith not as a set of certitudes and formulas but a way of living.  Nor did he come out of the conversion process with a fixed plan for solving the problems of the world in economics, society and politics. This is a refreshing break from much of what one reads on Catholic media, whether establishment, progressive or conservative. 

The author states that his initial attraction to Catholicism was prompted by intellectual reasons, specifically,  by his reading about the social teachings of the Church. (Vance seems to approach major turning points in his life, like becoming a father or adopting a new faith,  by omnivorous reading on the subject.). What attracted him about Catholic social theory was its balanced view of human nature – making room for communities and the family and rejecting both libertarian and liberal alternatives.

He later read much more and had conversations with Dominican priests.  One of these Dominican fathers pointed out to him that:

 “You don’t feel God’s presence and then change in an instant. Real grace comes through practice. That is why we demand that you live a sacramental life: going to church, taking communion, doing confession. This is a process. You don’t just accept Jesus into your heart – or get baptized –   and fix everything.”  ( p. 163)

And Vance realized:

(T)hat I had misunderstood the promise of the Christian faith. God could save your soul in an instant, but for most people, the transformation of that soul took time. And work. (p.163)

Hadn’t Gerald Manley Hopkins made the same point in 1876?

Not out of his bliss 

Springs the stress felt 

Not first from heaven (and few know this) 

Swings the stroke dealt –

 Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver

That guilt is hushed by,  hearts are flushed by and melt – 

But it rides time like riding a river

 (And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss). 1)

But Vance eventually does seem to have had an epiphany. After the birth of his son, he and his wife traveled to France. Vance, holding his infant son, entered an ancient cathedral, seemingly alone. There he was struck by the beauty of the architecture and the evening light shining through the stained-glass windows  – in a cathedral empty of faithful. But as he sat there, he grew ever more reconciled with the Church.  The cathedral, a work of great beauty, completed in a Christian age, was still standing after so many ages. God was there regardless of whether man was. Finally, although he had thought himself alone with his son, a woman appeared – an African immigrant, apparently – who had been worshipping in a side chapel. One other soul had been there with him all along! It was this experience that nudged him over the threshold to baptism. (pp.170-72) 

Later in Communion, Vance expresses similar views  in other contexts. While attending as a senator a security conference in Munich, he admired this European, originally Christian city with its beautiful monuments and human dimensions – contrasting it with the ugliness of modern cities and strip malls,  But Vance also observed at this conference the conflict of such traditional Western values with his European dialogue partners:  the class of  decadent “boomers” defending the globalist order. Of course, Vance is obliged to add a more “nuanced,” understanding depiction of the latter….

A distinctive aspect of Communion is Vance’s consistent and forceful criticism of the culture of the United States as epitomized by his experiences at Yale Law School and at a law firm. He describes well how they foster an exclusive commitment to individual economic advancement,  regardless of the alleged “humanist” values propagated by the same law school and regardless of the personal cost to those initiated into this system.  “Liberal” academia and the capitalist economy are completely integrated. Vance himself was caught up in this trap before the recognized its perils.   He repeatedly criticizes this ethos and argues instead for a culture open to the family. These thoughts distinguish Vance very much from the libertarian wing of the Republican Party – and from the actual practices of those who dominate the Democratic Party as well.

Vance regrettably has also absorbed some less attractive traits of his new co-religionists. He gushes over Pope Francis and relates an anecdote which he had already described in a 2020 article. 2) According to Vance, a conservative Catholic was engaged in criticizing Pope Francis when a wine glass sprang off a table and crashed on the floor.  Both Vance and his dialogue partner took this as a sign from above. Thus, a flight to the irrational substitutes for an attempt to rationally understand of current politics of the Vatican.  Next, Vance gives us a lengthy excursus on the crisis of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. (pp.165-170)  He quotes certain Catholic authorities to the effect that the doings of clerical child molesters are more understandable if viewed in the context of the misdeeds of the ancestors of the Lord  – or of the chosen people in general – as set out in the Old Testament. And a Dominican priest opines that the clergy  “need to do penance and build more virtuous structures of safeguarding and accountability.” I would contend that identifiable historical and theological reasons exist for the recent overwhelming scale of sexual abuse scandals in the Church. I don’t think relativizing these crimes or merely advocating bureaucratic solutions addresses the issue at all. 

Vance’s attitude towards the higher authorities of the Church is not uncritical or merely defensive. He tells of his visit to Rome in which, among other encounters, he had an interview with Cardinal Parolin in which the subject of immigration was raised.  Vance was struck by the attitude of Parolin, who seemed to reduce the entire question to one simple moral assertion. This, for a phenomenon that involves all kinds of issues – of the economy, society and national security. Of course, we have seen the same phenomenon again in the recent statements of Pope Leo on war and peace – admittedly made after extreme provocation from President Trump. These statements tended in the direction of outright pacifism. Vance, however, is simply discovering the gulf between 21^st century clerics, who are comfortable uttering platitudes for which they never will be held accountable, from those in positions of authority in government who have responsibility for the good of the commonwealth and of the whole people. The latter must take all aspects of an issue into account.

In summary, I thought Communion illustrated well issues of being both a Catholic – and a Catholic politician – today. And I appreciated that Vance, a Catholic secular politician,  was able to confront honestly major questions raised by the American economy and society. I also liked the author’s modesty in not pretending to have a set of formulas or solutions ready at hand.  In this regard, he is a welcome change from the prior  “devout” Catholic president and similar representatives of the Democratic party, who proclaim themselves Catholics while following slavishly the dictates of the secular culture. 

What the future will bring for JD Vance is of course uncertain. The actions of President Trump may be rapidly decreasing Republican electoral chances not just in 2026 but 2028 as well. Vance has become a bogeyman for the globalist European leadership. Israel too has developed a special dislike for him. Catholic clerical leadership in the Vatican and the United States(in contrast to the American Catholic population) seems much more comfortable with politicians like Joe Biden and Barack Obama (their positions on “life issues” are irrelevant to them). Moreover, even though Vance is reputed to be the front runner to be the 2028 Republican presidential candidate, he has made powerful enemies within the Republican Party as well.  The neocon faction has become his bitter enemy – both for his foreign policy positions and also the economic ideas such as those found in this book. Whether anyone can obtain the nomination of a major political party  – and be elected – in the face of such opposition I do not know. Yet I wish Vance all the best in his future endeavors  – and I hope Catholics would give his book a look!

1. Hopkins, Gerald Manley, The Wreck of the Deutschland St.6
2. I criticized Vance’s views at that time.  “A New Catholic Magazine,”  The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (7/21/2020) (discussing Issue 01 of The Lamp (Easter 2020).

Dutilliet, Abbe Henri. Little Liturgical Catechism.  With a foreword by Joris-Karl Huysmans (Os Justi Press, Lincoln NE, 2026)

A Benedictine Oblate, Lumen Christi: Defending the Use of the pre-1955 Roman Rite. With a foreword by Peter Kwasniewski (Os Justi,  2025)

The Masses of Holy Week & Tenebrae: Latin-English texts for the pre-1955 Palm Sunday, Tenebrae & Sacred Triduum (Os Justi, 2025)

Os Justi press has now published three books on the pre-1955 version of the traditional Mass. For years now, elements of the pre-55  liturgy have been widely used in Catholic traditionalist circles. It has been a true example of  “organic development!”  Nevertheless,  a great need still exists for an intellectual understanding of the pre-55 rite and also for descriptions of the rituals themselves. That is where these three volumes are most helpful. 

The first book, the Little Liturgical Catechism, originally published in 1860/1896, obviously does not deal with the differences between the pre-55 version of the Roman Rite and subsequent developments. On the one hand, at the time this book was written,  the Roman Rite of 1570 as subsequently modified still generally applied. On the other hand, many local liturgical variants could still be encountered, some unique to France,with features in some cases dating back to medieval uses. This book is a clear and well-organized guide to the various elements of the traditional rite – the Mass,  the sacraments, the ceremonies, sacred vessels and vestments. Utilizing a question-and-answer format,  it does address many curious features of the rite as to which even veteran traditionalists might be perplexed  – such as the reasons for the elaborate ceremonies at a solemn Mass involving the subdeacon and the paten. 

None other than Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote the foreword to the Little Liturgical Catechism.  In his “conversion cycle” of novels (En Route, The Cathedral and The Oblate)Huysmans considered at length liturgical and musical issues in the Roman Rite of his day – which he did not find flourishing everywhere. For example, he strongly advocated the return to chant as the normative Roman Catholic music.  I’m not sure if I agree with him, however, when in the foreword to this book he laments the supposed utter ignorance of the laity at liturgical services at that time.  That sounds like the first warning shots of developments to come.

My only reservation regarding this book is that I fear some people would take it as an absolute, comprehensive and exclusive set of rules. That could not be the case, because, as this book itself takes pains to describe, absolute uniformity did not prevail in the Roman Rite, especially in France, and there was still an abundance of local customs and rubrics.  Some of these customs remind me of the Eastern Rites, such as the distribution of blessed bread (not the Eucharist!) at the conclusion of the liturgy. Others seem to derive ultimately from medieval uses. Indeed, some of these seem to have been resuscitated for the Novus Ordo, such as an offertory procession with gifts (in the 19^th century apparently mostly money), a kind of “kiss of peace” and  “bidding prayers.” All of these items existed in one place or another in France at that time.  If these facts are understood – namely, that circa 1900 there was a degree of liturgical variety still remaining among dioceses and nations – this book is an extremely valuable resource. 

For the Little Liturgical Catechism  is a remarkable work – not just as a historical document  but as a guide to understanding  the main elements of the traditional Mass even today. In that regard, the translator, Steven M. Soldi, Jr, has not only produced a very readable text but has added valuable footnotes, which help explain the relationship of this book to more recent developments. I would have liked to have had this book in my hands many years ago!

Lumen Christi, the next volume we will consider, deals much more directly with the question of choosing – somewhat oversimplifying –  between the pre-55 and the 1962 versions of the traditional Mass. It sets out  in great detail all the changes between the various forms of the liturgy: not just the major ceremonial differences for Holy Week but also the arbitrary changes to (usually a reduction in) the feasts of saints,  the octaves and in general all the small details that actually added great meaning to the rite. Paul Cavendish is responsible for an important appendix with charts summarizing the changes to the Roman missal and breviary between 1955 and 1962. I probably don’t need to tell the reader that the “Benedictine oblate’ thinks the changes to the liturgy made in 1955 and later were unnecessary, even ”catastrophic.”

The “Benedictine oblate,”  in the course of his book, clarifies a number of misunderstandings – or putting it more bluntly,  outright lies – concerning the liturgy, such as the claim that the so-called Tridentine Mass was an entirely new creation by Pope Pius V that abolished prior rituals. Similarly, the author is forced to correct the conservative view of the age of Pius XII as a time of security and solidity. For it was under Pius XII  that the beginnings of the liturgical revolution took concrete form, started with the changes to Holy Week that he promulgated. The author frankly acknowledges that from the 1950s the liturgical avant-guard was looking to totally deconstruct the Roman Rite. From the changes to Holy Week,  the course to the Novus Ordo, while not inevitable, was an increasingly likely outcome.

The author of this book writes as a committed advocate of the pre-55 rite. Although I agree with the substance of his conclusions, I have reservations about the tactics. It doesn’t seem very politically prudent to launch a public debate on the merits of the pre-55 rite with those who use the 1962 missal or to analyze the authority for returning to the earlier practices.  For Pope Francis early on established (or more accurately, confirmed) the new liturgical style with his performance of the Mandatum on Holy Thursday. At  the very beginning of his papacy, Francis disregarded the Novus Ordo rubrics. And certainly, Francis’s strongest fanboys in Chicago, Detroit, Charlotte, etcetera have since emulated him in this. I don’t see why others should be more papal than the Pope. So,  I think the new principle in traditionalism should be to “do the right thing”  – instead of following rules and rubrics that those in authority themselves completely disregard.  In a sense, anyone who supports the traditional Latin Mass or even a conservative Novus Ordo is acting against authority,  so I find elaborate arguments supporting or defending moving to the pre-55 or earlier to be  somewhat moot. In an appendix, the “Benedictine oblate” also outlines a gradual, non-confrontational approach to restoring the pre-55 rite.

The “Benedictine oblate,”  the author of Lumen Christi, of course is anonymous. The advocates of the synodal path, of the LGBT movement and of Catholic leftist political progressivism are not at all so constrained. I think this illustrates well the relative standing of the two “movements” (to use that term) in the Catholic Church today.

Lumen Christi provides a very handy compendium of how we got from1954 to the various stages of liturgical change in the 1960s. If you need arguments in favor of the pre-55 rite, you will find them here. Finally,  I admired the author’s exhortation to traditionalists to stand fast whatever may come their way. For the traditional rite of the Church in whatever version has indeed been “revived” and is very much alive!

The third volume,  at 488 pages substantially longer than the other two, is The Masses of Holy Week and Tenebrae: Latin-English texts for the pre-55 Palm Sunday Tenebrae and Sacred Triduum.  The Little Liturgical Catechism is a handbook and dictionary of the various elements of liturgical tradition as it was lived in France in 1896; Lumen Christi tells of how the Roman Rite was transformed out of recognition and makes the case for fully restoring it. The Masses of Holy Week & Tenebrae, however,  is a practical guide to actually do this rite – or, at least, “actively participate” in it  – by providing the texts and music for Holy Week in one complete volume. It seems  to me a very complete collection including all the relevant liturgical texts for Holy Week. Chant notation is provided throughout. Moreover, this book is illustrated with beautiful reproductions from medieval illuminated manuscripts  – almost like a fine missal.

My only reservation regarding this fine publication is similar to what I expressed regarding the Little Liturgical Catechism. Some readers may assume it is a fixed and complete guide to the pre-55. But I believe that in actual pastoral use, elements of the pre-55 rite may be only partially and gradually incorporated into the Holy Week services and elsewhere in the liturgical year.  Someone who does not understand this might be confused if he expected the services in his parish or chapel to reproduce exactly what is set forth in this book.  But, as I said, “organic development” does not work that way.

Taken together these three works provide an accessible set of resources for the pre-55 rite. What you will actually see done  – or can do  – may be only a partial version of what you read here. The recovery of the Sacred will take time – generations even. It is still impressive, however, that such works are now available  – the progress the traditionalist cause has made is truly remarkable.

All Available from Os Justi Press.

It intrigued me to discover several years ago that Ida Görres had written a review of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Trojan Horse in the City of God. 1)  Her review of the Trojan Horse was published in Erbe und Auftrag (“Heritage and Mission”),  a somewhat obscure Benedictine publication.  Nevertheless, it is prominently described in the collection of correspondence between Ida Görres and Paulus Gordon OSB (the editor of Erbe und Auftrag). 2) My curiosity was piqued by this encounter of two German Catholic authors who in the distant past, in various ways, had been considered in Church circles as “progressives.” I had looked forward to an encounter of these two writers, having similar views in many cases, but with seemingly contrasting reactions to Vatican II. I was disappointed to find Görres’s review to be not a detailed appraisal of von Hildebrand’s thought, but a minor polemical response, not even a full page in length.  It does, however, reveal much about Görres’s – and the official Church’s – attitudes toward reform, tradition and the emerging post-Conciliar culture. Unfortunately,  I find that I need to write a review longer than her original to do justice to this matter!

I’ve already reviewed several works by Ida Görres.  I would summarize her position as that of a supporter  – in a somewhat nebulous but real sense – of renewal and even revolution in the Church. Yet she also – both before and after the Council – profoundly disagreed with specific concrete applications of the renewal, such as in sexual morality, politics, liturgy, or the nature of the Catholic priesthood.  On the latter point,  Ida Görres, in contrast to most other Catholic literary figures of her generation that I have read, was extremely focused on the institution of the Church. Her concern here was not so much the papacy or the hierarchy, but the clergy’s evangelizing leadership – or lack thereof. She obviously set the greatest importance on maintaining good connections with the clerical establishment,  especially its progressive members. The concern – even reverence –  for the role of the clergy was combined with a quest for saints – both living and dead. This,  despite her series of disappointments in men she had once revered  – like Karl Rahner.

Paulus Gordon had been a correspondent of Görres for many years. About the time her review of von Hildebrand’s book appeared,  he was appointed to be the secretary of none other than Rembert Weakland in Rome. So,  her review is very much in harmony with the attitudes of the clerical establishment of the day. In fact, Görres reassured Gordon that although he may have feared that she would be favorable to von Hildebrand’s book,  her review was going to be very critical.

I don’t want to write my own review of the Trojan Horse for the purposes of these remarks,  but I do need to say something about this very early (1967) reaction to the developing crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in the wake of Vatican II. 3) Von Hildebrand’s book is a kind of 20^th century Adversus Haereses, describing non-Catholic philosophies, perverse attitudes and heretical tendencies which by then were manifesting themselves throughout the Roman Catholic Church. Compared to subsequent works it is restrained: generally, the proponents of these tendencies are not named. One conspicuous exception is a footnote castigating none other than Fr. Paulus Gordon! 4) An even more significant exception is von Hildebrand’s extended critique of the thought of Teilhard de Chardin who of course had been dead for many years by the time von Hildebrand wrote his book. By 1967, however, his ideology was all the rage in Catholic circles  – the 1969 volume of Erbe und Auftrag lists several works dealing with Teilhard in its “books received” section. 

Görres begins her review by pointing out  – astutely, I would say – that the “Trojan horse” metaphor is a little out of date because by 1967 the horse’s crew had disembarked and in fact were swaggering shamelessly throughout the city. She also finds that in substance the book does indeed make many valid points. However,  Görres attacks the book above all for its style. According to her, von Hildebrand is rigid, thinks only in black and white terms, lacks empathy and understanding. “(The book) lacks any fraternal sympathy for the pains of anxiety, of seeking, of the distress of straying.” Instead of seeking out the good even in erroneous positions, von Hildebrand delivers only blanket condemnations. Furthermore,  he supposedly falls into the sentimental and outmoded rhetoric of past devotional writing.

But the real crux of Görres’s review is her emotional reaction to von Hildebrand’s criticism of the thought of Teilhard de Chardin. For von Hildebrand had systematically attacked a man who Görres elsewhere had praised for his “angel-like nature”  (Engelhaftigkeit). 5) Görres accuses von Hildebrand of defaming this “great mystic and fervent apostle.” She insinuates that von Hildebrand was motivated by personal animosity based on one direct encounter with Teilhard in 1950. Görres herself, however, did not share all of the philosophical positions of Teilhard. 6) Görres concludes her review by lamenting how some of those who seek to defend the Church and address the acknowledged problems use such weird weapons to do so. 

Now in commenting on Görres’s critique,  I would first say that her review gives the reader hardly any idea of von Hildebrand’s book. He would get the impression from her review that, stylistically, it is a violent polemic interspersed with old-fashioned, mawkish passages. But the Trojan Horse is in fact a sober catalogue of mostly philosophical aberrations in the Church. Further, Görres does not reveal to the reader the positions of the book she is reviewing – even those with which Görres agrees. Indeed, some of what von Hildebrand says about the state of the Church prior to Vatican II is not dissimilar to what Görres herself had written – if von Hildebrand does so in a more nuanced manner. 7)

Clearly, Ida Görres as late as 1969 remained committed to the “vision” of Catholic renewal. In no way was she a progressive on issues of morality, nor was she an adherent of the Catholic Church’s left in secular politics. Nevertheless,  in this review, she rejected public, straightforward criticism of aspects of the Catholic culture that had developed after Vatican II. I think she in some way intuited (which von Hildebrand at this stage perhaps did not) that a too forthright attack on abuses was actually an unstated attack on the origin of the abuses  – namely the Catholic movement of renewal and Vatican II itself.  Despite all her disagreements with the unfortunate developments which she saw exploding all around her, Görres never could never do that. In a sense,  although the term is anachronistic,  her position resembled that of what later became known in the United States as “conservative Catholicism.” 

But this review is relevant to more than just elucidating the personal philosophy of Ida Görres towards the end of her life. For the argumentation of her review already illustrated deeply problematic aspects of the post-Conciliar Church. First is the attraction Görres feels for “angelic” ecclesiastical figures. Their sanctity inspires blind devotion and insulates them from any rational criticism of their practices and ideas. What Görres writes about Teilhard, for example, is exactly the same as what the devotees of Dorothy Day have been repeating for decades: Day’s supposed sincerity and sanctity render any criticism of her political and economic ideas an act of treason. Celine Hoyeau has recently summarized for us the history of devotion to charismatic founders and spiritual leaders of Catholic movements in France and the resulting disastrous consequences in the area of sexual abuse. And we all know of numerous other examples elsewhere throughout the Catholic world (e.g.,Maciel). 

Second,  Görres’s review of course was not just the private opinion of that author. It appears in an official publication of the German Benedictines. I see her review as an initial response of the Catholic clerical establishment to the first stirrings of criticism of the post-Conciliar developments. For von Hildebrand was associated with those thinkers who in the United States coalesced around Triumph magazine and attempted to understand the rapidly unraveling Church and secular culture in which they were living. Görres’s review shows the answer of the clerical establishment: a total refusal to “dialogue.”  Von Hilderbrand’s attempt to set out a rational framework for analysis of the contemporary Catholic scene was met with a blistering response and ad hominem attacks. For there was never a possibility of dialogue with a “reform” movement that, as Pope Francis much later explained,  proceeds from the axiom that it directly embodies the will of the Holy Spirit. This stance of the establishment has remained intact until the present day!

1.  45 Erbe und Auftrag at 348(1969). I would like to thank Dr. Nicholas Salazar and the Yale University Libraries for their aid in locating this review.
2. Görres, Ida, “Wirklich die neue Phönixgestalt?”  Über Kirche und Konzil: Unbekannte Briefe 1962-1971 an Paulus Gordan. Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz (Editor) (Be & Be Verlag, Heiligenkreuz, 2015) See the discussion at pages 318 and 420 (both pages have footnotes with a not totally accurate citation to Görres’s review) 
3. Hildebrand, Dietrich von, Trojan Horse in the City of God, (Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, N.H.1967 (this edition 1999)). There are questions about the edition of this book reviewed by Görres. First,  the German edition is a translation, and the advertisement  in Erbe und Auftrag (to which Görres refers) indicates it includes additional material by the author.I don’t know if these additions made it into the subsequent English reprints . Second, the Sophia edition I am using states that an “appendix” in previous editions has been deleted. I strongly suspect this is the document that can be found online here:  “Critique of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin by Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand, Absoluteprimacyofchrist.org. (posted 10/11/2012; accessed 1/22/2026).This is referred to in several online discussions of Hildebrand’s critique of Teilhard. Hildebrand, however, criticizes Teilhard on several other pages in the Trojan Horse. 
4. Hildebrand, Trojan Horse at 48 n.26 (wondering about Paulus’s belief in the Resurrection as a historical fact).
5. Görres, “Wirklich die neue Phönixgestalt? at 69.
6. Id. at n.83
7. E.g., Hildebrand, Trojan Horse at pp. 51-60.

After Newman: A Eulogy for Anglo-Catholics 1845-1965

by Aidan Nichols, OP

Gracewing, Leominster 2025

255 pages

Fr. Aiden Nichols, OP offers us a “eulogy” for Anglo-Catholics. I would note, first, that Fr. A. Nichols, “OP” is obviously once more a Dominican –  his move to the Premonstratensian order having gone nowhere. Second, he calls this book a eulogy: a speech of praise but one commonly given for a deceased person. And since Nichols’s narrative ends in the early 1960s, we may conclude that Anglo-Catholicism ended sometime between those years and now. 

Father Nichols’s stated purpose, however, is to celebrate the achievements of the Anglo-Catholics over some 120 years. It is the story of those involved in the Tractarian movement who, after Newman and others joined the Roman Catholic Church, stayed in the Church of England and sought to transform it, to make it Catholic, but English. 

I must admit this book presents some challenges to the reader. After Newman is very dense – names, movements and institutions follow each other in rapid succession. It is arranged thematically, even although these themes follow a quasi-chronological order. This at times makes it difficult to follow for someone not already somewhat familiar with the issues and people involved. Nevertheless, a close reading begins to uncover all kinds of gems. Fr. Nichols often exhibits a very English, quirky sense of humor. 

“(Jones)the rector of Batsford with Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire’s Evenlode Valley(could any location be more quintessentially English?) (p.135)

One of the bishops whom Gregory Dix called “Edwardian’: Edward VI in theology, Edward VII in mental equipment and Edward VIII in attitude to marriage. (p.124)

Fr. Nichols also frequently draws on his own experiences and those of the Church today in elucidating the past. I should point out that Fr. Nichols has endured travails in the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Francis that recall those of the Anglo-Catholics of the 19^th century.

For Anglo-Catholicism in the formative years – what Fr. Nichols calls the time of the “Oxford Fathers” – was hardly an elegant, effete affair of “sherry in the rectory.”  Pusey, Keeble, Neale and their disciples routinely faced anti-Catholic, anti-“Puseyite” riots. And for a while ritualists were actually prosecuted by the state. It may surprise those unfamiliar with English history to read of the extent of the direct control by the crown and parliament of all aspects of life of the “established” Church of England at that time – and to a lesser extent up to the present day. The only countervailing forces came from the financial  and political support of secular patrons (which later included prime minister Gladstone.) This assured the Anglo-Catholics of access to parishes and benefices where they could implement their ideas. But at least through the 1930s the fortunes of the Anglo-Catholics were often driven by political changes in parliament.

Liturgically there seems to have been a wide variety of practice among the Anglo-Catholics. So-called ritualism took a while to get underway. At first the Anglo-Catholics advocated for more regular even daily communion services, for reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, and, most famously, the use of more elaborate vestments. But a time went on a great variety of liturgical practice unfolded. Some held to the Prayer Book. Others explored reviving some or all of the Sarum use. Then there were the so-called Anglo-Papists who adopted directly the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. All these forms coexisted with each other.

The Anglo-Catholics revived for the first time since the Reformation monasteries and communities of men and women in the Church of England. Numerous sisterhoods arose – these often undertook missions in the worst slums of the cities to help and live among the poor, outcasts and prostitutes. This was 70 years or more before the Catholic Worker came along in the United States. Fr. Nichols points out that some of these sisters followed a rule of prayer that was much more intellectually and spiritually demanding than that which similar active female religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church tended to use at that time. Later, contemplative monasteries were established. Communities of men also were created. Their model was more the medieval orders rather than the clerks regular typical of the Catholic counter-reformation (like the Jesuits); they emphasized communal prayer.

Now Fr. Nichols points out with pride the artistic achievements of the Anglo-Catholics. We might start with the great gothic revival churches in the second half of the 19th century. And these grand edifices were often associated with missions to the working-class areas of the cities – another focus of Anglo-Catholic activity.  As Fr. Nichols points out, these Neo-Gothic shrines reflected the principles of Pugin  (who had become a Roman Catholic) more faithfully than what was built in the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglo-Catholics resurrected and brought to a rare perfection such crafts as ecclesiastical needlework or stained glass. The Anglo-Catholic legacy in hymn writing (Neale!) was influential: do we not know “All Glory, Laud and Honour” and even “Onward Christian Soldiers”? 

Anglo-Catholicism produced notable theologians. In the social area, they produced doctrines of a “Catholic Sociology.”  They also developed a critique of modern society and advanced as an alternative  “Christendom” – like Catholic traditionalists today. And, as indicated above, their social engagement was not all just theoretical.

But perhaps best known to Roman Catholics are the writers associated with Anglo-Catholicism: Dorothy Sayers and her translation of Dante, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, the novels of Charles Williams –  among others. Fr. Nichols doesn’t mention C.S. Lewis, but he could certainly be said to have had a Catholic spirituality – like that of the early Oxford Fathers but certainly unlike that of the more extreme ritualists or the Anglo-Papists. As an aside,  some of these figures remain targets to the present day of anti-Anglo-Catholic rage. A recent article in the Church Times (once an Anglo-Catholic foundation!) indicted Anglo-Catholic “lay luminaries” Arthur Machen, Evelyn Underhill and Charles Williams (the latter two favorably mentioned by Fr. Nichols) for dabbling in the occult. 1) 

Now after the battles of the 19th century and as the 20th century advanced the Anglo-Catholic movement seemed to be gaining traction and, at least in certain respects, even dominance within the Church of England. Between the wars,  Anglo-Catholic conferences became grand, well-attended affairs. Fr. Nichols writes of an Anglican moment after 1945.  In 1961 Arthur Michael Ramsey, of Anglo-Catholic background, actually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Despite this new influence, however,  the movement eventually lost ground. Fr. Nichols does not describe for us much of what happened after 1960. Perhaps Anglo-Catholicism became a victim of its own success. For a potential root cause analysis, Fr. Nichols quotes William Davage: 

By accepting a tolerated place within a comprehensive economy, falling into an establishment embrace, the Anglo-Catholic missionary edge to recover the whole of the Church of England to its right mind was blunted; its aims were watered down, practices and disciplines became increasingly compromised.(p. 146) 

In addition, Fr. Nichols writes of a rupture among the Anglo-Catholics over “quite other issues“( than the disputes over ritual and Catholic practices of the past; Nichols probably here means such things as the ordination of women). These issues:

[B]y the end of the 20th century would divide Catholic Anglicans into two camps: ‘affirming’ Catholics who accepted the agenda of progressive Roman Catholicism, fed as it is, in matters of anthropology, by secular liberalism and the ‘classical Anglo-Catholics’ of whom After Newman is a eulogy.(p.60)

Archbishop Ramsey (and his successors) seems to have let progressives do whatever they wanted. Recently we’ve seen a recurrent exodus from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church, as the “CofE” departs ever more radically from the tenets of even traditional Christianity.  This, despite the fact that the highest leadership of the “RCC” seems quite enamored of Church of England establishment the last few years…., 

Fr. Nichols notes that, perhaps strangely, contact between Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics has been limited. That is unfortunate!  Over the years each Catholic “denomination” has been glad to borrow literature, music and rituals from the other. And a Catholic traditionalist, reading the early struggles of the Anglo-Catholics, is forcefully reminded of his own situation. For in the Catholic Church today traditionalists are also fighting for the complete Catholic heritage in liturgy, theology, philosophy and art. Their struggle is also against a persecuting, hostile-to-indifferent clerical establishment often allied with secular forces,  But the challenge for the Anglo-Catholics was in a sense greater. The “opponent” (really, the state and society of Great Britain) was, unlike today’s Roman Catholic Church, expanding, seemingly invincible and at the height of its power. Furthermore, the coercive power of the state and of the violence of mobs could be (and were) brought to bear against them. But the Anglo-Catholics persevered over the decades – it is an example to be admired. 

In a final eulogy or even epitaph for the Oxford movement, Fr. Nichols justly writes that:

its influences sowed seeds in all the areas scanned in this short book and the seeds sprouted and the fruit – herein described – is undeniable. In consequence, Roman Catholics, who, historically, were not their friends, was must now out of justice as well as by generosity of spirit, become their admirers. And more than admirers, their allies.(p. 204)

1. Yoder, Richard,  “On the Wings of the Dawn: the Lure of the Occult,” Church Times (12/14/2018). This is very similar to the preposterous campaigns in the Roman Catholic Church against Cristina Campo and, more recently against Sebastian Morello both accused of “hermeticism.”

The Disastrous Pontificate: Pope Francis’ Rupture from the Magisterium 

by Dominic J. Grigio

Os Justi Press(Lincoln, NE, 2025)

845 pages.

Already we have the first history of the pontificate of Pope Francis: The Disastrous Pontificate gives us an early summary of the Francis years. This substantial book is divided into three parts.  The first is a systematic exposition of the theological errors of Pope Francis. The second is a collection of statements and events in the reign of Francis, arranged chronologically month-by-month. The third section is a set of source materials supporting the author’s critique of Francis’s positions. 

Given my own interests, I focused  on the second part which forms a short history of Francis’s  papacy. It quotes Francis himself throughout the years of his pontificate. Some of “Francis’s“ statements are actually those of his supporters in and outside of the Vatican. In addition to the voice of Francis and friends, Grigio provides a running critical commentary on the Pope’s statements from contemporary sources. (A third voice which is largely missing, however, is that of the sycophantic official Catholic and secular media. )

Now much of the material in the second  part of the book is taken from LifeSiteNews, although Grigio also draws extensively on other sources in the secular and the official Catholic media. I confess I do not read LifesiteNews regularly, but I was nevertheless aware of almost all the matters discussed. There were, however,  one or two surprises. Such as where Pope Francis said he had read and liked Frederic Martel’s Inside the Closet of the Vatican, a pro-homosexual, pro-Bergoglio book which describes rampant homosexuality in the church and the Vatican  –  and also disparages Pope Benedict, Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Muller, Bishop Ganswein… (p. 300, May 10, 2019)

This strictly chronological format does have the disadvantage of being a list of statements and actions by Francis without explanation or analysis of the context in which they occur. Thus,  I think it may be difficult for one who was not already familiar with the events of Francis’s papacy to fully follow what is described here. But this format also has an advantage –  we see each of the statements and actions of Francis as of the date they took place. As a matter of style, I did find tedious the author’s repetitive application of epithets to people and institutions (“the heterodox Tablet”) like in Homer or Old Germanic poetry.

Taken as a papal history, The Disastrous Pontificate is a tedious experience. It is the greatest possible contrast to the sometimes startling but often fascinating biographies of the Renaissance and baroque popes written by Ludwig von Pastor. Francis leaves us no such record of interesting words and deeds,  holy or not.  The voice of Pope Francis and his claque, as set forth in this book, is one long, monotonous rant, devoid of intelligence, insight and especially of humor.  Francis breaks the Conciliar ideology down into a set of slogans or buzzwords that he endlessly hammers home: going to the peripheries, mercy, tenderness, dialogue, the “outgoing Church,” “there’s no going back,” etc.  This is accompanied by the constant, coarse disparagement of adversaries. Ideological friends, however, are effusively praised and rewarded. Underlying everything is a manic cult of personality. ( The Disastrous Pontificate doesn’t mention the enormous number of books written by or about Bergoglio). As for Bergoglio’s administrative policies, they combine tyranny with incompetence ( e.g., the unending financial and managerial scandals in the Vatican). 

It’s unclear what  Pope Francis himself believed. If we read the numerous interviews with Eugenio Scalfari (never repudiated by the pope) one would have to say: very little. Francis did, however, revive the Conciliar movement of the 1960’s in its most radical form. He spoke of a ”cultural Revolution,”  a “paradigm shift” of living through a “change of epoch.” This experience of the allegedly changed world of today would now determine the theology of the Church. (pp. 474-75, November 1, 2023). What Pope Benedict called the “hermeneutic of rupture” could hardly be expressed more drastically.

Should I add that the achievements of Francis’s papacy outside of the strictly ecclesiastical sphere are virtually nonexistent? In terms of secular politics, Francis’s most notorious achievement was his accommodation with the government of China. Unless, that is, we count as “secular politics”  the wholesale adoption by Francis as his own of the program of the European and American establishment: migrants, social programs, etc.  And he looked the other way when this same establishment – notably, President Biden -aggressively advocated practices like abortion or homosexual marriage.

Similarly, artistic achievements of the Bergoglio papacy are utterly lacking. There is the “art “ of Fr. Marko Rupnik,  omnipresent in the Church – at least until the other aspects of his career were exposed. There are “ideological” (Socialist Realism style) statues of migrants and the homeless. And there is “Luce,” the mascot of the 2025 jubilee year. The papacy today can no longer provide any impetus to artistic creativity.

Now when this book describes the Bergoglio pontificate as disastrous, I think the author means in the first instance the ideological destruction and the denial of Catholic principles in theology and morality. But I also think of the background of these events . The ongoing decline in the numbers of priests, seminarians and religious. The closing of churches and monasteries. The never-ending series of sexual abuse scandals and the resulting bankruptcies in the United States. And above all, the continuing decline of the practice of the Catholic faith among those still claiming to be Catholic.  Bergoglio himself did not understand or care about any of this:

Five places:  Belgium, Holland, Spain, Ireland and Quebec filled the world with missionaries. Today these five places have no vocations. it is a mystery: and in less than 100 years. How do we explain this to each other? I see no explanation….  I’m not concerned in the sense that we are merging, it is a sign of the times that indicates worldliness, that indicates a level of development that puts value elsewhere. (p 435: January 13, 2023)

The Pope’s indifference to this and other afflictions of today’s Church is amazing.

And what of Leo? Robert Prevost came to the Vatican to be an efficient implementor of Pope Francis’s policies. Thus: 

‘”On the 9th of September 2023, Pope Francis met with Archbishop Robert Prevost OSA , head of the dicastery for bishops and Archbishop Christophe Pierre Apostolic nuncio to the United States to discuss the Apostolic visitation of bishop Strickland. “

The recommendation put to Bergoglio was to request Strickland’s resignation. (p.450, September 9, 2023)

The rhetoric and style of Pope Leo is clearly very different from that set forth in this book. Leo has tended to avoid the confrontational rhetoric and name calling of his predecessor. He has introduced a calmer and more orderly style of governance. He has reached out to some  parties within the Church who had been slighted – or worse – by his predecessor. So, for example, he authorized a statement to the French bishops issued by Cardinal Parolin which had some kind words to say about traditionalists. This would have been unthinkable under Francis. Similarly, he’s made limited policy adjustments in personnel and policy at the level of the curia to assuage certain aggrieved parties and consolidate his more orderly and less mercurial style.

On the other hand, Pope Leo has not yet touched the substantive policies of his predecessor. He has emphasized his own continuity with Pope Francis.  That resemblance extends to some of Francis’s habits (extended interviews given on airplanes; the cultivation of preferred relationships with reporters) The new Pope has been extremely solicitous of other members of the Francis team.  In most cases he has retained the same personnel in the same positions. And these people have continued to take actions and issue statements entirely in line with the policies of Pope Francis – and have asserted that Pope Leo also will be doing the same.  It seems likely though, that Leo, by using a different tone and rhetoric, wants to defuse some of the confrontations stoked by Pope Francis while keeping his predecessor’s documents (and people) in place. I’ve expressed my fear that this approach may be inadequate in the light of what is happening in Germany, with the FSSPX, with the Vatican finances, with the homosexual movement  – the list is endless. 

Refecting on this book. I think the saddest part of all is this:  I have a great fear that Pope Leo and most of those the Vatican, upon reading this book, would find little wrong.  And there are further indicia of the Church’s crisis.  The author’s name, Dominic J. Grigio, is the pseudonym of a member of the clergy  “who cannot reveal his identity for fear of reprisals against himself and his diocese.” (Rorate Caeli). And some desperate “conservatives,” considering how a pope can make statements like the ones set out in this book,  have recourse to strange theories splitting the pope into “two bodies”  – a heretical pope and an orthodox pope. (p.44). Thus, the intolerable strain on the culture of the Church created by the Bergoglio pontificate persists. But to do anything about it,  we must first understand this situation:  The Disastrous Pontificate is a major source book for that.

( You can obtain The Disastrous Pontificate: Pope Francis’ Rupture from the Magisterium from:

https://osjustipress.com/products/disastrous-pontificate)

La Trahison des pères : Emprise et abus des fondateurs de communautés nouvelles

By Céline Hoyeau 

Bayard Editions, 2021

352 pages

The Betrayal of the Fathers confronts a crisis that has been simmering within the Church for decades – namely, the new spiritual “movements” and their all too frequent  deviation into spiritual and sexual abuse. Celine Hoyeau,  who works for the semiofficial La Croix in France, gives us a systematic review of the subject. It is a phenomenon that is especially  important in France. There, new religious communities were viewed as a potential savior from the decline and disintegration of the official Church that was already evident by the early 1970s. And although Hoyeau doesn’t say this,  their “conservative”  spirituality was at the same time distinct from and opposed to that of the mortal enemy of the establishment, the Catholic traditionalists. Therefore, the movements enjoyed from the beginning varying degrees of patronage from the official Church. And after 1978, Pope John Paul II adopted the movement concept as a preferred form of apostolate.

Hoyeau describes the sad story how movement after movement experienced disaster because of the exploitative activities of their spiritual leaders – in fact, the problem of abuse has infected the great majority of them.  The ensuing disclosures have shaken the Church in France. It is not that sexual abuse only occurred in the movements – on the contrary, there was probably more of it in the mainstream religious orders and in the diocesan clergy. But what was particularly distressing was the discovery of it in the new communities, inflicted at the hands of founders who often were revered as living saints. I should add that this book was published in 2021 – since that time much additional data has emerged supporting the conclusions of Hoyeau.

 In some cases, the French movements date back to the 1940s or even earlier. However, the big impetus for the nontraditional movements came in the 1970s with the influence of the charismatic renewal coming from American Protestantism.  The new movements had varying organizational structures and apostolates. Many originated in a specific charitable initiative. One, the “Office Culturel de Cluny” (OCC) had as its mission to restore Christendom through art and beauty! (pp.24-25) 1) They often feature hybrid liturgies and dress (e.g., combining Western and Byzantine traditions)  But nearly all of them have an absolute, charismatic founder enjoying a near divine aura based on direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and who obtains total domination over the members of the community. These in turn find it impossible to break from the psychological hold exercised by the founder and, willingly or not, become participants in his (or in some cases her) crimes.

Of course, the  same phenomenon and the same problems have emerged again and again outside of France. In Germany we have seen the KIA(Katholische Integrierte Gemeinde),  once patronized by Cardinal Ratzinger and which later had to be dissolved. Controversy has been swirling for years around Fr. Joseph Kentenich, the founder of the Schoenstatt movement – disciplinary actions which the Vatican took against him in the 1940s were only recently discovered.  I could of course also cite Fr. Maciel and the Legionaries,  Gino Burresi and the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary….

And what of the United States? Previously I have made a comparison between the European movements and the American “Conservative Catholics.”  2) But what in Europe is the predominant mode of alternative ecclesiastical organization is less common here. On the whole, the new spiritual movements, although present for many years, have remained a subordinate phenomenon in the United States.  The Catholic Worker of Dorothy Day in the 1930s already had features of the later movements(e.g., an oracular, charismatic founder ). Yet the regimented centralized control and devotion to the leader found elsewhere seems never to have been effectively established. And this example shows that, in the American context, the focus early on tended to be on political activity. Much more precisely resembling the developments chronicled by Hoyeau, however,  is the story of Fr. Bruce Ritter and Covenant House in the 1980s.

 Considering branches of communities originating outside the United States, Opus Dei has developed a certain presence in the United States since the 1950’s.(although I am not sure Opus Dei views itself as a “movement”!) Much later,  the Legion of Christ and its affiliate Regnum Christi were gaining traction prior to the reign of Pope Benedict XIV. The Neocatechumenal Way seems today to enjoy more official ecclesiastical  patronage than any of the others. 

But in conservative Catholicism,  leadership and a sense of community  have been provided primarily not by the new spiritual movements, but by supportive (mainstream) parishes,by authors, TV programs, publications and political organizations, especially those involved in pro-life activity. Charismatic renewal also has had less influence  with conservative Catholicism compared to its role in the European movements. Perhaps that is attributable to the omnipresent Protestant atmosphere in much of this country. “Charismatic” activity would be naturally associated with this milieu, not with a Catholic culture the conservatives were striving to restore.

Hoyeau seeks to identify the root causes of the problem. She notes how after World War II many Christians converted their faith into a political hope of reconstructing the world. Between 1958 and 1980 the level of religious practice in France fell from 35% to 10%. Vatican II was supposed to stem the estrangement from the Church but it only accelerated after 1965. The Council’s emphasis on religious liberty indeed appeared to many as an official authorization to make one’s own judgments in matters of belief. (pp.57-58) Welcome observations from a writer at La Croix!

Hoyeau devotes considerable space to the psychological aspects of abuse in the new foundations. She details the circumstances – affecting both founders and their followers – which enable the founders to gain total control over their subordinates. Yet I don’t think this crisis  arose primarily from the psychological defects of those who create such communities and those who are attracted to them. Rather, as Hoyeau herself shows us, these “formless” communities are the product of a time of flux. Even before World War II, I would assert, the traditional  Catholic paradigm of clergy and laity, of active and contemplative religious orders, had started to grow “brittle,” and mixed groupings of clergy and laity, usually active in the world,  sprang up.  This became the norm for the new foundations after the Council. Interestingly,  Hoyeau guardedly hints something deeper may be involved in some of these new movements – that in certain of them a non-Christian (quasi-Satanic?) cult may have taken root over the decades. And we have since encountered in the books of “Tucho” Fernandez or in the reported doings of Fr. Rupnik things startlingly similar to what Hoyeau reveals of the practices of the French founders. Thus, the abuses Hoyeau sets forth have an objective theological, ecclesiological  and historical foundation. 

I cannot follow other aspects of the author’s reasoning, especially in the latter half of this book. In keeping with the bureaucratic nature of the Church, she looks to “experts” in various disciplines to show us a path out of the disaster. Some of these experts offer analyses that contradict what Hoyeau herself has written earlier in the book. For example,  as you might expect from La Croix,  one pundit even attributes the failures of the founders to the repressive sexual regime before the Council. Thus, even the failings of the post-conciliar creations are only attributable to the pre-conciliar Church! I also think Hoyeau does not adequately spell out the dangers of the concept of “spiritual abuse”  – an overly broad category which itself fosters the abuse of authority. But all at all,  Celine Hoyeau has done us a great service in clearly and comprehensively analyzing an ongoing problem and tragedy for the Church.

1. Like the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny?!
2. See The Society of St. Hugh Cluny, “The Culture of Totalitarian Ultramontanism”(December 15, 2023); “Catholic Traditionalism in the United States: Notes for a History Part 2” (March 23, 2014)

Les Sept Sacrements : d’Hier à Aujourd’hui

(A brief critical examination of the New Rituals)

Fr. Claude Barthe

Preface by Bishop Athanasius Schneider

(Contretemps, Versailles, 2025)

98 pp. (in French)

Father Claude Barthe always can be relied on for outstanding contributions to the self-understanding of the traditionalist cause. The battle over Catholic tradition has up till now focused primarily on the celebration of the Traditional Mass (the Eucharist). Father Barthe points out, however,  that there are six other sacraments. In this short, succinct book,  Fr. Barthe examines each of the sacraments of the Church as it is administered in the Novus Ordo.

The traditional Roman liturgy, writes Fr. Barthe, is a coherent whole. The seven sacraments in the traditional rite mutually reinforce each other and embody the same theology.  But the sacraments of the Novus Ordo also represent a unified whole. Fr. Barthe’s thesis is that the flaws inherent in the Novus Ordo Mass – which traditionalists have described and endlessly discussed – are present in varying degrees in each of the other sacraments as well. Fr. Barthe examines how a different theology produces different liturgical forms. He then inquires how successful the sacramental forms of the Novus Ordo have been in preserving the meaning of the sacraments  and transmitting the Christian Faith. Indeed, have the post-Vatican II changes even affected these sacraments’ viability?`

To start with baptism, Fr. Barthe notes the new form is distinctly longer than the older. A great deal of the time is given to talk: the ceremony includes a liturgy of the word, readings and a virtual homily. The message that is delivered, however,  is weaker on at least one point – the struggle against the demon which characterizes so strongly the traditional form is blurred,  notably by the disappearance of the exorcisms, properly so-called, and other rites having the value of an exorcism.  Instead of a struggle against the devil the emphasis is on the joyful welcome of the new Christian to the community The entire ceremony is less sacred –  the new form of baptism is preceded by a formula of welcome which reminds one of a secular meeting. The numerous variations that are possible also have an a-ritualistic effect.

Regarding the sacrament of penance, the most noteworthy fact is its virtual disappearance in parts of the world, notably in Fr. Barthe’s France. A disappearance which contrasts with reception of communion by almost everyone attending a Novus Ordo Mass. Although the words of absolution are the same as in the old rite – or largely so – the surrounding prayers have been changed, with, as always, the addition of a variety of choices.  The emphasis is not on judgment, satisfaction for sin, and penance, but on  dialogue. Indeed, the suggested norms in France would seem to presuppose, by reason of their length,  a drastically reduced number of penitents.  

Extreme unction (the “Anointing of the Sick”) is another endangered sacrament.  The anointing of the sick in its new form has been “reinvented”  – Fr. Barthe says “devalued.” As in the new rite of baptism, the specific prayers against Satan and that the sick individual may avoid hell are gone.  On extreme unction,  Fr. Barthe quotes Guillaume Guchet as follows:

[Satan] is the one most repressed by the conciliar reform (he has also, along with the exorcisms, vanished from baptism).  It’s as if, at the same time that his kingdom (hell) has been discretely taken away from him,  the devil also has been the victim of an operation of rampant demythologization which doesn’t say its name.  (p.64)

These issues raised by the new rite of the anointing of the sick, Fr. Barthe continues, are in the context of changes made to the funeral rites,  which also weaken the witness of the lex orandi regarding the particular judgment, purgatory and the risk of damnation. This is accentuated by banning from the liturgy all signs of sorrow, speaking of the deceased as if he were already in heaven, the use of inappropriate music, etc.

These three sacraments may give the reader an idea of the approach of Fr. Barthe. He reviews the changes to the text and rubrics of the sacraments. As a rule, these eliminate or tone down dramatic references to evil and spiritual struggle. The texts are more verbose and provide numerous options. Fr. Barthe states makes this disturbing conclusion: “The entire problem of the new lex orandi [is that]: what is clear is replaced by the vague; what is true by the blurred. “

Then thereis is also the “pastoral” atmosphere in which the Novus Ordo sacraments are celebrated. If every sacrament is presented as a joyful event between a person and the community,  or, in matrimony, two people, the rituals are denatured. They resemble more and more purely secular social exercises. And, especially in Europe, the interest of the dechristianized populations for such rituals is rapidly decreasing. (See, for example,  the  2025 statistics for Germany.)

Fr. Barthe recommends that traditionalists, to the extent possible, should practice only the traditional forms of the sacraments. As a persecuted minority, it is extremely dangerous for them to enter into negotiations or compromises regarding their principles. (Under the new pope, such tactics are once again being advocated in certain circles). And the idea of celebrating the Novus Ordo sacraments in Latin is an illusion because it is the content, not the language,  of the New Rite that is the problem. 

Last year the Seven Sacraments stirred up a storm among certain groups in France that support the TLM but, in their reverence for ecclesiastical authority, correspond more to the Catholic conservatives here.  Why is this?  I don’t think Fr. Barthe makes any unusual or incendiary points beyond those raised in prior discussions on the TLM. Is it his forthright presentation of the Traditional liturgy and the Novus Ordo as two distinct, incompatible worlds?   Is it his implicit denial  of “validity” and “authority” as the exclusive interpretative keys to interpreting liturgy?   Is it his insistence on the unity of the seven sacraments and that the traditionalist should seek them all rather than just the “Latin Mass”? The Seven Sacraments is an important book that every traditionalist should read. I understand that Os Justi publishers will be issuing an English translation later this year.

Durch Habsburgs Lande

Ronald Friedrich Schwarzer

Second, expanded Edition

2025 Karolinger Verlag (Vienna, Leipzig)

155 pp.

(in German)

In the foreword to Through the Lands of Habsburg Lothar Höbelt describes the author, Ronald Friedrich Schwarzer, as a well-known “character”  in Vienna. Ronald Schwarzer, our author, was born in 1965 – just outside “Boomer land.” In his “day job,” he is involved in the management of an old, established Viennese jewelry firm. In that regard,  he resembles that leading Catholic traditionalist of New York, unfortunately deceased,  Alex Sepkus. 

Schwarzer’s book, combining history, travel, politics, art and religion,  reminds me too of the late Arkady Nebolsine of New York – like Schwarzer, also a “character.” The world views of the two men are strongly aligned – monarchist, proud of their heritage, and traditionalist in religion and culture – even if their specific interests differ. Arkady Nebolsine revered the great traditions of Russia in art, literature and music,  the Russian empire and people and especially the Orthodox church. Schwarzer is devoted to the House of Habsburg,  the Austrian people and culture and the (traditional) Catholic faith. In Through the Lands of Habsburg, moreover, he covers half of Europe in addition to territories within the pre–1918 Austrian Empire

For, starting out in the 12^th-13^th centuries from what is now Switzerland,  the Habsburg family eventually reigned over, at one time or another, almost all of Western and Central Europe except for France and Scandinavia. Starting in the 13^th Century until 1806 the Habsburgs provided (with some significant interruptions) the Holy Roman Emperors.  The Habsburgs reigned until 1700 over the vast Spanish domains in Europe, but also in the Americas, Asia and Africa.  Through this connection Schwarzer is able to include in his book Portugal, which was only Habsburg between 1580 and 1640. A further extraordinary fact –  although Schwarzer doesn’t mention it – is that Philip II of Spain was recognized as king of England between 1554 and 1558 by reason of his marriage to Mary I.

The last phase of Habsburg rule was the new “Austrian Empire” after 1804/06. It was, in a certain sense, as extraordinary as its predecessors: what of an empire that by 1847 ruled Vienna, Prague and Salzburg; Milan and Venice in Italy; Cracow and Lemberg (Lvov) from the former Polish kingdom; Budapest and Dubrovnik further south and east? It was a dazzling collection, under one ruler, of many of the great cultural centers of European history!  Schwarzer’s book is, however, most specific and detailed when the covers those areas in or adjacent to today’s Austria.

Schwarzer comes to grips with his almost unlimited subject matter by focusing one or more features of each city or landscape of which the writes.  It can be a church, a painting, a sculpture, the memory of a historical event or the entire current population of a locality. Or it can even be an individual. Schwarzer tells us of Polyxena von Lobkowicz of Prague. It was she who rescued the Catholic representatives of the emperor after they had been “defenestrated” by the Protestant rebels – an event which ignited the Thirty Years’  War. And it was she who gave the  statue of the Infant of Prague to the church of Our Lady of Victory, where it still resides.

Schwarzer covers large, famous cities like Prague, Milan or Venice but also isolated towns, country churches and (formerly) out-of-the-way valleys. He has a particular fondness for the former resort towns of the 19^th century Austrian empire. This is an opportunity for him to describe the lifestyles and tell us the gossip of that era. For, regrettably, as the 19th century progressed and especially as the fateful year 1914 approached the number of scandals in the imperial house increased. It was but one aspect of the decline of the Austrian state and the Habsburg monarchy. 

Schwarzer is a clear and forthright writer. He is not afraid to violate the taboos governing the current German- speaking  world. For the intellectual culture of Germany and Austria is stifled  by conformism, Denkverbote and thought crimes. So, Schwarzer describes the trashing of formerly German neighborhoods of Slovakia by their new gypsy inhabitants. He describes for us a major late Medieval fresco that includes a very uncomplimentary depiction of a (symbolic) synagogue. Schwarzer wonders  why this depiction of the “elder brothers in the faith” still is visible  – other such images have been covered up by now. 

The same could be said of his review of the tragedies of the 20th century. He describes how the German populations of Brunn (Brno)  and Slovakia were either expelled or massacred at the end of World War II. He recounts the heroic defense against the Red Army by a pickup mountain division in April of 1945. He depicts vividly the horrors of the Isonzo campaigns in the First World War on the Italian/Austrian border. The murderous struggle, in which Austria generally fought against overwhelming odds, did produce in 1917 a tremendous German-Austrian victory. A certain young officer from Württemberg named Erwin Rommel accomplished a particularly heroic exploit in that battle. A tragic reminder of those days is a church, still standing, that was built in 1916 by soldiers of the imperial army, In it the names of thousands of Austrian soldiers  – names from every nationality of the empire – are commemorated.

Schwarzer has a keen understanding of the symbolism ever present in works of art or buildings before the “modern age.” It was a world laden with meaning. Let me give you some examples of his writing on this subject. These sections – and there are others –  should be mandatory reading for those who are currently carrying out a witch hunt against Sebastian Morello for his laudable attempt to rediscover the symbolic meanings of the world.

(Above) The crown of Rudolf II.

Schwarzer describes the “house crown” created by order of the Emperor Rudolf II between 1598 and 1602; the “imperial crown” of the Holy Roman Empire was preserved separately.  After 1806 Rudolf’s crown served as the crown of the Austrian empire. 

Typical of these “house crowns” is the combination of  the royal circular band with the miter, set crosswise, of the high priest and the imperial arch which symbolically encompasses the world. With this crown,  the emperor raised his rank above that of the kings as a secular and spiritual lord of the world, as king and high priest in the succession of Christ. (p15)

( The diamonds in the royal band), as the hardest of all gemstones, were intended to symbolize the invincible Christ. The great red spinel on the central lily, which rests on the forehead, the seat of the monarch’s spirit,  symbolizes the fire of the Holy Ghost. At the top of the imperial arch, the great sapphire represents God the Father  – it is set  above the cross as a sign that only through the cross of Christ can one  come to the Father. (p.16)

In the baroque library of Vorau monastery,  every aspect of the architecture and decoration has symbolic meaning: 

In the east where the sun rises the image of Christ as Salvator Mundi dominates the space and shows who rules here. Then there follows on the ceiling a depiction of the judgment of Solomon (jurisprudence), at the West End of the library we recognize the queen of Sheba requesting knowledge from the wise Solomon (philosophy).

The emblematic depictions on the North and South sides of the library play exactly with that tension between the spiritual and the profane. The theological books are displayed on the South side of the room where the sun’s rays rest. The profane works are on the cold north wall. One sees as the very first image in the west a medical bleeding  under which are the words “vulnerat ut sanet”   – it wounds in order to heal. This represents preaching, that with severe words brings the sinner to repentance and so heals his soul. As the counterpart on the opposite wall,  we recognize a trumpet and the words “clangit et tangit”  – it resounds and touches –  this leads to the practical methods of preaching, in other words, the art of rhetoric.  Like a trumpet it sends out well-crafted words into the world. (pp. 77-78)

Then Schwarzer takes us through the secular palace of Eggenberg, built after 1620. 

In the chaos of the 30 Years War there arose a model of a world in order. A moat that was never filled with water separates the palace like an island from the crazy world of madness. 365 external windows represent the days of the year, 31 rooms on each floor the days of the month. In the piano nobile, 12 state rooms stand for the hours of the day and night;  together they have 52 windows for the weeks of the year.  if you count the 52 windows of the state rooms with the eight of the “ planetary room” we arrive at 60 minutes/ seconds of time. The four facades show the four seasons, the four directions of the wind, and the four elements. Enclosed in the innermost part of  central tower is the chapel where rests the Most Holy,  God himself, as the center of everything. (p.85)

As is the case with any book,  I can’t agree with everything the author states  – this is particularly true for such a dense, highly factual work as this. I don’t think that the Vorau bible is the first German language translation of the bible. Schwarzer seems to have a dislike for the Duomo of Milan that I don’t share and don’t understand. He tells us a legend of the derivation of Wiener Schnitzel from Cotoletta alla Milanese in the 19^th century.  I’m not totally sure that scholars of culinary history agree with his story.

Schwarzer concludes on a somewhat apocalyptic note with a visit to Fatima. For the visions of Fatima in 1917 occurred the year of the Russian revolution and one year before the end of the Austrian monarchy. In 2007 arose the “new” basilica, ”an orgy of steel, stone and glass,” with space for 9,000 people, and, before it, the largest paved church square in the world. Dominating everything is a distorted cross of structural steel, 34 meters high, which Schwarzer calls an “optical blasphemy.”  He points out that all this is worthy of the liturgies that are celebrated there today (describing an ecumenical celebration).(Schwarzer doesn’t mention the huge mosaic of Fr. Rupnik which still presides over the interior of the basilica –  the management  is defiant on this point.) Schwarzer concludes with the thoughts about what the content of the Third Secret of Fatima might be (mentioning Cardinals Kaspar and McCarrick) ….

Schwarzer has given us a comprehensive tour of those parts of Europe where monarchs of the Habsburg house ruled at one time or another. I think he has demonstrated the validity and continued relevance of the political form of monarchy by showing that in all these countries amazing things were achieved in art and culture –  things that the current generation cannot understand, let alone match. I would love to see this book translated into English. But I think it might be necessary to have a set of footnotes equal in length to the present text of the volume in order to explain it to English-speaking readers!

Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness

2025 Word on Fire, Elk Grove Village, IL

141 pages

I have been hearing all kinds of good things about Bishop Eric Varden in recent years. A Trappist monk who became the Bishop of Trondheim in his native Norway, he has appeared as an advocate of orthodoxy and sensibility in the Roman Catholic Church of Francis. In Towards Dawn, Bishop Varden offers his readers spiritual advice in the context of the issues, controversies and even the “buzzwords” of the present day. This slim volume gives us a selection of his thought and style.

Bishop Varden has a laudable awareness of reality and willingness to confront unpleasant facts, yet at the same time he remains within the limits of clerical discourse. Therefore, he has attracted favorable attention from the establishment. Consider, for example. the publisher of this book,  Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire,  or that Pope Leo invited Bishop Varden to give the meditations for this year’s Lenten retreat at the Vatican.

His writing is clear, careful, and erudite. The essays in this book often have the flavor of a sermon. At times one senses the author is not a native English speaker; indeed, some of the essays have been translated by the author from the originals he himself wrote in several other languages! Like many Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, he feels compelled to adorn his writing with Greek words: kath’holon, evangelion, topos, eschaton, synodos, and, of course, kerygma. A more serious stylistic barrier is his German-like inclination to approach issues by discussing in detail relevant words and their etymologies.

Bishop Varden wants to give Christians a message of hope –  he begins his book by denying that we are in post-Christian times.  For a Chrisitan, such a statement makes no sense – for Christ is always with us, He is the perennial Dawn.  Rather,  the Bishop thinks we are entering a “post-secular” era.(p. ix) 

Such a time of “epochal change” is admittedly stressful. Yet, Bishop Varden asks, isn’t this focus on the uniqueness of the transformations of the present age, in essence, narcissistic? For the Christian, there is only one decisive paradigm which:

inheres in the fullness of the Church’s faith in Christ, defined by the councils and transmitted through a patrimony of theology, liturgy, culture, and charitable action.(p.15)

Here Bishop Varden is implicitly critiquing utterances of Pope Francis and his circle.

Bishop Varden is unafraid to mention some of the failings of the Church today. For example, although very cautiously, he suggests the “post-conciliar bringing-up-to-date” exhibited “considerable shortsightedness.”  

In many instances, it has not borne the fruit it was intended to bear. After decades of self-affirmation, it is time to admit this.(p. 13)

Then he considers the topic of abuse, and of the catastrophic results connected with it, specifically, the  referendum of May 2018 in once-Catholic Ireland which legalized abortion: 

How has such fearful fury been stirred up? Alas, the answer is at hand. The collapse of the Church’s credibility not just in Ireland but worldwide has been massive. Revelations of abuse – abuse of power, abuse of status, sexual and violent abuse – have driven large segments of the Irish nation, and of many other nations, to look on the Church with revulsion…. (p. 80) 

What can be done to address the situation?  Bishop Varden cites, interestingly, the example of the construction in France of the Basilica of Montmartre, dedicated to the Sacred Heart, after the disasters of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune.

The Basilica was built as a penitential pledge, a space dedicated to uninterrupted prayer before the Blessed Sacrament to call Christ’s Eucharistic grace down upon a broken nation. (p. 82)

(Above) Inside the Basilica of Sacre Coeur with perpetual exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, offered by “Gallia Poenitens.”

Bishop Varden draws on his own Cistercian (Trappist) experience when he rejects nebulous subjective “spiritualities.”  “I sometimes think ‘spirituality’ has become a designation for subjectivized religion freed from dogmas and commandments  – and to a  large extent from revelation.”  (p.116) Instead, we have to return to the concrete, objective encounter with God  in nature, in scripture and in the liturgy.

Bishop Varden is particularly insightful in this collection’s key essay “The Body at Prayer” in which the author contrasts pre-Conciliar liturgical usages with the practices of today. Today both Catholics and Protestants are seeking in the Far East “a spirituality grounded in ritualized physical discipline,” coinciding “with a thoroughgoing deritualization of inherited forms of worship at home.”

This topic is a hot potato now, at any rate in Roman Catholic circles, where young people are keen to rediscover aspects of liturgical and ascetic practices abandoned the wake of the Second Vatican Council… Today’s young seekers find themselves reprimanded  by a predominantly elderly establishment formed by the thrills and anxieties of that revolutionary time, which, to state the obvious, is chronologically further removed from them than the Treaty of Versailles was from youth waving banners on Parisian barricades in 1968… (pp.45-46)

Bishop Varden emphasizes the prior importance of fasting and confession prior to receiving communion. A communicant who experienced the pre-Conciliar discipline of fasting knew that the state of one’s body is not indifferent to the state of one’s soul.  As for the priest, rubrics required him to recite Vigils and Lauds and spend time in silent prayer before celebrating Mass. Bishop Varden describes the rituals of vesting and the rules prescribing the appropriate demeanor of the celebrant when he approached the altar.  Our author, also citing the examples of musicians and ballet dancers, states:

The most venerable of human functions, the confection of Christ’s Body and Blood in an act of rational worship, surely calls for no less a degree of deliberation and concentration. It is this intuition, I believe, that stirs the hearts of young women and men today. I cannot see that it is false. No, in a time weighed down by artificiality, leaden rhetoric, dud personality cults, and frantic “innovations” of terrifying banality in stagecraft, political campaigning, and liturgical practice, a quest for objective, oblative expression in sacred functions appears to me sound and forward-looking.(p.51)

Bishop Varden links the explosion of priestly abuse in the 1960’s with abandonment of  “physical, ritual and moral discipline in life and worship.” What followed the revolt of the priests at the time of the Vatican Council against the old liturgical forms was “the often tedious, sometimes destructive emergence of the priest as personality.” This was a “megalomaniac illusion.” (p.52)

All of us are susceptible to such megalomaniac illusion. The more closely we are associated with a sacred office, the more potentially lethal and Luciferian, this tendency becomes inflating our perception of self. (p.52)

Certain of the bishop’s efforts are decidedly less successful – for example, his essay “The Monastery as Schola DEI.” To the best of my knowledge only one particularly dumb American bishop has seen fit (repeatedly) to canonize DEI by linking it to “Dei” (of God). I’m surprised to see a man of such obvious education as Bishop Varden employing the same analogy. Of course, Bishop Vardon’s purpose is quite different from that of his American colleague: he wishes to show that Benedictine monasticism achieves, in a much truer sense of these words,  “diversity, equity and inclusion.”  I admit I find this form of apologetics singularly ineffective. For a political concept like DEI has a very specific significance in the current society.  Diversity, equity and inclusion are not mere words to which we can arbitrarily assign meanings. Among its many shortcomings, DEI, insofar as it mandates “gender equality,” excludes fundamental principles of Christian morality. A Benedictine monastery (all Catholic, all male (or female), all celibate)seems to me to be the exact opposite of an institution organized on DEI principles. For the Church to claim the slogans of today’s society as its own seems like pandering to the controlling secular world.

I have the same observations, in the ecclesiastical realm, on Bishop Varden’s “Synodality and Holiness.”  Our author traces an “authentic” synodality from the Old Testament to the New and to the present day.  Thus, synodality becomes just a nebulous cliché. Yet, synodality in today’s Church has a very specific meaning: the adoption of democratic and bureaucratic forms of governance, the recognition of homosexuality (including homosexual marriage), women priests, married priests etc. It leads inevitably to the adoption of the full panoply of rights mandated by the modern world (like abortion and euthanasia).  

I do have a more fundamental issue with this book. As we have seen, Bishop Varden explicitly recognizes the continuing  importance of the traditional forms of worship and that a return to them should not be discouraged. He acknowledges “wounds of the Church,” the existence of which are still denied by the papacy and the hierarchy. Yet he seems to think that through personal spiritual conversion a new dawn for the Church can arise. I get the impression Bishop Varden assumes we have, in today’s Church, all the tools; we have the structures in place for a recovery. I think, though,  that the Church’s problems are such that a radical institutional and spiritual reform will be necessary in order to restore her to health.  Consider the Gregorian reform of the 11th century, of the Counter-reformation of the 16th,and lastly the unfortunately incomplete recovery of the 19th century. Bishop Varden speaks of the Benedictines and Cistercians as potential anchors and models in these times. But where do these communities stand today? Bishop Varden writes: 

I am indebted to Dame Gertrude Brown, a nun of Stanbrook, for a brilliant insight. In the early 1980s she was sent to the United States to assist a community reconciled to the church after embroilment in what came to be called the Boston heresy case. Dame Gertrude was glad to accompany a broadening of outlook among the sisters and brothers. (p.5)

A footnote indicates this information came from a private communication with a nun of the Stanbrook community (with which Bishop Varden has had contacts) Now, once upon a time, Stanbrook had been perhaps the largest and best-known monastery of women in England,  with wide resonance in the secular world(In this House of Brede!) But to what has the “broadening of outlook” led there? The community, which numbered some seventy as recently as 1970, by 2024 had been reduced to 15 active members and one postulant. 1) And these figures understate the decrease, since two other Benedictine monasteries had been closed and liquidated into Stanbrook. The grand Stanbrook monastery complex was sold years ago and is now a luxury hotel. The nuns built for themselves a horrendously ugly modern monastery in a remote location. The same “progress” is true of Bishop Varden’s own Trappist order. Just last week I read that the original house of the order in France (la Trappe) is to be closed in 2028. 

Yet there are exceptions to the sad story of decline. One of the Benedictine monasteries liquidated into Stanbrook, Colwich Abbey, has been sold to the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, from Missouri. 2) And the grand Trappist monastery of Mount Melleray in Ireland, which closed in January 2025, has been acquired by Ave Maria University. 3) Thus, healthy American institutions – conservative or traditionalist – on the fringes of the Roman Catholic establishment are picking up the torch from the dying, mainstream religious communities of Europe. For a true spiritual recovery to occur, the liturgical tradition and asceticism of Catholicism must be not just the subject of learned observations or a reluctant concession to the enthusiasts of a younger generation but must become the law of the Church once again.

1.  Stanbrook 400  (“a commemorative Issue of the Stanbrook Benedictines”)  at 127 (2025). An alternative count presented in the same document adds seven more nuns in nursing homes or otherwise not part of the active community)
2.  Id. at 9
3. Elhabbal, Madaleine, “Ave Maria University To Send First Student Group To New Ireland Campus At Former Abbey,” ewtn.co.uk  (3/15/2026)

Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes

Edited and translated  by Gerhard Eger and Zachary Thomas

Foreword by Fr. Claude Barthe

396 pages

(Os Justi Press, Lincoln NE 2025)

 Os Justi Press offers us a new edition and translation of the Liturgical Travels of Jean-Baptists Le Brun des Marettes. It’s a unique journey through the Catholic Church of France as it existed in 1718. Thus, it describes the liturgical situation of France after the impact of the Protestant Reformation, of the Counter Reformation, of the Gallican and Jansenist controversies but before the simplifications made in the Church as reconstituted in  the wake of the French Revolution. This perspective is unique. I had previously written about the account of Wilhelm Wackenroder, a later German writer, who also described a liturgical visit at the end of the 18^th century to Bamberg, a Catholic diocese where the ancient rite still flourished. But that writer was a Protestant, completely unfamiliar with Catholic culture and the rituals the witnessed. Le Brun des Marettes, however, writes not only as a convinced Catholic but also as a representative Jansenist of that era. 

Now the author unfolds an amazing picture of the practices of the French Catholic Church in those days. For La Brun des Marettes liturgy is not just the celebration of mass, but also blessings, chanting of the divine offices and above all processions. Above all the ceremonies of Holy Week receive detailed treatment. Throughout Le Brun des Marettes provides many curious details. He claims, for example, that in one monastery in Poitiers, nuns formerly served as acolytes vested in surplice and maniple.  And we repeatedly read in Liturgical Travels of the employment of the rood screen, where it still existed,  for the chanting of the readings of the Mass. Le Brun des Marettes frequently enriches his discussion of the various liturgical uses he encounters by reference to the practices in Rome, Milan (the Ambrosian rite) and the Byzantine liturgy

Furthermore, the performance of these French liturgical rites was inextricably intertwined with the secular culture  – ecclesiastical ceremonies might be the occasion of the distribution of gifts or remuneration, the acknowledgement of feudal obligations or the administration of charity. Truly this is a perfect picture of integralism! 

The commenters in the New Liturgical Movement of some years past, who scrutinized and critiqued every detail of the ceremonies described or photographed on the pages of that blog, would find this book informative. Indeed, Shawn Tribe, the founding editor of that website, has contributed a very fine essay to this volume. Yet these amateur critics will find within nothing corresponding to their vision of a uniform, fixed, immutable set of rubrics governing everything. 

For the liturgical diversity described by Le Brun des Marettes is the product not just of the conflicts of the two centuries preceding his own era but, in some respects, dates back to late Roman times. It is all the result of organic development, not of dictates from centralized authority. More recent influences on the national and international level had been incorporated into the existing local tradition.

Nor will the Vatican and the Catholic Church establishment find in this book support for their current certitudes. For, contrary to what Pope Francis and his acolytes claimed, after the Council of Trent Pius V did not repudiate all prior uses and establish liturgical uniformity throughout the Western Catholic Church. Total liturgical uniformity had never been implemented even in the Western Church. This book demonstrates that , contrary to Cardinal Roche’s recent assertions, while diversity existed and development was possible, all was regulated by the exact performance of  historic tradition – there was no formless flux of change.

Of course, this situation described in Liturgical Travels depended on the existence of many subordinate institutions within the Catholic Church: monasteries, collegiate churches and above all the cathedral chapters of canons, all richly chronicled in this book. The canons of the cathedrals were the guardians of the local liturgies. This liturgical diversity disappeared largely because the institutions described in this book also has been swept away or radically transformed after 1789. Later, such cathedral chapters seemed completely alien to the Catholic clergy themselves:

We (in the United States in 1930 – SC) have attained to our full ecclesiastical stature. Prelates, robed for ceremony, should adorn our more solemn religious functions. The Roman purple is now necessary to give character and color to our Pontifical occasions. The stately cathedral demands the purple stall. We have not and let it be devoutly hoped that we never will have, cathedral canons, but we have and we should have a growing number of monsignori  – men who have led distinction to religion in their own parishes and who are intellectually as well as ecclesiastically an ornament to the church. 1)

Now Le Brun des Marettes is a Jansenist. Our author writes particularly complimentary descriptions of certain Jansenist monasteries. This tendency also is evident in his consistent advocacy of simplicity and of returning to supposedly ancient practices. So, he commends those churches where the altar remains bare prior to the Mass and refers to the famous discussion of the purpose of candles in Catholic services – are they symbolic or do they merely provide illumination? Thus, our author touches on topics that many years later were taken up by a more extreme generation of Jansenists and then by the liturgical movement in the 20th century. Indeed, they reflect a radical change in the spiritual outlook of Westen Man. 

However, Le Brun des Marettes is in no way an early representative of the culture of Vatican II. In true Jansenist manner, he repeatedly advocates, not the relaxation of norms,  but a return to earlier,  more severe forms of devotion and penance. Above all throughout the book our author constantly returns to the exact performance of rite. The variety within the French church may have been great, but everything in every individual church was precisely governed by law and custom, not by the exercise of flexibility or creativity. 

Now our author is by no means perfect. His selection of churches is unsystematic,  with some (notably Rouen) receiving far more attention than others. There’s a fair degree of repetition. At times it is unclear whether a particular ritual described by Le Brun des Marettes was actually being practiced in the author’s day  – or whether it was something he had found in an early manuscript. The author helpfully describes now and then architecture, inscriptions and monuments, often Roman, but in not in any methodical manner. And obviously some of his conclusions have been overtaken by liturgical scholarship in the last 300 years. 

Nevertheless, I found this book a clear and interesting read – also thanks to the translator. This edition is supplied with notes that are a great aid both to one familiar with the liturgy and to the reader completely unfamiliar with the topic. Furthermore, there are helpful introductions and essays included in this edition. Some valuable illustrations dating back to the 19th and 18th centuries complete the presentation.

I see Liturgical Travels as being of greatest interest to the Catholic traditionalist who has long personal experience of participating, as celebrant, minister or member of the congregation,  in the celebration of the traditional rite – especially in the solemn Mass and vespers. In Liturgical Travels he will find a multitude of insights into the practices with which the has become familiar. Indeed, the presentation of the many alternatives found in this book will only increase his appreciation of his rite. Those who have the good fortune to be able to participate in Sarum use or Dominican liturgies will be especially grateful to this book– for these alternative liturgical uses have survived to the present day and indeed have points of resemblance to the liturgies of the French cathedrals described in Liturgical Travels. 

1. Duggan, Thomas S., The Catholic Church in Connecticut, at 203 (The States History Company, New York City, 1930). The author was vicar general of the Hartford, CT, archdiocese.