Ritorno alle Sorgenti: Il mio Pellegrinaggio a Oriente nel Cuore dell’Ortodossia (A Return to the Sources: My Pilgrimage to the East in the Heart of Orthodoxy)

By Alessandro Gnocchi 

Edizioni Monasterium, Cellio, 2023

The current state of the Church is presenting faithful Catholics with terrible and tragic choices. What can they do to preserve their liturgy, their morality and their Faith and pass them on to their children? One possibility that is increasingly relevant is the Eastern Orthodox Church.  To what extent is Orthodoxy a viable alternative to the Roman Catholic Church?

Alessandro Gnocchi is an Italian writer and journalist. For years he worked together with Mario Palmaro tirelesssly defending Catholic tradition in all its aspects. With Palmaro, Gnocchi was one of the earliest and most perceptive critics of Pope Francis. Together, they predicted all too clearly what was about to befall the Catholic Church. Mario Palmaro died in 2014. Since then, I’ve heard little of his colleague in arms. But I now understand that in 2019 Alessandro Gnocchi joined the Russian Orthodox Church (he is now “Aleksandr,” at least when receiving communion). This year, he has published a short book telling of his experiences of Eastern Christianity.

Now in judging this book, we should not be swayed by contemporary political pressures. And the last thing I would want is to rekindle obsolete polemics between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. So, we should not be quick to denounce the author but try to understand what motivated his decision. After all, other Catholic apologists over the years have taken this step,  most notably Rod Dreher. 

I have some personal insight into the matter since, through much of the 1980s. I was a parishioner at Saint Michael’s Russian Catholic Chapel in New York. Subsequently,  I got to know members of the Russian Orthodox community in the United States – especially one good friend who died in 2020. 

What does Gnocchi find attractive in Orthodoxy?

We should start with the liturgy. For the Orthodox churches have preserved the ancient liturgies of the Church.  They have (generally) resisted the temptation to compromise with the spirit of this age. For example, (though Gnocchi himself seems ambivalent about this point)  we should remember that both the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches have insisted on retaining liturgical languages that are not easy to understand for speakers of modern Greek or Russian. 

Orthodoxy has retained the central role of monasticism and therefore of asceticism and mysticism. These are not just as the preserve of esoteric specialists but are incorporated into the life of the entire church. So, for the Orthodox the center of gravity of their religion is not the patriarchate of Constantinople or of Moscow but the monasteries of Mount Athos. And as Gnocchi points out, those monks who have received  the grace for the task undertake the role of counselors or spiritual directors for the laity that have recourse to them. Thus, monasticism is integrated into the world of the Orthodox faithful.

Continuing in this line of thought, the Orthodox Church still treasures the theological and spiritual classics of patristic and medieval times. It celebrates the role of the great saints of the past.  In contrast to the West, which generally restricts the sources of its theology to Vatican II and subsequent papal pronouncements, the Orthodox world draws on the Eastern fathers of the church, the Desert Fathers, the mystics of late antiquity and the Middle Ages as well as more modern contributions. These sources are all still living presences in the Orthodox faith.

Gnocchi also speaks of icons and the traditional art of the Eastern Church. In Eastern theology their role is far beyond that of a mere depiction or reminder of a sacred person or event. The icon creates a real presence of that person, of the sacred in the world of today. Therefore, the artist of icons, such as the famous Andrei Rublev, is ideally a holy man, a monk,

Gnocchi has some extravagant praise for the Orthodox monks and elders he has encountered on his “pilgrimage.” But even discounting these exaggerations, what he is really pointing out is that, for all his faults, the Eastern priest, the Eastern monk is still a man of God – he acts as a spiritual leader through the liturgy,  through the other sacraments, through his spiritual counsel. The contrast with the Roman Catholic clergy, secularized,  bureaucratic, self-regarding and self-promoting, could not be greater. And of course, there is no Pope in Orthodoxy.  Gnocchi does not need to write much about patriarchs and bishops. These are not the center of the Orthodox faith.

So far it would seem that Orthodoxy is a most attractive alternative to what passes for Christianity in the Western Church. Yet, this is not the end of the story.   As we shall see, I don’t think that Gnocchi makes a very compelling case for the Orthodox Church.

I will start with his style. In extravagant and exalted language, he sings the praises of Orthodoxy and attempts to convey abstruse points of theology. In other passages, particularly in the second half of the book, he turns strident and confrontational on topics like filioque and papal infallibility. Throughout there’s a constant use of Russian terminology. Gnocchi appears to be less a humble sinner or a seeker after truth but that most tiresome of individuals: the religious fanatic.

Now I have heard of this happening to Catholics who become Orthodox. As in Gnocchi’s book, they want to transform themselves into a Russian or Greek and break utterly with the West and their own past. Is this really a consequence of their own Roman Catholic heritage: the obsession with doctrinal terms, the agitated tone, a certain fixation on the clergy?  I don’t think it’s just the fault of the converts, however. For the Eastern churches themselves, as I understand it,  demand of the new convert complete repudiation of his past and of all his ancestors.  I have heard that sometimes a convert has sent such a declaration to the members of his former community or parish – was not this very book written at the instigation of Gnocchi’s elder or “staretz”? (More of this later.)

Here we come to a critical point: the “Eastern” ideology that is forcefully advocated by Gnocchi. This holds that there exists a fundamental difference between Western and Eastern Christianity dating back at least to the 4th century and that the two Churches had evolved into different mutually exclusive worlds many years before the supposedly decisive break of 1054. Indeed, for Gnocchi the decisions of the hierarchies on mutual recognition  – or not – play little or no role given this fundamental chasm between West and East. This self-understanding of Eastern Christianity as an unchanging, pure, isolated block descended from Apostolic times is the Orthodox equivalent of Western ultramontanism which tried to find the 19th century papacy in the 4th century and earlier.

This is, of course, historically preposterous. From the 4^th century onward the popes of Rome, Western doctors and saints had influenced and interacted with the East just as the doctors, saints and councils of the  Eastern Churches did the West. Indeed, Pope Gregory the Great is (probably erroneously ) considered as the author of the Orthodox service of the presanctified gifts.  Greek and Eastern popes governed the Church for much of the 7th and 8th centuries. Between 730 and 840 (with one interruption) it was the Eastern Church, not the West, that was dominated by iconoclastic heretics.   Neilos, a Greek monk (born in Italy!), recognized as a saint in both East and West. established around 1000 a monastery,  Grottaferrata, not too far removed from Rome itself. And, even afterwards, contacts between the two churches were not at all entirely broken off  – consider the career of El Greco in the 16th century in Spain, of all places.

Another alienating feature of Gnocchi’s spirituality is his relationship with his elder or staretz. This role of the staretz is personally unfamiliar to me. I had always understood it to involve the voluntary recourse by a layman, let’s say,  to the staretz – a monk who makes available to him the spiritual insights gained in the contemplative life. But Gnocchi’s staretz seems to have assumed the controlling role that used to be ascribed to the Jesuits. By the way,  it is totally untrue, as is asserted here, that this type of counseling is unknown in in the West.  We might mention the anchoresses of medieval England, just as one example.

I hope the reader does not think that the tone of this book, now confrontational, now enthusiastic, at times ranting or overblown, is typical of the faithful of the Orthodox Church. Far from it.   The born-and-bred Orthodox have a very relaxed attitude to their faith, as it is as natural to them as their own nationality. After all, the Orthodox Church still places the greatest weight on the role of the nation: Serbian, Greek, or Russian. The nation is the contemporary descendant of the governing function once performed by the Byzantine or Russian emperors.  In certain branches of Orthodoxy like the OCA (the Orthodox Church of America) or the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, the relationship with contemporary society becomes perhaps too cozy, resulting in problems like those afflicting the Roman Catholic Church.

And, in contrast to what Gnocchi presents, the attitude of the Orthodox, both laity and clergy, to the Western world is not at all unrelentingly hostile. Consider this passage from Gnocchi’s own book:

 In the Orthodox Church the divine liturgy is the most perfect expression of the true faith. When Pope Benedict XVI “liberalized” the celebration of the ancient mass, Patriarch Alexei II commented, “it is a step in the right direction. For if we had touched the divine liturgy, we would never have been able to survive 70 years of state atheism.”

Given its spiritual treasures, I think the case for Orthodoxy can be made. Gnocchi in this book has regrettably not succeeded in doing that. I would think this divisive work would have exactly the opposite effect. That’s a shame. Because amid this darkening world,  it is essential that all adherents of Christian Tradition rally in the defense of Christianity and the Truth.    

Crepusculo: Lettere dalla Crisi della Chiesa (Twilight: Letters from the Crisis of the Church)

By Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli

Chorabooks, Hong Kong, 2022

Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli have now given us three short books that together represent a profound series of reflections on the state of the Church today. I have already reviewed the first in the sequence, Uprooted: Dialogues on the Liquid Church(Sradicati, 2019)) – which also has been translated into English. I am looking forward to receiving the second, Decadence (Decadenza, 2020). Finally, in 2022 appeared Twilight (Crepuscolo). The title captures the state of the Catholic Church of today. The authors ask if this twilight is the growing darkness before nightfall or that before a new dawn? For the American reader, however, the title of course has  added significance in relation to the Roman Catholic Church of today: the Twilight Zone!

Like its sisters, Twilight takes the time-honored literary form of an exchange of letters. The personalities of the two authors are complementary. Aldo Maria Valli, a journalist, Vaticanist, media and TV commentator, is poetic and forceful, even visionary. I can confirm, having heard Valli speak in Rome last October at a conference during the Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage, that he is an extraordinary speaker. Aurelio Porfiri,  a musician and composer by profession,  has a more discursive and restrained style, featuring generous quotations from favored authors of conservative Catholicism, like Henri de Lubac  – but also from Romano Amerio. That is not to say, however, that Porfiri does not make his own pointed observations. What is common to both authors is that,  after having served the Church and secular media establishments for years in high positions, they have become determined critics of the present Vatican regime. Aldo Maria Valli, moreover, has turned decisively to Catholic traditionalism.

The writers’ assessment of the present situation of the Church is honest and bleak. The institutional Church has identified herself totally with the world. The Church speaks and acts exactly like the secular powers. “Nothing good for the soul can come from ‘shepherds’ who talk like the United Nations, are champions of political correctness and who embrace all the theories of the New World Order.”

Even though the Church cannot end, Valli states the Church as he had known it up to now is finished. The Church that may arise again will have nothing to do with hierarchy, the episcopal conferences and the dicasteries of the Roman curia. ”That ship has been wrecked and sunk.” As for the papacy, under Bergoglio, “the papal authority, already undermined, has received the death blow.” But Bergoglio is only the last link in a chain. Decisive for this realization of Valli’s was Amoris Laetitia and, even more so,  Traditionis Custodes. 

Valli describes his spiritual situation: 

The word that comes to mind is extraneousness. Look, I feel ever more estranged from the hierarchical church, from the shepherds – these shepherds! From their preaching, from their rites. Extraneous to all the so-called pastoral initiatives that live from empty slogans. Extraneous to the ceremonies which put at their center not God but man. Extraneous to sloppy and distorted liturgies. Extraneous to the conformism of the guardians of mercy….  

In such a dilemma, what can a Catholic do?  Here the authors draw on Ernst Jünger and his archetype of the Waldgänger (literally, “one who goes into the forest”). The Waldgänger is a combination of rebel, outlaw, and anarchist. Such a man asserts the truth in a dishonest world. The price of his personal integrity is exclusion from that world and immersion in the figurative forest.  Valli emphasizes that the Waldgänger is not fleeing, but making a manly choice of resistance,  “when by now it is clear that the institution has taken the path of betrayal and apostasy.” 

Valli does not at all see himself leaving the Church. “(Going to the forest)does not mean in my case abandoning the Church, but rather is a cultural attitude, by which everything coming from the summit of today’s Church, dominated by a humanitarianism which is confounded with that of the Masons, is decisively denounced, rejected, and refuted.“ Do we not see here some similarities with Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option and – even more so – his Live not by Lies? And does not the latter title in turn remind us of Solzhenitsyn and his colossal solitary struggle? We should also remember that Ernst Jünger became a Catholic a year or so before his death (at age 102)….

Aurelio Porfiri ends Twilight by quoting Joseph Ratzinger: a small rest (of Catholics) will remain, perhaps like those Japanese of the past, who lived their faith far from the (institutional ) Church but without separating from her.  So, Porfiri concludes, while we cannot say that a paradigm shift has happened in the Church it is taking place in ourselves, in those of us “who  take seriously the promises of the Man from Nazareth and sit here in the twilight, dispelling the darkness with confused actions while waiting for the dawn.”

Peter A. Kwasniewski

The Once and Futrure Roman Rite: Returning to the Traditional Latin Liturgy after Seventy Years of Exile

2022 TAN Books, Gastonia, NC

It’s no exaggeration to say that Peter Kwasniewski is the most energetic advocate of the traditional Roman Rite in America today. We have covered his many lectures and conferences on the site since 2015;  he is a familiar presence on the internet.  The books he has written or edited just since 2018 have been remarkable both in quantity and quality. In addition to all this, Dr. Kwasniewski is active as a church musician. Thus, his knowledge of the liturgy, both in the West and the East, is based in large part upon his own practical experience.  

The Once and Future Roman Rite is the most complete summary of Kwasniewski’s thought and advocacy on behalf of the traditional mass, for which he makes a passionate case. Dr. Kwasniewski’s tone can be intense, engaged, colloquial, even argumentative. He does not pretend to be a disinterested observer. But in this regard is St. Augustine’s City of God any different ?

The author first sets forth tradition as the governing norm in Catholicism. Tradition is not static but is, as the Newman explained, always involved in a process of organic development. Dr. Kwasniewski argues, however that the Novus Ordo can in no way be viewed as an organic development of the Roman rite. Its content has been largely changed and the basic features of the rite have been altered as well. Dr. Kwasniewski further argues that the traditional Latin mass and the divine liturgy of the East are much more closely related to each other then either of them is to the Novus Ordo. Kwasniewski profoundly disagrees with Pope Benedict’s “two forms of the Roman rite” solution of Summorum Pontificum – if that is to be understood not just as a political solution but as a statement of liturgical theory.

Kwasniewski finds support for his conclusions in a series of key addresses by Pope Paul VI between 1965 and 1969. Our author quotes them in full instead of taking selective passages to support foreordained conclusions. It is very clear from these documents that Paul VI  viewed the new mass as superseding the old, that it represented a revolutionary change, and that even the earliest so-called abuses (such as universal use of the vernacular or the discarding of Gregorian chant)were intended and modeled by Paul VI himself. This completely undermines the theories of conservative Catholics and other “reform of the reform” advocates who wish to dissever the Novus Ordo as it was created and imposed in 1969 from the conciliar documents themselves or from the post-conciliar magisterium of the popes.

Dr. Kwasniewski proceeds to a definition of a liturgical rite. He finds that the Novus Ordo is in no way the same as the Roman rite because:  the Roman canon is not used, mass is not offered in Latin, the liturgical texts are not recited or chanted, most of the prayers of the Latin mass have been eliminated or extensively reworked and reordered, a multi-year lectionary has been introduced, the calendar of the saints has been a severely reduced,  the traditional offertory  has been eliminated, mass is not said ad Orientem, the liturgy is celebrated in a sequential manner,  and the communions of the priest and of the faithful are mingled. Note that this description fits the Novus Ordo as it is usually celebrated, not unusual adaptations in favor of Catholic tradition such as we find in the Oratory churches in the UK.

Indeed, for Kwasniewski the presence (or absence) of the Roman canon is decisive.  A memorable chapter of this book is the author’s detailed analysis of the text of the canon and the theological meanings of each sentence. Kwasniewski argues that this ancient text inculcates a whole series of  theological truths that are downplayed or even absent in the Novus Ordo, e.g., that the Church’s unity and her other perfections are gifts for which we must pray to God; that the sacrifice of the mass is offered for Catholics who hold the true faith and they are its beneficiaries; that faith and devotion are prerequisites for participating in the mass; that we are protected by the intercession of the saints; and that there is divine predestination (only not in the Calvinist sense!). And the optional version of the Roman canon found  in the Novus Ordo – which is rarely used – has been altered in significant respects. Dr. Kwasniewski devotes a whole chapter to the fate of the mysterium fidei (the mystery of faith) in the Novus Ordo.

Dr. Kwasniewski believes the liturgical aberrations of today did not start with Vatican II and Paul VI but with the revision of the Holy Week ceremonies under Pius XII. For it was then, after 1948,  that the great themes of the liturgical revolution first received concrete application. It was with the changes to the Triduum that the modus operandi of centralized liturgical renewal was first consolidated.

In this book, depending on the subject,  Dr. Kwasniewski takes up the role of a theologian, a liturgist,  a historian, or a spiritual advisor. Parallel to his main arguments, he touches on a multitude of other issues and facts.  In so doing,  Dr. Kwasniewski is not afraid to clear up errors and misinterpretations that have gained currency among traditionalists – even if they support their cause.  This book is a gold mine of facts and arguments for the traditionalist seeking to better understand his own position and to respond to his adversaries.

The overall conclusion that Dr. Kwasniewski draws should be obvious: to adhere fully to the traditional Latin mass. In a sense, the pontificate of Francis has been liberating. The Catholic traditionalist no longer needs to feel any residual obligation to be a politician  –  the pope has clearly rejected that possibility. Thus, the only option remaining is to “do the right thing,” without any fear or hesitation. But wasn’t this conclusion already foreshadowed in the Heresy of Formlessness by Martin Mosebach (who has written a superb foreword to The Once and Future Roman Rite). When I reviewed Heresy almost twenty years ago what struck me was the universal application of the author’s arguments. The traditional mass was no longer merely an aesthetic pleasure, or a concession sought for by a small minority – it was a vital rule of faith than should be extended to the whole Church. So it is with Peter Kwasniewski. The traditional liturgy needs to be restored in full to the Church so that the Faith may flourish once again.   

I first encountered Daniel J. Mahoney when I reviewed his 2018 book The Idol of Our Age.  There he expressed guarded criticism of Pope Francis but still felt the need to “balance” his negative comments. In an article written for National Review two years later Mahoney was far more direct in his characterization of Francis. Today Mahoney is speaking out loud. After cataloguing with prophetic urgency the Vatican’s misdeeds in theory and practice,  he concludes:

 Today, papalotry is not an option for faithful Catholics. To fundamentally “change the Church,” as Francis surely intends, is to undermine her authority and her very raison d’être. The Catholic faith is not the religion of humanity, and the Holy Spirit is not an agent of the Historical Process, no matter what some Catholic progressives think. As with the Arian crisis of the fourth century, when most bishops succumbed to heresy, the task of Catholics is to defend the truth unalloyed. We owe the papal office filial respect. But no pope is an oriental potentate. His “private judgment” cannot take precedence over the moral law, the apostolic inheritance, and the unchanging teachings of the Church. Today, alas, unthinking papalotry reinforces theological and moral subversion. Self-deception of this kind only lead to the abyss. At this critical moment, Catholics have an obligation to see things clearly.

Mahoney, Daniel J., The Church over the Abyss. (Americanmind.org 9/20/2022)

Now Daniel Mahoney has done significant scholarly work on the legacy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for whom he professes great admiration. Pope Francis and Solzhenitsyn – these are mutually exclusive personalities:

“either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.”

Curious – I had just reacquainted myself with how another thinker, Thomas Molnar, had in 1980 been inspired by Solzhenitsyn (as opposed to any of the representatives of the official Catholic Church) in formulating his thoughts on the relationship of Church and State. Rod Dreher too has moved from the self-satisfied, quietist Benedict Option (2018) to a Solzhenitsyn-inspired assault on the current apocalyptic state of the West as exemplified by Live not by Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020). That transformation includes increasingly savage attacks on Pope Francis – for whom, by the way, Dreher had initially expressed admiration. For Dreher’s current views see, for example, “Pope Francis, McCarrick and Maciel” (The American Conservative, 5/29/2022). The prophetic voice of the great Russian writer lives on!

State and Church, “libertarian” and “truth-oriented” government – these topics once again stir up controversy. In the United States, by 1960,  Catholics were fantasizing that conflicts over such issues were, for them, a thing of the past. Since then, the government of the United States at Federal, state, and local levels has increasingly adopted policies overtly hostile to Christianity; thus, the debate – in the context of actual political conflicts – reemerged. On the practical level, we might cite the development and successes of the vast pro-life movement; in the realm of political theory there is the esoteric and specifically Catholic “integralist” discussion.

I think it might be of interest to turn back to Thomas Molnar (1921 – 2010) to shed light on the subject. He was a thinker who frequently dealt with the roles of both state and Church.  One of his few (the only?) books to have been reprinted in English since his death is The Church and the State: The Catholic Tradition as an integral Element of Western Political Thought (Cluny, 2018) – originally published under the more accurate title of Politics and the State: a Catholic View (Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago 1980).

I would not suggest this work as an introduction to Molnar’s thought. Much of it is the author’s critical confrontation with schools of thought from which Molnar seeks to distinguish the Catholic tradition – like the main strands of “conservative” political science in his day (Federalist, Straussian and “Voegelinian”) or an array of post-Thomistic political thinkers of the past, from Marsilius of Padua to Hegel. One does not find in The Church and the State the originality of Molnar’s pioneering works of the 1960’s such as The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) or The Counter-Revolution (1969). Nor do we encounter the passionate intensity of his increasingly savage dissection of the liberal ”civil society” now dominant in the US and Western Europe, as set out in a whole series of books such as Le Modèle Défiguré: L’Amérique de Tocqueville à Carter (1978) or The Emerging Atlantic Culture (1994). And a much more detailed discussion of the post-Conciliar Church can be found in The Church: Pilgrim of Centuries (1990). In contrast, The Church and the State has a more disengaged, abstract character. Many of Molnar’s arguments and opinions seem to me to be only sketched out or to presuppose the reader’s familiarity with his other works. Perhaps Molnar’s heart wasn’t in this book.  Whereas the other works previously mentioned focus on very concrete political, cultural, or historical situations, in 1980 the question of the relation of the Catholic Church – as it existed after the Council – to contemporary American state and society was of necessity highly theoretical. 

Nevertheless, the Church and the State, like any book of Molnar’s, offers a wealth of insights. The author, in marked contrast to our current integralists, avoids proposing “solutions” or a specific course of action. He is aware of the limited applicability of precedents from the ancient or medieval world to the unprecedented secular age of modernity. Yet he insists on the superiority of the Catholic philosophical tradition in analyzing the role of the state. Not unexpectedly, Thomas Molnar proposes the synthesis of ancient and Christian thought achieved by Thomas Aquinas as the standard for a Catholic view of the state.

This book is in fact largely a defense of politics and the state (as the original title implies). Both are natural to man. Indeed, the state derives its authority either directly or indirectly, through the people, from God. Yet, after Christianity, the state can no longer demand from the individual citizen total loyalty such as did the Greek polis. Similarly, although monarchy remains the preferred form of government – certainly in Aquinas’s judgment –   in Christendom the state also incorporated democratic features. 

The Church has an objective that is supernatural and primarily directed toon the salvation of each unique, individual person. Now the state is (or should be) oriented towards the temporal common good. It needs, however, the presence and cooperation of the Church to achieve these ends. But the Church as an incarnate institution also needs the state. Molnar views the two realms as coexisting in harmony. One is not subordinated to the other – but for the integrity of both a link must be maintained. Otherwise, despite its ever-growing size, the modern state drifts aimlessly, in subjection to the forces of contemporary civil society (the non-state, non-Church institutions). What form this connection should take and how is to be reestablished Molnar does not tell us. The Church’s “temporal power” or the overtly political linkage of “throne and Altar” from the age of Christendom have little or no relevance today.

”In contemporary pluralist societies, the power of the Church can only moral and spiritual, but it must so emphasize the moral and spiritual domain that it should be evident that society’s integrity and survival depend on it. The result would be a modicum of mundane power as well…..” (p.141)

Moreover, Molnar asks how the Church can impart moral direction to the state, when it too is in subjection to the same secular ideologies that dominate the state and society? At the level of the local national hierarchies, complete doctrinal confusion reigns – both in Molnar’s day and today. Molnar is somewhat coy on the role of the papacy.  But it is interesting – given his later views on the subject – that he does seem mildly optimistic in regard to the initial actions of Pope John Paul II.  It’s indicative, however, of Molnar’s overall judgment on the Catholic Church in 1980 that the contemporary Christian thinker he quotes most often in this book is not a pope, bishop or religious but Aleksander Solzhenitsyn (not Roman Catholic at all). 

For according to Molnar, it is above all through the action of the lay faithful that Christian influence on the state will be exercised. Moreover, Molnar sees a leading role for the laity in saving the Church as well. Indeed, as in many other issues, he was prophetic!  In the very year this book was published the Solidarity movement took off in Poland, And hasn’t the United States Catholic laity – collaborating with many others – achieved what was called impossible, the reversal of Roe v. Wade?  Counter-cultural Catholic political movements are active at this moment in Hungary, Poland and even Italy. I don’t need to tell the readers of this blog about the role of the laity in the traditionalist movement. With the exception of Solidarity, all these movements faced a hierarchy and Vatican that were ambiguous or even hostile to their aspirations.

Perhaps The Church and the State is too inconclusive and tentative in its conclusions – this book is no “manual” for action. But Molnar was aware of the complexities of politics and life, and of the chaotic situation both of the Catholic Church and of Western state and society circa 1980. 42 years have not improved matters. On the contrary – Molnar’s narrative of the dire moral challenges facing the Church from a state that has been subordinated to contempoary secular society reads like it had been written yesterday! And perhaps just clarifying the issues and freeing the discussion from the clutches of hostile ideologies is itself no mean achievement.

The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism: Rethinking the Papacy in a Time of Ecclesial Disintegration

By Peter A. Kwasniewski

2 Vols.

(Arouca Press, Waterloo, ON, 2022)

It’s remarkable that a book from an author on the Traditionalist spectrum features a title contrasting “hyperpapalism” and “Catholicism” – implying a conflict between at least some aspects of the Church’s governing structure and the Christian religion itself. Such titles have been almost innumerable on the progressive side since the 1960’s – e.g., Infallible?: An Inquiry (1971) and Can we save the Catholic Church? (2014) (both by Hans Kueng). Yet those on the right were until recently perceived as being necessarily staunch supporters of the Church’s post-1870 constitution. For example, Peter Kwasniewski quotes the “ultramontanist” Cardinal Antonio Bacci on the papacy, in a remarkable passage originally published in 1959: 

There is in the world… one man in whom the greatness of God is reflected in the most outstanding way of all. He participates in the authority and in a certain sense in the personality of Christ. This man is the vicar of Jesus Christ, the Pope….. His power extends to the ends of the world and is under the protection of God, who has promised to confirm and heaven whatever he will decree upon earth.  His dignity and authority, then, are almost divine.  Let us bow humbly before such greatness. Let us promise to obey the Pope as we would Christ…. We cannot dispute or murmur against anything which he teaches or decrees.  To disobey the Pope is to disobey God. To argue or murmur against the Pope is to argue or murmur against Jesus himself. When we are confronted with his commands, we have only one choice – absolute obedience and complete surrender. (Hyperpapalism Vol. 1 at 24)

Now perhaps we could dismiss some of these statements as quaint exaggerations emanating from the pen of a professional Latinist and curial courtier undoubtedly inspired by the panegyrics that past ages addressed to emperors, rulers and, yes, popes. Yet I think there is a declining but still not inconsiderable Catholic population that accepts these statements as literally true.  I am not sure, however, whether Cardinal Bacci was accurately describing the situation of the Catholic Church even in 1959. And as it later transpired, Cardinal Bacci himself, like the arch-ultramontane Cardinal Louis Billot, SJ, before him, was unable to support all the twists and turns directed by papal authority.  (Bacci, on the promulgation of the Novus Ordo; Billot, on the condemnation of Action Francaise). So, a potential conflict between the ultramontane papacy and, not just so-called “dissenters,” but also the defenders of orthodoxy themselves has been long present. 

But with the advent of Pope Francis a much wider section of Catholics has become aware of this calamitous dilemma – the possibility (the reality?) that the highest ecclesiastical authority, claiming direct divine authorization, may no longer be proclaiming the Faith.  For the present pontiff has directly linked progressive political ideology and theology with an unprecedented assertion of papal power.  Since July 2021 Traditionalists have been designated as the official adversaries of the Vatican. But, as Philip Lawler points out, conservative and even “orthodox” Catholics now find themselves the targets of Francis and his team – indeed, they had become “enemies of the Pope” and even “tools of the devil” even earlier than the traditionalists. (“The Pope indicts ‘restorationism.’ I plead guilty.” Catholic Culture, 6/23/2022)

 In Hyperpapalism, Dr. Kwasniewski squarely confronts the situation of the Church today. Hyperpapalism is a major addition to the ever-growing critical literature now appearing on the crisis in the Church. (I should mention that I have known Dr. Kwasniewski for some years and have collaborated with him on several projects. Indeed, works familiar to me are cited in the first footnote of this book (Hyperpapalism, Vol 1 at xi).

The work is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 (“Theological Reflections on the Rock of the Church”) deals with the papacy itself. It defines the nature – and limits – of the pope’s authority.  A historical review shows how exaggerations and abuses crept into the governance of the Church. The author addresses various objections raised by conservatives still troubled by any discussion of papal authority. He rebuts the sedevacantist “temptation,” that seems to emerge in any such discussion. Dr. Kwasniewski’s prose is clear and understandable but also forthright and direct. I’m sure those qualities will be appreciated by the ecclesiastics (including Pope Francis) whose drastic statements have so exacerbated the crisis.  

The second volume (“Chronological Responses to an Unfolding Pontificate”) is a review of the papacy of Pope Francis from the year 2013 onward. It depicts the conflicts between Catholic tradition – including the Scripture itself – and the words and deeds of the Pope that have squarely raised the issue of the scope of papal authority discussed in the first volume. Dr. Kwasniewski emphasizes the theological and moral aspects of the Francis pontificate. But a cursory review of the same period in a source like Sandro Magister’s Settimo Cielo blog, which concentrates more on administrative, governance and personnel issues would produce an additional, even lengthier list of abuses!  Indeed, Magister recently has published an article on this very subject. This illustrates the depth of the problem.  The second volume is largely a chronological arrangement of material previously published online. As I wrote regarding another book, this has the advantage of capturing the immediacy of the flow of events.  

Let me single out two passages that particularly struck me. In Vol. 1 Dr. Kwasniewski describes his personal journey from “ultramontanism to Catholicism” quoting his own youthful writings on the subject. (Hyperpapalism, Vol 1 at 6-7) They reveal the revived pro-papal enthusiasm promoted in conservative circles during the reign of John Paul II. Tragically, those who had climbed on the papal bandwagon found themselves disowned, not just later by Pope Francis but in part even under John Paul II himself (the Assisi conferences, the Legion of Christ scandals….).

In volume 2 the author takes to task The Pillar online news service. Now The Pillar has featured incisive reporting of uncomfortable facts extremely damaging to the reputation of the Vatican, individual American bishops and the American Catholic establishment in general. At the same time, however, regarding matters of policy its writers often affect an obsequious, deferential attitude to ecclesiastical authority. In Is the Pope the Vicar of Christ or the CEO of Vatican, Inc. Dr. Kwasniewski castigates The Pillar for its article on the arbitrary deposition of the bishop of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. In that article, , after enumerating at length the theological difficulties connected with this action, The Pillar nevertheless concluded that, after all, the pope has the power to do whatever he wants. (Hyperpapalism, Vol 2 at 266-71) 

What will be the outcome of all this? That we cannot predict. Any “restructuring” of the Church and the Papacy will be the product of future events – but is not the course of history is the hands of Divine Will? In the meantime, this book will serve as a resource for the afflicted Catholic. It will help him maintain confidence in his faith and tradition in the face of official persecution. It will provide a wealth of arguments aginst his adversaries. And perhaps it will give him hope for better days – for he will realize the current state of the Church is not the final “end of history.”

Histoire des Traditionalistes

By Yves Chiron

(Tallandier, Paris, 2022)

637 pages

At long last we have a major history of Catholic Traditionalism. We should offer thanks to Yves Chiron, author of a vast series of works on modern Catholic history, for providing us this much needed account. Chiron’s review is by far the most thorough work on the history of Traditionalism available today. For anyone who wants to explore the roots of Traditionalism, I would highly recommend this book.

For Traditionalism has developed from a fringe phenomenon that both the Church establishment and the media could safely ignore, to a force having a major impact on life of the worldwide Church. Isn’t the best evidence of this presence the declaration of war against Traditionalism issued by Pope Francis? For the Pope and the Vatican judge Traditionalism, and none of the other adversaries in and outside the Church today, as their mortal enemy.

Histoire des Traditionalistes concentrates almost exclusively on French Traditionalism. That is not really a disadvantage, for it was in France – or at least the French-speaking world – that the Traditionalist movement was born and reached maturity. It was only later that other countries-most notably, the United States, joined France as focal points of Traditionalist life. But it was in France that the first Traditionalist critiques were written, where the first leaders like Archbishop Lefebvre arose, where the FSSPX, its allied institutions, and later the Ecclesia Dei communities were established. It is in France where great public events like the Chartres pilgrimages take place.

As someone who has written a history of the Traditionalist movement in the United States – a situation in many respects far simpler and more straightforward than France – I can appreciate the magnitude of Chiron’s accomplishment. For he has chronicled, relying heavily on primary sources, a diffuse movement extending over some seventy years sharing the same overall “spirit” but with many different and various directions, objectives, leaders and organizations. It was illuminating to read for the first time the full background of so many legendary figures. And the author concludes this book with an extremely valuable 125-page biographical dictionary of (mainly French) Traditional Catholics. 

Yves Chiron devotes considerable space to the early years to help us understand how the movement arose. He delves back even before World War I. His narrative only reaches the Second Vatican Council on page 125! He usefully points out that not all Traditionalists had their roots in the “Maurassian” (Action Francaise) movement – although some certainly did (like the great Jean Madiran) Others spent World War II and the occupation in the Resistance. He shows the origins of future conflicts in the struggles of Catholic thinkers against the leftward drift of the Catholic Church in France after World War II. Thus, the initial clashes were over political, economic and theological – not liturgical – issues. These first conflicts prompted denunciations of “integralists” by the clerical establishment. Out of these debates arose leaders, publications and organizations that were soon put to a much more severe test. For an American analogy, one thinks of William F. Buckley’s Mater non Magistra (punning on the title of the 1961 left-leaning encyclical of John XXIII) and the initial focus of the Triumph magazine team.

The battle intensified during and after the Second Vatican Council. For it soon seemed that the whole doctrinal structure of the Church was collapsing. It was now that Archbishop Lefebvre started to assume an ever-greater role. And it was now that the Church establishment took its first repressive measures against Traditionalism. But the real turning point was the promulgation and imposition of the Novus Ordo. Archbishop Lefebvre and others were inspired to take direct action to preserve the Traditional Mass. The organized Traditionalist “resistance” was born. Chiron sets forth in detail the role of laity, secular priests and members of religious orders in the developing struggle.

Although it is not the primary focus of his book, in passing Chiron reveals much about the dysfunctional operation of the ultramontane Church. The work of devising the Novus Ordo was conducted by a committee of experts reporting directly to Pope Paul VI, bypassing the responsible functions in the Vatican. At no time prior to the 1980’s was there any real attempt by the establishment in Rome or France to “dialogue” with the Traditionalists. The actions of the French (and Swiss) bishops were limited to bureaucratic edicts and condemnations. It is no wonder that such bitterness arose in the relationship of Traditionalists and the hierarchy.

The main motive force behind Traditionalism in France became Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X. The “dialogue” between him and the Vatican increasingly becomes the main theme of this book. Now our author seems to be of an irenic bent – sympathetic to Traditionalism, but also anxious to maintain good relations with the Pope and the hierarchy. This accords with the author’s mild, dispassionate, at times almost noninvolved style.

So, for example, when Archbishop Lefebvre felt compelled to ordain priests for his society (in 1975) and later to consecrate bishops, Chiron quotes abundantly from other followers of Traditionalism that advise against these steps. Of course, if Lefebvre hadn’t taken these decisions, there hardly would be any Catholic Traditionalism today. And in these years, he was not alone in feeling the necessity of taking drastic acts contrary to authority. Consider the seizure of St. Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris! It remains a Traditionalist parish to the present day.

I do have some reservations regarding this magisterial work. Although I approve it in principle, the focus on France, with marginal references made to Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States, does have its limitations. I have quibbles, for example, with some of the author’s implied judgments on developments in the United States. Father Gomar DePauw was a great pioneer of Traditionalism on these shores already in the 1960’s; he did not, however, found a nationally significant movement. The fact that Una Voce United States handed the Pope a petition in 1994 does not at all imply that it was speaking for U.S. Traditionalists as a whole (as their own petition makes clear!). Like other French Traditionalists who have written about the situation in America, Chiron ascribes too much importance to sedevacantism. Although that tendency is perhaps stronger here than elsewhere in the world, it in no way plays a leadership role among American Traditionalists.

Yves Chiron makes persuasive arguments and often reaches convincing conclusions (although I might not agree with all of them). He at times, however, falls into the mere reproduction of contemporary statements and petitions, without interpretative commentary, as if these were the essence of what went on in historical reality. But that is where the historian’s judgment is required.  In a work of history, we look for not the mere recital of facts, but the author’s interpretation of them.

Chiron’s book lacks at times a wider historical context. The struggles of the Traditionalists did not occur in a vacuum but in the larger Church. At all times after the Vatican Council the Catholic Church in Europe was in a state of chaotic decline, bordering in certain places on total collapse.  France is one of the leading examples. This dire situation is what motivated the Traditionalists. The lack of this context puts the Traditionalists in an unfavorable light, making them appear obstinate, aggressive and belligerent. Yet they were only reacting to the wasting away before their very eyes of the faith that they loved. A principled man often appears strident and opinionated compared to those indifferent or conformist.

Chiron also does not fully convey the militancy of the “Conciliar” establishment. From the 1960’s to the present day the Vatican, the episcopate and a large percentage of the clergy and religious lived through a revolutionary “conversion” to the “Council” abandoning much or all of a Tradition now understood as a barrier to the faith. Pope Paul VI’s discourse on the benefits of sacrificing the Catholic culture of the past is exemplary. And much of the laity (that minority who continued to frequent the churches, that is) followed the path of their spiritual leaders. This explains the animosity, even the hatred, felt by all these forces – and not just formal “progressives” – against Catholic Tradition and especially the Traditionalists themselves. It is the origin of the Church’s readiness to use coercion and intimidation against Traditionalists – but not against opponents allied with the secular establishment. For if you have given up everything in pursuit of a dream which has not materialized you do not look kindly on someone who, by his words or life, is reminding you of that fact. This is even more so when the governing powers of this world are applauding you at every moment. Again, Chiron’s failure to highlight these tensions and passions within the wider Church puts the entire Traditionalist struggle in the wrong light. I would admit, however, that many Traditionalists themselves have been reluctant to admit the truth about these divisions within the Church.

I regrettably have more significant reservations about the final two chapters on Popes Benedict XVI and Francis – particularly the last. These two also seem to have been written in a more summary manner than the rest of the book. This is a shame, because the motu proprios and other accompanying actions of Popes Benedict and Francis are the most crucial events of the post-Conciliar period regarding Traditionalism. As to Pope Benedict, I don’t think the author fully captures the significance of Summorum Pontificum. Perhaps that is because the embedding of Traditionalism in the ordinary life of the Church that Benedict’s motu proprio intended and, at least in some places, accomplished, had its greatest consequences not in France but in the United States. Chiron’s account of the final breakdown of negotiations between Benedict’s Vatican and the FSSPX in 2012 is both blander and more favorable to the Vatican than my previous understanding of the facts.  Regardless of this, Chiron very accurately points out that at the end of the day Benedict was unable to achieve a full reconciliation of the FSSPX, just as he was utterly incapable of making any progress on the liturgical “reform of the reform” he supposedly favored.

Chiron’s chapter on Pope Francis completely misses the mark. The author’s desire to advocate peace between Traditionalists and the Roman Catholic establishment gets in the way of his judgment. Just the title of this chapter “Pope Francis – a Pastor above all” is ludicrous; I wouldn’t use the term “pastor” to describe a progressive ideologue and a tyrant – an extreme version of Francis’s own hero Paul VI. And when Chiron describes Traditionis Custodes as a “regression” compared to the acts of his predecessor, that is the understatement of the century. For it directly contradicts them; the Pope therein explicitly states his desire to annihilate traditionalism. And that is entirely in accord with his prior words and deeds both as Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Pope. Yes, it is true that, generally speaking, the Pope, prior to Traditionis Custodes, had focused his attention on things other than liturgy. But this was only to promote progressive initiatives in morality, theology and politics equally incompatible with Traditionalism. He did grant further legal accommodations to the Society of Pius X – but what does that matter in relation to the Pope’s implacable conceptual hostility to Traditionalism, so abundantly displayed in public, and his repeated measures against individual Traditionalist apostolates? Characteristically, Chiron quotes, apparently favorably, the first craven response of the French Ecclesia Dei communities to the French bishops in August 2021 – positions from which these organizations subsequently entirely departed. To fully explore the impact and implications of Traditionis Custodes, however, would have required Chiron to rethink and largely rewrite his prior conclusions on the reconciliation of the Church establishment and Traditionalism after 1982 – something he was understandably reluctant to do. 

In his concluding thoughts, Chiron summarizes the significant influence, scope and numbers attained by Traditionalism in the world today. And the Traditionalists are unlikely to disappear anytime soon – Chiron himself thinks “some” bishops will apply Traditionis Custodes in a non-confrontational, relaxed manner. Broadly speaking, that has indeed been the experience up till now. Chiron ends his book by quoting Jean Madiran, who describes Traditionalism as a “way of life,” a “profession” a “devotion” and a “state of mind.” All this is very true – in a certain sense! But we would be mistaken if we understood this to mean that Traditionalism is some subjective mood, attitude or emotion. For what motivates Traditionalists is the fight for the objective truths of their religion, for the restoration of the Church and, in the climate of today, even the existence of objective reality about the nature of Man and the world. As Madiran states, this is not just an intellectual affirmation or an ideology but, like Christianity itself, informs and shapes the entire “way of life” of the believer. That is why Traditionalists have been fighting for 70 and more years – as Chiron chronicles in such detail. And it is why they will continue to do so.

Krass

By Martin Mosebach

(Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg, 2021)

(525 pages)

Krass, Mosebach’s latest novel, is more tightly focused than the “epic” Westend written some thirty years earlier. It is divided into three sections, each with its own style and coloration, much like the movements of a grand musical composition. Their titles reflect that: Allegro Imbarazzante, Andante Pensieroso and Marcia Funebre. The action of the novel is concentrated at three specific points of time – even if the first and last “acts” are separated by two decades.

However, while Westend is restricted to Mosebach’s native German world, Krass roams much further afield – sweeping from Naples to the French countryside to Cairo.  Krass has similarities to Mosebach’s more recent novels. For example, in Krass we find a wonderfully detailed description of a third world culture (Egypt). Mosebach has done the same for Morocco (Mogador), India (Das Beben) and, again, Egypt (Was davor geschah and the non-fiction The 21). This allows Mosebach to make all kinds of contrasts between the world of Europe today and the more permanent (and in a certain sense more spiritual) life of these traditional cultures. Dr. Jüngel, one of the leading personages of Krass, also recalls a certain kind of grasping, manipulative yet ineffectual modern personality encountered elsewhere in Mosebach’s work – such as the German “anti-hero” of Mogador.

The novel commences (Allegro Imbarazzante) in late 1988 beginning, most appropriately, with a magic show in Naples. We are introduced to Ralph Krass, an intimidating German businessman, wheeler-dealer and “macher” whose personality differs in every respect from Eduard Has, the protagonist of Westend. Krass is domineering, imperious, controlling and decisive. He surrounds himself with an entourage of mainly middle aged and older individuals who he has reduced to total dependance. We also meet the second major character of the novel, a younger man, the aforementioned Dr. Jüngel. An art historian, he has made a “pact with the devil,” becoming Krass’s famulus and facilitator. His letters to his feminist wife chronicle much of the doings of the Krass’s coterie. 

It’s an indulgent, carefree life, with Krass providing his retainers lavish food and drink as well as tours, shows and boating excursions in and around Naples. With Jüngel’s assistance, Krass is pursuing the purchase of a villa on Capri – the legendary island of hedonism. He also bent on attaching to his entourage a young Belgian woman, the unfaithful Lidewine, as a kind of mistress. For sex is also a part of the entertainment of Krass and company.

Yet amid the luxury and lavish amusements, some of the characters have disturbing premonitions. Jüngel lectures on the Alexander mosaic in the Naples Archeological Museum and, in particular, on one detail: an image of death. Krass himself, while swimming off Capri, is stung by a jellyfish and is nearly swept away by the current. His intended new villa is a mysterious ruin. And we gather that his business (arms trafficking?) rests on shaky and perhaps illegal foundations. So, the uninhibited lifestyle of Krass – and of Europe today – carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. Et in Arcadia ego! We view the beginning of this unraveling already in the last pages of this section.

Andante Pensieroso takes place in a remote corner of Central France late in the following year. Jüngel has taken refuge in the house of a friend after his world has collapsed. He has been expelled from Krass’s circle, his wife (whom he had left behind to join Krass), has deserted him and he has lost his job in Germany. He is flat broke and for want of a functioning CD player cannot even distract himself with (classical) music. He faces an emotional breakdown and, seeking a way out, desperately tries to contact Krass. It’s a traumatic fall from his previous fantastic, extravagant existence under the direction of Krass.

Yet in his isolation from the stimuli of the modernity, Jüngel is now open to a whole new world of reality.  He perceives more directly the nature that surrounds him. That includes, in a very Mosebachian touch, meaningful encounters with two parakeets, a cat and a white wagtail (an Old-World bird). He visits a functioning monastery, ancient but rebuilt in the 19th century, in which the Latin plainchant is still sung:

The compulsory musical abstinence made me receptive to the severity and sobriety of this chant, for its renunciation of polyphony, atmospheric magic and 3/4 and 4/4 time. One can’t dance around to this music or march to it. Singing here was a higher form of speaking.  The objective appeared to be the purification of the senses from confused emotions. That fit well with the chill of this church that made me shiver after a while – although I didn’t think of returning to the warm air outside.  The half-light in the hall faded away; the two candles that were lit for the singing of the chant still shone as golden dots until a monk returned and extinguished them. Now it was night. (p. 238)

He is befriended by a cobbler, Desfosses, living in a room adjacent to that monastery. Desfosses, like Jüngel, is a refugee from the vicissitudes of modern life – if for other reasons. He is an upholder of older habits and customs, a practicing Catholic and happens to be a devoted fan of Marshal Petain. This man teaches Jüngel the lesson that not one shoe or tool should be thrown away – everything can be repaired and reused. In travels over the countryside the earthy Desfosses shares with the impecunious Jüngel hearty meals (Lievre a la Royale) and potent drinks. 

Jüngel eventually succeeds to getting a call through to Krass who challenges him to go off on his own. A chance remark by Desfosses gives Jüngel an insight into the interrelationship of all things and events. These incidents, along with the “education” he has received in his exile, enable Jüngel to break free from both his dependance on Krass and his grief at his broken marriage.  After this “resurrection” (as he calls it) Jüngel can face life again. 

The scene of the novel’s final act, Marcia Funebre, is Egypt. It’s 2008 – 20 years later. We meet again Krass, but the supremely self-assured “master of the universe” of the past is gone; instead, he is a man desperately attempting to re-establish contact with his former friends in the government to order to stave off disaster. As the novel progresses, Krass is stripped of everything: his business, his money, his hotel room and, confined to a hospital bed, even the control over his own body and finally his very life. The account of his lingering decline is a fearful narrative. Krass’s only consolation is the devoted friendship of an Egyptian lawyer who strangely comes to consider him his “father.” The unselfish Mohammed, like Desfosses a sympathetic if flawed individual, is Krass’s only support in his last days. 

Jüngel and Lidewine also have ended up in Cairo – for different reasons. Jüngel’s “resurrection” in France has unfortunately failed to bear lasting fruit. He has become a professor of “urban studies” at one of the most undistinguished of German universities. He is in the Middle East on a grant and is on the hunt for another. He has lived through two further divorces. Lidewine has taken up the art business of her parents. In Cairo she is pushing the work of a fraudulent local artist – and otherwise continues her promiscuous ways. Jüngel and Lidewine thus remain emblematic representatives of decadent Europe today.

After learning of Krass’s presence the pair set out to find him. Too late – his body has been taken away for burial! In an oppressive and disturbing scene Jüngel and Lidewine roam in the gathering dusk the endless “city of the dead” of Cairo, searching for his grave. But the body of Krass has disappeared completely among the anonymous myriads buried there – as if he never had existed.

Krass thus contrasts the superficial fantasy world of Western Europe, focused on food, sex, travel and entertainment – and, for some people, social climbing by linking up with those holding economic power – with the permanent values of the surviving remnants of Christian culture in provincial France and of the unchanging world of Moslem Egypt. And above all, with the final reality: death. 

Strewn about this novel is the wreckage of Western civilization. Krass’s villa, appropriately named Faraone, is a decayed ruin – just crumbling “stage scenery.” The abbey in which Desfosses resides is, in large part, a not very successful mid–nineteenth century restoration – the original nave had been destroyed in the French Revolution. And a grandiose but dilapidated Cairo apartment to which Mohammed takes Krass is the haunted, empty relic of a half-Western, half-Oriental past. Mosebach enjoys depicting the decrepitude of structures that once were modern. For, as he writes, contrasting the quality of the abbey’s surviving medieval choir with that of the nineteenth century nave:

Ancient things cannot become old fashioned, that which is ancient has learned to wait. Before it, the fashionable continually passes away, even though it is the expression of life. As if only that which has thoroughly died can pass the real test of permanence. (p. 237)

Am I reading Krass in an excessively allegorical manner? Perhaps! In America – after Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and their successors – this perspective is second nature to us. And after all, Krass is not a treatise but a novel with colorful scenes, memorable characters and a fascinating narrative. Yet it seems to me that Mosebach is indeed showing to Europe – and the entire Western world – a great warning sign. He is holding up a mirror so that we in the West can gaze on our own terrible reflection. And is that not, returning to the start of these reviews, also a task of a Catholic writer?

Westend

By Martin Mosebach

( Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 2019)

New Edition, 895 pages

Most readers of this blog are well acquainted with Martin Mosebach, internationally perhaps the most tireless advocate of traditional Catholicism. Yet Martin Mosebach’s day job is primarily that of novelist. In fact, he is one of Germany’s leading practitioners of that genre. Yet as far as I am aware only one of his novels has been translated into English: What was before (2010; English translation 2014). To remedy this defect, I’d like to bring to your attention two of his most remarkable works – one first published 30 years ago, another in 2021.

What is the connection between Martin Mosebach’s faith and his novels? He has specifically rejected any understanding of the role of the Catholic novelist as that of an explicit advocate for the Catholic Church and its clergy. In his novels there are no conversions, deathbed or otherwise, and no visions or miracles either. In fact, he has written of his dislike for the conversion of Lord Marchmain at the conclusion of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Yet he maintains that he is a Catholic novelist – but that means a novelist having a Catholic sensibility which informs all his writings. Now especially a novelist must start his work with what he sees about him. Martin Mosebach is the product of an overwhelmingly non-Catholic and even non-Christian environment. Similarly, I don’t recall that Flannery O’Connor, also the resident of a non-Catholic culture – if one very different from that of Martin Mosebach – included many Catholics in her writings.

Westend , a 1992 novel, deals with Mosebach’s own country, city, and people. The title is the name of a late 19th century neighborhood in Frankfurt. This district of splendid mansions and townhouses enjoyed its golden age prior to the First World War. Then came the chaos of inflation in the 1920s, the exile or worse suffered by the large Jewish community in the 1930s, and the allied bombing in the 1940s (which, however, largely spared the Westend). After World War II the once wealthy area endured further traumatizing changes in economics and direction. The grand houses were subdivided into apartments or even workshops. There was even a descent into a red-light district for a few years. Individual buildings were torn down or endured the “simplification” of their facades and decoration. All the while visions swirled among real estate speculators, politicians and city planners of leveling the Westend entirely and building a totally modern district of offices and apartment buildings. But at the end of the day this did not happen.  Starting at the 1970s the value of these buildings was recognized and that part of the Westend that had not been destroyed was placed under architectural preservation. And today it flourishes once again as a luxury residential area.

Now in this novel the Westend is dominated by certain patently symbolic images. The bombed-out Christuskirche with its empty Gothic windows serves as the visual and spiritual focus of the neighborhood. For God is no longer here – in the course of this book we learn that His presence had become attenuated even before World War I. Over the facade of the nearby natural history museum stands a figure of Chronos (time) – or of Death – with hourglass and scythe. Within the houses of the neighborhood themselves we encounter paintings and furnishings which serve to anchor and link the succeeding phases of the novel. 

The saga of the Westend reminds me of a place very familiar to me – Brooklyn, New York. There too, relatively intact neighborhoods built between 1865 and 1900 survive, like Park Slope, much of Brooklyn Heights, Clinton Hill, and more besides. They also, if on a somewhat different timeline and sometimes in a much more drastic fashion, went through a cycle like that experienced by the Westend: splendor in the 1890s, decline, as the 20^th century advanced, into apartments for the middle classes and in some places even into outright slums, followed, starting in the 1970s, by the rediscovery of these attractive streetscapes.  Now, the “brownstones” (as they are generically known) of these gentrified districts are among the most desirable dwellings in New York City.

Westend is set against the background of Frankfurt in the 1950’s and 60’s. Now Frankfurt, as I mentioned, is traditionally a very Protestant town – historically a free “Imperial City.” Yet even though the Reformation had triumphed in Frankfurt, a Catholic minority flourished under the protection of the nearby Elector (prince-bishop) of Mainz. In the 18^th century the Catholic house of Thurn und Taxis ran the postal system of the Holy Roman Empire out of Frankfurt.  In those same years the Catholic Brentano family rose to prominence – Clemens Brentano, the Romantic poet and champion of Anna Catherina Emmerich, was their most distinguished representative. And some of the main churches of Frankfurt remained in Catholic hands, above all the “Imperial Cathedral” of St Bartholomew’s, where the Holy Roman Emperor was elected, and, from the 16^th century onward, crowned in magnificent ceremonies. 

Mosebach refers frequently to the historical context in which his story takes place. His understanding of German history is vastly more subtle and profound than the simple dichotomy of evil Nazis and good modernity that governs thought in Germany today. Yet Westend is in no way a detailed social and political treatise on life in Frankfurt between 1950 and 1968. The author provides only such information that is relevant to his characters’ story. Key details – such as the exact date of certain events or the age of some of the main characters – is only given far into the novel or not at all. This creates now and then a feeling of timelessness.

The narrative of Westend begins after World War II in which the medieval city center of Frankfurt had been utterly destroyed. The novel tells of two families and two houses in the Westend. The first, the Labontés, are the heirs of the owner of a former grand wine, cigar and gourmet food business. Two maiden aunts manage the family’s ornate old mansion which has survived the war intact. The interior is crammed with magnificent pre-1914 furnishings and seems shrouded in a perpetual twilight or half-darkness. The household is run with proverbial German thoroughness and order by these aunts. A ne’er-do-well son of the family regrettably seems entirely lacking in admirable qualities but exits the novel early, leaving behind a son, Alfred Labonté. Since his mother also died young, his two aunts must take charge of his upbringing. 

The second family – the Olenschlägers, represented by Eduard Has, has had a totally different experience. Their old home was bombed out in the war. But thanks to clever investments by Eduard’s mother, their fortune has survived intact. Eduard was able to ride out the war in Switzerland thanks to his posting to one such family-controlled company which, we gather, was of significance to the German war effort. Eduard thereby avoided the unpleasantness of the war years in Germany: the deportations, the bombing, the fighting, captivity or death at the hands of the Allies. He returns to Frankfurt committed to modernity. Has sets out to create a grand collection of German expressionist art. The ruins of the old family mansion will be replaced by a six-story apartment building. And the new building will be crowned by a stark glass penthouse in which he can dwell with his collections. All this activity is underwritten by his family’s firm which harbors dreams of totally rebuilding Frankfurt and plunges into the speculative real estate boom of the post-war years.

Eduard Has thus is representative of the higher bourgeoisie of Frankfurt and West Germany after the Second World War: conformist, anxious to be considered modern but driven by the need for self-display of earlier generations. Utterly lacking in judgment, vacillating and indecisive, he allows himself to be dominated in his choice of art and architecture by advisors who seek their own advantage. His morals are also extremely fluid – he collects other men’s wives as easily as he does pre-World War I expressionists. He does have great – perhaps excessive – affection, however, for his daughter Lilly.

We see his grand new house and gallery take shape. Of course, like all modern art, his rooftop residence is stark and bare. It also is totally inappropriate for the city’s weather conditions and as a dwelling for the family. The sun blazes in without hindrance. It is hard to find one’s way round the rooms given their arrangement and frequent mirrors. The specially designed furniture is impractical. Smells from cooking in an apartment in the basement waft up to the 6th floor. It is the greatest possible contrast to the comfortable old Labonté mansion of 1897!

Alfred Labonté is now growing up in the atmospheric surroundings of the latter house.  Although Martin Mosebach has denied any autobiographical angle to this book, Alfred seems from an early age to be endowed with insights regarding his house, his neighborhood and art far more sophisticated and perceptive than anything Eduard ever expresses.  Moreover, Alfred is raised as a Catholic, if only in a perfunctory manner, due to the obligation his aunts feel they owe to his dead mother. Other than the case of several minor characters, Alfred’s Catholicism is unique in the world of Westend.

Alfred early appreciates the ornate Victorian decorations of the facades and railings of the neighboring townhouses. Although he does not fully understand it, he is drawn to the beauty of the Catholic Mass (see the passage below). He experiences a spiritual vision of the Westend one evening in which the entire neighborhood seems ordered to, and subsumed into, a blazing sunset behind the ruined Christuskirche. But especially he is drawn to the 19^th century paintings (of a “Victorian” local artistic school) on the walls of the LaBonte mansion, especially one specific work: The Departure of the Knight of Cronberg for the Holy Land, in which a crusader from the vicinity of Frankfurt bids farewell to his lady. The work fascinates the young Alfred and he gradually comes to see himself in the role of the knight, and Eduard Has’s daughter Lilly as his lady.

Yet, like life itself, there are many twists and turns to the novel.  Both Alfred and Lilly stray from their apparent destiny, handicapped by their superficial education and weighed down by the “sins of the fathers.” Meanwhile Eduard Has continues his triumphant career, managing his wife, his mistress, his artistic and architectural influencers (as we would call them today), the people in his family firm who in fact control his business as well as a variety of colorful local characters. Externally it is a life of grand success: due to his collection of art, he and his wife receive upper society’s accolades, prestigious memberships and coveted invitations. His firm meanwhile is developing a grand plan to raze and totally rebuild the Westend to be an exemplary modernistic district – perhaps like La Defense outside of Paris.

(Above and below) In a dream Eduard Has sees, in the midst of a horrifying infernal landscape, two black marble busts of him and his mistress. He reads in bronze letters under his image NIHIL and under that of his mistresss UMBRA. Was Mosebach inspired by the white marble busts of the far more pious Altieri family in the Church of St Maria in Campitelli in Rome?

Mosebach writes in clear, “classical” prose, now elegant and sophisticated, now using colloquial speech. The analysis of what is going on the minds of the protagonists can be at times extraordinarily detailed. But Mosebach also draws on other techniques. He constantly accompanies and illustrates his story with symbols and images drawn from art, nature and Catholic tradition. The narrative switches abruptly again and again from one character and location to another without warning – one must keep reading carefully! Information is frequently laid out in a nonlinear manner:  details foreshadow events only occurring later in the novel, while other incidents are only fully described much later than their first appearance. At times the author hints that he (and apparently one or two of the novel’s characters as well) are gazing back at these events from a point in the future – which must be 1992. 

And, opera-like, the discursive “recitative” of the characters’ mental states, conversations and comings and goings is interrupted with startling effect by great visual “set pieces.” For example, Alfred’s father rows a boat dreamily down the river Main (on which Frankfurt is located) – and sees a murdered infant floating towards him. Eduard has a long emotional dialogue with his Swiss dealer in which both explore the nature of collecting art.  Both Alfred and Eduard have extended, revelatory dreams. In a heart-rending sequence of scenes, Alfred experiences the greatest grief at the sudden death of a beloved aunt – all the more traumatizing for him since she had suffered a disabling stroke at her own birthday party which he had disdained attending. Alfred is not comforted when he is told how fortunate his aunt was to have a “merciful’ and “peaceful” death.  

For Alfred felt the horror of a sudden and unprepared death expressed in the petition in the litany – long forgotten by him: a subitanea et improvisa morte libera nos domine. (pp. 722-23)

There follows a forceful depiction of a nonreligious “ceremony” for his aunt in a crematorium where a “pastor” delivers a bizarre, half-philosophical, half-pagan sermon. Amid this oppressive spiritual desolation, Alfred realizes that this entire “ceremony” is the greatest insult to his dead aunt. 

But Eduard must face a day of reckoning. His company has overextended itself financially and its plans for the Westend are thwarted – apparently by a political switch in favor of the budding historical preservation movement. Eduard discovers to his horror that, like Madame Bovary, he “has signed too much paper.”  The management of his own company pushes Eduard to the brink of financial ruin, his wife finally deserts him, his paintings are removed to the vault until the legal situation is resolved, and he must return to people he has come to despise. His world having collapsed, Eduard can only look forward to a meaningless void.  In his deserted penthouse, only his daughter Lilly remains.

Alfred’s world too has turned upside down after his aunt’s death. As Mosebach has subtly pointed out to us now and then earlier in the novel, the aunts’ commitment to German tradition – symbolized by their venerable residence and its contents – is only the product of superficial habit. The surviving aunt brings in a television, substitutes snacking on “health food” for the substantial, regularly served mealtimes of the past, auctions off the entire contents of the Labonté house and finally moves out entirely. The painting of the Knight of Cronberg is donated to the Frankfurt art museum, where, we are told, it resided in the vault for many years. Alfred is left alone in a small room amid the empty and deserted spaces of the LaBonte residence – which he in fact has ended up owning. But his fate then takes a different turn from Eduard’s. He finally comes to realize who he is, and that he is destined in some mysterious way for Lilly. And the next day he in fact receives an imploring call from her – besieged in her rooftop home by one of her father’s consultants. Like the Knight of Cronberg so familiar to him, Alfred resolutely advances to her rescue. 

What happens next, we are not told.

So, can we say Westend is a “Catholic” novel? It certainly testifies eloquently that “God is not here.”  But many great novelists have made the point that God is absent in the modern world, without thereby necessarily being considered Catholic. We have to look for additional indicia of a Catholic sensibility. Mosebach shows in this work a great appreciation of the intrinsic value of things, of history and of people – even those individuals for whom he otherwise lacks sympathy. He admires that which has organically developed, in contrast to the modernist ideal of a clear break with the past; he supports reality against ideological dreams. He detests phonies and manipulators. Like Dostoevsky, he does not fear to assert the importance of beauty to life. I already mentioned this book’s numerous liturgical and spiritual references. But for me, Mosebach in this book conveys a definite sense that there is an underlying providential will present in this world.  We usually perceive it only dimly or in fragments.  We are free to reject its promptings.  But is not such an affirmation preeminently Catholic?

Alfred and the Mass. (from Westend at pp. 254-255)

by Martin Mosebach

In the half year (of his preparation for First Communion) Alfred had been overwhelmed with impressions, but he had no vessels to capture the overwhelming riches. He was sprinkled with Holy Water before Mass began; he saw the pyramids of candles on the altar, the many white, lace trimmed altar cloths, the entrance of the priest in brocaded vestments and the black biretta with the black pompom on his head. He saw the deep bows, the prayers whispered while the congregation sang loudly and drowned out the words spoken at the altar. Alfred heard the language, foreign, musical and full of vowels, in which he later learned to navigate very assuredly. He heard the chanting of the priests, which ran like a creek snaking through a landscape without any restrictive rhythm, like water, which avoids obstacles, which sometimes is still, sometimes overflows, then in a thin jet falls one step lower and finally flows wide and gently. Alfred heard the little bells, at whose signal everyone dropped to his knees; he saw the cruets with water and wine which were brought up to the altar; he saw the tiny spoon with which the priest took a drop of water for the chalice, he smelled the incense, the fresh aroma of the first burning grains and the heavy clouds  which had something of the odor of burnt sugar and which hung about in the front of the church towards the end of the Solemn Mass.. He saw the swinging thurible, the brief washing of the hands from the elegant water cruet and the fine white towel, hardly bigger than a handkerchief. Then came silence, the whispering at the altar, then the church bells began to ring, and the little handbells as well, and then there hovered above the head of the priest a small white disk. Alfred could never get used to the idea that this was bread since the white disk had nothing to do with the bread that he ate at breakfast.

Alfred’s extraordinary, profound emotion prevented him from understanding what he had beheld with the greatest amazement. After the Te Deum of the Corpus Christi procession Toddi Olsten (Alfred’s friend in school) observed that it really was first class. “My father says that nobody can equal the Church in this kind of production. Organ and bells together – it’s a terrific effect….” (Alfred) never would have had the idea of calling ringing the bells during the great hymn as a “terrific effect.” He excluded the possibility that calculation was at work here – everything happened the way in which it had to be done. What happened escaped his understanding, but it was obviously beyond any arbitrariness which would allow one to speak of a “production.” Given his temperament he could have grown into the liturgy of his Church without any difficulties. But for this he would have needed steady direction – in other words, education – just as the Church once understood her cult as a life-long education. But there was nobody who took up the education of Alfred beyond that provided by his aunts….

Sire

Éditions de Fallois 1991

L’anneau du pêcheur

Éditions Albin Michel 1995

By Jean Raspail

Jean Raspail, who passed away in 2020, is best known to the English-speaking world for his 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints. Here he presented in startling detail a scenario in which a decadent Europe is overrun by third world migrants and simultaneously undermined by libertine progressive forces. As a kind of aside, Raspail depicted the ineffectual activity of the debilitated Roman Catholic Church in the face of this apocalyptic confrontation. Could the author have guessed that forty years later his vision of a grand migration would be literally fulfilled on the southern border of the EU and the United States – with a Western world in the grip of total moral and political chaos and the pope of the Roman Catholic Church actively furthering the movement of decomposition? Rod Dreher called attention in 2015 to this most amazing prediction. Of course, Mr. Dreher also had to dutifully register his horror at the “racism” of Raspail’s book, at its “offensive” language that makes one “cringe.” 1)

Jean Raspail, however, continued to write books in a prophetic vein. He loves to describe causes that seem to be lost and the hidden spiritual forces that still dwell behind the façade of modern life.  His admiration is clearly for those who adhere with unshakable loyalty to outdated and “reactionary” crusades in the face of all the odds and all calculations of success. Is it at all surprising, then, that I read in the notices of the author’s death that he was friendly to the traditional mass community?

In Sire, Raspail tells a fantastic tale of how Philippe Pharamond, the young heir to the French throne,  accompanied by a handful of companions, travels over present-day France on a journey to Reims cathedral to be anointed king of France. The odyssey, at time bordering on the supernatural, is a large part covered on horseback. Raspail surrounds the narrative of the group’s travels with marvelous descriptions of nature (or whatever of it is left today). The progress of the royal party is actively helped by an unlikely group of supporters: a mysterious monk and former Cardinal, a leading French industrialist; a black female security guard at the basilica of Saint Denis, a taxi driver – and many more. Others seem to be mesmerized against their will into facilitating the anointing. There are adversaries and persecutors too – especially one particularly repulsive ex-Jesuit in the employ of the state security forces. For the French government perceives this crowning as a threat. 

Raspail gives us a vivid description of the decayed and dying French Catholic Church. Her clergy are characterless eunuchs without personality. The present-day treasury of the cathedral of Reims is but a collection of junk. The churches – regardless of the support of the state –  can be at any moment a scene of vandalism or even murder.

Throughout there are haunting,  phantasmagoric images. In incredibly violent scenes, we witness the  leaders of the French Revolution systematically desecrating the graves of the French monarchs at Saint Denis and then destroying – or so it seems – the vessel containing the holy chrism at Reims. Prayers are secretly recited in the early morning darkness in the Basilica of Saint Denis – surrounded by a decrepit, hostile and grotesquely ugly modern town and menaced at every moment with vandalism – before the tombs of the French kings. (The basilica has indeed recently been vandalized in March 2019 and January 2022)

These images culminate in an apocalyptic nighttime vision in which Pharamond is forced to confront France as it is today (that is in 1991 – in 2022 it is far worse). Pallid wraiths sit in a fast food-type chain restaurant by the highway devouring vile food. Endless rows of identical high-rise apartments extend out from Paris whose inhabitants sit glued to their flickering TV screens (today it would be their computers). Pharamond faces the temptation of despair before this realization of how little his calling and dignity means to the Frenchmen of today.

Yet Pharamond overcomes this challenge and continues onward to his destiny. And this is the significance of the anointing and of the search in this novel for the last drops of the oil brought down by the Holy Spirit for the crowning of Clovis, the first king of the Franks. For Pharamond is king by divine right – it matters little how many accept him. This to Raspail is the nature of royalty. He describes beautifully too the personal relationship that the subject of a king has with his sovereign and the rules of etiquette incumbent upon both. The author reflects movingly on the nature of fellowship and the beauty of sharing risks  – and meals. 

The novel actually builds up a fair amount of tension – we really await with trepidation for the anointing to be accomplished. We feel for the royal party and their heterogenous entourage. At the end, after the rituals have been accomplished,  Pharamond departs. We are not told what the next chapter of his story will be. But it seems that something necessary in some hidden way to the French nation’s spiritual equilibrium has been achieved.

L’anneau du pêcheur (The Ring of the Fisherman) turns to the spiritual world. The novel is based on the extraordinary premise that the Avignon papacy never came to an end; that a line of Avignon popes has endured unto our day. Now, I admit that, outside of France perhaps,  the Avignon papacy does not enjoy the best of reputations. But Raspail gamely goes to bat for the home team. In contrast, he depicts St. Catherine of Siena’s “sweet Jesus on earth” – the murderous Urban VI, restored to the city of Rome- in the darkest of colors. 

Raspail forcefully makes the case for Avignon in the Western schism. Much of the narrative deals with Pedro de Luna (Benedict XIII) and his stubborn fight against all odds for his papal rights regardless of what the Councils of Pisa and Constance, the French King and his own sovereign in Aragon may be saying and decreeing. For him truly, fiat Justitia et pereat mundus.

Now according to Raspail, after Benedict XIII and a couple of succeeding pretenders, a hidden series of Popes continued the Avignon line to the present day. These became poor men – vagabonds perhaps – but true men of God and endowed with the gift of miracles. But Raspail implies that these have been the true popes. And the last of this line now undertakes a journey to Rome (which attracts the attention of the Vatican). And this pope, like all his predecessors in this lineage,  bears the name “Benedict” ! 

 Of course the uncanny prophetic gifts of Raspail himself are here once again demonstrated. For who, reading this book, cannot avoid thinking of that lonely, hidden Pope Benedict of our very own day  – Joseph Ratzinger – and the contrast of his quiet spirituality with the brutal carnival show presided over by the current occupant of the see of Rome? A Pope Benedict who, once again, is suffering savage attacks in his country of birth.

Actually, The Ring of the Fisherman does not dwell on criticism of the the present-day Church. Rather, the novel contrasts the authentic spirituality of the humble man of God  Benedict with the great void of today’s secular France, insensible to spiritual things. In this novel, it seems that the battle for the soul of France has already been fought long ago –  and won by the present age. Much of the story involves the travels of  Benedict and his retinue about ruined cathedrals, mysterious chapels and isolated monasteries in the south of France. Criticism of the Vatican II Church is mostly subtly implied – such as by depicting a supposed Vatican secret security agency. Only in a brief but memorable description of the yowling crowds at a gigantic “event” in a South American stadium can be found overt satire of today’s Church. Engulfed by the chanting of the mob which surrounds him, John Paul II’s feeble voice is drowned out. (Raspail does not mention that this kind of show was largely instituted by John Paul II in the first place).There’s also a final sentence in this novel mentioning the imprudence of John XXIII in calling the Vatican Council, similar to that of his predecessor John XXIII,  a pope (or antipope) of the Western Schism, of agreeing to  the Council of Constance. Do I need to add that everyone -including the last Pope Benedict – seems to be using the traditional liturgy?

In my opinion, although its premise is fascinating, The Ring of the Fisherman is less successful, as a novel, than Sire. It is far more static – the basic conflict is evident very early on. The contrast running through the novel between the world of Pedro de Luna (Benedict XIII) and that of his modern-day descendant holds our attention but has certain monotony.  And Raspail’s descriptions of Vatican officials and departments   – a la Malachi Martin – are not really developed. In contrast,  J-K Huysmans’ Là-Bas also is structured around an alternating narrative of the late middle ages(Gilles de Rais) and the modern day (occultist circles)  but builds up to a dramatic climax of both threads. 

The Pope Benedict of the novel dies before reaching Rome. Yet Pope John Paul II arranges that his body be brought to St Peter’s and buried simply in the catacombs, with a low Mass,  before a small congregation but with the funeral honors of a Pope. There, in a simple white marble sarcophagus, resides the last of the Avignon Popes with this simple inscription:

BENEDICTUS

1. Dreher, Rod, “It’s Jean Raspail’s World Now” The American Conservative (9/7/2015)