Jan Bentz, Jochen Prinz (editors)

Einer, der nicht nach Utopia wollte: Thomas Molnar zum 100. Geburtstag

Patrominium -Verlag, Mainz, 2022

162 Pages

I was happy to see that last year a book was finally published dealing with Thomas Molnar. It has been a long time to wait for such recognition of a man who was once so prominent both in American conservatism and the French reactionary resistance. But finally in 2022 Molnar has received his own Festschrift – if a relatively short one. Contributors come from the United States, Switzerland, France, Hungary and Germany.

Now I certainly appreciate the efforts of all involved in putting this attractive tribute together. I cannot say,  however, that A Man who didn’t want to go to Utopia is the best place to get to know Thomas Molnar.  The tone of the book is too abstract. Molnar appears mainly as an academic dealer in ideas and concepts. The authors investigate the source of his ideas, try to identify influences on Molnar and discuss how Molnar fit into the conservative movement in the United States (or didn’t). Although such information has its value, it leads to a misunderstanding of the man and his work. 

Of course, it is a bit unfair to expect those who are discovering Molnar primarily from his published works will form the same impression of someone with whom I conversed for many years. However, I think even a brief acquaintance with Molnar’s books and articles reveals an entirely different cast to his thought – that he was eminently practical and focused on the concrete political and spiritual problems of his time. That Molnar was, above all, a supreme analyst of culture.

His best writing usually responded to a specific contemporary development or tendency in education, politics,  philosophy, ideology – or the Church.  His interest was kindled by a news report, a casual remark in conversation, or something ordinary he had just seen. For Molnar such incidents of daily life could suddenly illuminate in a new way one of the “global” issues of our age. And Molnar’s perspective on these topics was not at all uninvolved but passionate and committed. Given the direction the world took over the course of his life, that passion often manifested itself in forceful criticism of the world’s dominant powers (including specific individuals and countries).   

In his essay in A Man who did not want to go to Utopia,  Zoltán Pető does focus on one overriding cultural concern of Molnar: the worldwide liberal hegemony of the United States that obtained its ultimate triumph in 1989/91. In a series of works from the 1970’s through the 1990’s he inveighed against the new “liberal” despotism, with its fusion of idolization of the market with the decline and disrespect of tradition, manners, and education . Molnar very clearly identifies our age with a previous era of transition and collapse: the fall of the Roman empire. And he compared himself with Symmachus, one of the “last pagans.”

Haven’t the events of the last 10 years furnished the best proof of the validity of Molnar’s arguments? The synthesis of capitalism and cultural/political totalitarianism that he denounced has become an everyday reality. But Molnar was prescient in so many other matters as well!  The working out of the tendencies within the Church that he  critiqued starting in the 1960’s has led to the reign of Francis. A particular target of Molnar’s almost from the beginnning of his writing career, American higher education, has culminated in the “woke” takeover and in the outright repudiation of Western civilization.

Especially in later years, Molnar turned more and more to the writing of philosophy. For he came to see as the hope for mankind not institutions but the innate, indestructible affinity and desire of man for truth and for God. It is regarding this aspect of Molnar’s oeuvre that the essays in A Man who didn’t want to go to Utopia are most helpful. 

Despite the reservations I have set out, this Festschrift is a valuable contribution – especially to those intrigued by Molnar’s thought (and who can read German). I hope this book leads its readers to further investigate the works of a major figure of Catholic and counter-revolutionary thought.  

In some respects, a recent (2021), much shorter, article by János Pánczél Hegedűs provides a better initial, general introduction to Molnar. ( Pánczél Hegedűs, János, “Thomas Molnar’s Lifelong Struggle against Modernism,” Hungarian Review, Vol XII, 11/24/2021). It also takes up certain issues that are still somewhat unexplored – Molnar’s biography, or his religious development (although I would not agree to some of this author’s assertions in the absence of specific authority). On a humorous note, Pánczél Hegedűs discusses rumors (which I never have heard) that Molnar had been a CIA agent!

 

Intelligence in Danger of Death

By Marcel De Corte

Translated by Brian Welter

Introduction by Miguel Ayuso

Arouca Press, Waterloo ON Canada 2023 (Originally published in 1969; reissued in 1987)

We have been recently reading some of the intellectual “first responders” to Vatican Il. These authors had to confront the initial impact of the revolutionary changes of the Council and formulate a response. Their task was daunting. For what could be more challenging than to come to grips with this unprecedented, even unimaginable situation: the Roman Catholic Church overthrowing its seemingly immutable liturgy, structure, and even its morality and doctrine? Thomas Molnar, Dietrich von Hildebrand, the other contributors to Triumph magazine, Cristina Campo, Bryan Houghton – it was a remarkably talented, intellectually “diverse” group who nevertheless shared the ability to look facts in the face. Their first reactions often have a freshness and force that often was missing in the subsequent decades – when “conservatives” felt they had to be ecclesiastical politicians and “nuance” their positions. Only with Martin Mosebach’s Heresy of Formlessness (2001) and, even more so, in the literature published after the accession of Pope Francis did direct speech in defense of Catholic Tradition more generally reemerge. 

We must add the Belgian philosopher Marcel De Corte to the number of these early critics. His Intelligence in Danger of Death, however, is far broader than a discussion of the Council. De Corte sets out to analyze the situation of the Western world in the 1960s. The reforms of the Council were a characteristic phenomenon of that world. Now De Corte situated these upheavals in Church, society, and intellectual life in a broad philosophical framework – that of Thomism and Aristotelianism. In other words, the catastrophes of the present – for De Corte saw them as such – proceeded from philosophical error. In the case of the Catholic Church, that involved departure from its inheritance of philosophical realism. But De Corte enriches his philosophical considerations with perceptive observations on the facts of his times. In this and many other respects the thought of De Corte resembles that of Thomas Molnar.

De Corte’s overall theme is the decline, or rather the marginalization, of the intellect. While the intellect is disparaged, the creative function of the mind (De Corte calls it the poetic) is exalted. The result is the loss of contact with reality since the external world becomes the creation of the mind.

De Corte divides his book along three broad headings. First, he considers the pursuit of utopia by intellectuals which replaces the real world with an artificial world of technology. The wise are replaced by experts and technicians who can provide practical solutions. De Corte quotes Joseph Stalin’s description of engineers of the soul. “Everything is determined according to decisions inspired by ‘specialists.’” The intelligence is sidelined in favor of Marxist praxis or liberal pragmatism. (pp. 31-32)

One thinks of parallel observations found in Thomas Molnar’s Decline of the Intellectual (1961).

Second, he treats of the idolization of science and the application of the scientific method to all aspects of existence. This is of course valid criticism. I had difficulty following De Corte, however, where he seems to critique the theoretical approaches of modern science in favor of philosophical realism of the ancients. It seems to me that modern science is a post-1300 A.D phenomenon that requires new philosophical considerations.

Third, De Corte gives us a creative analysis of today’s tidal wave of information: “information that deforms.” The information culture of today inevitably involves manipulation and vulgarization. News and propaganda are indistinguishable. How can man’s intellect come to an understanding of anything in the ceaseless torrent of images and sounds? How can a man enter into a real fellowship with others when he is constantly engaged by ( = is connected to) the central producers of the media which occupy all his time? De Corte, moreover, was writing before the internet had arrived….

How does De Corte apply these concepts to the Catholic Church of the 1960s?  More than most commentators, he clearly identifies as a defining fault the loss of reality by the hierarchy since the Council. He writes of:

A parallel hierarchy contemptuous of its values of truth, which are then removed from the true hierarchy; the extraordinary isolation of this hierarchy from the real world and the real man, the curtain of illusions of chimeras, of mirages even of visions that blind it, even sometimes …. its most eminent representatives.

The mere concept of a “pastoral” Council implies the abandonment of realism, of contemplation, of the intellect. De Corte: 

The first [key element] is, without any possible doubt, the orientation imprinted by the recent Council of the Universal Church which relegated to the background the values of contemplation to the benefit of the values of action. These in turn, in the post-conciliar mentality, were sidelined in favor of the values of fiction and the will to power. These two falls were fatal. Right from the first meetings when the majority of the fathers rejected the scholastic-styled schema on the definition of the Church, under the pretext that it was inaccessible to the modern mind, truth had to yield to efficiency, the intelligence to the will, and the eternal to the temporal.

…

In becoming engaged in the “pastoral” path, in aggiornamento, and in adaptation to the “modern world” following the Council, many clergymen were moved to sacrifice the values of the truth for the values of efficiency. To reach contemporary man it is necessary to drop the parts of dogma to which his mentality can no longer give its consent. … That is the abyss into which the clergyman who subordinates contemplation to action and action to the will of power topples into.  This abyss of iniquity no longer has the smallest place for the intelligence.

The second key element that we would equally like to underline in contemporary Catholicism is parallel to the first: it is the subversion of the liturgy. Let us rest content with bringing out what is, in our opinion, the essential point, which is the abandonment, even the proscription, of Latin…. 

Why is this an issue?

Ultimately, for the believer, it is not by chance or arbitrary decree that Christ was born in a given place, at a given time, within the orbit of the civilization of the intelligence and realism of the mind. The disposition of Providence is obvious: Greco-Roman civilization is the sole civilization that, having confidence in the human intelligence in its capacity to be measured by the real and to understand it, had the universal reach…. Christian civilization, which in a way sublimated this civilization, is its most perfect expression.

After the Council:

In many cases, pastoral work and liturgy were abandoned to the bilious zeal of innovators, the darkness of an intelligence gorged on illusions, and the will of clerical power. This work and liturgy have incited the faithful to work with all their strength in collaborating with those who dream of changing man and the world.

(All these quotes are taken from pp. 60-66)

Has not John Lamont recently written of the indelible relationship between the Christian faith and the civilization in which it arose ? 1) We note, too,  the passionate tone of De Corte’s remarks: this is no dispassionate participant in an academic debate! For the foundations of the Christian faith are at stake.

Admittedly, any primarily philosophical approach also has limitations. It is conducive to determinism, historical reality becoming the inevitable function of an intellectual process. Hegelianism is the classic example, but Thomists are not immune to this temptation. Historical reality so often takes its own twists and turns!

In his 1987 preface to the reissue of Intelligence in Danger of Death,  De Corte could review the continued disastrous progress of the “paradigm shifts” (to use a current cliché) of the post-World War II era. And he recognized that, on the Church front, John Paul II was no solution but rather part of the crisis. Indeed, De Corte wrote that the crisis was still in its early stages. And now, nearly 40 years after that preface? In the last few years, the “woke” ideology has triumphed in the West. Regarding the Church, De Corte’s fears and warnings have proved so terribly true – in contrast to the continuing fantasies of the Church establishment. 

De Corte (quoting Charles Maurras!) does, however, offer this hope:

‘It is characteristic of the intellectual to lead the reaction to hopelessness. Faced with the threatening horizon, the national intelligence [ De Corte clarifies: the universal intelligence] has to become connected to those who try to do something beautiful before sinking.‘

It is the optimism of a philosopher who has faith in human intellect, in the priority of contemplation over action and in the objective existence of the real.

1. Lamont, John, “Dominican Theologian attacks Catholic Tradition (Part 4): what is at Stake in the attempted Suppression of the TLM?” Rorate Caeli (accessed 9/25/2023)
2. P. 66, quoting Maurras, Charles, “L’Avenir et L’Intelligence” at 87, Romantisme et Révolution (Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, Paris, 1924)

Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life

By Peter A. Kwasniewski

Foreword by Fr. John A. Perricone

TAN Books, Gastonia, NC, 2023

The indefatigable Peter Kwasniewski has given us yet another book relating to Catholic liturgy and culture. Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence, however, differs in certain important respects from Kwasniewski’s other recent works. It deals with music and especially sacred music. It arises out of the author’s own experience as a music director and as a composer. Kwasniewski’s other books testify eloquently to his warm admiration for the traditional Roman Rite. While his love for the Latin mass is evident in this book as well, Kwasniewski reaches out here to a “broader” audience. He discusses how good music has a role to play in the home and in the Novus Ordo mass as well.

The style of this book is concrete and often colorful. Throughout the book,   Kwasniewski offers specific suggestions and recommendations. Although this work at various points does address theological and theoretical issues, Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence never loses its character as a practical handbook for recovering the role of music in the world and in the Church.

Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence, as the title indicates, is divided into three major themes. The first, good music, discusses how to develop or rediscover good taste in music.  The second, sacred music, deals with the music that is appropriate in the sacred liturgy of the Catholic Church and how to enable its performance. Finally, and to some perhaps enigmatically,  Kwasniewski argues for the place of silence in the liturgy.

Kwasniewski starts with the need to break away from today’s popular music in order to develop one’s own ability to appreciate great music. The author offers concrete recommendations as to what media to use and what composers to listen to. This part of the book is particularly intriguing. For how can someone appreciate the role of music in the liturgy, for example, if he has never internalized the basic structures of western music? For, as the author states, “the prevailing western popular culture is impervious to and, at times, subversive of, the process of Christian inculturation.” I myself have often reflected on how in earlier years a child would have heard classical music or music derived from it in cartoons, film scores and pop and band concerts. Today, where this is lacking, it is much more difficult to appreciate more demanding and elaborate art forms like opera which are  totally alien in the current musical context. No wonder the audience for opera in the United States continues to diminish.

Kwasniewski next turns to the role of music in the liturgy. Not unexpectedly, our author argues strongly for the preeminent role of Gregorian Chant in the liturgy of the Church. He makes ample reference to the statements of the magisterium over the years in support of Chant up to and including Vatican II. I only have  this reservation, however – the entire culture of the Catholic Church is currently governed by the repudiation  of all such authority-  including, in this instance, that of the supposedly sacrosanct Council! 

Consistent with the style of this book, the author discusses in detail what Chant exactly is in relation to other kinds of music, and how to establish the performance of chant at the parish level. He demonstrates that this is completely feasible – rebutting claims that such music is too demanding or unintelligible for parish use. Kwasniewski is a harsh critic of the “Contemporary Worship Music” that has dominated celebrations in the Novus Ordo for decades. And he gives good reasons for banishing guitars and pianos from the church.

Regardless of this book’s practical focus, Kwasniewski does not necessarily neglect theory. For example, he shows that bad music has a deleterious effect on the souls of those who hear it relentlessly. Thus, establishing a high mutual culture is not a luxury, but a necessity for the restoration of a truly Catholic spirituality. Of course, this is entirely in accord with the considerations of Plato and Aristotle regarding the effect of music on the soul of man.

Finally, we come to the role of silence. An aspect of a fine music culture is the necessity at times to be silent. For example, in the Western liturgy even in elaborate musical settings silence prevails at the most sacred moment,  that of the consecration. 1) And from an early stage both in the West and in the East large portions of the liturgy –  like the Western canon –  began to be said silently. Indeed, recurring moments of silence in the liturgy are actually most conducive to participation by the congregation. Obviously a particular target of these reflections is the Novus Ordo liturgy which fills every moment with readings, responses, or music.

This thesis of the  book, moreover, is most consistent with the recent experience of the traditionalist movement in the United States. I am perhaps not as confident as Kwasniewski that immediately before the last Council a high level of music performance could be frequently found. But clearly in much more recent times, St. Mary’s parish in Norwalk,  or the Saint Gregory Society in New Haven  (to name just two institutions) have achieved an extraordinary level of musical perfection. At these places which celebrate the Traditional mass,  inspiring music is not a show, but an an integral part of the parish worship. Here, Chant, polyphony and more recent sacred music may be performed by professional singers, parish choirs and children’s groups – sometimes all together. The wonderful musical culture found in these fortunate locations has contributed greatly to the success of these apostolates and has radiated outwards. The value of good music is of course not only its pragmatic effectiveness. But these few examples powerfully support Peter Kwasniewski’s arguments that great music is necessary and can and should become a part of ordinary Catholic life.

1. I know there have been and are exceptions…..

Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience

The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church 1848-2023

John M. Rist

James Clarke & Co., Cambridge (U.K.), 2023

Daily we see fresh evidence of the immense stress on the Catholic Church caused by the papacy of Francis. It is a crisis that the Church establishment cannot acknowledge,  let alone confront. The distinguished scholar John Rist has made an important contribution to the developing awareness of these issues. HIs Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience frankly addresses the role of the papacy and of the bishops in the last 170 years. 

Rist sets forth his arguments in a short historical review of the papacy in the modern era (post- 1846). Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience is always direct at times colorful and often idiosyncratic – Rist never holds back with his opinions and insights on a whole variety of subjects more or less related to his topic.  For example, he defends (twice!) the late Cardinal Daniélou from suspicions to which the circumstances of his death might give rise.  At times there is sly humor. This book features a Very Select Bibliography. Rist sets before each of the paragraphs of this book several quotations from all kinds of sources. For the chapter on Pope Benedict, we find affixed:

But what about that dreadful Pope?

German Lutheran pastor (female) encountered in Iceland.

Best Pope For 300 years.

John M. Rist

Rist appears to me to have been one of the “conservatives” or “centrists” driven to a traditional position by the radicalism of Francis (Rist calls him “Francis I” on one occasion). Our author converted to Catholicism in 1980 largely motivated by John Paul II’s pro-life advocacy, and obviously still reveres him. Now Rist has had to witness Francis’s systematic undoing of the pro-life legacy of John Paul II. Rist has signed a statement accusing Francis of heresy.

Rist fearlessly points out contradictions and conflicts most Catholics don’t want to hear let alone acknowledge. That the concept of “infallibility” is in practice ambiguous. That the statements of Vatican II on the Church and religious liberty, among other matters, are not exactly reconcilable with those of earlier Councils.(Rist debates several Integralist scholars on this point) That the Vatican cannot talk, as it has done, of reconciling with the Orthodox on the basis of the pre-1054 Councils without calling all its subsequent Councils into question – including the “super Council” Vatican II, I might add. That in any case papal infallibility and supremacy rule out any real union with Orthodox churches. 

Above all, Rist understands that the “ultramontane” (our author doesn’t use that term very often) papacy established by Vatican I is and has been a key contributor to the current dysfunction – or should I say collapse – of the Catholic Church.  Rist’s thesis is that a papal infallibility and authoritarianism, rather than constituting an impregnable line of defense for the church and tradition, in fact undermined them in the long term. This regime fostered the current notion that Catholic doctrine is a set of rules proposed by authority – which might very well subsequently change these rules.   It launched a never-ending quest for clarification and definition of infallibility itself. The post -1870 “creeping infallibility” eventually led to the current situation where every utterance of Pope Francis in whatever form is automatically accorded “magisterial” authority. I particularly liked Rist’s brief but insightful descriptions of the ”collateral damage” of Vatican I – the promotion of habits of servility, conformity and blind obedience throughout the Church. These negative patterns of behavior  – this lack of integrity – would bear dreadful fruit.

Rist points out the similarities between the manipulative and authoritarian process leading up to the definitions of Papal infallibility and universal papal jurisdiction in 1870 and the modus operandi employed by Francis today. Indeed, one particular institution – the Jesuit order – played and is playing a key role in the papacies of both Pius IX and Francis. Perhaps Traditionalists might not wholly agree with the author’s sympathies for  Döllinger and the more outspoken opponents of infallibility, but they must admit that their fears have become all too terribly real. Most specifically, the episcopate of the Catholic church has indeed been largely reduced to the role of disposable branch managers of the Vatican.

Rist takes a somewhat benevolent, if inconclusive, position regarding Pope John XXIII, Vatican II and Pope Paul VI. One reason seems to be the rehabilitation during and after the Council of a number of theologians previously the recipients of some form of papal censure.  Rist does seem to have a fondness for scholars, either in 1870 or in the decades before Vatican II. In my view, however, how can one criticize Pope Francis and his regime without critiquing the substantially identical, and in some cases even more extreme, actions and language of his great hero, Paul VI?

Rist is nevertheless clear that despite reestablishing an equilibrium between the bishops and the Pope being one of its major professed aims, Vatican II in fact reconfirmed the papal hegemony. This was reflected not only in the conciliar texts but in the way Pope Paul managed the Council and its aftermath. Immediate post-Vatican II developments only reinforced the continued decline in episcopal status. The new series of synods were the instruments of further papal manipulation – although not yet as blatant as later under Francis. The creation of national episcopal conferences only served to subject the bishops to local bureaucratic forces.

We have noted Rist’s admiration for John Paul II, as evidenced by the extended exposition of the pope’s writings in this book. Indeed, George Weigel was consulted on the chapter dealing with John Paul II (although Rist says he did not incorporate all his suggestions!). Yet on this chapter’s last pages our author offers a startlingly critical appraisal of John Paul II’s “celebrity autocracy.” He depicts him as blinded by his own self confidence and the desire to focus media attention on himself. His encyclicals were often more his private opinions and were received as such. His limited attempts to restrain the progressive forces – such as his actions regarding the priesthood – often were submerged in a discussion of their infallibility. In such things as his ecumenical initiatives or his appointments, Rist writes, he was influenced by an unduly rosy view of human nature (a surprising flaw for one claimed by his fans to have possessed preeminent political skills). Earlier in this book, Rist has made similar observations about the “optimism” of Paul VI and some of the theologians of the Council. This indicates to me that what we are dealing in all these situations is not an individual character flaw of this or that pope but a widespread ideological conviction that drastically affected the ability of the Catholic leadership to perceive reality.

Finally,  we have the papacy of Francis with its “choice against tradition.” The Jesuit order as in 1870 once again plays a dominant role,  this time with a radically secular set of objectives. Generally,  Francis has avoided a direct assault on tradition– he seeks rather to change the praxis as the method of superseding the rules.  But this tactic too may be on the point of changing. So far the servile episcopate, the clergy and laity have acquiesced – or at least have not directly opposed – Francis’s campaign.

I do have my reservations regarding Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience. It focuses on the decisions, statements and writings of popes, scholars and some bishops. The laity, the lower clergy and the non-Catholic world receive more limited and secondary treatment. This is understandable in a book written by an eminent patristic scholar. Yet it is outside the closed circles of the higher clergy and the academy where the actions covered by this book had their greatest impact. 

More surprisingly, Rist only briefly  mentions liturgical issues. But liturgy – the mass, the other sacraments, the appearance of the churches –  is where Vatican II had its most obvious, immediate impact on the faithful. This is where Pope Paul VI exercised most radically papal authority – indeed, the most radical exercise in the entire period covered by this book (matched only by Amoris Laetitia). And this is the battlefield – along with that of “life issues”  – where Francis is waging a war to eliminate his opponents. 

Developments within the Catholic Church naturally always interact with the general “course of human events”  – secular history. To be sure, Rist does now and then consider such influences – such as his description of the weak political position, both in and outside of the Church, of the anti-infallibilists in 1870. Yet more could be said on this interrelationship. De Maistre’s’ thought, for example, illustrates some of the secular political roots of Papal supremacy. The anti-infallibilists in turn were closely associated with the rise of political and economic liberalism, nationalism and the scholarship practiced at German universities (Rist takes a somewhat dim view of the latter phenomenon, then and now). Vatican II itself is inconceivable without the establishment after 1945 of the American world order and the “permissive society.”

In conclusion, Rist offers some “modest conclusions, and less modest suggestions.” 

“a model must be constructed whereby the pope is clearly recognizable as the focus of doctrinal unity, but which will simultaneously provide a structure for his activities such as can inhibit the kind of abuse of office which – combined with and encouraging the passivity of too many Catholics – has threatened the Church since papal infallibility was defined at Vatican I and has now seriously infected it.” ( p. 210).

 Rist then makes a number of concrete suggestions to achieve this goal:

1. Return the appointment of bishops to local control, subject the pope’s veto  (for which he must give reasons);
2. The election of the pope should be returned in part to a revised group of Roman clergy;
3. Misuse of infallibility should be strictly curtailed – ”it should be understood primarily as indicating that the church and the pope should cling to basic Catholic dogma”;
4. A hierarchy of “non-dogmatic truths” should be recognized;
5. “The church can no longer tolerate either pointless persistence…or the consistently overweening pretensions of a number of uncontrolled religious formations especially the Jesuits and those women’s’ orders roughly grouped under the LCWR…. ;
6. No revived “Gallicanism” should be tolerated in national hierarchies, especially in Germany, “where the claim to pursue a local synodal path is reinforced by the belief developed over the last 200 years that they and they alone are the Church’s intellectual elite.” (pp. 211-14)

I doubt all traditionalists would agree with all these recommendations, or that they could be realized in practice. For that matter, all traditionalists would hardly agree with all of the author’s historical conclusions. Yet isn’t this beside the point? I – and I suspect John Rist too – wouldn’t expect every reader to endorse everything that is written in Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience. John Rist has frankly and honestly pointed out a glaring wound in the Church – one that is leading it to extinction in the West. He has the courage to suggest specific actions to help reverse the situation. Such candor is a rare quality in the Catholic Church today. I would recommend this book to everyone who would like to read a challenging, invigorating account of a major aspect of the crisis that is impeding the effective proclamation of the Gospel today. 

Gli Imperdonabili

By Cristina Campo

Adelphi Edizione, Milan, 1987.

Cristina Campo (real name:  Vittoria Guerrini, 1923-1977) is among those who first reacted to the revolution in the Church of the 1960s. A noted author in her own country, she wrote of the crisis of the modern world in all its forms. But she did much more than merely play the role of a cultural critic:  galvanized by the liturgical changes of the Council, she became an early activist in the effort to preserve the Traditional liturgy.  She was one of the cofounders of Una Voce Italia. She organized a petition from noted intellectuals in 1966 for the preservation of the Latin mass – in some respects her petition had more notable names than the later, much better-known “Agatha Christie” petition in Britain. Then, in 1969 she was one of the main editors of the so-called “Ottaviani Intervention” against the Novus Ordo mass. Later, after the Latin Church had abandoned its liturgy, she turned to the Eastern rites which she encountered at the Russicum institute in Rome. For reasons we will explore later Campo fell into undeserved obscurity – among Catholics, that is. For example, Leo Darroch’s Una Voce: A History of the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce does not even mention the role of Campo or Una Voce Italia in the “Ottaviani Intervention” – one of the two or three most important concrete actions that Una Voce ever undertook in the forty- year period covered by this history! 1)

The Unforgivable, a collection of essays, is Campo’s representative prose work.  In it, she covers a broad range of subjects: poetry from all ages, literary criticism, fables and folklore, spiritual writing and liturgy both East and West. Her style lies somewhere between that of an essay and a prose poem. Indeed, the use of repeated themes and poetic symbols throughout this volume provides a certain unity to this book: oriental carpets (including those that fly), flowers, destiny, the need for “attentiveness,” the liturgy.  The depth and range of her knowledge is astonishing. To mention but a few of her sources, in addition to Italian icons like Dante, Leopardi, Manzoni and Lampedusa she cites literature in English (Donne, Pound, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams but also Arthur Machen 2)), French (Proust, Simone Weil ), German (Benn, Hölderlin and Hofmannsthal) Spanish (Borges) and Russian (Chekhov, Pasternak and Pushkin). But she also draws on folk and fairy tales, the Church fathers, the lives of the saints, the spiritual and liturgical tradition of the East but also that of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. 

I will discuss here those sections of The Unforgivable touching most directly on Catholic and religious matters such as theology, liturgy and “Christian culture.” Please forgive me in advance for any mistakes.  Campo’s erudite Italian is as challenging as any poetic text must be, and Italian is not my best foreign language! Indeed, it has often taken me multiple readings to “decipher” some passages.

The Unforgivable, the essay from which the collection takes its name, deals with poets and poetry’s necessary search for perfection of form. The poets’ sensitivity to beauty marks them as outsiders, even outcasts from the current world. But it also leads to a distinct spiritual culture, an attitude to life. She explores this topic through a series of symbols and images, starting with the description of a Chinese man, who, while standing in a queue waiting for his execution after the Boxer rebellion of 1900, calmly concentrated on reading a book. Or Hugo van der Goes’ portrait of the donor of the Portinari altarpiece whose aristocratic image adorns the cover of this edition of The Unforgivable.  (As a Florentine, Campo would be most familiar with this work!). Even though this essay is not overtly religious, do I need to point out its obvious conflict with the Roman Catholic Church since the Council with its endlessly repeated contempt for beauty and for the “esthetes” (the ultimate insult!) who care for “museums.”  A contempt recently forcefully reiterated by Pope Francis, 3) who, moreover, also disdains the search for perfection in the moral and spiritual life as well.

Il Flauto e il Tapeto (The Flute and the Carpet), for me the centerpiece of this book, deals with the providence of God as manifested in the life of each person, starting with an image from Psalm 57(58) of a snake responding (or not) to the charmer’s musical call. It is a melody meant individually for each of us. We can call it destiny, a calling or in Christian terms, a vocation. It is a summons that is often drowned out by the noise of today’s world in which the sense of an individual destiny, like that of the meaning of symbols, seems to have been lost.

For religion is nothing but sanctified destiny, and the universal massacre of the symbol, the unatonable crucifixion of beauty are, as I have said, the massacre and crucifixion of destiny.  

Yet once this destiny is perceived, we discover an interconnectedness in our lives. There is meaning to our existence but in this world we can never fully unravel it. It is like discerning the pattern of an oriental carpet by looking at its reverse. Yet Campo trusts that, amid the universal horrors and ugliness of this age, there will always be those, who may be found in the most unlikely situations, who will hear and respond to this call. 

Reading these profound yet mysterious passages, I was reminded of Martin Mosebach’s account of his own spiritual journey:

I ought to have accepted, long ago, that I live in a chaos, that there is nothing in me that can say “I” apart form some neural reflex, and that every sense impression of this nonexistent “I” rests only on illusion and deception: nevertheless, when I hear the blackbird’s evening song…and when I hear the distant clang of the church bell… I hear these things as a message – undecipherable maybe – that is meant for me. People say, and I should have grasped it long ago, that the objects surrounding me have not the slightest significance, that there is nothing in them and that what I see in them is what I read into them (and who after all, am I?) Yes, I hear all of this, but I do not believe it. (My bolding – SC) 4)

Further, Campo links destiny (now the interlinked destiny of all men, indeed, of the whole universe) to the liturgy – which sums up and describes the entire “history of salvation” through the “supreme intellectual beauty of the gesture.” She writes unforgettably of the ceremony of the vesting of a Byzantine bishop involving a dense interplay of gestures, music, incensation, vestments and liturgical colors, in which the bishop advances symbolically from a mere individual to one having the full powers of the Unique Model. The vesting proceeds from the black penitential monastic garment to “the scarlet of the monarch and the martyr, the stole of the sanctifier, … to the crown of the celestial king.”  Anyone who saw last year Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone perform the Western equivalent of this rite at a Solemn Pontifical Mass in San Francisco will never forget the experience.  (pp. 132-34).

Her final, purely “religious”  essay of this book, Sensi Supernaturali (Supernatural Senses), evidences her deep understanding of liturgy.  Here she writes of the concreteness, physicality and corporality of the Catholic religion. Christ of course talked of “eating my Flesh and drinking my Blood.” Such are also the witnesses of those ancient times – St. Ignatius of Antioch for example describes how, after eating the body of Christ he will in turn become himself bread – a sacrifice in the arena in Rome to be devoured by wild animals. And this tradition continues up to the physical gestures, the veneration of relics and the processions so much a part of the Christian culture of the Mediterranean countries even today. Above all, it is the (traditional) liturgy which employs all the senses.  In it:

 “All the five senses are launched out into the deep, outside of the body, outside of the “demoniac space” of the world, towards a state of acute vigilance, skillfully called up and perpetuated, which is already the beginning of their transformation.” (p 246)

We would think that such an author, a woman too, would have remained a cherished figure in Catholic circles, a showpiece for the Church. But that was not to be. Some of the reasons are objective. Her style, while evocative and beautiful, is not exactly easy reading. Almost none of her work has been translated (yet) into English. Poets, especially modern poets, necessarily are restricted to a limited audience in their own language. 

But there are also ideological reasons for the lack of interest in Cristina Campo. As for the Church establishment, it should be clear from the above that Campo’s thoughts on beauty, perfection of form and the liturgy are the exact opposite of the principles governing the current regime in the Church. The reservations of the traditionalists are somewhat less easy to understand.5)  It seems that Campo’s wide interest in such things as the thought of Simone Weil, the Western hermetic tradition and eastern religions is distressing to the more “rigid” people on the right – some in the sedevacantist realm. For them, the basic reference materials of a Catholic are limited to the papal magisterium between 1846 and 1958, the Catechism of the Council of Trent and neo-scholastic theology. For example, Campo’s audacious and creative juxtaposition of Catholic devotions to Hindu theological concepts is suspect to them.  Moreover, there is a photograph of Campo sitting in a yoga pose that is calculated to drive such people into incoherent rage. Finally, Cristina Campo may have been naughty in some aspects of her private life.  But let me conclude these considerations by quoting an appreciative letter of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre from 1986:

Cristina Campo! What a memory during that awful Council! How much encouragement we received from her to carry on the good fight! She saw the invasion of the enemies of the Church and of the true Rome better than we did. She was right then and still is right today: the enemies are everywhere the Church and especially in Rome. 6)

Tragically, Cristina Campo, who never seems to have enjoyed good health, died in 1977.  She was of that first generation of Catholic apologists – almost all from the ranks of the laity – who clearly saw the looming disaster and courageously strove against it. Among them, she was also of the few that grounded her opposition to the Conciliar changes by reference to an objective context: the entire Catholic tradition, East and West,  as well as philosophy and literature, both Catholic and non-Catholic. This distinguishes her from those who, on the one hand, reacted only emotionally, or, on the other, relied only on the post-1846 Catholic magisterium.  I would hope the work of Cristina Campo becomes an important reference for a traditionalist movement still working to develop its own self-understanding. 

The website www.CristinaCampo.it contains almost everything written about her. Moreover, the life and writing of Cristina Campo may soon be much more accessible to the English-speaking reader. There is an English translation online of the essay “The Unforgivable,” with valuable commentary. 7) If I am understanding their announcement correctly, Penguin/Random House will be publishing early next year a translation of the complete The Unforgivable plus additional materials.  8) Finally, Martin Mosebach informs me that a book by Joseph Shaw, “The Intellectuals and the Old Rite,” will be forthcoming shortly in which Cristina Campo will feature prominently. 

1.  1964- 2003. Darroch, at 31.  For a brief biography of Campo along with a bibliography see Chiron, Yves, Histoire des Traditionalistes at 498-499 (Tallandier, Paris 2022)
2. The cite to one of Machen’s stories on p.127, 259 is inexact in this book. The full cite (actually, Campo’s quotation is a paraphrase) is “The White People” at 111 in Machen, Arthur,  Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (Tartarus Press, Carlton-on-Coverdale, Lyburn 2006)
3. E.g., Pope Francis, Letter to the Priests of the Diocese of Rome (8/5/2023) “And, again, by vainglory and narcissism, by doctrinal intransigence and liturgical aestheticism, forms and ways in which worldliness “hides behind the appearance of piety and even love for the Church”, but in reality “consists in seeking not the Lord’s glory but human glory and personal well-being.” 
4. “Eternal Stone Age” in Mosebach, Martin, The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and its Enemy (trans. Graham Harrison) at 18-19 (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006; first German edition, 2002)
5. Porfiri, Aurelio, “Cristina Campo and the Monsters of Traditionalism,” OnePeterFive (4/28/2023) Aurelio Porfiri has the merit of bringing Cristina Campo to the attention of the English- speaking public upon the hundredth anniversary of her birth.  
6. Letter of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of 8/5/1986, at CristinaCampo.it (my translation – SC)
7.  The Unforgiveables (sic) by Cristina Campo, a translation with  a commentary, Andrea di Serego Alighieri and Nicola Masciandaro. From Glossator 11; Cristina Campo, (6/11/2021) (This publication also includes translations of other works by Campo)
8. The Unforgivable, by Cristina Campo,  Introduction by Kathryn Davis, translated by Alex Andriess (anticipated issue date 2/06/2024)
   

Il Pastore e I Lupi: Ricordando Benedetto XVI

By Aldo Maria Valli

Chorabooks, Hong Kong 2023.

With a Foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider and a “Testimony” by Cardinal Joseph Zen.

Aldo Mario Valli is among the most articulate and inspiring defenders of Catholic traditionalism today both in the spoken and written word. Yet Valli is a relative newcomer to the traditionalist cause. Indeed, he was a long-term associate of the late Cardinal Martini of Milan. He covered the papacy of Pope Benedict for a leading Italian TV channel. But the blinkers fell from his eyes with the publication of Amoris Laetitia.  

In the Shepherd and the Wolves (Il Pastore e i Lupi) Valli has written a short history and defense of Pope Benedict XVI. It is evident from the book that Valli has great affection for Benedict, whom he knew professionally as a journalist but also from private encounters. Valli describes for us a gentle, spiritual man of great intelligence, who nevertheless, even before his papacy, became the target of outright persecution from forces within and outside the Church It was an attack which the scholarly, shy Benedict found difficult to confront. 

So, this book in not at all a critical analysis of Benedict’s papacy (at least up to the last few pages of this book!). Rather, it is a warm, appreciative reminiscence and a defense against the accusations that rained down on Ratzinger before, during and after his papacy – and which continue to do so now, even after his death. For example, as far as I am aware, in Germany a lawsuit is still underway against the estate of Benedict XVI related to the tenuous connections of Ratzinger when Archbishop of Munich with a sex offender priest – all in order to besmirch the Pope’s reputation in a potential trial.

Valli devotes much space in this short book to the public statements of Pope Benedict and in setting forth his philosophical and theological principles.  He also rebuts the endless attacks against Benedict in the media – that Benedict was unpopular, too focused on Europe and on condemning errors, disrespectful to other religions, indifferent to clerical sexual abuse, etc.  – not to mention even wilder claims.

In this regard, The Shepherd and the Wolves strongly resembles much of the
2020 biography of Pope Benedict by Peter Seewald. As I wrote of the latter book, I find such point-by-point defenses of limited utility, especially ten years or more after the facts. By structuring a book around rebutting clearly absurd accusations Valli (and Seewald) cede all the initiative to Benedict’s opponents. They are the ones who are allowed to set the framework of the discussion. Regarding the media a historian of Benedict’s papacy should be rather asking different questions:  Why were the media uniformly hostile to Benedict but currently are still fawning and obsequious towards Francis?  Why did the Vatican willingly participate in the staged media game? Above all, why were Pope Benedict and the Vatican so obsessed with their image in the media in the first place?

Like Seewald (at least until his most recent interview, that is!) Valli also appears to restate the assertions of Benedict that his resignation was entirely voluntary, dictated by his failing strength and not at all motivated by internal political crises of one kind or another in the Church. I am not sure anyone believes this, especially given the ten post-abdication years.

Yet at the very end of the book Valli breaks with this party line and offers an alternative critical review of Pope Benedict. His interpretation is sad and highly insightful– and, for what it’s worth, also agrees with my own views on the subject. First, Valli frankly points out the disastrous consequences of Benedict’s renunciation, not only by enabling the reversal of the Pope’s own policies but also by reconfirming the understanding of the papacy as a secular political function. 

Valli sees the key to Benedict’s actions in his consistent desire to find a Third Way between traditional theology and radical modernism. Pope Benedict could never ascribe any guilt for the unfolding catastrophe of the post-conciliar Church to the Council itself.  Rather, he made a mythical “council of the media” responsible for the Church’s woes. For Valli the tragedy of Benedict is not weakness of character but precisely his theological and intellectual starting point – his theology. Ratzinger at the Council had wanted to ignite a fire which would purify and illuminate the Church. Yet the wood for that fire was taken from warehouses in which it was claimed that that the Church and the world could and should live in reciprocal harmony. Yet the truth is that the world is marked by sin and the Church cannot do anything but call it to conversion. That purifying fire turned into a devastating blaze that could neither be contained nor brought under control.   

In a sense, the papacy of Bergoglio was the bitterest possible “punishment” for Ratzinger’s lack of insight.  Pope Benedict had to witness for ten years how the process of self-dissolution, initiated by the Council, was carried to its most extreme consequences precisely because of his own resignation. Valli asks: “Who could imagine a condemnation more terrible”?  Indisputably, the destiny of the humble Bavarian professor was ultimately tragic. (pp. 161-62)

Acknowledging these truths does not at all detract from Valli’s admiration for Pope Benedict.  He concludes his book by quoting from a letter he received from one of his readers. She wanted express her thanks to Pope Benedict, a man and pastor she has always considered a spiritual father, a witness who had given strength to her life and had always seemed to speak directly to her. Benedict’s rather summary funeral mass reflected how Benedict to the very end never had the recognition he merited.  In contrast, so many of the simple faithful had greeted and thanked him. His message had reached both the mind and the heart! (p. 163)

Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy in Defense of the Traditional Mass and the Faithful who Attend it

Peter A. Kwasniewski, Ed.

Os Justi Press, Lincoln, NE 2023

Hardly had I finished reading one book from Os Justi press (1) when there appeared a new entry in their series “Os Justi Studies in Catholic Traditionalism.” In this series, edited by the indefatigable Peter Kwasniewski, Os Justi offers serious commentary on current Church issues of special relevance to the Catholic Traditionalist movement.

In 2022 John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy published a series of articles defending Pope Francis’s war against Traditionalism (collectively, the “Synoptic Look”).2) Peter Kwasniewski has now assembled in Illusions of Reform a volume of responses. The heart of Illusions of Reform is two series of articles by Jane Smith and Peter Kwasniewski that set out a detailed, comprehensive critique of the Synoptic Look. There follow essays from a range of writers, many associated with Traditionalism, discussing one or the other aspects of the Synoptic Look. Two of the contributors (Peter Kwasniewski and Alcuin Reid) were directly denounced by Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy in the Synoptic Look.

I think the contributors to Illusions of Reform did a good job in refuting the assertions and calumnies of the Synoptic Look. If the contentions of Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy trickle down to the bureaucrats of the Roman Catholic Church in rectories, schools, organizations and parishes, Illusions of Reform will provide to the Traditionalist faithful a handbook of responses. Moreover, the authors of the essays in this book sometimes exceed their immediate task of responding to the Synoptic Look and break new ground. I was intrigued, for example, by Peter Kwasniewski’s argument that the fresco of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (and other similar paintings for monastic refectories) helped lead to an incorrect theory of a versus populum celebration of the mass.  Alexander Battista observes that the Synoptic Look’s theological condemnation of the Traditional Roman liturgy also applies in large part to the eastern rites of the Catholic Church, which (still?) remain in good standing with the Vatican. And there is Alcuin Reid’s contribution, in which he confronts the invective directed against him in one section of the Synoptic Look. 

It seemed to me, however, that debating the assertions of the three authors is of limited utility. For this response (and even the title Illusions of Reform) presumes that Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy are proposing for public discussion their scholarly, if mistaken, opinions. As Alcuin Reid writes, it’s clear that these authors had no interest in dialoguing with anyone or of convincing anyone. It is instructive that the authors of the Synoptic Look refused permission to reprint their essays in Illusions of Reform and likewise rejected the opportunity to rebut the critical essays published there. Similarly, they made no attempt in their own essays to “engage with” any of the literature critical of the Council or the Novus Ordo that has appeared over the last 60 years.

Indeed, the analytical framework of Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy leaves hardly any room for dialogue.  For the position of the authors, identical with that of Pope Francis himself, is that Vatican II is the work of the Holy Spirit, the liturgical movement is the work of Holy Spirit, the new mass is the work of the Holy Spirit. Thus, any attempt even to question any of these items is to directly oppose God. As is stated in the Synoptic Look, for some people (the Traditionalists):

 there can be a danger of loving a form of the Mass more than one loves Jesus (3)

 (A startling claim – from a charismatic, even Protestant perspective?). It’s remarkable how easy it is for members of the Catholic establishment to discern the will of God in this world! It’s almost as easy as was their ability in the 1960’s to identify the signs of the times.

And this same Holy Spirit seems completely capable of contradicting Himself.  One of the most extraordinary aspects of Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy’s essay is their extended argument that the Traditional Mass was theologically flawed; that Catholics, prior to the Council, prayed to “God” instead of to “Christ” or the “Trinity.” Thus, it would seem the Holy Spirit abandoned the Church and the bulk of the Catholic population to theological error for untold ages. I recall hearing such arguments in the distant past but never with such insistent radicalism. 

If the theology of the authors of the Synoptic Look excludes rational discourse, to argue with them over historic facts is likewise useless. For example, regarding the origins of liturgical movement, it is said:

Like almost all renewal movements in Church history, such as the rise of the Franciscans and Dominicans, the liturgical renewal movement was from the ground up. In this case, it was initiated and primarily grew from within a monastic setting…. (4)

Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy thus believe that the liturgical movement between 1900 and 1950 and the emergence and expansion of the mendicant orders in the first half of the 13th century are historical phenomena of comparable origin and significance. It’s clear that any recourse to historical reality with authors exhibiting historical judgment of this kind would be futile.

In my view, Cavadini, Healy and Weinandy’s opus closely resembles the DEI declarations found universally nowadays in the publications of corporations, governmental units and educational institutions: a demonstration of loyalty to the ideology of an establishment rather than an honest expression of personal or scholarly opinion. But if the content of the Synoptic Look is unimportant, nevertheless, who wrote it, where it’s being published and the style in which the message is conveyed are important.

Now all three authors of the Synoptic Look are certified members of the Catholic establishment and at least two are currently in the current employ of Catholic educational institutions. Moreover, they seem relatively uninvolved in the Catholic progressive movement otherwise dominant on Catholic campuses. Their loyalty to the establishment is thus pure, unaffected by further demands for change. Given the policies of Francis over the last ten years, it an increasingly rare stance among “Catholic Conservatives!”

Professor Cavadini is director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame University, the publisher of the Church Life Journal in which appeared the essays of the Synoptic Look. 5) What is this Institute? It (or its predecessor) was founded in 1970 by a noted radical priest of that era, Monsignor John J. Egan, who remained associated with it for many years. (6) In the course of time, the Institute seems to have been absorbed into the broad mainstream of the so-called American Catholic Church. It advertises itself as a facility to ”form and empower” Catholic leaders. It appears, however that these leaders are mainly fellow bureaucrats in the employ of the Church. Indeed, the Institute itself seems to have an extraordinarily large number of administrators. If we peruse the news items on the Institute’s website we see only a happy world of more grants from secular foundations, more money from Notre Dame alumni, more nebulous, undemanding articles and more programs. 

The McGrath Institute is thus emblematic of the modern Church establishment:  bureaucratic, self-satisfied, pontificating, discoursing solely with fellow members of its own isolated world but directing abuse and invective against officially designated adversaries. Yet, since the Council, the forces represented by the Institute have been the consistent winners within a Church otherwise mired in steep decline. It is they and their more radical colleagues who have spearheaded the synodal path, first in Germany and now throughout the entire Church. Yet clearly such entities are incapable of communicating with, let alone evangelizing, either the outside world or the non-practicing majority of Catholics. To outsiders, they are the ugly face of official Catholicism. It is the Traditionalists, so much despised by them, that can mobilize individual imitative and commitment and unlock the evangelizing force of the Christian faith. I think this contrast will be patently obvious to anyone who reads both the Synoptic Look and Illusions of Reform – which I highly recommend.

1. Joseph Shaw’s The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity.
2. Now these essays are assembled and available at: A Synoptic Look at the Failures and Successes of Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms, Church Life Journal (12/1/2022).( the “Synoptic Look”) This title is a pseudo-objective replacement for the more aggressively anti-Traditionalist titles of some of the original posts (“The Way forward from the Theological Concerns with the TLM Movement,” “Papal Responses to the emergence of the TLM Movement”).
3. Synoptic Look, “Theological and Pastoral Concerns with the Tridentine Mass Movement”
4. Synoptic Look, “The Rise of the Liturgical Renewal”
5. https://mcgrath.nd.edu
6. “History and Mission” 

By Joseph Shaw

Os Justi Press (Lincoln, NE, 2023)

Mr. Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and president of the International Una Voce Federation, offers us a book of reflections on the Church and society of today and especially on the position of the Traditional Catholic Movement. Even though the author taught philosophy at Oxford University for many years, The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity is no abstract treatise.  Our author, by virtue of his office, is squarely in the midst of the liturgical wars of today. Shaw returns again and again to the refutation of attacks launched against Traditionalists by their enemies within the Church. The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity serves, first of all, as a valuable arsenal of information and arguments for the Traditionalist. And this is an honorable role! Wasn’t the City of God also inspired by the need to respond to contemporary calumnies against Christians after the fall of Rome?

Shaw, however, goes far beyond the role of a controversialist. He works to understand what is happening in the Church today.  In contrast to most commentators on liturgical issues, Shaw knows that the Church is embedded in history and in society. As the title of this collection of essays indicates, liturgical questions cannot be severed from other theological issues and from the daily life and experience of the faithful. This book develops these interactions and influences.  Shaw sets the controversies and deviations of the moment in a broader historical, philosophical and sociological context. This deeper understanding will be necessary to the Traditionalist in the continued conflict between the Church establishment and Catholic Tradition – a struggle that may last years, decades or even generations.

Mr. Shaw divides his work into three sections: The first, “Liturgy,” deals with the liturgy, its meaning and function. The second part, “Crisis,” addresses issues of conflict within the Church -not just the struggle over the Traditional Mass but also clerical sex abuse and sex education. Finally, “Family” explores underlying sociological causes of the dysfunctions Shaw has described. Certainly, “Family” is the broadest topic and the most controversial, given the author’s frank discussion of the role of feminism and feminization in the current crisis of Church and society. I recall that Cardinal Francis George of Chicago came a cropper when he dared to express critical thoughts regarding feminism.

Let me give a few examples of the “Shavian” insights. The author’s discussion of “active participation” is among the clearest I have ever read. The Conciliar reduction of participation to comprehension is fundamentally flawed:

However, saying that understanding texts and ceremonies aids participation is not the same as saying it is necessary for participation.  Still less is it to say that participation is aided by changing prayers and ceremonies to make them easier to understand.  … A poem or a painting can engage us powerfully without knowing very clearly what it is about. An explanation may well enhance our participation in it, but we would not be inclined to say, of those who do not have the benefit of such an explanation, that they were incapable of real participation in, say, William Blake’s poem Jerusalem or the Wilton Diptych (p.25)

A related theme is the Catholic establishment’s claim that only “elitists” can “get anything” from the beauty and sacrality of the Traditional Mass. It is obvious from the life of Traditional parishes today  – as well of that of the entire Church until the 1960’s – that beauty and sacrality appeal to all groups of the Catholic population, regardless of income, education, race etc. In contrast, it has been the most educated and wealthiest segments of the Catholic population who have been most hostile to the Traditional liturgy. Shaw quotes here the disdainful and scurrilous remarks of the egregious Fr. Reginald Foster – the Vatican’s Latinist!  – on the liturgical role of Latin 1) (pp. 72-73). Indeed, Shaw points out it is this clerical “elite” that has convinced itself that the unlettered “masses” cannot participate in the Traditional Mass.

Speaking of Latin, Shaw finds that, well before the Council, the Church had difficulty articulating a principled and coherent defense of the liturgical role of Latin. (p.83). As in so many other issues, the current Traditionalist’s understanding of the purpose of Latin in the liturgy is far more sophisticated than that of his pre-conciliar forbears. Or it at least can be – if he reads the growing literature (like this book) on the subject!

Rebutting Pope Francis’s relentless denunciations of “rigid” Catholics, Shaw finds the origin of this calumny in a pseudo-Freudian analysis of the rise of Nazism. The Frankfurt school made the historically false claim that the intact family and the society associated with it created a mythical “authoritarian personality” that allegedly spawned fascism.  This is the dubious source of Pope Francis’s constantly repeated characterization of “rigid” priests and laity as being diseased.

There have been studies over the years linking some of the current deviations of the “Conciliar Church” to a centuries-long process of “feminization” of Catholicism as found in devotions and schools of spirituality. Shaw develops the intriguing argument that the Novus Ordo, with its exclusive emphasis on verbal communication, reflects more clearly a feminine sensibility, whereas ritual and mystery appeal more to a masculine sensibility. Perhaps! – but I don’t see any disproportionate rush of the “devout sex” to the Novus Ordo. (pp. 236-371)

As one who has given some thought to the disastrous effects of ultramontanism on the Church, I particularly welcomed Shaw’s perceptive commentary on the subject:

We know, with hindsight, that the centralization of the Church has made her painfully vulnerable to the capture of central institutions by corrupt individuals or misguided ideas. It is no new thing in the history of the Church for there to be corruption in Rome (as I write the trial of Cardinal Becciu is ongoing) (It still is! – SC). What is new, and disastrous, is the diminishment of alternative sources of influence, initiative and prestige, from which Roman problems could be addressed without being cut off immediately by the very people causing the problems. I have in mind things like monastic reformers, reforming bishops, fearless preachers, or even the Holy Roman Emperor.

….

[W]hat the Church needs in dealing with a unified threat is not the brittle strength of the centralized control center, but the flexible resistance of ten thousand little platoons with the self-sufficiency and initiative to carry on guerilla warfare even when the enemy has won the big battles. What at needs, in fact, is the family. (pp. 277-78)

Shaw’s observations are entirely in accord with both human and spiritual wisdom. Did not Machiavelli make the same point regarding the weakness of rigidly centralized states? Later, in the first half of the 19th century, the German Romantics wrote of the need to foster intermediate corporations situated between individuals and the central authority of the state.  And even the papacy in its most explicitly ultramontane phase propounded this Catholic understanding of subsidiarity. Joseph Shaw’s insight, however, is to identify the hierarchically organized, so-called “traditional” family as the specific cell of resistance in the war for the defense of the faith. Regardless of all the forces seeking to destroy ii, the family still possesses unique strength, for it is both a natural and, in Christian marriage, supernatural institution. But in the battle for the faith the family cannot function in isolation as an individual atom but must always remain in union with others as a member of the Body of Christ. 

I hope the above conveys the flavor of Mr. Shaw’s book. Do I need to add that it is all well and clearly written? I would recommend this book to the Traditionalist looking both for arguments in his current struggle for survival but also for an analysis of the overall causes of the current crisis. It is this deeper understanding that will help preserve us from mistakes and deviations arising from purely reactive and opportunistic stances.

The Liturgy, the Family and the Crisis of Modernity is available HERE.

1. Fr. Foster was (perhaps unwittingly) echoing Heinrich Heine, who in the 1830’s sneered that the prostitutes of Paris spoke better French than the canonesses (aristocratic ladies) of Germany…..

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

By Alessandro Gnocchi 

Edizioni Monasterium, Cellio, 2023

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

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

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

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

What does Gnocchi find attractive in Orthodoxy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Aurelio Porfiri and Aldo Maria Valli

Chorabooks, Hong Kong, 2022

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

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

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

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

Valli describes his spiritual situation: 

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

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

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

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