Irrwege und Umwege im Frömmigkeitsleben der Gegenwart

“Dead Ends and Deviations in the Piety of the Present Day.”

By Fr. Max Kassiepe OMI

Second Expanded and Revised Edition, Echter-Verlag, Würzburg 1940.

Irrwege und Umwege (“Dead Ends and Deviations”) is a most extraordinary work  – the first edition was published in 1939. For it is a very early detailed critical commentary on the forces within the Church that were even then advocating change – above all,  the Liturgical Movement. By 1939 the Liturgical Movement had obtained achieved real significance, at least in the German-speaking world. It’s obvious, however,  that it still retained somewhat the air of a cult, gaining momentum, but still not readily understandable to the mass of Catholics. The Liturgical Movement, as described by Fr. Kassiepe, was promoted by a clique of writers, monks, young priests and their youthful lay enthusiasts. And it still remained a movement, as Fr. Max Kassiepe’s book testifies, that had not yet been canonized and could be challenged publicly and directly. (The publication date of this book also shows that even in 1940 the Church enjoyed considerable freedom in the Third Reich – that is, as long as one didn’t criticize the regime.)

Our author, Fr. Max Kassiepe, approaches the issue from the perspective of an experienced spiritual director. Fr. Kassiepe had led a wide variety of Catholic pastoral activities and seems to have specialized in giving retreats and addresses at major Catholic gatherings and events. He emphasizes from the start that he is not utterly opposed to the Liturgical Movement  – in fact it has brought about many beneficial results. He does object to the one-sided, confrontational and non-pastoral face of the new movement. Fr. Kassiepe describes the adherents of the Liturgical Movement as elitist,  unrealistic and lacking in understanding of the life and issues of ordinary lay Catholics.

His first point of criticism is the reduction by the Liturgical Movement of Catholic spiritual life exclusively to participation in the Mass. The prior forms of Catholic individual piety  – most notably the rosary  – are displaced and marginalized. Fr. Kassiepe criticizes the theoretical basis of this approach which proposes the superiority of an “objective” spirituality, as embodied in the Mass, over an alleged “private” spirituality. He calls this approach  “liturgism.” Fr. Kassiepe specifically criticizes the notion of returning to the age of the “Early Church” (Urkirche). He points out  – decades before such scholarly positions became more widely known – that the Liturgical Movement’s claims about the form of the liturgies of the Early Church – like the prevalence of versus populum celebration or the location of the altar in the center of the church building – were historically dubious. 

Fr. Kassiepe objects to the widespread disregard of the liturgical rubrics by the Liturgical Movement. The Liturgical Movement utilizes unauthorized vernacular texts, promotes versus populum celebration of the Mass and arbitrarily modifies the rules for nuptial marriages. Further, the Liturgical Movement agitates publicly for concelebration. Or its clerical members don’t celebrate Mass when a congregation is not present. Obviously, this kind of criticism is what we would expect in the days of the rules-focused 1870-1958 Church. But did not this principled rejection of liturgical rubrics later reach epic proportions during and after Vatican II and especially after the promulgation of the Novus Ordo? 

Fr. Kassiepe deems many of the initiatives of the Liturgical Movement non-pastoral. So, for example, he advocates continuation of the practice at that time of distributing communion outside of the celebration of the Mass. He further condemns the disparagement of the forms of popular piety and the reduction of the interiors of churches to “a puritanical prayer room as devoid of decoration as a barn, cold as the stable of Bethlehem, uncomfortable as a homeless shelter.” (p. 38 – quoting Cardinal Faulhaber!)

Kassiepe diverges from his liturgical focus to deal with other pastoral issues less obviously linked with the Liturgical Movement. He accuses circles associated with the Liturgical Movement of promoting an excessively romantic, lyrical and spiritual image of marriage. This leaves couples unprepared for the demands of married life. This chapter reminded me of an exchange at a conference long ago between Alice von Hildebrand and Christopher Derrick concerning the nature of marriage – von Hildebrand’s highly romantic view contrasted with Derrick’s realism.

Some of Fr. Kassiepe’s objections are at first hard to understand but reward closer investigation. For example, in one chapter, he denounces  “semi-quietism.” This would seem to an odd issue, given the almost exclusive focus of the pre-Vatican II Church on the active apostolate and the emphasis of the Liturgical Movement itself on participation in the publicly celebrated liturgy. However, what Fr. Kassiepe is primarily addressing is not a mystical deviation, but what later became known as pastoral approach in the sense familiar to us from the developments of the 1960s onward: relaxing collective, objective liturgical and moral duties in favor of spontaneous individual acts. The author even mentions some Catholics skipping Mass on Sunday given, what was to them, the right circumstances! 

A particular sore point for Fr. Kassiepe was the tendency of the disciples of the Liturgical Movement to disparage frequent confession and to restrict the sacrament of penance only to where it is absolutely necessary – when the penitent is in a state of mortal sin. These observations have particular resonance today when the sacrament of penance to a great extent has fallen out of use entirely. One cause was exactly this restrictive view of the sacrament of penance which I recall being expounded in the now-distant past.

Fr. Kassiepe devotes a chapter to the necessary interaction of young and old in the ministry of the Church. There is always a conflict but also a complementarity, a mutual enrichment between the generations. I think the Liturgical Movement – with its perceived disdain for the “old-timers” and their ways – represented to the author the younger generation! Fr. Kassiepe’s understanding approach, derived from his lengthy pastoral experience and seeing the good in both sides, contrasts with the 1946 Letter of Ida Görres – a  one-sided indictment of the German clergy of that day by a sympathizer of the Liturgical Movement. And the Letter was published just six years after Fr. Kassiepe’s book!

Fr. Kassiepe thus treats many issues that would become the focus of conflict twenty or more years later. Many of the practices and assertions he critiques in this book became dogma within the Church by 1970 – and in certain places, like Germany, well before that. But intellectually, how successful are Fr. Kassiepe’s arguments? In his introduction to the second edition, the author notes that some who agreed with him nevertheless concluded he had not gone far enough in his criticism. They pointed out that he did not explore the theological implications of the Liturgical Movement and the dogmatic errors which underlie the aberrations catalogued in his book. “More profound observers see a serious danger for the faith in these phenomena” (p.7) On the contrary, Fr. Kassiepe states that he has assumed the good faith of the Liturgical Movement advocates and chooses to treat the abuses he discusses primarily as problems of practical pastoral management. 

I would agree with these critical observations on Fr. Kassiepe’s book.  For the aberrations of the Liturgical Movement were by no means only attributable to mistaken pastoral policy or uncontrolled youthful enthusiasm but also reflected a more fundamental opposition to the Catholic Church as it existed in that day. It was indeed the beginning of a true revolutionary movement: rejecting practices of Catholic life as actually harmful which up till then had been encouraged or even mandated. And we all can observe about us today the effect on the practice and understanding of the Faith of the reforms originating in the Liturgical Movement 

Yet the author has good words to say about aspects of the Liturgical Movement. He mentions the renewed sense of being a child of God, and of the membership of all Catholics in the mystical body of Christ.  The Liturgical movement works to transform superficial, routine and “other-directed” Catholics into conscious, understanding and joyful followers of Christ. It has eliminated much that was kitsch and unworthy in Catholic devotional literature. And this kind of Catholicism is much more accessible to youth and those outside the Church. 

Reading such passages is it not paradoxical that the traditionalist movement today best realizes what was of value in the original Liturgical Movement? I would cite the awareness of the centrality of the mass, particularly the sung mass, and of the importance of understanding the liturgical texts. There is a stronger orientation of the spiritual life of the Catholic around the Church year and its various feasts, saints’ days and seasons – yet without any detriment to the devotions such as the rosary and Eucharistic adoration. And finally, a much greater participation by the laity in all aspects of the Church’s life.  The results are clear in the growing participation of youth and the increasing numbers of converts to traditionalist and conservative parishes. So, many years after the publication of Irrwege und Umwege, and under unimaginably different circumstance,  the reconciliation between the legacy of the past and that of the Liturgical Movement – as wished for by Fr. Max Kassiepe – may have finally taken place!

When the Sea Recedes: The Tragedy of the Church in the 21st Century

By Jean-Pierre Maugendre

(Éditions Contretemps 2024)

When the Sea (or Tide) Recedes is a major new addition to the traditionalist library. It’s a selection of essays that chronicles life in the Catholic Church and in Western Europe between 2005 and 2023. 

I do have to warn the American reader. This is a very French book. It is Maurrassian, rightist, political and traditionalist – all anathema to mainstream Catholics (to the extent they still exist) in both France and the United States. Jean-Pierre Maugendre tells his story with intensity, panache and personal commitment. His speech is clear, decisive yet controlled. His positions are unambiguous – but hysteria, eccentricity and fanaticism are absent. Although some of his views – such those regarding the French abandonment of Algeria – may send “middle-of-the-road” Catholics into uncontrolled rage.

A further warning to the American reader relates to the subtitle of this book. Much of the book in fact deals not with the Church but with French politics and society. Indeed, it presupposes some knowledge of what has happened in France over the last 20 years. But again, this is very characteristic of the French right, which acknowledges and affirms the political dimension of the Catholic faith. The side-by-side narrative of When the Sea Recedes, covering events both political and religious, makes clear the unavoidable interaction between the Catholic faith and politics. 

And this link with the political world cuts both ways. The French right engages in politics on the basis of its faith. On the other side of the coin, as the ruling culture of Western civil society becomes ever more anti-Christian and totalitarian, those same tendencies become manifest as well in the “establishment” Catholic Church under Pope Francis. For although the Catholic mainstream and progressives rage against the political commitment of the French Catholic right, this is only because (a) they reject the right’s political positions; and (b) they themselves are infinitely more political than the right ever has been. Anyone who reads the National Catholic Reporter, the official media of the Catholic churches of France and Germany or has followed the actions of Pope Francis and the Jesuit order can verify this. The politics of the progressives, however, is a pale copy of that of the secular establishment. In contrast, what Maugendre calls, quoting sociologist Yann Raison du Cleuziou, “observant” Catholicism: “sets as its top priority the integral transmission of the Catholic faith and does not give up enriching civil society by the values of the Gospel.” (p.398)

I have to admire the author and the French right for their indomitable spirit. On the French political front, they suffer defeat after defeat on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Despite the grave failings of Macron over the last three years,  the French political establishment continues to be able to exclude the rightist party from any role in the French government. And despite intermittent widespread public outrage over uncontrolled immigration, gay marriage and disastrous economic policies, the French right never is able to capture a majority of the electorate.  Yet, there’s never any slacking off of the intensity of the right’s engagement. 

The same can be said in relation to the Church. In the first ten years covered by this book the Catholic traditionalists received unprecedented recognition from Rome, if far less so on the national level. Since the accession of Francis, of course, all this has been reversed, and the Vatican has undertaken a new campaign against Catholic tradition. And while these struggles convulse the Church, Maugendre reminds us again and again of the relentless, drastic collapse of the Faith, as evidenced in the statistics of declining baptisms, marriages, and vocations in France – things that don’t seem to perturb the hierarchs of the Church. More recently, the cause of the French Catholic traditionalists has experienced fresh defeats in Pope Francis’s all-out war against Catholic tradition, such as the deposition of Bishop Dominique Rey. To continue Maugendre’s metaphor – is the sea still retreating? 

….

The sea of faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d;

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems 

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain 

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

Yet Maugendre rejects such a mood of resignation. In all the trials he describes he finds much about which to rejoice.  Such as the recent overwhelming turnout for the traditionalist pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres. (We just now hear that the French episcopate – and the Vatican – have backed off from ideas of closing Chartres cathedral to the pilgrims in 2025.)  Or in his retelling the stories of those who, in one way or another, had fought the good fight in politics or in the Church. Maugendre celebrates in this book the legacy of such varied personalities as Benedict XVI, Helie Denoix de Saint Marc and Jean Madiran.  And although it undoubtedly took place after the work on this book closed,  I’m sure Maugendre has welcomed the “miracle” of Donald Trump which has unleashed a counter-woke wave throughout the world. Maugendre was fighting the same struggle years ago. For example, in June 2010 Maugendre already anticipated J.D. Vance in stating the obvious truth of the “hierarchy of charity.” (p.121). 

As Maugendre tell us, such events and people confirm that situations are never hopeless.  “Because that which seems inevitable never is, it’s never in vain to resist it.” That’s especially true in religion where the ultimate triumph of the truth is assured.  “It isn’t the hope of victory, but the necessity of struggle that makes the Christian warrior.” (p.21)

We know the sea of faith will return again!

The Right Hand of the Lord is Exalted: A History of Catholic Traditionalism from Vatican II to Traditionis Custodes

by Aurelio Porfiri

Sophia Institute Press (Manchester NH 2024)

The Right Hand of the Lord is Exalted, (“The Right Hand”) is a new contribution to the growing literature on the history of the Catholic traditionalist movement. The author, Aurelio Porfiri,  has been writing for years on cultural and liturgical themes. I have appreciated very much his collaborations with Aldo Maria Valli. In these, Valli plays the role of the impassioned critic and visionary, while Porfiri poses as the calm voice of reason. Yet he makes his own trenchant points as well – while considering life in the modern world and the Church from the perspective of a practicing musician

If we view The Right Hand as an extended essay on the development of traditionalism since the Council this new book offers much that is positive. It is a leisurely ramble through the 60 years following the beginning of Vatican II. Porfiri structures his chronology around the reigns of the post-1958 popes. He also mentions cultural and world events occurring in each year; some of these examples from the outside world are insightful, others mildly amusing. It is important, however, to situate internal Church affairs in the context of secular history.

Porfiri’s views are solid and perceptive on such topics as the relation of the Vatican Council to the subsequent creation of the Novus Ordo, the role and real opinions of Pope Paul VI or the exact nature of the plans of Francis for the traditional liturgy. In the earlier years covered by this book, they are – perhaps surprisingly – aligned to a great extent with the positions of Archbishop Lefebvre.

Now I was looking forward to reading Porfiri’s insights into the traditionalist scene in Italy. Compared with the United States and especially France,  Italy remains somewhat of a ”black hole” in the history of traditionalism. Here in the States, we know of the glorious early days of Italian traditionalism up to the 1970s. We’ve heard of the role of various noble ladies in Rome and elsewhere. And then there is the Italian internet presence, established by both traditionalists and conservatives, which has steadily developed over the last 25 years. Sites such as Sandro Magister’s Settimo Cielo, Silere non Possum, the late Il Sismografo, Valli’s Duc in Altum, Messa in Latino, to name only a few,  have become required reading in the traditionalist scene worldwide, For example, Silere non Possum has been revolutionary in opening up the inner workings of one diocese to the public view – that diocese, of course, happens to be that of the pope, Rome. 

Porfiri provides helpful information on patrons, organizations and authors. He chronicles the positions of these participants in the traditionalist scene over the decades.  His information, however,  is often too summary to really give us an idea of what these people believe. There is no detailed account of the contributors in the online community. 

The only significant Italian-based community of which I am aware that was not an intellectual or journalistic organization was the Friars of the Immaculate, originally not traditionalist but later tending in that direction. In 2013 Francis set out to destroy them as one of the first shots in his war against Catholic tradition. Porfiri does describe this event but in a summary manner that doesn’t do justice to the topic and its worldwide significance. And contrary to what Porfiri says, the war against the spiritual descendants of these friars continues to this day. (e.g., the recent expulsion of the “Marian Franciscan Sisters and Friars” in the UK.)

I do have more significant reservations which relate to the subtitle of this book: A History of Catholic Traditionalism from Vatican II  to Traditionis Custodes. The Right Hand is a serviceable introduction for someone who is absolutely new to the subject. It is short and easy to read. But it has serious limitations as history. For The Right Hand is in no way a thorough, scholarly history like the works of Yves Chiron, Joseph Shaw, Guillaume Cuchet or Roberto de Mattei all of which deal with aspects of the same years.

For starters, Porfiri allocates the 306 pages of his text as follows: 

Introduction, 3 pages;

Pope John XXIII, 56 pages; 

Pope Paul VI, 152 pages; 

Pope John Paul II, 43 pages;

 Pope Benedict XVI,17 pages;

Pope Francis, 17 pages (plus 6 pages on Traditionis Custodes).

Thus, the last two papacies, in which traditionalism achieved its most complete recognition by the Church and then became the target of a total war launched by the same Church – are covered in some 13% of the text. 

Furthermore, I do not understand why, in Porfiri’s view, each pontificate since 1958 (except that of John Paul I!) constitutes an “era” in the life of the Church or of traditionalism. It seems to me, for example, that the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict constitute a separate era on their own.

Porfiri’s impressionistic, personal approach to the topic by its very nature raises questions of focus and completeness. For example, regarding the Church as a whole, he discusses in some detail events in the 1960s and 70s yet, other than the Vigano affair, says virtually nothing about the sexual abuse crisis which has shaken the Church to its foundations since the 1990’s. Nor does he write of the unending series of  financial scandals of the Vatican since the late 1970’s.  As The Right Hand approaches the present day,  Porfiri’s judgments tend to become more summary and attenuated. We read that a book or issue is “complex,”  “important” or “interesting.” I don’t think these adjectives aid the reader, who is looking for the historian’s assessment of the significance of a fact or event.

Porfiri’s narrative also leaves out important aspects of traditionalism itself. In contrast to the extensive coverage of the earlier literature, more recent books related to traditionalism go unmentioned.  Porfiri says little regarding the United States –  but for him to summarize American traditionalism since 1964 by referring to Fr. Gommar DePauw, Patrick Henry Omlor, Francis Schuckardt and Fr. Gruner’s Fatima Crusader is simply preposterous. Even in Italy, Porfiri says nothing about the role of Cristina Campo in the early traditionalist initiatives, although all this is clearly spelled out in a book by Fr. Francesco Ricossa, which in 2023 Porfiri himself recommended as a source on the subject. In this regard, I note that Una Voce (both in Italy and internationally), which understood itself as the center of the traditionalist world over the decades covered by The Right Hand, is mentioned only in three or four scattered pages!

In my opinion, Porfiri frequently describes groups and individuals without considering their actual strength and significance. So, in United States, even if sedevacantist groups are represented (and thus in Porfiri’s view constitute  “traditionalisms”)  only three traditionalist “denominations” are predominant:  the FSSPX, the Ecclesia Dei societies/communities and the Summorum Pontificum communities.  Porfiri tends to devote substantial space to the more fringe elements within traditionalism, which may have contributed to skewing his judgment. For small conventicles and sects, without the responsibility of dealing with the Church and society as a whole, are freer to take up radical, aggressive and uncompromising positions. 

Perhaps as a consequence of this, Porfiri exaggerates the significance of the divisions among  “traditionalisms.” For what unites all traditionalists is devotion to some form of the pre-conciliar liturgy and adherence to Catholic doctrine and morality as they were understood in the continuous tradition of the Church. There do of course exist belligerent groups, particularly in the sedevacantist sphere. Yet differences among traditionalists are minor compared to the variety of views among “conservative Catholics “ in the United States – to say nothing of the chaos that prevails in the “official” Church.  Didn’t Malachi Martin many years ago foresee the Catholic Church disintegrating into entities not just autocephalous but autozoic  – a development being realized in our own day? 

I also wonder what exactly Porfiri understands traditionalism to be. It’s not, as described by him, a succession of declarations and actions by the Pope, bishops and the Vatican, on the one hand, and responses of diverse traditionalist groups in the form of statements, publications and organizational acts, on the other. Nor is it a series of books being published(although I spend a lot of time reviewing them! ).  Rather, traditionalism is about Catholics who concretely experience the catastrophe unfolding about them at the level of parishes, schools, religious orders, universities, individual families and the entire society – a catastrophe which the Church has never acknowledged. Traditionalism is about the efforts and sacrifices these Catholics (predominantly the laity) make to save the faith of their families and their children by handing down to them “the faith of our fathers” in the liturgy, the sacraments, Catholic culture, and in doctrine and morality. And this engagement frequently spills over into political activity as well. For traditionalism is not at all merely a defensive response: it ultimately wants to restore the entire Church and even reach out to all men – but as Catholics. I am especially disappointed in this regard because Porfiri’s collaborations with Valli demonstrate that he is very much aware of what is happening on the ground in the Catholic Church today and what it’s like living in the desacralized world of modernity.

In conclusion, I would recommend The Right Hand  – with the above reservations. It provides a handy, understandable review of developments in the Church and among traditionalists since 1962. On many of the points this chronicle raises the author and I agree. But we are still waiting for a complete history of Catholic traditionalism as an international phenomenon.

(I find myself with a backlog of five or so book reviews! Here, I review a book – or rather an essay  – published in 2005. It’s significant for two reasons. First it deals directly with topics we ourselves have repeatedly considered on this blog  – indeed it represents a school of thought almost exactly the opposite of the views found in Sebastian Morello’s 2024 Mysticism, Magic and Monasteries which I reviewed yesterday. Second, some consider that I have neglected the sedevacantist strand of Catholic traditionalism. By this review I would hope to start to fill that gap.)

Cristina Campo, or the Abiguity of Tradition

by Fr. Francesco Ricossa

2005 Centro Librario Sodalitum, Verrua Savoia TO (revised edition 2006)

Fr. Francesco Ricossa, as far as I am aware, is still active. He has been one of the leaders of the Institute Mater Boni Consilii in Italy since1985, when he and others split off from the FSSPX. Mater Boni Consilii promotes a variant of sedevacantism and publishes Sodalitium(named after the Sodalitium Pianum, the heresy-hunting organization established by Msgr. Umberto Begnini under Pope Pius X). I gather that in Italy Fr. Ricossa enjoys a considerable reputation that extends well beyond sedevacantist circles. 1) His Cristina Campo, or the Ambiguity of Tradition (the “Ambiguity of Tradition”) is one of the first Catholic attempts to deal with that remarkable leader of early traditionalism. Both Roberto de Mattei and Aurelio Porfiri have recently mentioned favorably this book.2) In the last paragraphs of my own review of Campo’s The Unpardonable I refer, somewhat humorously, to Ricossa’s essay. 3) But in view of the Ambiguity of Tradition having being raised once again, I feel the need to address it in greater detail. I ask: is the Ambiguity of Tradition a serious historical source?

Ricossa’s essay does refer to primary sources (which he often quotes) and is footnoted. On the positive side he succinctly details Cristina Campo’s decisive role in the initial stages of the resistance to the liturgical revolution, such as in several petitions by Catholic and non-Catholic cultural figures to save the Traditional Mass, in the founding of Una Voce Italia and in the so-called “Ottaviani Intervention.” Later, there was her close collaboration with Archbishop Lefebvre and other high clerical figures such as the future cardinal Mayer. 

What I do question, however, is Ricossa’s depiction of the spirituality and religious beliefs of Campo. Contrary to Porfiri’s claim that the Ambiguity of Tradition presents a “learned and respectful” account, it is in fact a sustained attack on Campo’s memory. 

Ricossa’s problems with Campo start with her early fascination with the thought of Simone Weil. There follows Campo’s relationship with Elemire Zolla.  Ricossa is not so much concerned by the moral but the “ideological” aspects of this association . For Ricossa describes Zolla as a “gnostic,” a disciple of Rene Guenon and the “traditionalist” or “perennialist” school. Very briefly, “perennialism” posits the existence of a universal primordial revelation manifest in the traditions of Man which is opposed to the spirit of modernity. Ricossa argues that Zolla became Campo’s “maestro” or guru, guiding her through all kinds of esoteric and hermetic doctrines including those of the eastern religions (Zen, Hinduism). 

Now with the coming of the Vatican Council Campo did become a convinced defender of Catholic “tradition.” But Ricossa insinuates that this conversion may well have been partial, or incomplete. The main evidence for this, as we shall see, is her interest in what Ricossa calls the “deviation” of the Eastern Church. He concludes his biography with sanctimonious prayers for the soul of Christina Campo, hoping that she may be numbered among the saved.

Looking at the published works of Campo, I am unable to find overt advocacy of perennialist, hermetic or esoteric doctrines. Her references to other religions are dwarfed by her constant recourse to the saints, culture and devotions of the Catholic Church: both the post-Tridentine Church and the Eastern Church. Ricossa, however, finds support for his claims in the influences other authors allegedly had on Campo, such as those set forth in the chapter In the Darkness: Weil, Hofmannsthal, Zolla. (pp. 7-16)  I do not know anything about Zolla, but I do know something about some of the more significant figures Ricossa mentions.

Let us start with Simone Weil, who in this book receives almost as much page space as Cristina Campo.  Ricossa describes her this way: 

‘At the crossroads of Christianity and all that is not Christian Simone Weil did not have a doctrine, rather an unstable metaphysical and theological  gnosis made up of tendencies now of the Cathars, now Pythagorean, now Platonic,  which emerged within her from the breeding ground of oriental traditions, especially Indian….” 4)

Ricossa adds:

 “She was a gnostic, therefore, and as so outlined, genuinely Jewish, even in her Marcionite repugnance for the Old Testament” (p. 7) 

Later he describes the alleged gnosticism of Simone Weil as having not pagan, but Talmudic and cabbalistic sources.  (p.41)

This is how Ricossa characterizes one of the most profound mystics of modern times, who, in her way, was an apologist for Catholicism. 

Ricossa continues:  “Along with Simone Weil the literary ‘guiding light’ of Campo was the freemason Hugo von Hofmannsthal, one of the numerous Jewish mitteleuropäisch writers” into whose works Campo was supposedly “initiated” by Jewish and probably masonic friends. ( p.8) In footnote 17, however,  we learn that it was in fact Hofmannsthal’s paternal grandfather who converted to Christianity (although Ricossa claims this was feigned).  In the same footnote Ricossa cites a 1998 masonic source that asserts Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “distinguished” masonic family background “appears in his works” (not that he was a freemason). 

This is the manner Ricossa describes a writer who considered himself a Catholic, who was buried in the robes of a third order Franciscan and whose works are infused with a profound Catholic culture (e.g. the librettos for Der Rosenkavalier and Die Frau ohne Schatten). Moreover, I don’t immediately understand – other than his Jewish ancestry – why Hofmannsthal is singled out in comparison with Eduard Mörike, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, the English metaphysical poets, T.S. Eliot, and especially William Carlos Williams. After all, Campo translated far more of each of these poets’ work than she did of Hofmannsthal’s; her selections show her outstanding good taste. 

Now one would have thought that after what Campo described as her “conversion” and her engagement in preserving the Latin mass, her Catholic “credentials” would have been established in Ricossa’s eyes –  but no. Campo, among other things, had become involved with what Ricossa calls the “deviation” of the Russia Catholic Church (and of the Eastern Churches in general). And the Eastern Churches are reducible to Hesychasm: the path of contemplation or “quietness.” Indeed, according to Ricossa, there is a relationship between the “Byzantine church” and Freemasonry and with perennialism as well:

“Hesychasm became thus the typical form of “Christian” esotericism especially among the disciples of Rene Guenon…” (p 27)

To the above examples I could add many others – Ricossa writes of the “lethal” Dostoevsky (p.25) and of Boris Pasternak, “(Campo’s) last literary guiding light along with two other sui generis Jews, Simone Weil and von Hofmannsthal.” (p 25). Ricossa even feels the need to defend Romano Amerio from the suspicion of heterodoxy to which the subtitle of his book Iota Unum “Changes (Variazioni ) in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century” could otherwise give rise. (fn.132 at pp. 72-73). 

In summary, these illustrations of Ricossa’s judgment prevent me from taking him as a serious biographical authority.

Now I think there is more profound difference between Campo and Ricossa than the latter’s obsession with Freemasons, Jews, esoteric circles and their influences and conspiracies. At the very beginning of his book he cites Weil’s Letter to a Priest in which Weil confesses ( I paraphrase)that while she feels nothing in common with the Catechism of the Council of Trent, when she reads the New Testament, the mystics, the liturgy and sees the celebration of the Mass she feels a kind of certainty “that that faith is mine.” Ricossa remarks that passage “could have been written by Cristina Campo” – in fact, Campo did write a critical but understanding analysis of this and similar passages in her introduction to Weil’s Waiting for God. What both she and Weil are pointing out, however, is the inadequacy of a “decadent” Catholic catechesis that understands the Faith primarily as a set of doctrines (propositions) to be accepted. I regret that Ricossa seems to have such an understanding – thus his allergic reaction to this quote.

Similarly, Ricossa inquires why Campo opposed the changes of the Council in the first place. He speculates that this was “culturally” determined, (merely) aesthetic and even (just) a defense of a generic “sacred” or “tradition” (among many other traditions).(pp. 21-22).  In this argumentation, does not Ricossa come close to the Conciliar establishment’s views, which scorn aesthetic considerations and Man’s natural love of beauty? And is Ricossa that far removed from Bergoglian advocates Cavadini/Weinandy/Healy, who have written of Traditionalists “loving the Mass more than Jesus” as if they were separable or even potentially contradictory? 

Ricossa makes these points himself in an interesting section of his essay which covers the reception of Campo’s work up to 2005. He claims interest in Campo’s writings revived when they were republished starting in 1987 (ten years after Campo’s death)by the Adelphi press, which Ricossa identifies as gnostic and the creation of representatives of Jewish and esoteric circles in the 1960s. ( A look at Adelphi’s current catalog doesn’t seem to me to evidence a pronounced esoteric focus but is rather your typical, somewhat pretentious European literary catalog.5)) 

In June 2002 Gianni Rocca published an essay (“Cristina Campo and the “Primordial Tradition”) setting out the thesis of an “esoteric” Campo. The publisher was Edizioni Ares which Ricossa claims is Opus Dei controlled. ( I believe I have found some evidence for that.)  Now Ricossa is critical of Rocca.  Rocca dwells on the words of various esoteric and related authors rather than what Campo herself wrote and makes errors of fact and interpretation. (Much the same could be said of the Ambiguity of Tradition!)Yet Ricossa nevertheless agrees with Rocca’s conclusions if not his methodology. One wonders:  was Rocca’s essay really the basis of the Ambiguity of Tradition?  Ricossa further claims Rocca’s essay was published by Opus Dei to discredit traditionalism by associating one of its main champions with gnostic and esoteric thought. But isn’t this what Ricossa himself is achieving in the Ambiguity of Tradition? (Una Voce Venice published a statement calling Rocca’s essay “calumny.”) 6)

Doesn’t the Ambiguity of Tradition illustrate two forms of traditionalism,  two possible reactions to the revolution in the Church of the 1960s? That of Fr. Ricossa seeks at all costs to preserve doctrinal purity. In furtherance of that goal, it separates itself from outside contamination of all kinds. In Fr. Ricossa’s mind, Catholics should restrict themselves to their own tradition. This is the sedevacantist way. 

A second approach is that of Christina Campo and like-minded people since her day. She sought to find a common ground with Catholics and non-Catholics in defense of Catholic tradition. To do that she had to argue for the supreme importance of the Catholic tradition to the Christian West and even beyond. Is it not strange  – the “reactionary” traditionalist Campo was able to reach a broader (and better educated)community outside the Church than the Conciliar establishment itself, despite its mania for ecumenism! She was able to do this by virtue of her years of investigating poetry, myths and rituals. This gave her an understanding of the significance of form in liturgy, which in more recent years has been revived and  developed by, among others, Martin Mosebach.   Her intellectual and poetic work did not contradict her later advocacy of Catholic tradition but rather made it possible. 

For contrary to Ricossa, it is not heterodox or “syncretistic” to find mysterious correspondences between the Faith and other religions throughout history. One may glance at the Sistine chapel with its prophets and sibyls. And what of the role that Vergil had in the Church early on as a supposed precursor of the Gospels? Despite Ricossa’s aspersions, a Catholic may seek out the good in schools of thought not aligned with Christianity. Thomas Molnar, for example, cited authors like Mircea Eliade or Jung – and even, if less frequently,  Guenon and Evola – for their insights into desacralization and the loss of the sacred in the West. Yet he in no way was their disciple – he even wrote a book against such currents of thought. (The Pagan Temptation, 1987)

This outward-focused Catholic traditionalism is in a real sense missionary. It wants to communicate Christian truth, as incarnated in the tradition of the Church, to Catholics, Christians and indeed all peoples. Here and there we have seen how effective this can be even under the assault of Traditionis Custodes.  Future events will reveal when and how this “outward focused” traditionalism can progress. Campo herself never saw the success of her endeavors. Indeed, she has been largely forgotten by the traditionalists themselves – even to the present day! Yet for all these insights into what traditionalism can become we can be grateful to Cristina Campo.

1. Porfiri, Aurelio, The Right Hand of the Lord is Exalted at 247-250 (Sophia Institute Press, Manchester NH,  2024)
2. Porfiri, Aurelio, “Cristina Campo and the Monsters of Traditionalism,” onepeterfive (April 28, 2023); De Mattei, Roberto “Cristina Campo and the world of Tradition,” Rorate Caeli ( 2/14/2025)
3. The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny, “The Unforgivable,” (8/9/2023)
4. Ricossa is citing here B. Matteucci, “Simone Weil” in Enciclopedia Cattolica Vol. Xll (Città del Vaticano,1954).
5.  Adelphi Catalogo.
6. Ivo, Don Cesar, “Riatualizzazione del Paganesimo? Callunnie contro Cristina Campo,” Una Voce Venetia (No date; found on the Una Voce Venetia “Pagina Cristina Campo“)

(all internet links accessed 3/3/2025)

Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries: Recovering the Sacred Mystery at the Heart of Reality

by Sebastian Morello

Os Justi Press (Lincoln, NE 2024)

Sebastian Morello, a well-known contributor to European Conservative magazine, makes a dramatic plea for the reorientation and renewal of Roman Catholic spiritual life. His new book, Mysticism, Magic and Monasteries (“MMM”) appears at a favorable moment, for hasn’t Rod Dreher just published his own manifesto in favor of mysticism and rediscovering the ”enchantment” of the world:  Living in Wonder? (In fact, Morello reviews this book at the end of MMM). Moreover, Charles Coulombe, an advocate of such ideas for many years,  has written a foreword to Morello’s book.

Like Dreher, Morello confronts the desacralization of the world and of the contemporary Church, both now almost totally suffocated by the rationalism and materialism of modernity.  The mystic wellsprings of Christianity have been largely sealed off. In the West, the contemplative life has been reduced to the province of a small group of specialists. Indeed, there are indications that even these remnants have become targets of the leadership of the Church. Among the clergy, instead of mystics we have managers. The result is a world devoid of meaning.

Now throughout this book the author provides a critical review of the state of the Roman Catholic Church today. I have rarely read such a damning and accurate indictment. Of course, Morello’s status as an author at a secular publication enables him to be franker than most. Consider his perceptive comments on the Church’s dramatic loss of authority:

The hierarchy of the Church has almost entirely lost authority in the eyes of the rest of the faithful. … Among the vocal, active, Catholics of the second half of the twentieth century, there were broadly three factions: the progressives, the traditionalists and the post-conciliar neocons. That third category was dominant until the reign of Pope Francis, but since then has nearly totally disappeared. The champions of the “hermeneutic of continuity” have, generally speaking, fallen silent. It was too difficult to keep it up. …[T]here remained two dominant groups: the progressives and the traditionalists. Neither of these groups maintained much confidence in the authority of the Holy See or the curia. (p.47)

Very true – although I am not as confident that the neocons, even if they have quieted down, have totally disappeared!

Morello traces the disenchantment of the West to the ascendancy of the philosophy of Descartes and its division between the mind and the body. He advocates a return to the medieval and renaissance vision of the material world as participating in the divine. He cites elements of Catholic spirituality in prior ages that have been subsequently obscured: like the connections of Albert the Great and even Thomas Aquinas with Platonism, mysticism and “hermetic magic.” He discusses favorably the writings of  Renaissance humanists in Italy and Germany and their fascination with Platonic, esoteric and  hermetic thought. Morello also finds intellectual allies in much more recent times, such as Valentin Tomberg and his unique Meditations on the Tarot (1980)!  All these connections and links were once mainstream in Catholic thought, but in recent ages have been consigned to obscurity by an embarrassed Catholic Church. Morello does not claim that   reconnection with hermetic magic will rescue the Church – after all, the church has one Savior, Jesus Christ.  But, Morello argues, it may help to break the spell  – the black magic – of Enlightened man. 

And thereby, we may begin to retrieve meaning, and in turn start the Church’s process of humbling itself before the true King of the Universe. (pp.79-80)

MMM summarizes some of the best arguments in favor of monasticism that you will encounter anywhere. For Morello, Western Christendom is Benedictine. (In contrast, he has reservations about the spirituality of the Society of Jesus.)  He sees the revival of the Church (whenever that  occurs) as the rising out of a renewed monastic spirituality. To rediscover a spirituality that recognizes the participation of the material world in the sacred will take many years of living a Christian life. This vocation cannot be individualistic but must be shared in a like-minded community. Thus, I think Morello offers a corrective to the facile hopes of restoring a sense of enchantment through an individual spiritual odyssey or, likewise, to the dreams of those who believe they have a blueprint for the restoration of Christian culture. Any such re-enchantment or restoration will be the fruit of years  – indeed generations – of spiritual effort. That is the task of the monks.

Morello gives us concrete illustrations of his ideas. He analyzes, for example, artwork like Vermeer’s Allegory of Faith:

As the woman (a representation of the Christian soul )is whirled up into union with the infinite love of God she remains anchored by her foot in this world where she encounters that love. (pp.7-9)

Some of Morello’s examples like his description of exercising ( “like a knight Templar!”) with a medieval Indian mace,  may be a little too esoteric.  But there’s no denying the power of Morello’s chapter on “killing our elders.” This of course is now happening literally as the practice of euthanasia spreads. But “spiritual murder”  is also taking place in society and in the Church – in the form of the destruction of prior culture and traditions. We no longer want or listen to the advice of the elders – a key institution in all traditional societies. Instead, we applaud breaking with nature and tradition:

This pattern of replacing what we had with a poor version of the same thing is clearly observable in the cultural killing of our elders, for our societies are now full of therapists and counselors. … We went from a people who will seek a solution for the problems that arise, for love of the community that they helped to build, to a people in whose financial interest it is to perpetuate the problems encountered. (p.126)

Morello challenges us to reject this modern paradigm, starting in our own homes –  by teaching our children and grandchildren how to relate to parents, grandparents and relatives.

Concluding MMM is Morello’s review of Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder. Morello endorses that book and argues that it makes a clearer and more systematic case for the recovery of the sacred that I was able to discover. However, Morello does criticize Dreher for a certain lack of clarity when he seems to identify the pagan and Christian understanding of the world.  A Christian must distinguish this world, however enchanted, from the divine original. This world does participate in the divine original but is also fallen. Morello thus very clearly rejects the temptation of pantheism – an accusation often raised against those who wish to restore the role of mysticism in the Church.

Altogether a unique and challenging book!

Here is a link to the book listing at Os Justi Press:

Mysticism, Magic and Monasteries

“Brief über die KIrche”

Die Kontroverse um Ida Friederike Görres’ Aufsatz – ein Dokumentationsband

A Letter on the Church

The Controversy surrounding the Essay by Ida Friederike Görres – a Documentary Collection.

Paraiso, Jean-Yves (Editor)

(2005 Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar,  Vienna)

Last year I wrote a review of the 1951 book The Church in the Flesh of Ida Friederike Görres. Now that book prominently refers to a prior essay of hers, A Letter on the Church, (the “Letter”) from 1946, which at the time had created an uproar in the German Church.1) I felt it was incumbent upon me to examine the Letter and assess its significance. Fortunately, in 2005 Jean-Yves Paraiso – who seems to have impeccable progressive credentials  – had published the Letter along with other source documents relating to it. He also provided notes and an introduction. 

I do have to confess that I find Görres’s prose to be somewhat tiresome. Her style is now enthusiastic and emotional, now dogmatic and pontificating. It reminds me of what someone once wrote about the writings of Eric Gill (who, among other things, was a Catholic publicist): it’s like being harangued in a pub by someone who’s speaking too long and too loudly. It is somewhat unfortunate, however, to judge Görres by these post-World War II writings. They leave the impression that she is first and foremost a commentator and polemicist on ecclesiastical issues. Her most famous works, however, published during and before World War II, dealt with spirituality and hagiography,  such as her lives of Mary Ward and St. Theresa of Lisieux.

The Letter takes the form of a dialogue between a ”Protestant” and the author. The Protestant speaks of his admiration for the Catholic Church: its liturgy, splendid and understandable for the common people; the beauty of Corpus Christi processions; the high educational level and exemplary conduct of the clergy; the sacrificial service of the nursing sisters. Görres, however, feels compelled to point out that his “outsider’s” understanding may be superficial. She then launches into a catalog of the woes afflicting the Catholic Church at that time.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Letter is its focus upon the deficiencies of the Catholic clergy, particularly the diocesan clergy. In the post-1870 Church such public attacks on the clergy by Catholics of course had been few and far between.  According to Görres,  the conduct of the German clergy may indeed be “correct,” but that is inadequate. Görres provides a long list of clerical deficiencies: their education, their personalities, their worldliness and the leadership of their parishes. Why are there are so few pious priests? The priests often rattle off the Mass without any thought. To hear a decent sermon is an exception. “Celibacy, instead of freeing up the priest for fraternal encounters,  locks the individual rigidly and icily in his unmastered self.” Clerical authoritarianism can reach an extreme that Görres qualifies as “clericofascism!“ These problems  – and worse – are even more rampant in her homeland of German Bohemia (the Sudetenland).(By 1946 the German population there was either dead or in exile).

Certainly, the diatribe against the German clergy in the Letter attracted the most attention at the time, but other aspects of the Church are not spared. The  German monastic orders are impressive in choir, but such monks,  according to Görres,  should be “angels.” Catholic charitable organizations can be cruel and disrespectful to those in need. The laity, at least in certain 100% Catholic rural districts,  are narrow-minded and anything but Christian – after all, are they not the source of the clergy? Catholic schools are all too often characterized by a “narrowness bordering on fanaticism, perpetuation of the inadequate and substituting competence with zeal.” Moreover, Görres suspects these issues of the German-speaking countries may also be prevalent elsewhere in the Catholic world.

Görres’s imaginary dialogue partner, after hearing all this, inquires why she remains a member of the Catholic Church. She answers, not inappropriately, because the Church is the bearer of the Truth. Therefore, she loves the Church. In fact, she says all these things against the Church because she loves it so much. This love enables her to see everything clearly without any cover up. Her anger and sorrow are prompted by her conviction of how great a presence the Church should be. For the Church is the Church of Christ. These sentiments are set forth in a lengthy, emotional peroration.

Now, surprisingly enough, you do not find in the Letter certain things that you might have expected based on the polemics of subsequent decades. There are only tangential references to the war or the Third Reich, and the role of the Church in that time. There’s no real analysis of how the desolate situation of the Church came about and no examination of the role of the (current) hierarchy or the papacy, nor are any solutions offered. Curiously, she cites as a major issue that the Holy Saturday services take place in the morning of that day, which represents to her a logical absurdity. I don’t know if raising this point would make much sense in a dialogue with a real, as opposed to an imaginary, Protestant, but it does reveal the influence of Liturgical Movement agitation. Otherwise, as elsewhere in her writings,  Görres devotes surprisingly little attention to the liturgy.  At times Görres’s recitation of ecclesiastical ills declines into nonsense, such as when she cites real or imagined anecdotes from the life of aristocratic priests in the 18th century. 

The Letter demonstrates that in that “pre-conciliar” era the blunt critical speech of Catholics could match anything found online today. And Görres’s Letter provoked a response no less vehement. Indeed, the editor of this collection claims a statement of Pope Pius XII was specifically directed at Görres’s remarks (without expressly naming Görres).

Of the critical responses quoted in this volume,  I find most persuasive that of the Catholic archbishop of Freiburg, who pointed out how utterly inappropriate it was for Görres to publish the Letter at that time. For Germany in 1946 was not like the United States in 1965. Many German Catholics and their pastors were living in bombed-out cities or refugee camps, many families were still hoping for the return of their loved ones who were prisoners of war. The economic and political situation remained chaotic. Moreover, in the total German collapse of 1945, the hierarchy and clergy of the Catholic Church had played a great role in stabilizing society to the best of their ability –  just as the bishops of Gaul did during the barbarian invasions in the 5th century. And what of the witness of a not insignificant number of  clerics during the Third Reich – many  of whom paid with their lives?

I of course do not have direct experience of what the German Church was like at the parish level in 1946, but I think there are independent witnesses of that age that offer a stark contrast to Görres’s depiction. Such as Peter Seewald’s Benedikt XVI: Ein Leben, which describes the youth of Joseph  Ratzinger in the 1920s and 30s. For Poland, George Weigel’s Witness to Hope tells a similar tale about Karol Wojtyla’s younger days.  Do we need to mention the situation of the Church in the United States in those immediate postwar years, which Catholics at the time thought was a “golden age?” This evidence at a minimum demonstrates the “black legend” given us by Görres is a one-sided caricature. 

This is unfortunate because there were there were significant issues with the Catholic Church in 1946. Görres hints at some of these when she writes about priest-bureaucrats. Or when she comments on the worldliness of some priests, their desire to fit in with the laity and ingratiate themselves with the world. These were harbingers of what was to come.  Now, of course,  in prior ages saints like Benedict and Bernard, Dominic and Francis rose up to reform the Church even when everything seemed to be in flourishing condition. For in earlier eras, the response to mediocrity or worse in the Church was not just to denounce, but to reform one’s own life, and then attract others to the same cause – in other words, to found monasteries and orders. 

But I do not think the Letter‘s dark image of the Church necessarily has anything to do with historical truth. It is the start of a myth – like the myths of the decadence of the Church before 1517 and the Reformation, or of the French state and society prior to 1789 and the French Revolution. Such myths serve to delegitimize the establishment, in Church and state, to call its rule into question. They also justify political action against the establishment

Am I mistaken in seeing the vehemence of the Letter the consequence of the exalted notions of the author regarding the clergy and the institutional Church? Ideals that were derived from the excessive glorification of the institution that the Church inculcated after 1870. It seems Görres expected the clergy could be “angels.” Such an image inevitably would lead to disappointment when it collided against the actual condition of the Church in the world  (no matter what that might be). In Görres’s case, the reaction was rage – and eventually, the dream of a future total transformation.  

Now, in a way her subsequent book, The Church in the Flesh, 2) can be seen as atonement (Sühne) for the Letter. For The Church in the Flesh has as its stated purpose the defense of the Church as it concretely exists, as opposed to some disincarnate spiritual entity. However, she did not at all renounce the Letter. Indeed, The Church in the Flesh leads off with a dialogue that is clearly modeled on the Letter. This time the “Protestant” is replaced by a “convert” and the author is replaced by a “bold” representative of the worker priest movement in France. (pp. 3-4) The emotional indictment of the clergy and the Church is absent or subdued in The Church in the Flesh. Yet Görres states:

 “(In the Church today- SC) [t]here is also ‘the dying of the Church in souls’ ….the slow , creeping imperceptible dying from catching a cold and from impoverishment, from spiritual malnutrition and hardening.” (p. vii)

And she hopes for a new age of the Church:

Do you not feel how much has begun to flow that still seemed to our parents petrified in unchangeability? …It is a pleasure to be a part of this unique adventure of becoming new!  … So often it seems to be as if the Church is once again in early spring, in the very early part when nothing could be seen but snow, ice, mud and floods. (p.48)

Görres in 1960 published Zwischen den Zeiten ( Between the Eras or Ages, titled Broken Lights in the English translation).3) On the one hand, she returned to blanket denunciations of the Catholic Church of her day and restated her faith in a ‘Church to come”:

Nothing saddens me more at the moment than the pitiable mediocrity and flatness of Catholic Christendom – I can hardly find one redeeming feature anymore. 

The Church of Today, which is as much my concern as the Church of Tomorrow is that of the reformers. In me the present Church in changing if only in one tiny fragment, into the Church to come – that is the nucleus and meaning of my destiny.

 On the other hand, in this book she already was distancing herself from the concrete positions that were dominating Catholic progressive circles, like revolutionary criticism of the liturgy and unbounded admiration for the United States. 

During and after Vatican II, Görres took up these themes once more in private letters. 4) She acknowledged the frankly mythical character of these dreams of destruction and renewal by invoking an image of the Church as the phoenix, arising from the ashes of the existing Church, thanks to the creative destruction of the Council. Yet early on she challenged this image and then expressly repudiated the entire idea of a total rejection of the Church’s past:

I know, the Church is a phoenix. She has already died many deaths. But by suicide? Is there resurrection after that? If that’s so, then I wouldn’t really want to live any more. I can’t in such a wicked way separate myself from the whole past, to throw it overboard as a tissue of mistaken developments, of disappointments and wrong interpretations of the Gospel….  I simply can’t believe that the Lord incarnated in such a wrong way….( Letter of February 23, 1965. p. 89)

Yet the myth lived on. Have not we not heard the stories about the bad old days of the pre-conciliar Church? In the 1960s the specific target of progressive condemnation shifted from the clergy, who after all were the agents of the Conciliar revolution, to the laity. The Catholic laity does remain a target of progressive abuse even today. But Pope Francis, in his repeated attacks on “clericalism,” has redirected the criticism back to the clergy. And the progressive forces advocating women priests and the abolition of clerical celibacy have no hesitation in excoriating the current clergy, 60 years after the Council, using terms not unlike those of Görres!

But is there not an element of truth here ? Did not the revolution of the 1960s indeed create a clergy with problems very much like those Görres describes  – and far worse? She did, after all, concede to the German clergy of 1946 “correct” behavior. Since 1965, that has clearly no longer been the case. Not with $5 billion having been paid by the Church to victims of sex abuse since 2004 in the United States alone. Frankly,  the clergy today,  aside from a dedicated minority, is totally inadequate to the monumental evangelical task facing the Church. Indeed, in the advanced West, it is increasingly difficult to find any candidates at all for holy orders and a large percentage of clerics must be imported from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Poland.

As Paraiso concedes, Ida Görres was no ”left-wing” Catholic. As she herself wrote, she indeed stood between the eras. But by that she first had meant her position between the existing Church and the Church to come. Later, the expression took on a different meaning. Görres had shared in the prerevolutionary ferment of the progressives. Eventually, however, she could no longer follow either their concrete recommendations or their myths of destruction and renewal. The result was, at the end of her life, a public confrontation. But by that time a general revolution was shaking the Church to her foundations!

1. First published in Frankfurter Hefte, Number 8, November 1946 pp.715-733. 
2. https://sthughofcluny.org/2024/09/the-church-in-the-flesh.html
3. https://sthughofcluny.org/2020/03/is-it-really-a-phoenix-ida-gorres-and-the-collapse-of-german-catholicism-part-i.html
4. https://sthughofcluny.org/2020/03/is-it-really-a-phoenix-ida-gorres-and-the-collapse-of-german-catholicism-part-ii.html

Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

by Rod Dreher

Zondervan Books, Grand Rapids, 2024

Rod Dreher, the conservative political analyst and cultural critic, now lives in Hungary – one center of the struggle against globalism. Dreher published last year Living in Wonder, the third in a series of commentaries on the social and religious life of our age. In The Benedict Option he championed the establishment of small communities as a refuge from the surrounding world. In Live not by Lies Dreher wrote in a darker vein. He no longer saw self-sufficient communities as successfully existing within today’s society but anticipated conflict and persecution exemplified by the life and experiences of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Now, in Living in Wonder, Dreher writes both of his own spiritual quest and even of the restoration of the sacred in this “secular age.” 

I doubt that this work will attain the celebrity of The Benedict Option.  Living in Wonder covers too broad a range of topics: history, spirituality,  philosophy,  religious practice and personal faith experiences. The book’s starting point is the classic topic of disenchantment: the loss in the modern world of any sense the divine as present in the universe. This of course has been an ongoing issue since the romantic movement. Much more recently, Catholic authors have taken up the theme.  Cristina Campo, whose works we have reviewed here,  wrote eloquently of the loss in the modern world of symbols and of man’s sense of destiny.  Czesław Miłosz did the same in The Land of Ulro.  How is Man to live in such a world or even rediscover a sense of this world’s “enchantment”? These are the questions Dreher addresses.

He writes of the importance of prayer,  liturgy and of the beautiful as portals to the sacred. Here and there throughout this book Dreher speaks warmly of his(relatively) new faith, Eastern Orthodoxy. His advocacy, however, is never overbearing or exclusive and it’s refreshingly different from the tirades of others who have moved to the East. Dreher doesn’t rant about filioque, the Byzantine empire, 1204 and the allegedly unbridgeable gap between West and East. Indeed, it would be hard for him to do so,  since, like his earlier works in this series,  Living in Wonder aims at a broad readership in various religious traditions.  Speaking of his Orthodox faith, Dreher appropriately emphasizes those aspects attractive to outsiders: the beautiful liturgy,  the continuing centrality of the mystic tradition, the cult of icons. Dreher makes the case that Orthodoxy has thereby preserved a greater sense of the sacred as present in this world.

Dreher however, ranges far beyond this.  He particularly dwells on tangible experiences of the sacred in this world: wonders and miracles, coincidences and healings are discussed at length.  The author not only presents experiences of a benign “spiritual presence” but also the dangers of encountering evil forces actively working harm. In so doing, Dreher delves into realms such as exorcism,  demonic forces potentially present in AI, and even UFOs.

I think that these matters weaken the argument of the book.  I myself have met people who have had such experiences – so I do not at all dismiss this aspect of reality. But the counsel of all the spiritual writers I know is to eschew pursuing such things. Dreher, however,  seems to think the opposite: someone wishing to rediscover the sacred should be expecting and seeking out these phenomena.   Is this the residual influence of the world of evangelical Protestantism which the author claims to have abandoned? The bizarre nature of some of the events for which the author vouches will unfortunately lead many readers not to take his latest work seriously.

Rod Dreher brings his own experiences into the narrative of encounters with the world beyond the world. Some of these events involve personal tragedies in the author’s life. This lends a poignant and serious note to the author’s reflections. As in his other books, Dreher also relentlessly quotes witnesses to support the argument of his book.  They are predominantly, but not exclusively, Western converts to Orthodoxy.  The overall effect of these “voices,”  however, is to create a feeling of disorganization: the reader feels that he is hopping from issue to issue, from topic to topic, from country to country. And all in a rather short book. Dreher’s language also detracts from his exalted spiritual aims. It all too often is excessively colloquial; on other pages Dreher offers undigested terms derived from Orthodoxy: nous, perichoresis, theosis etc.

Dreher has moved in this book  beyond the facile optimism of The Benedict Option and the focus on cultural and political catastrophe of Live Not by Lies. He correctly sees that what is needed is the recovery of faith and of spirituality.  Disenchantment is a defining feature of contemporary Western culture. A culture, however,  cannot be changed by the exercise of the willpower of individuals or communities however well intentioned. And certainly not by the idiosyncratic spiritual quests of some of the characters quoted in this book. Only  generations and even centuries of men living  an ordered, sacramental faith can effect a reversal of the present malaise. This world does need to be reenchanted  – but that is not something that we should consciously set out to achieve. If and when the perception of enchantment revives it will be the result of the practice of a rediscovered faith.

By Peter A. Kwasniewski

273 pages

TAN Books (Gastonia, NC, 2024)

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

Why we worship facing east;

Why the priest is separated from the people;

Why the traditional mass is kingly and courtly;

Why we follow inherited rituals and strict rubrics;

Why we repeat ourselves in traditional worship;

Why we use a one-year lectionary of readings;

Why we pray in Latin;

Why it is better not to understand everything immediately;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by  Ida Friederike Görres

Translated by Jennifer S. Bryson

Cluny Media LLC, Providence RI ( 2023) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter A. Kwasniewski, Editor

(Os Justi Studies in Catholic Tradition 13)

Os Justi Press, Lincoln, 2024 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Os Justi Press (this and other publications).