The blog Vultus Christi on the feast of the holy abbots of Cluny (including St Hugh):
From “Athanasius” by Joseph Goerres(G. Joseph Manz, Regensburg 1838) – On the situation of the clergy of the Catholic Church in Germany from around 1780 to 1810:
That so many collaborators (in the work of separating the German Catholic Church from Rome and subjecting her to secular authority – Trans.) were found among the clergy made manifest a deeply rooted and widespread evil. An evil that had been running rampant not just since yesterday and which affords a saddening and depressing phenomenon that Justice will not permit to be passed over in silence. It can neither be hidden nor denied that many members of this clergy even in the immediately preceding times and before the start of this period’s upheavals had surrendered to an ever increasing slackness – both en masse in many of its noblest institutions and individually in many of its representatives. This led even then to the following. Just as the clergy heedlessly went in and out of cathedrals that the zeal of their fathers had built for their faith; just as they considered as only old junk the images with which their fathers’ artistic hand had decorated the interior of those churches, so did they have hardly an inkling any more of the rich treasure which they had been called to guard and hand down. By the side of a dying generation that sought to preserve the last remnants of the old living Tradition with the earlier seriousness and the ancient rigor there arose a new generation that minimized those remnants. They talked themselves into believing that the earnestness previously directed to Tradition was sinister monkery, that strictness was just useless troubling of oneself. Declaring both no longer appropriate for the times, they sought all kind of compromises with the age.
Protestantism stood before them as a shining exemplar: one only had to imitate it in order to rejuvenate antiquated circumstances in a quick transformation. They commenced a work, which in the beginning, regardless of its essence, still had to be carried out within the bounds of propriety and honor. First, they proceeded against dogma. This dealt with so many things the understanding of which had been lost in the increasing shallowness of the age. Now, it was declared incomprehensible and as such expelled from the domain of the only things worth knowing. (…) The ancient doctrine had poured its inner richness into a mass of such formalities, which also formed a barrier against the world. Now, however, as along with the inner nucleus the extremities grew cold, these too were given up, and, when advisable, eliminated as superfluous. Thus, after the tall castle in the center had been evacuated the outer ramparts found themselves abandoned. Doctrine was limited to the middle ground, to the active life and completely secularized by this simplistic limitation.
They proceeded in the same way against discipline. Here too the sense for the importance of asceticism had totally disappeared. The conviction of its unavoidable necessity for the cleric had been completely lost. The ancient rigor thus appeared as only an unforgivable harshness against nature, which like every exaggeration led, instead of to its goal, to the revolt of the one so maltreated. Thus, they were inclined everywhere to liberate oppressed nature; everywhere the tightly drawn bonds of discipline were loosened and in part broken. At the same time even in public services, the old multi-folded toga had to yield to the comfortable chlamys. This spread from the practice of individuals to that of institutions. The rules of the orders and the traditions were relaxed everywhere throughout every rank of the clerical estate. Lax observance was introduced everywhere in place of the strict. Soon the offspring were brought up in it in the seminaries….
(pp. 119-121, my translation)
“Athanasius” was Joseph Goerres’ powerful defense of the archbishop of Cologne, who had been persecuted by the Prussian state for defending Catholic marriage. His description of the German clergy of the enlightenment may strike a familiar note for contemporary readers, especially after some recent events in that country and Austria.
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The schola under David Hughes was magnificent as always.
Fr. Robert Boyd celebrated a Solemn High Mass today for the external solemnity of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. It was also Fr. Boyd’s farewell mass at St. Mary’s where he has been in residence for ten months. He is leaving the diocese of Bridgeport to join the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. He will be residing at the chapel of Our Lady of Fatima in Pequannock, New Jersey. The Society of St. Hugh assisted Father Boyd in celebrating his very first Traditional mass in Greenwich less than two years ago! At the reception members of the parish spoke warmly of all the good Fr. Boyd had done during his brief stay at Norwalk. We wish him all the best in his new work.
The Sermon on the Sacred Heart.
At the reception.
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