By Peter A. Kwasniewski

273 pages

TAN Books (Gastonia, NC, 2024)

Turned Around is Peter Kwasniewski’s latest contribution to the literature on the traditional Latin mass. (henceforward, the “TLM”) It is a kind of Summa of what he and others have written in recent years. The book is organized around commonly raised questions regarding this liturgy. The list of the chapters illustrates this practical approach:

Why we worship facing east;

Why the priest is separated from the people;

Why the traditional mass is kingly and courtly;

Why we follow inherited rituals and strict rubrics;

Why we repeat ourselves in traditional worship;

Why we use a one-year lectionary of readings;

Why we pray in Latin;

Why it is better not to understand everything immediately;

Why we kneel for communion and receive on the tongue; and, finally, 

The Mass is the faith and the faith is the mass. “Why are you people always going on about ‘the TLM this’ and ‘the TLM that’?”

Like most of Dr. Kwasniewski‘s works, Turned Around is passionately argued. The author summarizes much recent literature, including his own! But Turned Around permits the opponents of the traditional Latin mass – liturgists, publicists, Pope Francis, even the supposedly sacrosanct texts of the Second Vatican Council – to speak as well. This is absolutely foreign to the modus operandi of the Catholic establishment and Catholic media. But this openness to the “other side” actually furthers the arguments of the book. Because for the perceptive reader, the language of these contrasting views – superficial, platitudinous or pompous – only serves as a self-indictment.

Dr. Kwasniewski is not afraid to argue for the unique excellence of the TLM, and,  in contrast, to point out the many deleterious effects of the Novus Ordo liturgy. This book does not at all make a plea for toleration, on the desirability of respecting the attachments of a minority in the Church. Rather, as did Mosebach’s Heresy of Formlessness 20 years ago, Turned Around leads the reader to the inevitable conclusion that the TLM should be restored as a matter of principle for the entire Church. 

Dr. Kwasniewski dares to say that there was no need or advantage to the liturgical changes made in the 1950s and 60s. There was a need to purge sloppiness and carelessness in the execution of the liturgy and to combat utilitarian and minimalist practices of celebrating it. The Solemn High Mass and sung liturgy in general, needed to be restored to its central position in Catholic liturgical life. But this could have been handled through a reform similar to what was suggested in the very early days of the liturgical movement. Indeed, Dr. Kwasniewski makes a number of suggestions regarding improvements to the TLM which could be made while remaining within tradition. By the way, those pre-Conciliar abuses of the past are even more widespread in the celebration of the Novus Ordo today.  

 Dr. Kwasniewski takes head on the objection that the TLM reflects an earlier, monarchical age and is thus inconsistent with our cultural sensitivity today. He celebrates the fact that the TLM – especially the Solemn High Mass – is courtly and kingly. He denounces a mass that has been “deroyalized and decelestialized” (!) (p.67), For, after all,  the mass is the worship due to a Divine King. The contrary arguments, on the other hand, reveal all too clearly the secular political factors underlying  the liturgical changes in the 1960s.

It is notable that Dr. Kwasniewski does not address the (non-substantive) argument most frequently cited by Pope Francis and his acolytes in favor of the Novus Ordo and against the TLM: that God ordered the current regime, that Vatican II and the popes ( at least John XXIII, Paul VI and Francis) are acting at the immediate behest of the Holy Spirit. Of course this makes moot any rational analysis of the liturgy whatsoever. Dr. Kwasniewski does consider this position indirectly, for he points out the inconsistencies between some of the conciliar texts and their later implementation as well as citing  papal utterances since Vatican II which support the underlying arguments for the TLM

Dr. Kwasniewski draws on a wide variety of sources: theological, liturgical, historical, and practical. In this, he is aided by the vast explosion of works on the liturgy, not just by traditionalists, that have appeared in recent years. The chapter “What Next?” and the bibliography very conveniently summarize these resources. He also makes numerous references to the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern tradition. But Dr. Kwasniewski also draws on his concrete experience of the TLM.

I myself have been attending the old Latin Mass for over thirty years, and the sense of wonder , the regimented peace, the freedom of prayer, the desire wakened again and again for God, the joy(and frankly the relief) of never seeing any human being as the center of attention – all of this hasn’t “worn off.” The old rite is ever-new and ever-renewing.(p. 210)

I can only support Dr. Kwasniewski’s conclusions by reference to what I personally have seen of  both the TLM and the Novus Ordo, including at events where they could be compared side-by-side. The former rite is a unified ceremonial of gestures, readings music and movements, the latter – regardless of other trappings – a succession of texts read facing the people. Those of us who experience how the TLM is celebrated today in numerous parishes can testify that such engaged and committed congregations have previously hardly ever been seen (or heard). Is this not active participation?

In 2002, Martin Mosebach gave us the Heresy of Formlessness, the first handbook defending the traditional liturgy based on objective liturgical principles. Now, Peter Kwasniewski has given us a new guide to the TLM. Its content has been enriched by the experiences of the last quarter century, which saw the unanticipated expansion and flowering of the traditional mass and then the all-out war by the Pope and the Vatican to suppress it. But, as always, out of such conflicts, a new synthesis, a deeper understanding has emerged. Turned Around is for anyone who wants to understand why traditionalists fight for the TLM – as well as being a tool for those who need to defend it.

Post Scriptum:  I feel compelled to comment on the “Publisher’s Note” affixed to Turned Around by TAN books. It states:

 “TAN books, in its loyalty to the Church’s, teaching, has taken measures to ensure that what is opinion and what is dogma are clearly distinguished. The author herein published is, and intends to be, in all of his works, acts, and writing, a loyal son of the Church, and writes as such. The author holds, as to all Catholics, that the Novus Ordo is a valid mass, in which the Body and Blood of Christ are confected “ (ix)

This note is reminiscent of Fr. Joseph Fessio’s introduction to the original English language version of the above-mentioned Heresy of Formlessness. Turned around, if I am not mistaken, does not even discuss this issue of validity.  The Publisher’s Note, which in effect offers a partial apology for the book it introduces, reveals only the continued obsession of a significant part of the conservative and traditionalist community with issues of authority and validity.

by  Ida Friederike Görres

Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson

Cluny Media LLC, Providence RI ( 2023) 

Ida Friederike Görres, a German Catholic writer and apologist well known in her day, slipped into undeserved obscurity after her death in 1971. In recent years devoted followers of hers like Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and Jennifer S. Bryson have labored to rescue Görres from oblivion. Jennifer Bryson maintains a  website that covers all things related to Görres, to which she has recently added a substack. Jennifer Bryson is also the translator of The Church in the Flesh (in other words, the Church incarnate, the “really existing” Church), a volume originally published in 1950. 

Now The Church in the Flesh differs from two works of Görres I have previously reviewed, which, consisting of diary entries or letters, commented on a wide range of literature, personalities and current events. 1)  The Church in the Flesh, in contrast, is a more integrated,  theological presentation –  an apologia of the Catholic Church as she concretely exists.   But Görres seeks to link this description and defense of the Church to the subjective spiritual life of the believer. She employs more concrete, conversational,  and emotional language then one would encounter in a neo-scholastic treatise on the subject. In a sense, The Church in the Flesh is also a work of Catholic spirituality

The Church in the Flesh takes the form of letters addressed to (fictitious?) correspondents.  Görres’s dialogue partners present objections to – or at least raise doubts regarding – the Catholic Church to which Görres responds at length. The criticisms of her correspondents are not those of a theologian or philosopher but platitudes one commonly encounters in the news media or educational establishments in 1950 and today. So, for example, the chapter “The Nuisance of Morality” deals with the claim that the Church is reducible to a system of morality and, simultaneously,  with the opposite position: that the Church has nothing to do with morality. Long ago I heard the first statement solemnly uttered by a representative of a much older generation; the second, of course, is something we hear now every day. So, the questions Görres addresses remain relevant.

Görres emphasizes that the Church is not a disembodied idea or “religious concept” but a concrete reality. “The Church has always understood herself to be historical, that is, to exist in time and space.”  And that is because the Church is an extension of Christ, both God and Man. In the incarnation, God really entered our world. So we have to deal with Him here from now on:

with the traces and witnesses, the memories and attempts of this long-standing interaction with Him – you see, this life and its visible manifestation are what we call the Church. (p.15)

Thus, a believer’s relation to the Church is also his relationship with Christ. 

The Church has not deviated from an allegedly perfect “Early Church” but has developed from it. Görres argues for the role of tradition,  drawing heavily on Cardinal Newman’s thought on the development of doctrine. Tradition is a support for the believer  – but it also includes development. And one cannot absolutize any given era in the Church’s history. 

In the chapter “Church of the Saints “ Görres writes perhaps the most eloquent and passionate pages of this book. For hagiography was her profession.  Why does she write books on the saints? They are not, after all, necessarily perfect. 

Yes! For me, the saint is the most important person, not only in the Church. The saint is the most important person on the world because the saint is the decisive answer to the big riddle: What is a human being? … Humans are beings who can already partake of God’s holiness in this mammalian body, in this so widely explorable, transparent, predictable soul, in the midst of this world: visible, verifiable, real.  The human is created and called to be perfected in such holiness and to exist in it for eternity. (p. 184)

Throughout this book Görres writes of “the Church” being this or “the Church” teaching that. The Church, in her institutions, practices and doctrine, appears as a uniform, coherent bloc. This is entirely typical of the self-understanding and self-presentation of the Church in that period. Today, of course, we can hardly think of any teaching or aspect of the Church that is not questioned or outright rejected by a party within the institutional Church itself. Today the Catholic can no longer state baldly “the Church” teaches or does this or that without specifying who in the Church teaches or does it.

Görres sets out an extremely “conservative”  (in other words, limited) explanation of papal infallibility – quite different from ideas of some Church circles in that day or what is asserted now for Pope Francis. She indeed wishes to deemphasize the Catholic fixation on this doctrine. Instead, she speaks warmly of the infallible “ordinary magisterium” of the universal Church.(pp. 88-89)

Curiously, while emphasizing the living presence of Christ in the Church, Görres devotes relatively few pages to the liturgy. There are exceptions -such as the following eloquent passages on the witness of the liturgy to the reality and necessity of the personal spiritual struggle:

The liturgy is also full of evidence of this struggle(against the devil – SC). Every baptism begins with an exorcism. demands the solemn renunciation, of the Devil. his works, his splendor. …The Holy Mass , the memory of the Lord’s Death, brings before our eyes the terrible seriousness of this struggle, its final consequences, and the cost of this victory, and even over the coffin of a person we beseech God that it would please Him to deliver at the gates of hell the soul that He has recalled.

Have you ever taken part in the wonderful rite of the consecration of water [for the baptismal font] on Holy Saturday where the “water, a creature,” the eloquent symbol of everything elemental,  unsubdued, of the netherworld in and outside of man, is taken into consideration and is called to be a means for his rebirth.

The cult of the martyrs, the oldest cult of saints in the Church, the veneration of the Holy Cross, the whole Good Friday liturgy, mean exactly the same thing as the sacrament of the Eucharist on every weekday: the Church knows that the victory of God in this world is only visible by exception; that it must time and time again take place the form of destruction, in the testimony of defeat.

(pp. 174-175. Of course, these examples are taken from the traditional liturgy!)

Towards the end of this book, Görres makes an extraordinarily perceptive observation in critiquing a somewhat esoteric spiritual temptation of some contemporary Catholic writers. Their characters refused the support and consolation of the spiritual treasures offered to them by the Church and elected to “go it alone” and rely on their own spiritual experience.

In his War Journals, Ernst Jünger makes this very fitting remark: “Property is considered suspect not only by outside observers, by the disinherited; it becomes suspect, even burdensome and boring, from within, for the owners themselves…  Possessions require the strength to possess…. (p. 203) 2)

Görres applies this profound insight to a problem of personal spirituality,  but does it not also perfectly describe one of the main (unspoken) psychological motivations of Vatican II and its aftermath? The mania for simplification in the liturgy, the abandonment of fasting and other ascetical practices, the jettisoning by the religious of their habits and rules, the scorning of traditional ecclesiastical art– had not all these spiritual “possessions” or “inherited wealth”  (Görres’s phrase) become dubious – too burdensome, too boring, to hold on to –  at least in the minds of the clergy and religious? 

Yet Görres’s defense of the Church as she concretely exists is not at all unqualified. She writes of internal conflicts, of failings, even of spiritual decline. The criticisms of Görres have a certain vagueness and lack of specificity. Yet we can discern the beginnings of  lines of thought that would later be used to justify radical change in the Church.3)

For example, at the very beginning of this book, Görres gives us a kind of “parable” which I quote at length:

[W]hen I ask converts what the first noticeable reason was for their turning to the Church, their answer almost always mentions one of the things that you summarized in exasperation (I already know what you meant!) under the word “knickknacks“: the impression from a Mass, the sight of penitents waiting in front of the confessional,  a procession,  the chance participation in a Catholic funeral, a Marian devotion in May, a stay in the hospital under the care of Catholic sisters, a visit to a monastery – in short,  an encounter with precisely that visible, tangible element of the Church that so many of her own children call burdens and embarrassments and even view as objectionable.  4)

On the other hand,  when I asked a French worker-priest from that bold vanguard of the Paris Mission what actually prevents the majority of workers from believing,  whether it is the dogmas,  the strictness of Catholic moral demands …. (He said) ”Oh no, that’s all too complicated, too fundamental; the external manifestation of the Church as she is, that is the big obstacle.” 5)

There is room for both statements; both concern us.“ (Pp. 3-4)

The author seems to regard this asserted dualism with a certain ambivalence. The external manifestations of if the Church are both an attraction – at least for outsiders – and a stumbling block for “so many of her own children.”  But is not this comparison weighted?  The layman (especially the convert!), captivated by so-called externals, is contrasted with the “bold” clergy who reject them in favor of direct communication and social action. In the 1960’s, of course, the clergy would wage war upon these “externals” and would feel empowered to forcefully enlighten the benighted laity attached to them. One is reminded of the insights of Fr. Bryan Houghton on this very subject.6)

In The Church in the Flesh Ida Görres undertook to justify the Church to “modern man” utilizing fresh language and concepts.  As always, her work is studded with brilliant observations and beautiful passages. At the same time, we can discern ideas, if only in inchoate form, that later became the dogmas of a future Catholic revolution. Indeed, some  of the criticisms Görres addressed in this book are today routinely restated by those holding the highest offices in the Church herself!  But these were future developments which Görres herself would be unable to support. In dealing with “timeless” issues raised by the Church’s presence in the world, The Church in the Flesh remains a valuable resource –  and also an intriguing witness to a particular moment in the history of the Church. 

1.  Broken Lights: Diaries and Letters 1951-1959 (1964); „Wirklich die neue Phönixgestalt?”  Über Kirche und Konzil: Unbekannte Briefe 1962-1971 an Paulus Gordan (2015)
2. The translation of Jünger’s diary quoted in The Church in the Flesh omits several words, which obscures the meaning of what he  – and Görres –  are saying. See Jünger, Ernst, Strahlungen II, at 276 (Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 1949). I have taken the liberty of amending part of this quote.
3. Coincidentally or not, in the immediate post-World War II period, another female German Catholic author, Gertrud von Le Fort, was also creating  a minor uproar with her 1946 novel The Wreath of the Angels.  It set forth a precursor of the moral philosophy we have since seen expounded in Amoris Laetitia.
4. This recitation of aspects of Catholicism resembles certain statements of Simone Weil (for whom Görres later expressed dislike).
5. The “worker-priest” movement would experience grave conflicts with the Vatican beginning shortly after the publication of this book. 
6. Especially Judith’s Marriage (published in 1987,  but describing the Catholic world from the 1950’s to 1968) (Angelico Press, Brooklyn, N.Y. 2020)

Unresolved Tensions in Papal-Episcopal Relations: Essays Occasioned by the Deposition of Bishop Joseph Strickland

Peter A. Kwasniewski, Editor

(Os Justi Studies in Catholic Tradition 13)

Os Justi Press, Lincoln, 2024 

Nowadays books defending Catholic tradition in all its aspects are appearing almost as frequently as publications celebrating Pope Francis and the Catholic progressives. It’s an amazing feat, given the disparity in resources. For the massive Vatican publicity apparatus,  mainstream Catholic institutions and sympathetic secular media are the pillars of the pro-papal, pro-progressive media onslaught. Traditionalists, in contrast, have to rely on small independent publishing houses. We owe much of the new traditionalist publishing wave to Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, both as author and editor. He is of course the editor of Unresolved Tensions. 

Despite its somewhat awkward title, Unresolved Tensions gives us a needed theological and legal framework for understanding the deposition last year of Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler. It resembles Dr. Kwasniewski’s previous anthology Ultramontanism and Tradition – mainly collecting and preserving writings that previously appeared online. Unresolved Tensions, however, focuses on just one aspect of the governance of the Church.  You probably will not be surprised to learn that most of the contributors to Unresolved Tensions do not agree with the pope’s arbitrary, unfettered authority to remove bishops without cause. But this collection is also open to other opinions.

At the heart of the book is an exchange between Jose Ureta and Dr. John Lamont on the nature of episcopal jurisdiction (as opposed to membership in the episcopal order). Is the bishop’s jurisdiction intrinsic to (or inherent in) his consecration as bishop or is it follow from papal delegation?  If the bishop’s jurisdiction is inseparable from his membership in the episcopal order, it follows that the pope does not have unlimited authority to deprive the bishop of it. 

Mr. Ureta restates the case for unlimited papal authority over episcopal jurisdiction, an opinion which dates back well before the consolidation of the Ultramontane regime in the 19^th century. Yet, he also wants to absolve this position from any responsibility for the abuses we see at the present day.  In my opinion, John Lamont gives a more coherent and precise account of the debate between the “moderate” (restricted) and “strong” (unlimited) positions on the scope of papal power over episcopal jurisdiction. Lamont argues that the moderate position – even if in the minority in recent times – is not only supportable but is best suited for the universal nature of the Church.  Lamont’s position also has the merit of according better with historical reality. 

Joseph Shaw,  in his remarkable foreword to Unresolved Tensions, describes the pathetic situation of a member of today’s Catholic hierarchy. Regardless of the theories of Vatican II which supposedly restored episcopal rights, the bishop today finds himself totally controlled by the pope, media pressure and his fellow bishops. His scope for independent action is drastically circumscribed. So that,  when a pope arrives, like Francis, who is both unafraid of exercising absolute papal authority, and works in closest alliance with the secular media, episcopal resistance is understandably feeble to nonexistent.

Philip Campbell’s insightful essay asks in what sense can the pope be said to stand above canon law? He points out that papal exemption from the coercive power of canon law does not at all mean that the pope can violate canon law at will.  Those who argue otherwise are undermining the foundations of law. This also accords, I would add, with secular historical precedent. Some of the most authoritarian rulers have been the greatest creators of law: the later Roman Emperors climaxing with Justinian, Pope Innocent III,  the long succession of English monarchs in the Middle Ages, and of course, Napoleon. Under all these undoubtedly absolute sovereigns, the rule of law made rapid progress. 

Unresolved Tensions includes many other riches. Cardinal Gerhard Müller and Bishop Athanasius Schneider eloquently defend Bishop Strickland. The introductory essay on the scope and limits of papal authority by a “Friar of the Order of Preachers,” provides a comprehensive theological foundation for the rest of the book. Fr. Gerald E Murray describes the rules of canon law as they apply to Strickland’s  case. He argues that the deposition of Bishop Strickland violated all canon law requirements  of due process. Stefano Fontana writes of the radically new historical situation that Francis has created with his action against Strickland and appointment to the Vatican of Victor Manuel Fernandez. Finally, in an appendix Dr. Kwasniewski adds several essays of his own that have already been published in other anthologies as well as key texts cited by Ureta and Lamont. 

I doubt that Unresolved Tensions will have any immediate influence on the conduct of the “institutional” Church.  After all, only a minority of the contributors to this book currently hold official positions in either the clergy or academia of the Catholic Church. Bishop Strickland did accept his dismissal. Most bishops will also accept – if at times only silently – anything the pope orders. 

I fear that those holding teaching positions in Catholic universities and seminaries will also ignore this book, regardless of its virtues. Progressives have adopted a utilitarian, positivistic approach to Francis’s uncontrolled exercises of papal authority – if one of his actions furthers their agenda they will approve,  regardless of any previous advocacy of “collegiality” or “synodality.”  Those outside the progressive realm will probably try to ignore these issues, and continue to recite authorities without any attempt to relate the texts to these events.  But as Stefano Fontana eloquently states, in the current situation, conscientious objection will have to be active instead of passive. (This has already started after Fiducia Supplicans.) But Unresolved Tensions stands as a helpful resource, reminding us of rules of theology, law and morality which the Vatican routinely violates. And it will, hopefully, serve as a road map in a future recovery.

Os Justi Press (this and other publications).

Meier, Michael, Der Papst der Enttäuschungen: Warum Franziskus kein Reformer ist (The Pope of Disapointments: Why Francis is no Reformer)

Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2024

What does the progressive establishment think of Francis? You would think their evaluation should be entirely favorable. After all, under the Woke Pope (Newsweek) there’s virtual identity now between the positions of the extreme left (those previously called by some “dissidents”), and that of the ecclesiastical establishment. However, that is not necessarily the case.  The Pope of Disappointments sums up the Francis papacy from the German perspective. The author, Michael Meier, is Swiss, but the Swiss and Austrian Catholic churches function as a kind of subgroup of the German Church. For many years Meier was religion editor for the Zürich Tages-Anzeiger, a left-leaning paper. (Of course, just as in the Catholic Church, previously middle-of-the-road and even conservative German media by now have been largely absorbed into the dominant progressive culture).

It is admittedly difficult for me to acclimatize myself to the Catholic progressive world view.  First, the norms of “modern” Western society are an absolute value for the German progressives. Second, their progressive faith is encapsulated in a set of specific demands, reiterated endlessly for decades now: liberty for contraception and divorce, married clergy, women clergy, full acceptance of the LGBTQ movement within the Church, and a relaxed attitude towards abortion. These demands – or “reforms” – are presented as self-evident axioms – they require no defense or explanation. Meier describes progressives as Reformkatholiken – an ideologically loaded concept from the 19^th century, Third, the focus of these reformers is relentlessly secular and political. Reforming the role of women in Church, for example, is defined as their obtaining ever more power in the institution. Finally, the entire doctrinal structure of the Church is assumed to be just a set of administrative rules, susceptible to immediate and summary change. 1)

Now what is Meier’s verdict on Francis? As the title of the book indicates,  he has not fulfilled the expectations of the Germans. Yes, Francis has opened a limited scope for divorce and the LGBTQ presence; he has advanced ecumenical relations with the non-European religions, especially Islam. But much of the liberal agenda remains unrealized. Why is this? The author attributes it to Francis’s lack of firm ideological grounding. Meier characterizes Francis a pastor, not as a principled leader or intellectual. His alleged real focus is “evangelization.”  Francis displays “mercy,” he does not change doctrine. As Meier puts it, “the two most important characteristics of the Roman Church – celibacy and the exclusion of women from ordination  – are not negotiable.” And synodality is really a meaningless concept. 

Beyond the failure of Francis to explicitly realize the “reform” agenda, the author has other specific and pointed criticisms of his papacy. Regarding sexual abuse, the author, like the progressive German establishment,  doesn’t cut the pope and the Church any slack. He is relentlessly critical of Francis’s management of this issue. Meier is also not at all pleased with the failure of Francis to assume a belligerent status with Ukraine against Russia. He further finds it dubious that Francis associates himself with other religious leaders of a more autocratic mind, such as the patriarch of Moscow or the Islamic authorities – while not immediately granting intercommunion with the Protestant churches,  It may surprise the reader to find out that, in making some of these criticisms, Meier cites authorities who view the world from a perspective entirely different from his own – like Sandro Magister. Meier does mention (citing Mosebach and Spaemann!) the authoritarian leadership of Francis: the Pope’s actions are characterized by turns and twists, by surprising initiatives and then sudden reversals.

But what is a traditionalist to make of this?

First, I think Meier s totally mistaken regarding the personal character and the method of government of Francis. Meier seems to have fallen victim to the myths created by the Vatican media machine and its affiliated secular reporters, even though he specifically criticizes their depictions of Francis! And Meier is not alone in this vision of Francis as a simple, John XXIII-like pastor. Does not Yves Chiron in his History of the Traditionalists, also describe the pope as “above all a pastor” ? Thomas Sternberg (a former  high official of the German Catholic Church) says the same in his 2019 debate with Martin Mosebach, gushing over the pope embracing disabled people in wheelchairs.

Yet this depiction is the very opposite of the truth. A cursory review of the last eleven years reveals that Francis is a man consumed by a relentless drive for control and by a radical commitment to ideology. The fact that Francis was unable to achieve at a German institution the scholastic attainments of German intellectuals, does not at all mean that he is not an ideologue. His system of thought may be crude, but it is simple, short, and can be relentlessly repeated: we must go forward, not back, cannot be rigid, doctrine evolves, the Church must welcome everyone as he is, dialogue is essential, the unity of the Church “under Peter” must be preserved. These are ideological positions –  an endlessly repeated litany that Francis hammers home on every occasion.

The author is unfair to treat Francis just as a failed implementer of the progressive vision. He has, after all, given them hitherto unimaginable forms of recognition of divorce and same-sex unions as well as a vastly expanded scope of ecumenism. Yes, Francis has not officially authorized intercommunion with Protestants, but recently he has given unprecedented, influential access within the Church to the Anglicans.  At this very moment he’s obviously working on introducing married clergy and female clergy. 

Meier is distressed by a whole series of Vatican reproofs and criticisms of the German synodal path meted out during the Francis pontificate – but haven’t developments like Fiducia Supplicans shown that these admonitions were merely tactical?  I think our author is projecting onto the entire Church a state of quasi-totalitarian control and alignment with the secular power that outside of Germany does not (yet) exist. Only in Germany and adjacent areas could the controlling powers of the Church simply decree the “reforms” that the author wants. 

Elsewhere in the Church,  Francis must contend with the fact that many Catholics believe that certain positions that have been accepted previously are articles of faith. It takes a while to bring these Catholics around to discarding that which they had only a few years ago held to be certain and holy. This explains the torturous preparation of Francis before he makes each of his moves: the synod on the family, the Amazonian synod,  the Churchwide synodal path, the questionnaires regarding the status of traditionalism in the Church. These things may seem to an objective observer transparently dishonest, which is true, but Francis judges them necessary first steps in implementing progressive reform.  Admittedly there have been reverses,  some things have been blocked or stalled, such as – so far – the introduction of married clergy and a female clergy of sorts. 

The author makes much of the confusion under the pope, and the endless discussions he has initiated, which do not immediately lead to a conclusion. But Meier does not understand that this is a technique of introducing change. By opening up to discussion so many things that recently were considered fixed and immutable, Francis softens up the Church establishment for the acceptance of change. The creation by Francis of a state of confusion does not show lack of sympathy with progressive innovations. It is a way to achieve them without triggering massive schism.

Throughout this book we read an endless series of official statements, and  commentary of German theologians on them. Outside of those holding office in the German Catholic administrative or educational establishment, the Catholic laity do not figure in this book at all. There is no mention of the deterioration in the practice of the faith among them in the last 10 years. Meier talks of the exclusion of the laity from the governance of the Church but it’s obvious what he means by “laity” are the lay bureaucrats and associates of the Church. 

I found particularly offensive  a remark, not of the author, but of Massimo Faggioli, who writes:

“It’s clear that Francis is the first truly global pope, a non-Western pope, who has freed Catholicism from the idea of a moralistic, bourgeois middle- class Catholicism, which still defined what Catholicism is.” 2)

The message from the Catholic progressives is that if you do all the Church instructs you to do,  if you sacrifice to carry on a Catholic family life in this challenging world as best you can,  you will be denounced by your priests as a conformist, a Pharisee, and a hypocrite. The contempt of the Conciliar Church establishment for the ordinary laity has rarely been so blatantly displayed. 

For Meier, liturgical questions are not even worth discussing.  He grotesquely (and incorrectly) summarizes Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum as merely reintroducing anti-Semitic language in the Church. Benedict himself is caricatured as a lover of golden vestments,  a remote  authoritarian figure, and indifferent or hostile to ecumenism. 

There are many other things Meier treats only superficially or not at all. He talks of the failure of the Amazonian synod to achieve its policy objectives but does not mention the role of Cardinal Sarah and Pope Benedict.  Regarding Ukraine, does Meier really expect the pope to bless uncritically the positions of Zelensky?  For Meier to talk (citing Hubert Wolf) of pacifism not being part of the Church tradition seems audacious, to say the least, after decades of pacifist propaganda from Meier’s end of the ecclesiastical spectrum. Meier mentions Cardinal Tagle as a papal contender and a “personal favorite” of Francis  – although this gentleman had already been sidelined for unexplained reasons. 

The Pope of Disappointments witnesses to the dissatisfaction of the progressive establishment in the German-speaking world with the incomplete reform of the Church under Francis. The author predicts that things are unlikely to change, because those cardinals and bishops from the periphery that Francis has advanced are, in fact, not at all aligned with the progressive churches on many, perhaps even most issues. Indeed, the author concludes by writing that the Catholic Church may be irreformable (by that he means incapable of completely imposing progressive “reforms”). What Meier considers the deadweight of tradition will block the liberal dream from ever coming to fruition. His conclusions are quite a contrast to the relentless publicity in favor of Francis and of the church establishment that one reads every day in the Vatican and English-language Catholic media and the complicit secular media as well.

I myself had earlier described the situation of the Catholic Church after the Council  – and still, after more than ten years of Francis – as one of deadlock. In the Council the Church had institutionalized within its own bureaucratic structures a progressive movement that aims at the complete repudiation of the prior teaching of the Catholic Church on liturgy, morality, and theology. But the force of tradition, the natural reluctance of any institution to commit suicide and the residual faith of some of the hierarchy have prevented the immediate and total implementation of the progressive program. I agree with Meier that this conflict, analyzed in purely secular terms,  is most likely to continue indefinitely. 

1. A distinguishing feature of the German Church is its reliance for leadership upon professors and theologians, often associated with secular teaching institutions. Quoted throughout his book, it is they, not bishops or celebrity priests, who are the main authorities for Meier. The German church establishment further disposes of significant media assets; the author refers constantly to katholisch.de, the website of the Catholic Church in Germany (and sometimes to kath.ch, its Swiss equivalent). Much of what he writes would already be familiar to followers of these sites. 
2. Admittedly a translation of a (presumed) translation.

A Defence of Monarchy: Catholics under a Protestant King

Joseph Shaw, Ed.

186 pages

Angelico Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2023

A Defence of Monarchy is one of the shorter books on Catholic political philosophy that I have recently read,  but it certainly is one of the best written, most colorful in its language and most challenging in its arguments. It was prompted by two events. First, the ceremony of the  coronation of Charles III elicited a  favorable reaction worldwide. Once again, we saw a demonstration of the power of ancient symbols to reach a modern audience. It is an understanding which the modern Roman Catholic Church has largely lost. The second inspiration for this book was the publication of articles by Theo Howard and Alan Fimister, (both “integralists” or integralist sympathizers)who denounced the alleged participation (or even collusion) by the late Queen Elizabeth II in the introduction by legislation of all kinds of societal evils, specifically abortion.

When integralists challenged liberal political doctrines of the United States,  the IHE (Institute for Human Ecology) at Catholic University  and  Russell Hittinger sprang into action, blindly defending the status quo both of the United States and of Roman Catholic political thought since Vatican II.  A Defence of Monarchy also responds, in part, to an integralist critique but does so in a much more nuanced manner.

The first part of this book addresses directly the allegations regarding the “complicity” of Queen Elizabeth II in the promulgation of anti-Christian legislation. The authors point out that the British monarch since 1688 has had no power to reject legislation that has been passed by parliament. Therefore, the notion that Queen Elizabeth II participated in evil when, for example, the UK implemented legislation authorizing abortion,  is inaccurate.

The second part of the book deals with the coronation ceremony of King Charles. It offers a close analysis of aspects of the ritual and its texts. From it we obtain a better understanding of the Christian foundation of this ceremonial and indeed of the British monarchy. These texts have not been immune from corruption  – Peter Day-Milne analyzes examples of textual tinkering since prior coronations that has robbed some texts of much of their significance.  Nevertheless, he emphasizes “the richness of the traditional coronation prayers, all of which come directly from, or have been built upon,  the medieval Catholic liturgical tradition.” He observes that the very qualities that make these prayers so moving and memorable are also characteristic of the prayers found in the ongoing Catholic liturgical tradition, especially in its more authentic, extraordinary form. He compares, for example,  one of the coronation prayers with the prayers during the vesting of a priest in the Old Rite, showing a common derivation. Those who appreciated the coronation will find here a guide to a deeper understanding of what they saw and heard. 

The third part of the book is a broader and more philosophical analysis of the institution of monarchy and its role today. The authors militantly summon Catholics to support and cherish the current English monarchy, imperfect as it may be. The British monarchy is, first of all, in accord with the national tradition.  The cultural situation in the UK today is hardly  perfect, but it would be much worse under a republic. The authors contrast the situation in the UK with the secular Irish Republic which has moved aggressively towards the radical elimination of Christianity. James Bogle even argues – more audaciously but probably correctly – that Hitler could never have seized power if the German monarchy had remained. Charles Coulombe, Sebastian Morello, and James Bogle recall for us (deliberately) forgotten facts regarding the Jacobite tradition, royal legitimacy, and the history of the Loyalists during the American revolution. 

More profoundly, the British monarchy does preserve, if only in an attenuated form,  the connection of the state with the divine. Sebastian Morello writes of the “dignified” as opposed to the “efficient “ role of government – preeminently that of a monarch. The function of the monarch goes far beyond the mere ordering of the physical affairs of a commonwealth. The English monarchy is, in form, the last Christian sacral monarchy. In a tradition going back to the Roman empire  – and later the Holy Roman Empire – the monarch is God’s representative on earth, a mediator between God and Man.  Joseph Shaw writes:

The authority over temporal things exercised by temporal rulers also derives from God and is exercised under divine authority.  The notion of the king as a viceregent, a deputy, of God elevates the dignity of earthly power and also subordinates it firmly to the Law of God: though not to the holders of spiritual authority.(p. 161)

Thus, to a certain extent, the authors of A Defence of Monarchy do exhibit kinship with the ideas of the integralists and their rejection of the liberal model for society.  Of course, they do not share their model of direct papal control over secular states (which the integralists seem to assume to be republics). James Bogle pointedly criticizes similar clerical deviations which had made their way into the liturgy in the 20^th century:

The prayers for the emperor were no longer said after 1918, with the fall of the Austro- Hungarian empire, but remained part of the Roman rite until 1956 at which time a new prayer for rulers in general  – pro omnibus res publicas moderantibus , “for those in public office” – was substituted. This prayer was changed again following the Second Vatican Council and placed right at the end of the intercessions, behind the prayers for unbelievers and atheists, signifying the complete lack of importance that a clericalist and Modernist like Archbishop Bugnini now attributed to the laity and to the lay temporal power… . (p. 130, ftn 20)

Did not the late Thomas Molnar often write of the need to preserve the link between politics and the sacred (he cited the continuing role in the Hungarian political tradition of the crown of St. Stephen). Did not the Catholic writer Cristina Campo (writing of the last Russian tsar (Saint) Nicholas II) have thoughts parallel to those of the authors of this book concerning the spiritual (“dignified” in secular terms)vocation of the monarch:

In a famous photograph of the last emperor of Russia dressed in the clothes of his saintly ancestor, Alexey the Quietest, the haughty symmetry of the wide purple sleeves is mysteriously replicated on his chest by the golden wings of the two-headed eagle and crowned by the perfect, monastic, warlike circle of the collar. All of this, unexpectedly enlivened by the jaunty tilt of a fine black-martin cap, tells us more than any history book about the mystic audacity of that ill-starred sovereign, the last purely Muscovite tsar, who attempted with no intellectual weaponry or political genius or help from a single human being to lead the Enlightenment autocracy of the Petersburg Romanovs back to the traditional Russian religious destiny.  … Empires crumble when the education of princes yields to bourgeois lethargy with its scrupulous, superstitious ignorance of the spiritual roots of all power. 1)

I applaud the authors’ willingness to respond to attacks on both the monarchy and specifically on Queen Elizabeth II. My attitude towards the British monarchy, however, is more ambivalent. I understand the authors’ reverence for this British institution. I too appreciate the royal family, not so much for any Christian devotion they may have exhibited, but for Queen Elizabeth’s many years of devoted service and  for the creative (and traditional) ideas in art and architecture championed by King Charles. The British monarchy, however, has invested too heavily over the years in very modern public relations stunts,  starting with the creation of the new houses of “Windsor” and “Mountbatten” during World War I. Some of these gambits, such as Princess Di and Meghan Markle,  have backfired disastrously.  And despite the example of the monarchy,  the society of the UK today is every bit as woke and corrupt as the other states of the West – perhaps even more so.  Emmanuel Todd has recently argued that the United Kingdom is an extreme example in Western Europe of the “nation zero,”  exhibiting  economic, social, and political collapse – all of which derive from religious disintegration.2)

Yet A Defence of Monarchy does demonstrate that the monarchy – primarily but not exclusively the British monarchy – remains an essential symbol, nationally and even spiritually. The monarchy retains this status,  independent of its actual power and influence. The monarchist reader will find here a treasure chest of resources. And those interested in the more general issues of the relation of Church and State, of the common good and the secular order,  will discover a handbook full of perceptive insights.

1. Campo, Cristina, “With Light Hands,” in The Unforgiveable at 88 (Alex Andriesse, Trans.)(New York Review Books, New York,  2024)
2. Todd, Emmanuel, La Défaite de L’Occident, 194-229 (Éditions Gallimard, 2024)

Edited by Peter Kwasniewski

Os Justi Press, Lincoln, Nebraska (2024)

493 pages

When it was recently suggested to me that I write a review of Ultramontanism and Tradition, I at first was hesitant. For a number of the essays in this volume are my own contributions and, as the saying goes, self-praise is no recommendation. But when I saw that Mary Ann Glendon has written a two-page review in Catalyst magazine of her own recent book In the Courts of Three Popes my reluctance dissipated. Moreover, her review is also relevant to Ultramontanism and Tradition. Do I not detect in her article an unanticipated tone of criticism of the “papal court”? This, from someone who in the now distant past of Popes John Paul II and Benedict was a showpiece of the papal and Catholic establishment.1)

Ultramontanism and Tradition witnesses to the growing awareness by the conservative and traditionalist camps of the decisive role of the governing structure of the Church in the crisis created by the Francis papacy. 30 or 40 years ago most “conservatives” and traditionalists seemed to have only a vague idea of these questions of Church organization and authority. If anything, they advocated rallying to the papacy – first that of Paul VI, then of John Paul II and Benedict. This attitude was understandable, for from 1968 to the accession of Pope Francis, the Catholic progressive establishment in academia and the religious orders was publicly and militantly opposed to ultramontanism, infallibility, centralized papal power, and clericalism. On infallibility, for example, see Hans Küng’s 2016 letter to Pope Francis.2) 

Now of course the Vatican under Francis continues to pay lip service to these criticisms. But, as Ultramontanism and Tradition abundantly confirms, the regime of Francis is the exact opposite of the supposed “Conciliar” and Catholic principles of collegiality, subsidiarity and lay empowerment. And the likely disastrous outcome of these policies for the Church requires that those who wish to preserve the Catholic faith acquire a much deeper understanding of the nature and limits of papal power – from a Catholic and orthodox perspective. 

Ultramontanism and Tradition is a substantial volume of 493 pages. The editor, Peter Kwasniewski, has assembled 50 essays and articles – as well as some intriguing illustrations. Most of these were published in the last four years and  most originally appeared in various online publications. Four are original contributions for this book. Dr. Kwasniewski has done us a great service by collecting and preserving this material in one accessible book. But this volume could easily have been expanded further.  Scholars like John Rist or Fr. Aidan Nichols have made major recent contributions to the analysis of exercise of papal power; members of the Catholic historical establishment have done so as well. And even Rusty Reno of First Things has now forcefully weighed in!

We find among the authors familiar names like Cardinal Raymond Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Roberto de Mattei, Thomas Pink, John Lamont, Joseph Shaw….. The contributors come from a wide variety of disciplines: theology, history, philosophy, canon law and political science. They discuss all issues currently swirling around papal authority:  the power of the papacy over the liturgy, the possibility (or reality?) of a heretical pope, papal authority and “official theology,” etc. The essays illustrate the diversity of perspectives on these topics.  Some contributors remain committed to ultramontanism; others subject it to relentless criticism. Thus, the reader seeking to orient himself in the chaos of today’s Church will find in this book a wide variety of views, diverse proposed answers to vexing questions and abundant resources for further research. 

To illustrate some of the above tensions, among traditionalists, conservatives and progressives (the latter by now including most of official Catholicism) I would direct the reader’s attention to the final item in this book, reproduced and translated from the eminently official Herder Korrespondenz. “If it depended on Genius, this Office would be Madness” is a polemical dialogue between the author Martin Mosebach and Thomas Sternberg, a high-ranking lay member of the German Catholic establishment. Mosebach’s responses to an interviewer’s questions are concrete and colorful – Sternberg’s are more in the nature of platitudes. The traditionalist Mosebach’s understanding of the sources of papal authority is in fact that of the Catholic Church (on paper at least), while Sternberg, the man of the establishment, flatly denies Peter was the first Pope. Mosebach thinks Paul VI was the worst pope in history; Sternberg names him his favorite pontiff.  Mosebach anchors the office of Peter in hierarchy and tradition:  Sternberg waxes enthusiastic for a formless, emotional and charismatic papacy as embodied by Francis. Mosebach points out that such visions are dangerously akin to the style of totalitarian leaders – Sternberg takes umbrage at this characterization of Francis’s showmanship. It is characteristic that after this interview a German Jesuit attached to the Vatican then launched an attack on Mosebach. It doesn’t matter whose position accords most with (official) Catholic theology – the only unforgivable sin is criticizing Francis. 

I hope this gives you a taste of the riches that can be found in this book!

1. Glendon, Mary Ann, “Peering Inside the Vatican,” Catalyst: Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (3/2024)
2. Küng, Hans, Infallibility – Hans Küng appeals to Pope Francis, National Catholic Reporter (3/9/2016)

Jean Madiran 1920-2013

By Yves Chiron

(DMM, Poitiers, 2023)

Continuing our review of the recent flood of major publications on the sources of the Traditionalist movement, we come to Yves Chiron’s new biography of the towering figure of Jean Madiran (real name Jean Arfel). In many respects he was “Mr. Traditionalism” in France (next to Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of course!)  I find Chiron’s magisterial biography even more successful than his previous history of Catholic Traditionalism.1) Both books cover in encyclopedic detail a period of many decades starting from well before the Second Vatican Council and leading up to the present. Yet by its nature Chiron’s biography has greater unity and focus, for it enjoys a central point of reference: Jean Madiran. In the course of his long life, he interacted with almost everyone in the Traditionalist French “scene” – and beyond. Moreover, perhaps because the narrative ends with Madiran’s death in 2013, the author is free from the need to harmonize his history and the current regime in the Vatican.

Professor Chiron tells the story lucidly, not disguising aspects of the life of Madiran that may surprise some readers. Such as his initial career as a young Vichy supporter. Or certain marital complexities that Madiran experienced in his early years. And we are told of a festive celebration of Madiran’s 75th birthday during which a girl jumped out of the cake. At this same party Madiran received a gift of two tickets to Disneyland Paris, which he previously had found enjoyable. (p.473) Well, we all have our foibles….

Madiran embodied that intransigent form of Traditionalism from which so many supporters of the Old Mass would like to distinguish themselves: counter-revolutionary, “integrist,” Maurrassian! The largely imaginary “far right” political connections of Traditionalism remain a focus of rage for the Catholic establishment of the United States, Europe, and the Vatican. (The much more concrete and systematic ties of the institutional Church – including the so-called “left” – with the Western political establishment are of course never an issue for them). In the case of Jean Madiran, however, these rightist political commitments were very real. And this was for him a source of strength, not of weakness. For defense of the Catholic religion was for him inseparable from the defense of the French nation as it was concretely lived.

Madiran, of course, was a dedicated follower of Maurras, to whom he remained faithful all his life. Indeed, after the war, some of his earliest efforts were appeals on behalf of various Vichy figures facing imprisonment or worse under the new regime. Thus, his first engagement was political. Yet, in 1946-47, Jean Arfel discovered the priory of Madiran near a school where the was teaching. (He later took his penname from this priory.) He made a retreat there, discovering the Benedictine life organized around the singing of the divine office, the meals taken in silence and the primacy of contemplation. And he had a spiritual experience in which the gospel first began to speak directly to him. Years later he would refer quietly to this moment of enlightenment. (pp. 67-68)  

Madiran developed into a redoubtable journalist and organizer. In 1956 the founded his own magazine Itineraires,  which published contributions from a whole galaxy of writers from the religious and political Tradition (including those of my own revered friend Thomas Molnar)  Later, in 1982, Madiran cofounded a newspaper, Présent.

Madiran had and has the reputation of a militant polemicist. Yet Chiron points out that he also showed considerable talent for compromise and cooperation (for example, in his friendly dialogue with Etienne Gilson after the Council). It also may surprise the “Anglo-Saxon” reader to discover how often – at least in the earlier years – Madiran would sit down with his  journalistic adversaries (generally not his clerical opponents!)to discuss their contrasting positions. These encounters often took place in a restaurant – it is France, after all! Such exchanges of views would be unthinkable in the United States today, where both the progressive establishment and the feeble “conservative” centers talk only to themselves. 

By the 1950s, Madiran began to focus on deviations in the Roman Catholic Church. in 1955 he wrote the first work that won him notoriety, They Know not What They Do,  a critique of the drift of the French Church towards accommodation with communism. In one sense, this concentration on anti-communism was a retreat from his initial full-blown counter-revolutionary, even reactionary, cultural criticism. A loose contemporary analogy in the United States would be the focus of National Review magazine on anti-Communism. In that connection, on the religious front, William F. Buckley spoke out against both Dorothy Day and Pope John XXIII’s encyclical, Mater et Magistra. 

Of course, the French situation was entirely different from that of the United States. In France, Marxism had acquired almost a dominant position in cultural life and even among the Church intellectuals. Madiran’s book was accordingly very ill received by the clerical establishment. The French bishops took Madiran’s book as an affront. He was denounced in pastoral letters and statements. Madiran’s attempts to obtain support from the Vatican (in 1955-58!) were fruitless. Indeed in 1958 , the substitute of the Secretary of State counselled Madiran “to act within the views of the hierarchy – don’t just inform them but consult then in advance.” Chiron comments that this was equivalent to counseling blind obedience or at least the acceptance of control. (p.152) Note that all this happened before the Council and indeed mostly under Pius XII.

With the Second Vatican Council, Madiran shifted his focus once again. Uneasy at Vatican developments as early as the publication of Mater et Magistra in 1961, Madiran grew increasingly critical as the Council and its aftermath unfolded. It is generally forgotten today that, except for some independent priests, opposition to the Council, its implementation, and its “spirit” in the early years of 1964-71 was led by the laity. One can compare, in the United States, the circle of writers involved with Triumph magazine. 

In 1968 Madiran resolved henceforth to attend only the old liturgy. He became a tireless defender of the traditional Mass and fought first for its preservation and later for its official recognition. He fought other deviations in the French Church, such as communion in the hand and modernist catechisms. In 1968 he summarized his convictions in his main work The Heresy of the XXth Century. Madiran’s activism and criticism of specific bishops earned him the undying enmity of the French episcopate. Who has been proved right? –  I believe the facts of the French Church today speak for themselves. Consider the title of a recent book on “FrenchChurch” written by two stalwarts of the local establishment; Vers L’Implosion? 2)

After 1971, Madiran became an active supporter of Archbishop Lefebvre as he built up his seminary and order. Yet in 1988 he broke with Lefebvre over his consecrations of bishops. Later, however, it seems Madiran had to grudgingly reconsider – at least in part -his criticism of Lefebvre’s actions at that time. 

By 1989 the Soviet empire was well on the way to irreversible collapse. The Western establishment, instead of recognizing with either gratitude or an apology the superior judgment of those who, like Madiran, had for so long forcefully denounced the theory and practice of communism, instead turned even more strongly against these prophets. In Madiran’s case, it was in the 1990s that he suffered the harshest attacks, both journalistic and legal. Of course, Madiran himself gave his own answer to the politics of the new world order – he became a defender of the Front National.

Is the world not strange? Towards the very end of his life, during the pontificate of Benedict, Madiran finally enjoyed a modicum of official recognition from the Church  – in the wake of Summorum Pontificum. He was kindly received by Pope Benedict and at the Vatican; he was also honored at a grand festive dinner in Rome surrounded by traditionalist representatives.  It was a well-deserved reward for someone who had fought for Catholicism so long in the face of official clerical disdain. Of course, such gestures would be unthinkable today under Pope Francis and his team in the Vatican – both by reason of their ideology and their utter lack of manners.

Jean Madiran died in 2013 – his requiem was in Versailles at the famous church of Notre-Dame des Armées. 3)  He had been a peerless champion in France of Catholic tradition and politics.  Yves Chiron’s book will offer you a thousand additional details about his life and the saga of French traditionalism. I warmly recommend you discover it for yourself!

1. See my review and description: Histoire des Traditionalistes
2. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle and Schlegel, Jean-Louis, Vers L’Implosion?: Entretiens sur le présent et l’avenir du catholicisme (Seuil, Paris, 2022). The authors, however, don’t seem to have any ideas to address the crisis other than continuing the regime of the last 60 years. 
3. See The Homily at the Funeral Mass for Jean Madiran

Edited by Joseph Shaw

Foreword by Martin Mosebach

(Arouca Press, Waterloo, Ontario Canada 2023)

Recent publications have enabled us to revisit, from the traditionalist perspective,  the years of the Second Vatican Council and its immediate aftermath,  as found in the writings of concerned contemporary observers. These records have a special attraction for us – these initial impressions often have an immediacy , frankness and freshness that disappeared later. After the early days,  those struggling to preserve tradition often felt the need to make compromises or ingratiate themselves with the hierarchy. In our era when much of the clerical establishment once again has rejected all notion of compromise, it is fascinating to revisit these beginnings of the traditionalist movement.

Joseph Shaw has assembled in The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals a book of essays that is a major new contribution in the English language to the history of those times. It focuses on the two major petitions in 1966 and 1971 that were submitted to the Vatican for the preservation of the Latin mass. The book also covers other petitions in subsequent years – but these larer examples were more specific, and the signatories were predominantly individuals and organizations involved in one way or another in the traditionalist cause. 

That certainly was not true for the 1966 and 1971 petitions. The signatories included a broad range of distinguished representatives of the arts and sciences. Contributions in this book by Joseph Shaw and Fr. Gabriel Diaz- Patri list the signatories and explain their accomplishments and connections. Some of the names may be surprising: Jorge Luis Borges, Jacques Maritain, Graham Greene, Francois Mauriac, Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Girard – and many more. Perusal of their biographies shows that many were not traditionalist, conservative or even Catholic. Indeed,  there are some representatives of the far left among them.  What united them all was concern for the preservation of the historic artistic heritage of the West. By the way, those who became more directly involved in early traditionalism were also by no means drawn exclusively from the ranks of the political right. 

A forerunner of these post-conciliar initiatives was an essay (included in this volume) written by Marcel Proust in 1904 when the anticlerical French government was supposedly thinking of banishing Catholic worship from the cathedrals and churches it had seized. That work pointed out the intimate connection between the purpose for which the gothic buildings were created – Catholic worship – and the art and architecture of the cathedrals. Proust’s essay later was consciously drawn upon by those who formulated the petitions after the Council.

The heart of this volume are the chapters on Cristina Campo written by Fr. Gabriel Diaz-Patri. An outstanding Italian literary figure, Campo had gradually become immersed in the Catholic mystical and spiritual tradition. She “converted” around 1964  – perhaps after having been present at vespers.

Certainly, between 1964 and 1965 something spoke to her, reaching her from infinite distances. She spent hours of churches. She sat meditating in the monastery of  Tre Fontane, she attended vespers at Sant’Anselmo, perhaps unaware that almost 30 years earlier, in May 1937, Simone Weil had sat on the same pews … (p. 113)

But Campo sprang into action as the first liturgical changes were imposed. It is due to her efforts that both the 1966 and 1971 petitions came into existence. 

(A)ll the testimonies agree that the driving force behind Una Voce Italia at that time was Cristina Campo, not only writing what the institution published but also personally doing most of the work on the practical side. On this occasion too (the publication of the 1971 petition-SC),  the letter was due, to a very large extent, to her. Her international contacts with a cultural world that might be willing to give its support were crucial in the success of the project outside the English sphere (p.  201)

This book offers the first detailed account in English of Campo – at least up to the point of publication of the petitions. We would like to hear much more about the few remaining years of her life (she died in 1977). Happily, Shaw tells us that the chapters in The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals are but a selection from a forthcoming new biography of Campo by Fr. Diaz-Patri.

Fr. Diaz-Patri offers a second extended biographical narrative – of Bernard Wall and his circle, the organizers of the English side of the 1971 petition. I confess I found this account of the meetings and interactions of Wall’s friends going back decades less interesting than the Italian events involving Campo. Still, it was fascinating to read how much time people of those days could devote to discussion, how the serious exchange of thought had not yet been drowned out by the media torrent of our days. 

What was the motivation for organizing these petitions? I think it was to witness to the irreplaceable, intrinsic “objective” value of the forms of the old liturgy. This was something that could be understood and appreciated aside from any personal commitment to the religion those forms expressed. Thus, these petitions form an important witness in a Church which presented (and still presents!) the changes in the liturgy as some kind of unanimously accepted divine revelation. 

The actual effect of the petitions was of course minimal. The 1971 petition did obtain some narrow freedom for the continued existence of the old mass for the UK – although I read that subsequent to  1971 the Vatican sought at times to revoke even that limited exception.

Now, of course, these intellectuals may have been foolish to expect that these petitions would have any effect on the conduct of the Vatican. Their arguments at the time in fact backfired,  opening them up to the “indictment” of being “aesthetes.” Amazing – for many centuries the Catholic Church had been the main patron of the arts, now, in the 1960s, expertise in and commitment to the arts had become an accusation, an unforgivable sin. 

What held true for the petitions of 1966 and 1971 did even more so for the later ones submitted by traditionalist or conservative proponents.  In at least one occasion the receipt of the petition was hardly acknowledged – let alone any response being given. It’s instructive to read, in the case of these later petitions, of the arrogant and underhanded behavior of the Vatican officials – including those supposedly tasked with looking out for the traditionalists.  Indeed, the chicanery and confrontational attitude we now associate with Pope Francis and Cardinal Roche already were current – if displayed less systematically and openly – under John Paul II.

Martin Mosebach writes a remarkable foreword. For the first time in history, he writes, the laity rose up to defend the hierarchical, priestly, and sacral character of the Church – against an initiative launched by the priests! This book describes the battle for the Roman liturgy, and those who fought it were convinced it was the most important of the twentieth century – because the survival of the Christian religion was (and is) at stake. 

Joseph Shaw’s informative preface describes a primary purpose of The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals: to honor the memory of  the petitioners who sought to preserve the Traditional Latin Mass – especially Cristina Campo, “the foremost of them all.” He further claims that the minor relief obtained in the “English Indult” was a precondition for the expanded indults in 1984 onward. Well, one could argue about that – I think the actions of a certain French archbishop had far more to do with it. On the contrary, I would guess most people would consider the efforts of Campo, Wall and their friends to have failed. Yet the witnesses of these early petitions, like the early martyrs of the Church, can never be seen as failures. Their full influence will only be known in the course of generations. Their testimony to the truth and the power of beauty remains vital for us who live once more in an age of doctrinal collapse and official persecution. The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals is essential reading! 

by Aidan Nichols

(Gracewing, Leominster, 2023)

Fr. Aidan Nichols, the outstanding English theologian, has given us a succinct memoir. Apologia is the odyssey of a theologian and writer in the Catholic world after the Second Vatican Council. We travel to various places: from England to Norway to Jamaica to even (potentially) Sikkim (to name but a few). We meet religious orders and congregations of all kinds and character: Fr. Nichols’s own Dominicans, the Benedictines, the Traditionalist Dominicans and finally the Norbertines (Premonstratensians). Given the state of the Church today, Fr. Nichols’s saga may at times remind us not so much of Homer’s odyssey but of those written by the Greek poet’s 19th and 20th century successors: Flaubert, James Joyce, and Celine. Yet Fr. Nichols never succumbs to bitterness, rage and certainly not nihilism and despair – despite what he sees about him. He maintains throughout a serene and dispassionate attitude. Coming from an English writer, of course, this book now and then exhibits a sly humor;

(The parish church) was the work of the Clifton family…John Talbot Clifton, an explorer, turned out to be the last sane(and Roman Catholic ) squire…One of the richest families in Lancashire, occupying its finest Georgian house, their only son managed to bankrupt the Cliftons – and conform to the Church of England. (p.4)

We see also the author’s fine sense of detail – here describing his home county of Lancashire. Indeed, some of the intriguing, colorful information on the author’s life in his native country may be challenging for the reader not from the UK.

Fr. Nichols is a convert from a kind of nebulous Anglicanism. An encounter with an icon of the Virgin in an Orthodox church prompted his conversion. From that point forward Fr. Nichols was sensitive to the role of beauty in Christianity. He also retained from this experience a lifelong professional interest in the Eastern Churches and their theology.

At Oxford the joined the Dominicans. Now at that moment that order was going through a “revolution’ in the wake of Vatican II. Nichols was aware from the very beginning that the Dominicans were all over the map. And the state of their studies left much to be desired:

The word “shambolic” would scarcely be too harsh. (p.25)

Harsh conflicts soon developed in the community on, for example, the role of Marxism.  Yet, despite it all, a younger generation of solid Dominican priests and scholars did arise out of the chaos of the post-conciliar years. Fr. Nichols was among them.

Fr. Nichols describes some of his intellectual guiding lights – especially Aquinas and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Later, Joseph Ratzinger’s book of interviews Rapporto Sulla Fede (the “Ratzinger Report”) was “life changing.” As noted, he also explored deeply Eastern Orthodox and patristic theology and has written about everybody from Sigrid Undset to Matthias Joseph Scheeben. In contrast to what you would have perhaps expected, Fr. Nichols does not present a detailed narrative of his writings. At times in this book, he gives only a rapid-fire list of his numerous contributions. 

Fr. Nichols is no liturgical traditionalist; he states the is “moderately content” with the new rite. (p.73) Indeed, liturgical issues of any kind play a minor role in Apologia – as opposed to the author’s search for a community of religious brethren leading an orderly life under a rule. However:

At the Abbey of Einsiedeln, in the chapel of the Black Madonna, I had my first experience as celebrant of how the liturgy could go awry. Beautifully set up with a (Novus Ordo) Latin missal at an east-facing altar and a lay monk to make the responses, I became aware of a sudden commotion behind me. A coachload of Swiss housewives had descended unexpectedly. Without consultation the monk snatched the missal off the altar and replaced it with its German equivalent. With  – surely  – preternatural assistance, I managed. (p.39)

Fr. Nichols does not dwell on the situation in the Dominican order. But as early as 1995 he took a leave of absence to explore a vocation with the Fraternite Saint Vincent Ferrier (“an Old Rite community in the Dominican community but outside the Order.“) He found the life there:

(A)ltogether admirable, noting especially the care with which the Offices and Mass were celebrated, the atmosphere of silence, the warm fraternal relations at recreation….. Furthermore, the cuisine was wonderful. (p. 77) 

Yet, Fr. Nichols decided not to stay. He alludes to conflicts I sense he anticipated regarding some of his current or forthcoming theological writings. He also felt that he had work to accomplish in England or at least in the English-speaking world.

Fr. Nichols of course had to face the “new crisis” in the Church created by the Francis papacy. He of course was a great advocate of developing the riches of the Catholic Church, for Fr. Nichols, that includes the Anglican and the Eastern Orthodox traditions. Yet as he puts it:

The greater the richness the more decisively is clarity required. And Rome is the location identified by apostles, attested by the Fathers, whence that clarity comes. (p.101)

Accordingly,  Fr. Nichols felt compelled to sign two letters, one on Amoris Laetitia, the other on the Abu Dhabi declaration. The second letter “raised the issue of a pope, who by negligence or misdirection, strays into doctrinal error(heresy).”

The language of the second letter was certainly strong. But the seriousness of the situation called for a kind of description that eschews diplomatic formulae of an ambiguous kind. (p. 103)

Fr. Nichols then elegantly and honestly lays out the reasoning that led him to sign these letters.

There’s an intriguing chapter on a visit to Moscow. Fr. Nichols apparently hoped that, in the spirit of ecumenism, the Russian Orthodox might intervene in some way at the Vatican to arrest “the advance in the Roman Church of opinions incompatible with sanctity of the moral law.” (p.111) Fr. Nichols does not know if anything followed from this. And then these relationships were overshadowed by the war in the Ukraine. But Fr. Nichols believes that: 

The Church of Russia is too important a potential contributor to the survival of Christendom to be made a corporate pariah. (p.112)

In the wake of the two letters Fr. Nichols himself became somewhat of a pariah in the Dominican order. But then came an invitation from St Michael’s Premonstratensian Abbey in California. This seemed an answer to Fr. Nichols’s prayers (he calls the Abbey Rivendell!).  St. Michael’s has long been theologically Thomistic yet Novus Ordo. In a chapter written in a rapturous tone different from the rest of Apologia, Fr. Nichols describes the life, the architecture, and the landscape of the Abbey.

Fr. Nichols hadn’t reckoned, however, with the long reach of the institutional Church. Bishop Vann of the diocese of Orange found that Fr. Nichols posed a threat to the peace and good order of the  diocese. There was no real dialogue about the matter. The Bishop of Orange summarily imposed these restrictions: 

I could not preach or celebrate mass publicly in the Abbey church (assuming non Norbertines are present which they always were) nor hear confessions (except those of Norbertine canons) nor could I teach a course in theology or any related discipline to the Abbey’s “seminarians.”  Much less could I carry out any version of these activities beyond the Abbey’s territorial limits.  The effect of these inhibitions was to call into question the entire  process whereby I was contemplating a move from the Dominican Friars to the Canons Regular of Premontre.

Fr. Nichols surmises Rome and Washington were also involved in the matter; it was noted that Fr. Nichols’s correspondence with the Dominican leadership in Rome suddenly was routed through the US nunciature. 

The contemptuous treatment the Roman Catholic Church accords one of her most distinguished theologians is amazing. For this book was published several months ago,  and the lack of any uproar among scholars, clergy and laity since its appearance indicates to me they are comfortable with these actions. In 1979-80 the progressive forces of the Church raised an unholy uproar about the treatment of Hans Kung, who suffered nothing like these indignities. And later, Hans Kung was treated to a full day private audience with Pope Benedict, including a working lunch. Indeed, throughout Apologia you will find numerous other examples of questionable actions of ecclesiastical and religious authorities.  

But Fr. Nichols also has his own supporters. The Abbot of Saint Michael’s was already in the process of setting up a new priority in Illinois; Fr.  Nichols could go there with the blessings of the local bishop. For the time being, however, he returned to England to live at a vestigial Norbertine outpost close to the place of his childhood. An English bishop has written an  appreciative note at the beginning of this book. 

Where things stand now I do not know. The narrative breaks off in August 2023 with Fr. Nichols still in the UK. Father Nichols is listed as a member of the Abbey of Saint Michael’s. I hope things work out for him after so much seeking. This book is the moving record of a cleric who mostly lived the retiring life of a scholar. He made many distinguished contributions in so many aspects of his field.  And, as you can see from the above, he was anything but belligerent or polemical.  Yet when the time of decision came, he could not shrink from telling the truth regardless of the consequences.  

The Unforgivable: And Other Writings

by  Cristina Campo  (Author), Alex Andriesse  (Translator), Kathryn Davis  (Introduction)

(New York Review Books Classics, New York, 2024). Available on Amazon.

Finally there appears an English translation of the major essays of Cristina Campo. This edition consists of the book I had previously reviewed (“The Unforgiveable”) plus several additional essays. For a discussion of this volume see my review of the original text.

The proper recognition of Cristina Campo by Catholics is long overdue. As Kathryn Davis writes in her introduction to this book:

“It was also while living in Rome that Campo – who had grown up in a nominally Catholic household – underwent a religious conversion, her newfound relationship to Catholicism as uncompromising as was her relationship to everything else in her life. Together with the philosopher and religious historian, Elemire Zolla, she edited the 1963 anthology I Mistici dell’Occidente and was among the members of Una Voce, an international group fierecely opposed to the liturgical changes made by the Second Vatican Council – changes she castigated as “leprosy.” Christ’s parables, the Gospels in general, Scripture, had always been mainsprings of her life and work; following her conversion they became the prime undercurrent.”

To read this book is to undertake a magical voyage of discovery!