By Marcel Proust

Translated and introduced by John Pepino

Afterword by Peter Kwasniewski

2021 Wiseblood Books, Milwaukee, WI

In 1904 the Catholic Church in France faced the imminent loss of all her possessions. The churches were to be nationalized by a state controlled by atheists and the Masonic lodge; subsequently their conversion to secular use was entertained. Ultimately, however, the continued use of the church buildings by the Catholic Church was conceded. It was in the midst of this crisis that Proust wrote the essay Death comes to the Cathedrals.

Proust makes some elementary aesthetic and historical points. The cathedrals do not merely serve as a utilitarian facility to house the gathering of a congregation, but are a symbolic restatement of the Christian faith. Building on the work of contemporary scholars and writers such as Émile Mâle, Proust writes of how each seemingly insignificant detail in a cathedral  is laden with symbolic meaning. And this all relates back to the rite celebrated in the cathedral: the (traditional) Catholic Mass. For Christian worship to cease in the cathedrals would deprive them of meaning – to leave these buildings empty shells. A museum is not a living thing. In Paris just look at the Pantheon or “Napoleon’s Tomb” to see the sad results of alienating Catholic churches from the purpose for which they were created. As Proust writes:

Today there is not one socialist with taste who doesn’t deplore the mutilations the (French) Revolution visited upon our cathedrals: so many shattered statues and stained-glass windows! Well: better to ransack a church than decommission it. As mutilated as a church may be, so long as the mass is celebrated there, it retains at least some life. Once a church is decommissioned it dies, and though as an historical monument it may be protected from scandalous uses, it is no more than a museum.

…

When the sacrifice of Christ’s flesh and blood, the sacrifice of the Mass is no longer celebrated in our churches, they will have no life left in them. Catholic liturgy and the architecture and sculpture of our cathedrals form a whole for they stem from the same symbolism. 1)

Such a loss is not just a private Catholic matter but should be a concern for all humanity – but especially for the French nation. For the great series of cathedrals, beginning with the basilica of St. Denis and culminating in the extraordinary but unachieved (and unachievable) Beauvais,  is the chief glory of French – and even of world architecture. What Proust is suggesting – and what French traditionalists – both Catholic and non-Catholic – have insisted upon ever since is that Catholicism is so integral to the French national identity that any attempt to purge it strikes a blow at the nation itself. Just look at the recent statements of Eric Zemmour – a secular Jew – for a passionate (re)presentation of these principles. Contrary to the views of Catholics influenced by Vatican II,  liberalism and ultramontanism, this bond between the Catholic faith and the nation is not weakness, but strength! Just look at the Poland in the last century for a similar example.

Peter Kwasniewski contributes an afterword linking the events in France in Proust’s day to those of our own time. He tells of his own enthusiasm on first encountering Chartres. Then he compares the ritual vandalism after Vatican II with the measures of the Freemasons of the Third Republic. Today the Church herself largely accomplished what the anticlerical politicians of yore stopped short of achieving – the expulsion of the Roman Catholic rite from the architectural masterpieces to which it had given life. Indeed, these great cathedrals began to be viewed as aberrations from what should be the new Catholic architectural norm: some kind of utilitarian shed. In the cathedrals themselves the clergy place puny blocks in the transepts on which to celebrate their new form of liturgy.

Under such circumstances, Catholics can only be grateful for the de jure or de facto state control of church buildings in France, but also in Italy and Germany. Otherwise a wave of destruction – like that which swept over the sanctuaries of most churches in the United States –  would have done irremediable damage to the far more significant artistic heritage of Europe.

And this struggle continues to the present day. After the highly symbolic destruction of the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris a conflict has broken out between the archdiocese of Paris and scholars, artists and preservationists. For the archdiocese wants to adapt parts of the restored cathedral to a new didactic plan to make the Catholic faith “comprehensible” to the visitor, using in part projected images. 

The journey continues past 14 side chapels of the cathedral. Those existing chapels, … are to be reconfigured so as to “create a fecund dialogue between contemporary creation and the church.” Each is to receive a yet-to-be-created work of art, which is to be juxtaposed with a historic work, such as a painting or stained-glass window, while a text is projected onto the wall. These chapels are hardly the 14 traditional Stations of the Cross, the sequence of the Passion that culminates with Jesus being laid in the tomb. Here the 14th chapel is to be dedicated to the theme of “reconciled creation,” a phrase taken from Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’,” which addressed environmentalism and climate change .2)

 Pope Francis and environmentalism, not God, thus become the focus of this media presentation – which in any case has a didactic message utterly foreign to that conveyed by the Gothic architecture of Notre Dame itself.  But are the bright lights and television screens, the souvenir machines and explanatory placards in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York any better? (At least here though, offending modernist statues and altars have been removed and an attempt has been made to restore the stylistic harmony of the chancel and the side altars of the nave).

Speaking of St Patrick’s, the St. Hugh of Cluny Society has always tried to advance the unity of architecture, liturgy and music primarily in the greater New York Area. Of course, not even New York’s great church of St. Vincent Ferrer matches its European models – let alone our small Victorian neo-gothic parish churches. But the Catholic Church in America once had a vision of reproducing on these shores masterpieces of Catholic architecture – as a means for promoting and celebrating the faith. That is why we work for their preservation. And when in any such church the Traditional liturgy is celebrated with full ceremony and fitting music one gets a glimpse of the real meaning of all the elements of art and of the faith working together. Some (like Cardinal Dolan) may mock such old churches as “museums” but, as Proust so eloquently points out, a Catholic church celebrating the traditional Mass is the exact opposite of a museum!

I too have experienced the power of the French cathedrals. Since the 1980’s,  the annual traditionalist pilgrimages between Paris and Chartres have once again filled that great cathedral with life through the presence of so many young people at the celebration of the traditional Mass. On such occasions, Chartres, as large as it is, cannot accommodate all the pilgrims!

Chartres has spires, the statues and stained glass. But it has also suffered a number of harsh unfeeling restorations and also attracts, given its easy accessibility from Paris,  a relatively large number of tourists. Other cathedrals like Laon, Bourges or Beauvais – largely unrestored, silent and mostly abandoned to themselves in the midst of their semi-deserted towns  – afford the visitor a more evocative impression of artistic grandeur, loss and the ravages of time. 

(Above) The cattle on the towers of Laon cathedral. Proust: “We know that since the oxen of Laon had christianly drawn the construction materials for the cathedral up the hill for which it rises, the architect rewarded them by setting up their statues at the feet of the towers. You can see them to this day as, in the din of the bells and in the pooling sunlight, they raise their horned heads above the colossal holy arch towards the horizon of the French plains… .” (Below) The atmospheric old town of Laon.

Pope Francis has now launched a vast campaign to eradicate the traditional Mass, to try once again to achieve what the atheists of Proust’s day had sought to accomplish – ultimately unsucessfully. Death comes for the Cathedrals thus takes on a relevance perhaps unanticipated when this book’s introduction and afterword were written. And in addition to the religiously motivated Traditionalists, just as in Proust’s day, defenders of our common artistic heritage once again have risen up to defend the Mass. Michel Onfray, a self-described atheist, wrote last year:

The Latin mass is the patrimony of our civilization. It is the historical and spiritual heir of a long series of rituals, celebrations and prayers, all crystallized in a form that offers a total spectacle: a Gesamtkunstwerk, to use a word from German romantic aesthetics.3)

Proust too had evoked Wagner, in his view the only modern artist who in works such as Parsifal approached the beauty of the Catholic Mass! Yet, Proust affirms, a Catholic Mass celebrated in Chartres cathedral exceeds anything produced in Bayreuth.4)  It is incumbent upon us to defend and preserve this heritage for the sake of the Faith and also for all mankind. And strangely enough, in so doing is not Catholic traditionalism practicing the truest kind of ecumenism?

1. Proust, M, Death Comes to the Cathedrals at 10.

2. Lewis, Michael J., “An Incendiary Plan for Notre Dame Cathedral” The Wall Street Journal 11/30/2021

3. Onfray, Michel, “Ita Missa Est” in From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, (Peter A. Kwasniewski, Ed.) at 68 (Angelico Press, Brooklyn, NY 2021)

4. Bayreuth is the location of the theatre which Wagner created to present his operas.

From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War: Catholics respond to the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes on the Latin Mass

Peter A. Kwasniewski, Editor.

Angelico Press, Brooklyn, 2021

Since July 16, 2021, a cultural war has exploded in the Church. On that day Pope Francis declared his intent to eliminate the Catholic Tradionalist movement.  This was the latest step, moreover, in an assault on the principles of Catholic identity in liturgy, morality and ecclesiastical organization that has been proceeding for eight years now under this pontificate. One immediate consequence of this unprecedented papal action was an outpouring of critical commentary.  Except for sources controlled by the Vatican or directly or indirectly in the pay of the Roman Catholic Church, the authors were largely sympathetic or  favorable to the traditionalists – or at least unconvinced by Pope Francis’s assertions. 

Peter Kwasniewski, perhaps the most tireless literary advocate of traditionalism today, has gathered up and published in From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War a selection of these first responses. This book includes 69 contributions and concludes with a “public statement”  – an international open letter in support of the Traditional Mass. 

The contributors represent a broad spectrum of opinion. The dedicated  traditionalists are to be found, of course: Fr. Claude Barthe, Martin Mosebach, Dom Alcuin Reid – Peter Kwasniewski himself contributes a preface and five articles. But there are also “conservatives,” cultural pundits and those who previously viewed themselves as occupying a position in the middle of the road, liturgically speaking. Fr. Hunwicke is a member of the Ordinariate. And there are writers who are not Catholic at all. Dr. Kwasniewski subtitles this collection Catholics respond to the Motu Proprio  but I doubt that anyone would consider Michel Onfray a Catholic (as he himself points out in the first sentence of the essay reproduced in this volume). But the presence of such a thinker is of the greatest significance: Traditionis Custodes is a direct challenge not just to a parochial religious rite but to human culture in general.  

These essays were first published not just on the internet but also on major mainstream media throughout the world: Le Figaro (France), The New York Times, ABC (Spain). Among the contributors are noted authors and intellectuals.  I also note with pleasure the presence among the contributors of priests, bishops and cardinals: e.g., Cardinals Sarah, Müller, Burke, Brandmüller and Zen. I regret to say, however,  that subsequently certain of these clerical authors either complained about their presentation in this volume (Cardinal Sarah)  or relativized their views (Cardinal Brandmüller). This demonstrates the grip that ultramontane discipline still holds on the (conservative) Catholic clergy and the continuing inability of most of the Catholic leadership to accept open discussion or diversity of views. (Conspicuously absent from this volume – except for one anonymous priest from an anonymous institute – are contributions from the “Ecclesia Dei” institutes.).

The essays of this volume address Traditionis Custodes from many different angles. Some discuss its legality and focus on specific language.  Others take a more principled, philosophical approach, trying to discern what, in substance,  is going on. Ross Douthat seeks broad historical parallels. But this collection is not at all a mere critique of, and response to,  Traditionis Custodes.  Rather,  it is a summary of the arguments for traditionalism, a kind of miniature encyclopedia of what traditionalist Catholic and their supporters actually believe. 1) Pope Francis might have been hoping  to elevate Vatican II and the new mass rite beyond all rational analysis and inquiry but, as many the essays of this book show,  he is having exactly the opposite effect. 

The same is true for this book’s recurring theme of the relation of papal infallibility and papal governance  to Catholic tradition. For with Traditionis Custodes – as with Amoris Laetitia – Francis has radically put in issue the scope of his own authority. Regardless of Francis’s purported revocation of Summorum Pontificum, the pope’s authority to abolish the Traditional rite has been squarely raised (and denied  (Mosebach)).

Many of these early reactions have a refreshing,  fiery immediacy. In the face of papal legislative aggression, couched in language even more hostile and extreme, it’s no time to hold back. At decisive points in history one has to show one’s colors. As the old song goes:

Praise the Lord and swing into position,

Can’t afford to be a politician,

Praise the Lord, we’re all between perdition and the deep blue sea. 2)

The need of the day to formulate and express deep convictions clearly and directly, combined with the participation of several renowned authors, raises the level of this book far above that of the usual Catholic prose. One can discover throughout pages of great power and conviction – at times this book makes for great reading! 

At this moment we should be rallying all forces in defense of tradition, regardless of our prior differences. I nevertheless feel compelled to comment critically on aspects of certain contributions which, I think, reflect attitudes which I would have hoped to have disappeared after the impact of Traditionis Custodes. For example, here and there are traces of Roman Catholic servility  –  certain contributors feel obliged to balance their criticisms with praise for the pope’s other initiatives or to express understanding for the provocations he has allegedly endured from Traditionalists. One piece, by Christophe Geffroy and Fr. Christian Gouyaud, even spends paragraphs ranking and attacking traditionalists! (Another essay, Traditionis Custodes:  Divide and  Conquer? by Jean-Pierre Maugendre directly responds to this article’s assertions). Another contributor, like pre–1917 Russian peasants,  writes of Francis being misled by his advisors. Indeed, contrary to the more forthright views I previously described,  the hope is expressed by some that somehow the furor around Traditionis Custodes will die down, that some kind of equilibrium will reassert itself. 

This latter interpretation (or rather wishful thinking) has been put to an early test. The preface to this volume is dated October 7, 2021. Since then we have seen the instruction of the Vicariate of Rome (signed October 7, 2021!), the “Responses to the Dubia” of Archbishop Roche and the implementation decree of the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Cupich. All of these documents emanate from close allies of Pope Francis and are obviously coordinated with him and with each other. These measures confirm that, as far as Francis is concerned, there will be no truce or slacking off but only a fanatical fight to the death with Catholic traditionalism. 

Yet, on the other hand,  since October 7 the flood of essays, articles and posts defending the Latin Mass has also not let up.  It seems Traditionis Custodes has triggered a long dormant urge for traditionalists to proclaim their beliefs to the world. This literature, taken together, is a grand “apology” – in the original sense of the word, an explanation and defense – of the traditional Catholic faith. I would hope Peter Kwasniewski will set to work soon on From Benedict’s Peace – Volume II!

1. I look forward to a publication of an anthology of these contributions, each of which illuminates the issue from a different perspective and the whole representing a veritable encyclopedia of Traditionalist belief.  It will be an invaluable reference for Catholic Traditionalists – or for the curious outsider who wants to discover what motivates these people. (“Traditionis Custodes: Dispatches from the Front” The Society of St Hugh of Cluny, 8/18/2021)
2. Frank Loesser, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” (1942, referring to the attack on Pearl Harbor)

During the papacy of Pius IX the theory and, to a great extent, the practice of the modern ultramontane regime were perfected.  This system did secure internal unity and stability, leading the Church through one of the most pivotal periods of world and European history. Yet the lead-up to the Second Vatican Council,  the course of the Council itself and the implementation of its decisions revealed all too clearly the deficiencies of ultramontanism. The extreme centralized structures and absence of any real exchange of ideas in the Roman Catholic Church privileged the influence of “experts,” cliques and behind-the-scenes intrigue. At the pope’s command, the bishops, clergy and laity, unable to think for themselves, accepted blindly the destruction or relativization of that which they had only yesterday held sacred and immutable. 

But the “Conciliar Church” itself bore the hallmarks of the ultramontane past that it affected to despise –  provincialism, authoritarianism,  pervasive bureaucracy and remoteness from the life of men and women today.  The hundreds of pages of Conciliar decrees and the literary productions  of the Conciliar champions (Rahner, Ratzinger, Kung, Schillebeeckx, etc.) made, outside of the clerical bureaucracy,  little impression in the Church –-  and none on the world outside it. Indeed, far from being an avenue for establishing new communication with the world and the laity,  Vatican II – its interpretation and defense – became just one more burden on the Church establishment. 

Within the Church itself, however, all the institutions so carefully built up since the 1830’s – the schools, seminaries, monasteries, religious congregations, hospitals, universities –  experienced a more or less universal existential crisis. Entire national churches (e.g., the Netherlands, Quebec)  collapsed virtually overnight, while most others in the developed world commenced a continuous decline of religious practice.  Conflict within the ecclesiastical establishment itself broke into the open, as the Vatican and the Church’s dominant intellectual leadership fell out on a broad spectrum of issues. 

It became increasingly apparent that the positions of the progressives were irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine and morality, at least as previously understood.  The post-Conciliar popes up to Francis, however, could not face the consequences of either adopting the progressive agenda or condemning it.  The result was a deadlock between the progressive institutions and the Vatican which lasted for the next 45 years.  In the actual practice of  ruling the Church the ultramontane papacy more and more assumed a merely administrative role. 1)

In the midst of the post-Conciliar conflicts over the faith,  Catholic traditionalism was born. The new Conciliar model was manifestly not working;  a return to – or preservation of  – the past recommended itself. Contrary to what Pope Francis asserts, the attitudes of the traditionalists to the authority of the Council varied greatly – as did their understanding regarding ultramontanism. Clearly the establishment of the FSSPX and their consecration of bishops in 1988 were utterly contrary to the ultramontane system. By placing Catholic doctrine and tradition above obedience to authority, Archbishop Lefebvre in effect challenged ultramontanism’s foundational assumptions. I am not sure, however, that the FSSPX (and later the FSSP) fully grasped what was happening. I get the sense they adhered to a paradigm that all was perfect in the Church prior to Vatican II  – that the Church’s afflictions were attributable to infiltrators and dissenters. And,  after achieving reconciliation with the Vatican, the FSSP certainly labored to project an image of alignment with an authoritarian and infallible papacy. 

To the traditionalists could be added the “conservatives”  – which the progressive establishment hardly distinguishes from the traditionalists. From the late 1960’s onward they espoused a radical ultramontanism, understanding the progressives primarily as “dissenters” from authority. For the conservatives, just like their 19^th century predecessors, the papacy is a defender of Christian morality in the secular world, and the omnipotent guardian of doctrinal purity within the church.  This was often juxtaposed to the feebleness of the national hierarchies, which the conservatives usually viewed as ineffectual bureaucrats. Yet in fact,  the papacy itself, not just the bishops of the local churches, was usually reluctant to be directly drawn into conflict with either the liberal forces in the Church or the governing powers of the Western secular world.

Pope Francis has attempted to revive progressive Conciliarism and make it final and irreversible. To do this,  he has made the most extreme assertions of ultramontane authority in history. So far, his most salient “achievements” de jure in ruling the Church have been the attempted institutionalization of divorce within Catholicism and the launching of a campaign of repression of Catholic traditionalism. He has also adopted or tolerated the policy positions of the ruling secular powers on a broad range of issues – totally in harmony with the Catholic liberals.  His actions are very often accompanied by intemperate language denouncing perceived adversaries – similar to the rhetorical style of many progressives. 2)

Yet,  after 8 years,  the pope’s actions still fall short of the demands of his progressive allies.  Further papal initiatives – to introduce married and female clergy,  to regularize homosexuality, to explore a “synodal” system of  governance – have stalled. The hierarchs of the Catholic church remain, in general,  extremely unwilling to criticize publicly Pope Francis.  We do not fully know what is going on behind the scenes. Whatever its source, however, internal Church resistance has obviously slowed the progressive onslaught. Once again, in the eyes of the progressives,  the stagnation of the post-Humanae Vitae Church has returned.  In places like Germany they therefore feel empowered to take matters into their own hands – with, so far, a feeble public reaction from the Vatican. 

We must remember, after all, that the Catholic Church rests on the voluntary adherence of the faithful throughout the world. National and family support for remaining Catholic continues to erode – even in Poland.  In most places the Church also lacks the resources to offer the valuable patronage of an establishment (like that of the Church of England). In the aftermath of the Council the majority of the Catholic laity in the developed world have ceased to practice their faith. In some places many have gone further and declared their public exit from the Church (Germany) or become evangelical protestants  (throughout Latin America and to some extent in the United States). Even the remaining  practicing Catholics often have little understanding of Catholic doctrine; their adherence to the rules of the Faith regarding sexual morality is also limited. 

Thus, just as after the French Revolution, the fundamental challenge to the Church –  evangelizing the modern world  – still remains outstanding,  Now, however, the majority of the Catholic clergy and faithful stand in need of evangelization as well!  Ultimately this is a spiritual problem – a crisis of faith. A spiritual challenge can only by addressed by spiritual answers. Such a need cannot be met by a return to ultramontane centralization, strong-arm tactics and publicity tricks. Let us think also of our duty of evangelization to non-Catholics and non-Christians. For those outside the Church, ultramontanism is like ”preaching to the choir”  – absolutely incomprehensible. Endlessly reiterating Conciliar and progressive platitudes of the 1960’s and 70’s, that themselves are derived from prior secular ideologies, will have just as little success.  These policies have been imposed for decades in one way or another and have failed. 

In my opinion traditionalism is this answer, the real path of reform, the way out of the ultramontane/progressive dead end. That is because it rests not on the authority of the clergy or the support of the secular world, but on the individual commitment of the laity – not to some self-constructed world-view or to an image of the Church as it appeared in any one era, but to the fullness of Catholic tradition as it exists in every age. The traditionalists of the last twenty years or so  – laity, priests and families –  have become such because they experienced and then voluntarily lived the traditional mass. Thus, Catholic traditionalism fully respects the freedom of conscience of the individual believer and even presupposes it. It is not a sect, a cult, a “group” (Pope Francis) or an ideology but is a way of life and of faith that is freely available to all. Yet its practice so often works a total transformation of those who fully undertake to live according to its precepts. The traditional Catholic faith is thus the spiritual answer that believers and non-believers are secretly awaiting in this age of unbelief. It is now up to this who have lived it to make it available to the whole world. 

1. The situation of the Church under John Paul II and Benedict thus recalled that of Austria-Hungary in the years 1866 to 1918. It was a monarchy that had progressively lost its prior spiritual or ideological raisons d’etre ( such as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, the advocate of Catholicism in Central Europe, the leader of an embryonic German national state).  What remained to the central authority were the cult of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine (Emperor Franz Josef) and ongoing administrative responsibilities.  Meanwhile, ideologies that called into question the very existence of the Austro-Hungarian state (e.g., liberalism, socialism, Hungarian, Czech, Polish and even German nationalism as well as religious unbelief in general) proliferated – unchallenged and unrefuted.
2. Now in the many volumes of Pastor’s History of the Popes one certainly finds, particularly in the period between 1294 and 1559, papal utterances and deeds that are violent, extreme or even insane. These, however, occur most often in the context of papal secular political ambitions and the audience was political rivals, officials and ambassadors. Papal words were not broadcast all over the world – let alone published at the parish level. Nor were the popes of those years holding themselves out as spiritual leaders of the laity.

By 2013 – the year of Pope Benedict’s resignation  – the stalemate that has arisen at the end of the 1960’s had lasted for 45 years. The popes had not dared to force a showdown with the progressive forces on a significant issue. That would have called into question the Council. But neither would they adopt the progressive demands to explicitly adapt Catholic theology and morality to the dictates of the modern world,  which would render dubious the Church’s claims of continuity with its perennial traditions. The result was that the Vatican’s authority declined to a merely administrative role, while the pressure of secular society on the Church steadily increased.  The Church disguised this through the activity of John Paul II’s papacy and otherwise strove to maintain an image of infallibility, omnipotence, harmony of past and present, and agreement among all elements of the Church. The result was best described as “managed decline.” 

Pope Francis’s election brought a recommitment to the progressive agenda of the 1960’s along with a radical revival of ultramontane authoritarianism. Thus, his regime strongly resembles the reign of Paul VI – at least as it existed up to 1970. In one extreme recent example, if Paul VI had imposed on the entire Church radical changes in liturgy, so Pope Francis has now undertaken to compel the traditionalist Catholics to adopt the Novus Ordo. An entire population of Catholics – priests, religious orders, monasteries schools and laity  – previously in official good standing with the Church, have been reduced overnight to outcasts.  Prior papal legislation, commitments and agreements to the contrary – such as the regimes established for the Ecclesia Dei communities –  have been revoked. The Vatican has published a set of implementation measures that have centralized authority to an unheard-of degree – regulating even the content of parish bulletins!

And this anti-Traditionalist “crusade” is but one example among many. From the first day of his pontificate,  Pope Francis rejected the application to himself of any of the customs, laws and rules of the church. He routinely disregards the rulings and statements of his own Vatican officials.   A whole series of Catholic congregations and orders (like the Order of Malta) have been placed under the rule of papal commissioners. The same is now true of the entire Italian church in regard to Francis’s legislation on divorce. The pope has received the resignation of one entire country’s episcopate (Chile) and later of individual bishops in other countries (Germany and France). A class of bishop emerged that, after proferred resignation, continues in office only at the discretion of the pope. The Vatican has asserted centralized control over contemplative religious monasteries and orders, on the establishment of any new religious congregation and, most recently, on the term of office of the leadership of the so-called movements. In the United States, Francis has intervened directly and repeatedly in the affairs of the national bishops’ conference and even in American domestic politics. (e.g., the management of USCCB meetings, the status of politicians who promote abortion, the recognition of New Ways Ministry)

Pope Francis has added to his 1960’s progressivism publicity techniques borrowed from the repertoire of John Paul II. Gigantic papal events and voyages continue.  Papal statements, interviews and books proliferate.  A vast papal public relations apparatus has come into being at the Vatican and beyond – often in league with the secular press. (e.g., Vatican Insider, Crux, Rome Reports)   Francis has progressively refined this system over the years to focus it ever more closely on its designated role as a vehicle for propagating his image and thoughts.

The centralizing tidal wave at the Vatican has been reproduced down to the lowest level of the Church. The existence of Catholic Church’s traditional organizational form at the base – the parish – was increasingly called into question. The Archbishop of New York has openly speculated about a reorganization in which all Church property would be vested in the Archdiocese – a step that would, when combined with the current term limits on pastors, effectively transform all New York parishes into chapels. In dioceses in Germany and in the United States (such as the Cincinnati and Hartford Archdioceses) plans are being implemented that provide for radical reductions in the number of parishes. In response, the Vatican has feebly tried to uphold parish rights under canon law. 

The changes in rhetoric and style are as significant as the concrete measures. The pope has divided the Church into friends and enemies.  For example, in the American context,  the pope has made absolutely clear what he thinks the role of Catholic media should be –  by singling out for praise the eminently conformist Catholic News Service while accusing its competitor, the “conservative” EWTN, of doing the work of the devil. His publicists carry on this campaign further, denouncing those who “criticize the pope” and, in the last month or two, speculating on how Francis can neutralize “rogue” prelates (his critics in the hierarchy ).  They also explain that Francis really shouldn’t care about those in the Church he hurts or “leaves by the wayside.”

The pope often employs against his conservative opponents the language and techniques of ultramontanism. In Traditionis Custodes, for example,  the pope sets up Church unity and the inviolability of the Council as absolute values.  Indeed, the Second Vatican Council  (and its implementing decrees) are described as  “dictated by the Holy Spirit.”  The pope has canonized representatives of Catholic modernity ( like Pope Paul VI!) thereby seeking to invest their polices with an aura of infallibility. Pope Francis himself claims to teach “with magisterial authority.”  One often gets the sense Francis is mocking the legalistic and traditional diction of certain of his enemies, as when he titles his motu proprio seeking to abolish traditionalism Traditionis Custodes  (“Guardians of Tradition”!)

The culture of the Catholic Church under Francis has been rightly described as Orwellian.  The great advocate of dialogue never communicates with those who question his policies or who are the recipient of his attacks. Effeminate rhetoric (tenderness; accompaniment) contrasts with brusque commands and coarse denunciations.  Advocacy of a “synodal” church proceeds hand-in-hand with extreme centralization. The apostle of unity within the Church excludes whole sections of believers without a second thought.  Truly the regime of Francis can be called totalitarian ultramontanism!

Yet the pope’s totalitarian ultramontanism has a radically limited scope.  The most obvious constraint on Francis is the power of the Catholic progressives,  the media, and the institutions of Western civil society. Francis is absolutely dependent on their support. But their backing is not at all unconditional but depends on the pope continuing to advance their agenda.  Whenever Francis’s Vatican has been perceived as wavering in this mission,  the progressive powers, like the German church, have summarily rejected its (and his) authority. Just recently, Francis and the leadership of his upcoming conference on synodality have had to abjectly apologize to the progressive New Ways Ministry in the US.

In his direct interactions with the institutions governing the Western world, the pope pursues policies that are both totally secular and largely identical with the positions advocated by the media. So, Pope Francis has precisely implemented the dictates of the establishment regarding suspension of religious services because of Covid. I should add that the relationship – often scandalous –  between the Vatican and the Western financial powers has never been closer.

Resistance within the Church to Pope Francis has, however, also emerged from the other end of the spectrum, even if it is, in contrast to the progressive challenges, most often not publicly disclosed. Only a few prelates from this quarter – generally retired or previously removed from their positions – criticize the pope openly. Nevertheless, the publication of a book by the “pope emeritus” and Cardinal Sarah helped to derail Francis’s push for a  married clergy. The pope’s acceptance of divorce in Amoris Laetitia and his accompanying measures have by no means been received enthusiastically everywhere. Indeed,  it took blatant manipulation by the Vatican to obtain in the first place from the synods on the subject something that Francis could call approval of his marriage policies. Francis has had to publicly employ strong-arm tactics with the American hierarchy to block their policies on opposition to abortion. Finally, bishops throughout the world generally have been slow in signing on to Francis’s war against traditionalists. 

Thus, certainly in the opinion of certain progressives, the organizational deadlock that existed prior to Francis’s papacy has reemerged.  The tug-of-war continues between the advocates of radical change and the upholders of some form of Catholic tradition.  The debate on synodality in Rome and  in Germany  – which really often is about other substantive issues such as married and female priests – may well bring this conflict to a head. 

What a strange fate for ultramontanism! A set of policies that was supposed to secure the doctrine of the Church from internal enemies and preserve her independence from secular control has instead facilitated the greatest crisis of belief in the Church’s history along with her most abject subjection to the “temporal power” – not that of monarchs as in the past, but of the media, banks, NGOs,  universities and, increasingly, “democratic” governments (including China!). The most extreme assertions of ultramontanism (such as those by Pope Francis) coincide with today’s total humiliation of the Church. Is it a failure of trying to achieve spiritual objectives through the application of organizational techniques?  In any case, the need for evangelizing the world that arose after the religious collapse of the French Revolution remains unmet even today, as a whole, by the institutional Church.   

In the first installment of these historical reflections, I briefly reviewed the triumph and maturity of “ultramontanism” in the Catholic Church. Fundamentally a defensive strategy, it aimed at block-like unity, centralized control and absolute subordination to superiors. Especially up to 1945, its catalogue of achievements was remarkable. Yet,  like all defensive stances, it could not be prolonged forever.  At some point a counterattack must be undertaken  – for otherwise the enemy, having familiarized himself over time with a static opponent, will find a path to break through….

The Second Vatican Council convened in 1962. In no prior council had both the freedom from overt secular control and papal dominance over the proceedings been so assured. 2) The course and outcome of the council was determined by a new alliance of the papacy with internal progressive forces. Paul VI then enjoyed almost unlimited scope of action in implementing the council throughout the Catholic world.

The management of the Council and its subsequent implementation were truly the greatest triumph of ultramontanism. For no previous pope had radically and systematically changed the liturgy and the forms of Catholic piety  (e.g., the rules governing fasting,  the architecture and decoration of churches) virtually overnight. Paul VI found active supporters for his mission of change. A whole legion of clergy was inspired to forcefully drag into the modern Church the benighted sectors of the laity and their own less “enlightened” fellow clergy and religious. But, on the whole, resistance was minimal – so effective had been the inculcation of ultramontane obedience over the generations.  Of course,  the customs and traditions of the Church had likely lost their grip on much of the Catholic world through the ultramontane understanding of obedience to authority and adherence to legal rules as the source of their legitimacy. 

But even while still in session, the Council had unleashed forces that shattered the closed ultramontane world.  For the progressive clergy, empowered by Paul VI,  undertook to directly reverse the theology, teachings on personal morality and the governing structures of the Church – all the things that hindered complete reconciliation with the world. For internally, the Council and its aftermath may have been revolutionary. But viewed from outside, these changes were completely conformist, as the Church adopted the worldview, vocabulary and even the dress of the secular world of the 1960’s. The guiding Conciliar principles of aggiornamento and “reading the signs of the times” had in fact subordinated the Church to secular society far more thoroughly than had been conceivable under the European monarchies of the 18^th century, the Holy Roman Empire of the Gregory VII’s day,  or the Roman empire in the 4^th century. None of these historical powers had disposed of means (such as news media in the modern sense) capable of reaching into the life of each individual Catholic.  Truly,  it was a new, monumental  “Constantinian shift!”  And it was in these very years of the Council that the Western establishment’s attitude to the Church began to progressively change from a politically dictated posture of respect to an overt, intensifying hostility: starting with Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 drama The Deputy and culminating in an across-the-board critique of  “retrograde” Catholicism, above all, the Church’s teachings on sexual morality.

These developments came to a head with the storm over Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae. The pope could not obtain obedience to his decree – not only from the “rebels” but also from the religious orders, Catholic universities and even entire episcopal conferences. For Paul VI found himself confronting not only internal opponents,  but also modern “civil society” and its media, which stood behind the rebellious elements. It was a previously unthinkable breach in ultramontane discipline.  Truly, the Council, which had marked the high water mark of ultramontanism, had now administered to it its greatest defeat!

As to papal authority,  the result was deadlock. Paul VI would not withdraw his encyclical  – but neither did he attempt to insist on its enforcement.  The same impasse was true of many other doctrines and rules of the church.  A state of permanent, unacknowledged “civil war” from now on  prevailed in a Church in which a substantial part of the Catholic establishment either denied or understood in a new non – literal way what had been previously fixed and certain doctrine.  To give just one example, papal infallibility  – a foundation stone of ultramontanism  – was widely either denied outright (Hans Küng’s Infallible? – an Inquiry (1971)) or, more subtly, had its origins called into question (Hubert Wolf ’s The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio (2013)). The progressives did not necessarily see any need of respecting the “views” (Eamon Duffy) of the Vatican.  

Of course, some leaders of the Church – and not just those resident in the Vatican – continued to resist these interpretations and tried to preserve Catholic doctrine as traditionally understood.  Popes John Paul II and Benedict took numerous actions and made frequent statements on the liturgy, Catholic education, Catholic doctrine on sexual morality, etc.  Like Humanae Vitae, these were mostly ignored.  Disciplinary measures to impose order on the Jesuits (under John Paul II) or on American religious sisters (under Benedict) ended in capitulation by the Vatican.  For there was very little the popes could do. To directly confront the progressive establishment would in short order draw the media into the fray. That would reveal clearly that the alleged Conciliar reconciliation of the Church with the modern world had failed. Moreover, I suspect the popes feared that a large portion of the laity would likely follow the media.  

This reluctance of the popes during this period (1970-2013) to act against the progressive forces and their institutions was not just dictated by tactical considerations.  All these popes shared at least to a limited extent the opinions and goals of the progressives. And they were also desirous of a favorable presentation by the media. Peter Seewald’s biography of Pope Benedict reveals this obsessive concern of the Vatican with the pope’s image in the press.

There was no longer any question of recreating the pre-conciliar unity of belief and practice. At most, the popes could achieve a “tilt” in the direction of Catholic tradition – mainly through episcopal appointments. Even here the results were erratic. Yet, within the constraints outlined above, under  John Paul II there was an “ultramontane revival.”  John Paul II gained prestige from his role in the collapse of communism and his charismatic public persona. He adopted to a great extent the style of secular politicians and regimes. That even extended to features imported from the repertoire of the totalitarian states of the Eastern bloc (e.g., youth days and festivals; massive orchestrated public appearances).  The result was a renaissance of the papal image – appealing to so many at the time. The cult of “John Paul the Great” was born. 

The “neo-ultramontane” wave generated an immense amount of activity on the part of the partisans of the “Polish Pope” – especially in the United States and mostly among those outside the clerical establishment. Papal infallibility was reemphasized by these activists and now extended far beyond the 1870 definitions.  The election of the pope was now “God’s choice.”  The articles contained in Civilta Cattolica, because they were cleared by the Vatican Secretary of State, took on an aura of infallibility. The infallibility of Humanae Vitae was proposed. The stalemate of the post-Conciliar Church was recast as a struggle between papal authority and “dissenters.” Although such positions remained unofficial, they are indicative of the pro-papal surge under John Paul II. 

The new papalism, however, had to account for the tolerance of John Paul II for the progressive forces. The explanation that was found was the Pope’s need to avoid “schism.” This is, of course, a degenerate ultramontane understanding, in which preserving the external appearance of unity takes precedence over ensuring its actual substance. 

Another aspect of the neo-ultramontane era – sparked by the style and restless activity of John Paul II – was the obsession with the political aspects of the papacy and the Vatican. A whole legion of reporters, “information entrepreneurs” and, later, internet personalities concerned themselves with the internal affairs of the Vatican. In considering any issue of Catholicism it became usual to include speculation on Vatican personnel moves. Actions having the greatest importance for each individual Catholic were portrayed as the product of changes in the leadership of, and even within, Vatican dicasteries. Do I need to mention all the Vatican novels published in this era? – some of them informative, others ludicrous. Whatever might be the Vatican’s actual authority over the Church, this focus on Rome demonstrated that an unhealthy ultramontanism was alive and well.

We should mention at this point the ever-growing bureaucratization of the Church after the Council. Despite all the disorders within the Church,  offices, “apostolates” and administrators increased. As the ranks of clergy and religious declined in the post-Conciliar chaos, the number of lay employees grew exponentially. The clergy were also assimilated to bureaucrats. A retirement age was now set for bishops, and they increasingly were moved about from diocese to diocese.  At the local level, term limits began to be imposed on pastors. Added to this mix was an extreme degree of legalism. The result was an increased perception of the Church as a secular organization like the United Nations, a governmental agency, the EU headquarters or, later, a very large NGO (non-governmental organization)

Towards the end of John Paul II’s papacy, and during the whole of Benedict XVI’s reign, the Church and in particular the Vatican had to face ever increasing difficulties. The fundamental issue of the decline of belief and practice of the Faith within the Church herself had not been resolved. The Vatican bureaucracy became a cesspool of careerism, incompetence, and financial corruption.  The documentation that has been disclosed on the career of Cardinal McCarrick reveals how little John Paul II understood of the appointments he was charged with making.  The scandals of sexual abuse, the conduct of the leaders of the Legionaries of Christ and financial misdeeds at the Vatican opened up new fronts for relentless secular attack on the Church from 2002 to the present day. Pope Benedict was utterly unable to contend with either the media or his own Vatican bureaucracy.  Indeed,  the pope’s enemies in the latter organization resorted to outright treason to block Benedict’s initiatives. 

Faced with rising tide of challenges,  these popes seem to have slipped into a fantasy world – at least if popular biographies are any guide.  According to George Weigel’s Witness to Hope (1999), John Paul II seems to have been of the opinion that his innumerable voyages thorough the world were having major political effects (only in Poland was that conclusion perhaps justified). In Seewald’s biography (Benedict XVI: ein Leben (2020), pope Benedict is reported to have thought, upon ascending the papal throne, that all issues of the Church already had been favorably resolved by his predecessor. To quote another example, at several Vatican-sponsored conferences it was proposed that excess priests be shifted from the developed to the third world – this, at a time when the churches of these “advanced” countries were in fact relying more and more on imported African, Asian and Latin American priests.

In the same vein, as the popes’ real power within the Church declined, papal visions of global leadership grew. The bishop of Rome now was described as the “pope of all mankind,” a kind of worldwide spiritual advocate. Thus, John Paul II presided over interfaith assemblies at Assisi. Pope Benedict lectured in abstract terms on the relationship of faith and reason to the unbelieving German parliament.

Most importantly, the need for a renewed evangelization – now primarily within the Church herself – still had not been met. The opening to the world had been a one-way street in which the world instructed the Church. The marriage of the Council with ultramontanism had produced a culture that was far more provincial than the ghetto of 1958 so derided by the advanced Catholic circles of that time. The art and music of the Church by 2013 was either kitsch or uninspired copies of modern aesthetic orthodoxy. The increasing lack of funds limited even that activity.

The papacy had indeed survived the turmoil it had itself created in wake of the Council. But the Conciliar papacy had not preserved the Church’s unity in doctrine and practice – the reason ultramontanism had been advocated in the first place. The Vatican increasingly functioned as a mere administrative center, while all kinds of developments, heterodox or not, proceeded autonomously. In 2013 Pope Benedict resigned. It was a crushing blow to the papacy and absolutely unimaginable under pre-conciliar ultramontanism.  

1. The window is contemporary with the encyclical. Mater et Magistra is also noteworthy in the history of ultramontanism. William F. Buckley’s public disagreement with the pope’s conclusions – on economics – was up till then virtually unheard of.
2. With the exception of any understandings that may have been reached prior to the Council with the Soviet Union. But in avoiding a specific critique of the communist world the Council was only following the lead of the Western secular establishment which, by that time, had largely committed to an ideology of “peaceful coexistence.”

The actions of present Pope have put incredible stress on the Church’s constitution – the papal absolute monarchy.  I’d like to offer some reflections on this system of government: ultramontanism.   To understand it, though,  we have to go back in history, starting with the reign of Pius IX when the ultramontanist regime received its “classic” form.  I will focus on history  – what actually happened  – as opposed to theological considerations. 

In the wake of the French Revolution the Church seemed to have collapsed when the pope died in French captivity in 1799. She survived  – but never attained again the identification of the Catholic Faith with state, culture and society that had existed prior to 1789 in Catholic Christendom. The Church was henceforward a minority component of European society – even if one that remained enormously influential. The new mission was thus clear:  the Church needed to re-evangelize Europe and the world  – to rebuild the faith and her own institutions.  

By the conclusion of the First Vatican Council in 1870 the face of the Catholic Church had indeed been renewed. What were the features of the new regime?  

The Vatican Council of course was most famous for defining the infallible authority – under certain defined circumstances – of the Pope. But in practice  (the “spirit of Vatican I”)  the pope was henceforward treated as de facto infallible in all his decisions, at least in the sense in that no Catholic could question them. Any kind of discussion, let alone criticism, of the Pope was strictly prohibited.

The Pope’s immediate jurisdiction was extended directly to the entire world. All authority in matters of the faith, organization  and liturgy was centralized in the Vatican. It was expected that normally the pope should have sole right to appoint bishops. Obedience to ecclesiastical authority was elevated to a central position in the Catholic faith. The Church’s independence from secular authority at every level was likewise proclaimed.  Obviously, ultramontanism required adjustments to previously existing structures within the Church that had other organizational principles. For example, Leo XIII established in 1893 a Benedictine Confederation under an Abbot Primate,  headquartered in  Rome,  that embraced the previously autonomous Benedictine congregations. 

Going beyond these rules of governance, the pope assumed the position of chief spiritual leader and teacher of the Catholic Church. His image and personality were made known to Catholics throughout the world. It was expected that devotion would be paid to him. 

Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmeyer (one of the opponents of ultramontanism at Vatican I) summarized the effects of Vatican I:

I went in a bishop and came out a sacristan.

The ultramontane regime was a reaction to the historic Gallicanism of the French Church and to the recent clashes over state interventions in the governance of the Church (e.g., in Prussia, Spain and Russia). To this was added the perceived weakness of  national hierarchies and individual bishops in confronting secular governments. Loyalty to the Pope was cemented by the fierce anti-papal focus of most of the avowed adversaries of the Church – and their subjection to the powers of this world. For example, much of  the opposition to Pius IX was clearly dependent on support from Prussia(a predominantly Protestant state!), on the German secular universities, etc.

But other developments which, at first glance, might have seemed hostile to the Catholic Church, encouraged ultramontanism as well. For example, the French Revolution and its successor, 19^th century liberalism, had overthrown or drastically weakened rival regimes, such as the French monarchy, that previously had claimed a role in the government of the Church. It had expropriated or destroyed vested clerical institutions across Europe.  By default, the papacy stood alone. Of course, in the days of Pius IX the Church rejected such theories ( like Cavour’s “free Church in a free state”). Do we not also detect in ultramontanism the influence of another 19^th century development:  the Napoleonic regimes? Under Napoleons I and III  all power in France had been concentrated in one absolute, charismatic leader  – originally, as a bulwark against revolutionary excesses. 

Now ultramontanism was not achieved in a day. The system took many decades to perfect. Did not the Austrian emperor’s veto of cardinal Rampolla’s candidacy for the papacy – an extreme un-ultramontane action– take place as late as 1903? The Pope himself was still surrounded and framed by the elaborate ritual trappings of the past: the noble guards, the fans, the sedia gestatoria. For the first 60 years after the Vatican council the Pope remined a “prisoner of the Vatican.” 

Yet, as the years went on, the ultramontane elements of Catholicism increased. The last state in Europe that could be considered to be remotely a Catholic monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian empire, dissolved in 1918. In 1929 a new peace agreement was signed with Italy, giving the Holy See once more possibilities of freedom and independence. And as formerly mission territories such as the United States grew in importance the ultramontane element of the Church also increased. Developments in technology and communications (such as radio) also assisted in spreading the message of the Vatican and the Pope throughout the Catholic world and beyond.

Between 1846 and 1958,  the Church accomplished many great things. First and foremost she did not disintegrate under the hammer blows of liberalism in the second half of the 19th century and she survived the far more violent attacks of anticlerical, communist and national socialist regimes in the first half of the 20th century. Aided by the spread of European colonial regimes,  the Catholic Church now became truly universal.  Did not the United States, a former colony, advance between 1840 and 1960 from the status of an outlying mission territory to one of the strongest and wealthiest national churches in the world? Analogous progress occurred throughout the then vast British empire. Innumerable new congregations and orders sprang up, mostly devoted to an active apostolate of some kind: education, health care, the missions, etc. In the Catholic world entire nations sought a new, closer link between Church and state (Ireland, Spain and Portugal) 

By the reign of Pius XII a new level of respect also seemed to have been achieved at least in that part of the world dominated by the United States and its allies. Catholic politicians were playing a key role in many of the nations on the continent of Europe. In the United States itself,  a new era of harmony with the non-Catholic world seemed to have been established.  Concrete evidence of this is the vast number of churches and schools that were built in the 20 years after the end of the Second World War. Did this not demonstrate the great success of the Church – as reformed under Pius IX?

And the successes of the Church were not merely material or measured by numbers.  New devotions such as Lourdes and Fatima, new saints such as St. Theresa of Lisieux exercised a worldwide influence. A whole new galaxy of apologists testified to their Catholic faith, often using the literary forms of the novel or poetry.   Many individual artists  (e.g., Gaudi, Bruckner) devoted their efforts to the Catholic Church. Furthermore,  the Church rediscovered its treasures of chant and of medieval philosophy. She developed Catholic positions in regard to the totally new economic situation that had arisen in the course of the 19th century. Finally, the 20th century produced legions of new martyrs  – in Mexico, Spain, the Soviet Union, after World War II throughout Eastern Europe and, during this entire era,  across the colonial/ developing world ( e.g., China). 

The Cathedral of Covington contains an unusual series of windows illustrating dogmatic and administrative decrees of popes and councils. They are evidence of the central role that the pope and the Vatican had assumed in Catholic culture by 1914. (Above) The proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pius IX; (below) a detail of the window showing Pius X issuing his decree on church music.

But there was another side of the coin. Despite all the successes and the relentless whirlwind of activity there was a palpable narrowing of the Church after Vatican I. The Church seemed to have less and less relevance to the secular world, to be more and more remote and turned in on itself. The great hopes in the immediately preceding period of a grand Catholic recovery and of the reconversion of Europe  – such as those of the Oxford movement,  led by Newman,  or of German Romanticism culminating in the regime of King Louis I of Bavaria – had evaporated. A great uniformity of belief and  practice was achieved – among the believers. But if we expanded the definition of the Church to include the entire baptized population, the  results in key Catholic countries were less impressive. Didn’t communists play a tremendous political role in France and Italy post-1945? And the cultural influence – even dominance –  of these Stalinist parties in those years was even more impressive. 

Perceptive observers noted problems early on in the seemingly solid framework of  ultramontane culture. For example, Joris-Karl Huysmans asked why most of the prominent Catholic apologists of his age were converts – not the products of the Catholic educational system.  He saw the ugliness of much of the art and architecture of the Church of that time as a truly satanic influence. Huysmans also had reservations about the products of Catholic seminaries in France, and early on spotlighted certain abuses that would become all too obvious towards the end of the 20th century. 

These “spiritual” and “cultural”  deficiencies seemed to increase as time went on even though ever greater material resources became available.  As evidence, compare the 1950s edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia in the US with its predecessor of 1907-13, or the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington with the 1918 church of Saint Vincent Ferrer in New York City. That eminent university president Robert Maynard Hutchins (who had enabled the teaching of neo-scholastic philosophy at the University of Chicago) is reported to have frankly told the assembled presidents of the Catholic colleges of the United States what a mediocre job they were doing. And, as we know now, many individuals of doubtful faith or morality – and sometimes both – entered the priesthood and the religious life in the last great wave of expansion after the Second World War.

Aside from its spiritual problems,  ultramontanism entailed a number of practical difficulties. By centralizing all authority in the Pope the entire Catholic Church now became involved in the issues of any one particular church. Grand, centrally directed  papal initiatives such as the reform of Church music under Pius X also created very negative side effects  – attributable in part to the difficulty of attempting detailed management of local affairs from the Vatican.  The very nature of the ultramontanist regime tended to advance the careers of bureaucrats, builders and administrators rather than spiritual leaders among the bishops.

The claims of papal authority created expectations that could never be fulfilled. There was disappointment – unspoken or not –  at the Ralliement under Leo XIII, the reaction of the Church to the French secularization decrees in 1905, the papal disavowal of Action Francaise, the Vatican’s management in Germany of the relations of the Catholic Church and the Catholic political party with the Nazi regime, among other actions. Sometimes this criticism came from the left and sometimes from the right. But a common thread was the expectation that in the 20^th century the Church needed to  make heroic gestures in opposition to the forces of the world. The cautious and perhaps prudent reserve of the Vatican seemed to contrast with its grand claims of omnipotence.

Characteristic of the last years of ultramontanism under Pius XII was a circa-1960 study that compared  the management structure of the Catholic Church with an American business corporation – General Electric, I believe. The comparison, according to most reports I have seen, was favorable to the Church. Yet  in this analysis, the Church explicitly assumes the role of a minority participant in the ruling secular “civil society” of the West. Similarly,  around the same time the popular Catholic historian Henri Daniel-Rops affected to discern, from the perspective of ultramontanism, a  positive side even to events like the separation of Church and State in France in 1905:

 (I)t marked the end of Gallican tendencies, which was a notable contribution towards Pius X’s effort to strengthen the hierarchy and centralize ecclesiastical government. Henceforward there would be no intermediary between the pope on the one hand and the clergy and Christian people of France on the other. The bishops would be chosen directly by Rome….1)

Late ultramontanism thus was now reaching political conclusions almost the opposite of those of Pius IX. 

By 1930, at the latest, there was also a revival of progressive Catholicism. As always, leftism proceeds from the existence of very real problems and issues. There was a real sense that it was inadequate for the Church to remain a society within a society, separate from the world.  What was necessary was the reconversion of the entire world to Christianity.  But almost from the beginning less wholesome views mingled with these aspirations. What started as frustration with the timid “bourgeois” nature of ultramontanist Catholic witness and the Church’s excessive conformity to this world, developed into at first admiration and then uncritical acceptance of 20^th century secular regimes.  Initially there was undisguised jealousy of the alleged successes of totalitarian movements, especially communism, in inspiring their followers and in “solving the problems” of modern man. Dorothy Day is a case study in this. Later,  of course,  with Jacques Maritain, the focus of these feelings of Catholic inferiority switched to the United States and the democratic society. 

During the reign of Pius XII a pervasive culture of internal criticism emerged within the Church. Given the restrictions on Catholic discourse,  it often took the disguised form of historical, liturgical, philosophical, or artistic studies. By 1959 all aspects of Catholic tradition were routinely depicted as corrupt and purely arbitrary products of historical circumstance. It seemed the entire Church had taken the wrong direction even as early as the 4th century (the famous “Constantinian” transformation).  A truly revolutionary situation was emerging, at least within the Western European churches, when Pope John XXIII succeeded to the papacy.  And the actors in this budding revolution weren’t representatives from the fringes, but the official intellectuals and clerical bureaucrats of the Catholic Church herself.  It was a revolution from above, by the establishment, that was in the making. The regime of ultramontanism at the Vatican itself seemed completely incapable of discerning what was going on even among its own proteges.  

1. Daniel-Rops, Henri, A Fight for God 1870-1939 Vol I at 221( John Warrington, transl.)( Image Books, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, 1967)

By Julia Meloni

2021 TAN Books, Gastonia NC

In the wake of the election of Pope Francis, the public became aware, either through hostile exposes or the self-serving boasting of its members and supporters,  of the coordinated activities of certain prelates that had fostered the election of the new pope.  This coterie had formed to discuss electing a liberal alternative to succeed John Paul II. After that initial goal failed, much the same team  – now perhaps unofficially – remained intact. With election of Jorge Bergoglio they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

Julia Meloni has written a succinct history of the St. Gallen Mafia. It’s a story that often reads like the novels of  Malachi Martin – especially The Final Conclave (1978) or Windswept House (1996) –  but is all too true.  Meloni has diligently sorted through the published material on the subject – much of which is online – and has put this into a coherent narrative. 

Who were the key players here? Above all there is Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, who exercised a role as the public voice of the liberal opposition under John Paul II and Benedict. Sandor Magister once described his publicly expressed alternative views as the commentary of an “antipope”; Meloni calls Martini an “ante-pope” in view of his status as the ideal progressive dauphin. Others of the left wing of the European episcopate – such as Cardinals Kaspar and Danneels –  also worked, if in a less aggressively public manner, in this direction.  Then there was Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, the representative of the Vatican bureaucracy and diplomatic corps, who assumed the role of an anti-Ratzinger leader and coordinator. These ideological and political players joined to further a program of further “reform” of the Catholic doctrines on homosexuality, divorce and remarriage etc. At a relatively early date and well prior to the 2005 conclave, they identified Jorge Bergoglio as a leading candidate for realizing their aims. Meloni describes well all these – and other – personalities.

But it would be a mistake if the reader would conclude that a sound Church had been subverted by a nefarious conspiracy. A cabal like the St. Gallen Mafia only exists because of the secretive, non-transparent clerical culture in which it operated and which continues to dominate the highest levels of the Catholic Church today. It is a milieu that encourages underhanded conduct and palace intrigue (the disclosures of Cardinal McCarrick’s career illustrate this well). 

Furthermore, the “reforms” for which the St Gallen Mafia agitated were entirely public. Cardinal Martini might have been their most brazen exponent among high-ranking clerics. But the same ideas were and are being spouted at every Jesuit-affiliated institution of higher learning in the entire world – and at most other Catholic universities as well. And had not  demands like those of the St. Gallen Mafia already been made at the Detroit “Call to Action” conference in 1976 – an event organized by the episcopal leadership of the Catholic Church in America? True, under John Paul II liberals had to “keep their heads down” to certain degree. But the reformers of St. Gallen could rely on a strong base of institutional sympathy and support for their ideas. 

In a similar vein, it is evident from this book (and others) how incapable were Popes John Paul II and Benedict of confronting their ideological and political opponents within the Church. On the contrary, they seemed to go out of their way to flatter Cardinal Martini. Benedict also tried to remain on good terms with many of his progressive colleagues from Germany. Meloni  insinuates the existence of internal pressure exercised on Ratzinger to block the Pope from pursuing his conservative revival. But do we really need to hypothesize such obscure forces? Wouldn’t Ratzinger’s own prior history of dealing with Catholic progressives in academia and the hierarchy – as well as his political ineptitude –  have made his failures probable?

Finally, there are the conclaves. But weren’t the electors free to vote? Were they entirely gullible as to what was going on in the Vatican and progressive circles? And was it not probable that a Cardinal from the Jesuit order would share the ideology and political practices of most of his fellow Jesuits – also after being elected Pope? 

So I would qualify Julia Meloni’s admirable little book as follows. Yes, I accept that progressive individuals did band together to frustrate conservative reform and elect one of their number as pope. But these intrigues only became possible in the context of deep seated and very public problems afflicting the faith and organization of the Roman Catholic Church. These are what made the election of Bergoglio possible.   In actions like issuing the encyclical Amoris Laetitia Pope Francis may be implementing the ideas of the St. Gallen Mafia – but isn’t he also realizing the decades-old, incessantly restated demands of the progressive Catholic establishment? Some future historian, who will have gained access to all the sources now hidden from our eyes, will be able to fully lay out these intricate interrelationships. For now, Julia Meloni’s book is good place to start. 

By Father Richard G. Cipolla

It is indeed difficult in these times in the Catholic Church for those of us who love the Tradition of the Catholic Church to have joy at the center of our lives.  The mean-spirited and dishonest attack on Tradition in the publication of the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes has been followed by statements by the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Archbishop Roche, that make it clear that these relics of the 1960s who are now in power in Rome are determined to erase from the Church’s memory the Roman Mass of Catholic Tradition. There are those of us who believe that the crisis of the Church today is no less severe than the crisis the Church faced when the “world woke up to find itself Arian”.  The Arian crisis was overcome not only because of the constant witness of great bishops like St. Athanasius to the Catholic faith but also because of the laity who continued to sing the liturgical hymns at Mass that proclaimed the full divinity of Christ as true God and true man.

I have been blessed in my retirement as a priest to be able to celebrate the Traditional Roman Mass in a number of parish churches both in my diocese and in other dioceses.  This past Sunday, thanks to the true graciousness of the pastor, I celebrated a Missa Cantata in a parish in Bayside, Queens, New York.  I remember the first time I celebrated Mass there over two years ago, perhaps even three years ago (the pandemic has made time fuzzy).  I remember a congregation of perhaps 50 people in a parish church whose ethnic roots are Polish, a small choir, and four altar servers.  This past Sunday the size of the congregation was well over 150 people, the choir had grown as well, and there were 15 altar servers, ages (my guess) from 9 to over 20.  The mix of people in the congregation was truly catholic:  old, middle aged, young, very young; various shades of black, brown and white; some women veiled others not, some men in ties, others in casual dress. 

A priest always knows when he is celebrating Mass whether the people in the congregation are “with him”.  There are times in my priesthood when I was celebrating the Novus Ordo Mass in a parish that despite my facing the people I felt alone, for so many of the people at that Mass were waiting for Mass to end.  Their obligation would be fulfilled, and then on to brunch.  Of course, there were always those at Mass who really believed their response to my “Pray, brethren…” expressed something real in their response: “May this sacrifice…” And a number of those people have since then discovered the Traditional Roman Mass as the embodiment of what that exchange between priest and people really means.  

At Mass this past Sunday there was no doubt that the bond between priest and people in the offering of the Sacrifice was truly there.  There was no sign of “traddie” stiffness or super-piety, just a group of heterogeneous Catholics happily entering into the Sacred Mysteries and coming to Holy Communion with grateful hearts.

I must say one more thing about the altar servers.  Before Mass all fifteen were in the sacristy and the camaraderie among them was inspiring to see.  It is neither reactionary nor misogynist to recognize and take joy in that special relationship that is the bond of male friendship, even at the level of “merely” serving at the altar together.  Of course, I hoped while watching this motley crew serving at the Mass that at least some would become priests.  But even if none of them become priests, because of their sense of that bond between them that comes from participating so closely in the awesomeness of the Mass, they will make good husbands and fathers, and good friends.  

I continue to love the season of Advent with its dark and cold that anticipates the coming of the Light.  But I do not like the darkness and the cold of a Church manufactured in the 1960s that tries to cancel Tradition and has forgotten that the three names of God are Truth, Goodness, and yes,–Beauty.

I recently read that the Berlin monastery of the order known as the “Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters” in the English-speaking world is to be closed and sold. The reason given is lack of vocations. It seems that only 11 sisters are left (aged between 40 and 84). These sisters – colloquially called the “Pink Sisters” because of the unusual color of their habit – have preserved their strictly cloistered community. The focus of their spirituality is Eucharistic adoration. Strangely, however, the nuns of the monastery of St. Gabriel and the Annunciation of Our Lady have not followed a prescribed order of prayer for decades. (“Ewiges Gebet hinter Gittern: die “Rosa Schwestern” in Berlin,” Katholisch.de, 10/12/2021)

I do not know if the closing of this monastery is connected in some way with reported Vatican initiatives to centralize control over contemplative religious life – and allegedly also to reduce the number of such communities. The list of orders and monasteries throughout the Catholic world declining or disappearing is also, of course, almost endless. But the monastery of St. Gabriel and the Annunciation of Our Lady is remarkable for several unusual features.

First, the church and cloister were built in 1933-37 under the National Socialist regime. It is not a very well known fact, but a fair number of Catholic churches were erected in Germany immediately prior to World War II. Construction continued, even as elsewhere in Germany individual laymen, priests and bishops were attacked or in some cases even killed, as Catholic publications and organizations were suppressed. It was only with the coming of the Second World War in 1939 that the regime launched a broader crackdown on Catholic religious life (especially schools and congregations).

Second, the “Pink Sisters” had been called to Berlin by Fr. Bernhard Lichtenberg, the provost of the Berlin cathedral (a Catholic diocese of Berlin had been established only in 1929). Fr. Lichtenberg had undertaken the audacious task of evangelizing this non-Catholic and even non-Christian city – at that time one of the greatest in the world. But he recognized that to succeed in such a work the support of contemplative religious prayer and of Eucharistic adoration would be needed. Therefore, he established a strictly cloistered monastery in the midst of secular Berlin. A vocal opponent of the regime, Fr. Lichtenberg went on to have numerous altercations with the Nazis, and in 1943 died of ill-treatment as he was being transported to Dachau concentration camp. (Kloster St. Gabriel und Kirche Mariae Verkündigung, de.wikipedia.org, read 11/27/2021)

I have often thought that neglect of the contemplative life was a not insignificant flaw in the otherwise admirable record of evangelization of the New York Archdiocese. For in New York, as in Berlin, a missionary Catholicism had to build up the faith in an alien environment. In New York, however, the focus was almost exclusively on apostolic action. In Manhattan the one remarkable exception was the establishment in 1909 of the order of Marie Reparatrice in the former parish of St. Leo – initially, against resistance of the Archbishop. These semi-contemplative sisters, dedicated to Eucharistic adoration, soon enjoyed great suceess in the city. For a long time their church remained a welcome island of contemplation even for non-Catholics. These sisters of “Mary Reparatrix” were destined to disappear in the wake of the Council – their church is now the site of a high-rise apartment building. ( The Churches of New York LXXXI: Losses 11)

Third, the architecture of the Berlin church and cloister may be surprising in its modernity. For, regardless of the dogmas proclaimed by that era’s National Socialist propaganda and by our present day intellectuals and academics, the architecture of the Third Reich (like its music and films) in fact resembled very much that of the previous Weimar republic and also that found elsewhere in the West. The style of church of St. Gabriel – especially its interior – is severe but elegant. Is this not “noble simplicity”? The complex of buildings is protected by the local German law governing historic monuments.

So the “Pink Sisters” came to Berlin in most difficult times. But they perhaps were prepared for that – hadn’t their umbrella organization, the “Steyler Missionaries” (aka the “Society of the Divine Word”), founded in 1875 by a German priest, had to start its existence in the Netherlands because of the persecution under Bismarck’s Kulturkampf? And the convent of St. Gabriel, once established, did persist – through the allied bombings, the horrifying fall of the city in 1945 and the subsequent decades-long division of the city into East and West Berlin. It is only in the age of Pope Francis and of the rich and progressive German church that the story of this contemplative community comes to an end. A precious refuge of peace, quiet and spirituality will be lost.

Lately we’ve read a series of appreciations of the past great men of the “Conservative Movement” in Chronicles magazine and elsewhere. These remembrances come at a time when the establishment of the United States is deploying its power in unprecedented ways in the courts, in academia, in the media, in the government, in the economy, in the government bureaucracies and even on the streets and at dinner tables in support of a quasi-totalitarian ideology. In so doing, it also demonstrates the abysmal failure of the said conservative movement to effect the slightest cultural change. But it also awakens in us a feeling of gratitude for those in the past who, sometimes at great professional cost to themselves, pointed out truths and pronounced opinions regardless of their acceptability to the establishment. Was that not something that, once upon a time, Americans, even progressives, professed to admire? ( e.g., John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage)

So far, among these published remembrances, I have missed the name of Thomas Molnar (1921-2010), although, especially in the light of the events of the last two years, I believe him to be by far the most perceptive of all these figures. When I last checked, only one of his many books has enjoyed a recent reprint.1) His many French books remain untranslated (into English, that is). I have found on the internet only one attempt to describe the man and his thought – and that from 2013. 2) It offers insights and provides valuable context – nevertheless, I was surprised to read a number of views attributed to Molnar which differed not only from what I had heard him say in private conversation, but also from what he had expressed repeatedly in his published works. Now Molnar was anything but a systematic ideologue – a role and a concept he detested. He loved to toss out new theories for discussion – even if his views on a given topic were still a work in progress. He definitely liked, when the occasion presented itself, to tweak the nose of “conservatives” and especially of “conservative Catholics.” So I could see encountering here and there unexpected and apparently contradictory views in his books, articles and correspondence. But certain remarks attributed to Molnar in this 2013 appreciation had the definite tendency of harmonizing his views with those of the American conservative mainstream, of reconciling him to their shadow establishment. But that is the very thing that Molnar utterly rejected – in fact he described the American conservative movement as a “failure.”  

What is the best way to describe Thomas Molnar? I am sure you want to hear in the first instance about his work and intellectual achievements, not about his biography and personality.  I met him frequently, starting in the early 1980s. I last spoke with him shortly before his death in 2010. Molnar himself rarely talked about his life, except where necessary to illustrate an argument he was making. Even his own late, supposedly autobiographical Moi, Symmaque (1999 ) draws on his own experiences not for their own sake, but to provide the concrete setting for his savage critique of this age.

Was Molnar a Catholic philosopher or intellectual,  as he is so often characterized? To answer that question we have to define “Catholic philosopher.” Molnar’s philosophy was the product of great erudition and of profound meditation on European and Catholic philosophy and history. This informed all his works. Molnar drew on the ancient philosophers with whom the medieval scholastics later contended and finally absorbed into their synthesis of Christianity and Greek thought. He often wrote on the role of the Church in history – ancient, medieval, and modern –  and of the need of the sacred to leaven the culture and partner with the state.  Molnar always asserted the spiritual nature and destiny of man and fought against ideological deviations of both left and right. The tragic fate of the Church in post-World War II modernity affected him deeply. If these are attributes of a Catholic thinker, then Molnar was preeminently such a man.

But if we mean by “Catholic” an author devoted to explaining and defending the politics, institutions, and personalities of the Church; an academic expounding and interpretating the texts of councils, encyclicals, and other ecclesiastical documents; a writer engaged in agitating and even proselytizing on behalf of the institutional Church – then Molnar was most definitely not a Catholic intellectual.  A review of his works shows that the official pronouncements of the Church play only a subordinate role in his understanding of the world. 

His comments to me about alleged Catholic greats and institutions of the 1980’s onward could be very unflattering indeed. After a notorious incident in which a lecture by  Cardinal Ratzinger was interrupted by loudly demonstrating homosexuals, he remarked that, given Ratzinger’s mumbled delivery and unprepossessing appearance,  “no wonder a homosexual would confront him!” ( Much later Molnar had a couple of personal encounters with Pope Benedict but remained cool regarding him). He attended a meeting in New York between Cardinals O’Connor of New York and Lustiger of Paris, Yes, Molnar said, one shouldn’t expect Richelieu meeting St. Augustine, but this was more like a get-together of two labor union bosses and their staffs. On several occasions in my presence he raised the ire of younger conservative Catholics by politely but emphatically stating his views of John Paul II.  He also talked of the “super-puritanical” Thomas Aquinas College and characterized the magazine First Things as the “black fruit” of the accommodation of Catholicism to American civil society.

This attitude reflected his experience of the Church. Regarding Catholicism, it was the sincere faith of one Catholic sister he had come to know in San Francisco that had made the greatest impression on him. It’s not by chance that in Molnar’s works Simone Weil is repeatedly favorably mentioned. And of course there was the idiosyncratic Georges Bernanos, for Molnar the model of a Catholic intellectual and the subject of Molnar’s first book. (Bernanos: his Political Thought and Prophecy, 1960)  One weekend Molnar even took the time to lead a session of a book club for us young (or at least younger) Catholics at the old St. Agnes church in New York – the topic was Bernanos’s The Diary of a Country Priest.

This serves to introduce one of his characteristics: he was a great listener. He would talk with everyone: college students, a Haitian taxi driver, assorted eccentric Traditionist Catholics, a dear Russian Orthodox friend and, at least once, a late-night radio host. From every encounter he seemed to gather new insights and new facts.  Molnar was ever the central European gentleman; however, you may gauge from the remarks quoted above that his observations could be biting and he did not necessarily suffer all fools gladly.

Related to this openness to new encounters was his love of travel. Obviously,  he journeyed repeatedly to France and Spain but also, when the opportunity presented itself, to Africa, Asia and throughout the “third world.”  I recall, for example, him talking about his recent journeys to Peru and Korea. The fruit of these encounters is found in early books on Africa, in later essays analyzing the developing world, as well as in anecdotes scattered throughout his works. After the fall of communism in Europe, of course, he regularly travelled to his native Hungary but also to places like Prague – which impressed him greatly (the architecture, not what was going on there at that time).

To get an idea of Molnar’s thought, let’s start with his notion of “civil society.“ Characteristic of modernity is the domination of all aspects of life by civil society: the complex of economic powers, media, educational and other institutions which actually rules today throughout the western world. Now civil society essentially reduces man to a consumer and a producer, to a cog in the economy. According to Molnar, the only role for man under the regime of civil society is business. Molnar described the ascent and supremacy of civil society and its culture,  in both the United States and then in Europe, in a series of critical works, mostly written in French and untranslated into English: Le Modèle Défiguré: L’Amérique de Tocqueville à Carter (1978); L’Americanologie: Triomphe d’un Modèle Planétaire? (1991); L’Hégémonie Libérale (1992); The Emerging Atlantic Culture (1994).

For Molnar, the cultural horrors of today are inherent in the ideologies of democracy and liberalism. But above all else is the direst crime of modernity: the severance of the sacred from the state and society. – the separation of Church and state. By cutting off the state from its transcendent support and from its natural ally, the Church, profane civil society had drastically weakened both, opening the door to the total secularization of society. 

The exemplar and current leader of the resulting culture is the United States. For here the liberal culture is innate and not, as in Europe,  an imposed regime, or the product of imitation. Additionally, the puritanical foundation of America ultimately gave birth to the characteristically American missionary zeal combined with the desire to reduce all issues to formulas that can be readily disseminated and applied. After World War II this culture conquered Europe,  assimilating and incorporating related local tendencies. 

The despotism of modern civil society has brought about an unprecedented leveling and coarsening of the inherited cultures. In lieu of the rich European (and non-European) traditional cultures, civil society has imposed a uniformity disguised by relentless activity. To the extent culture exists at all under civil society it inevitably assumes arbitrary and preposterous forms. Representative examples of this in Paris are the glass pyramid stuck in the courtyard of the Louvre or the Centre Pompidou. Everywhere he went, Molnar saw the triumph of ignorance, licentiousness, and rudeness. Again and again he was shocked by the rising tide of incivility he encountered on his annual trips to Europe: topless women on the beaches of a Spain so recently traditional, drivers running one off the road in France. On this side of the Atlantic, he was particularly horrified by the rudeness displayed by American children to their parents in the presence of strangers.

Molnar had written frequently and forcefully against leftism of all kinds  (e.g., La Gauche vue d’en Face (1970); Utopia, the Perennial Heresy (1967); Sartre: Ideologue of our Time (1968). Yet he saw the United States as being a “new Utopia” sharing the same problematic features with the leftist would-be transformers of the world. As he once put it,  the first step of political wisdom is to perceive that communism is wrong. The next is to realize (as had Orwell) that communism and the “West” are the same. But the final insight is that communism is only the preparation for the further expansion of the liberal cultural hegemony.  Such views brought him into direct conflict with the champions of the “American experiment” who grew increasingly dominant among American conservatives from 1989 onwards.

His views of the Second Vatican Council were similarly negative. For Molnar,  the Church at the Council surrendered its claims to unique truth and definitively accepted its subordinate status as a citizen of civil society, as one “pressure group“ (Molnar’s term)among many. This was illustrated by Church’s adoption of the techniques of the media  – such the endless series of papal interviews, starting with John Paul II. In these the popes lower themselves to the level of their journalistic partners in dialogue. Further, by diminishing cultic life by its liturgical changes, the Church opened the door further to the depredations of the surrounding desacralized society.

I recall many instances of Molnar’s disdain for modern society in both Europe and the United States.  When I told him that my employer at that time was installing television screens in elevators he only remarked “you people are sadists!” He was always a savage critic of the news media, their lies, malicious intent, and ignorance. The way society and government are ruled by the news media was one of the most disastrous aspects of contemporary life.  His contempt for American education at every level was equally great.  Molnar saw the problems with American education as a pathology inherent in the fundamental principles of those institutions which had abandoned the purpose of education in favor of functioning as an instrument of modern secular society.  I told him of a lecture by a visiting German academic who had advocated a great expansion of the student body at German universities in order to catch up with the situation in the United States. Molnar only commented what that professor really intended was the destruction of education in Germany – to finally reduce the German system of higher education to the level found the United States. Do I need to say that subsequent developments at both German and American higher education have only verified Molnar‘s observations? In contrast,  Molnar was overjoyed to witness the application in his homeland of Hungary of tough requirements for admission to university  – as it should be for the future leaders of the nation.

Thomas Molnar’s thought has stood the test of time better than that of almost all of his colleagues of the earlier days of the conservative movement. They devoted their energies primarily to defending the “free world” against communism, the capitalist system against “liberals” and socialists.  On the religious front, the Catholic conservatives – at least most of them –  profiled themselves as champions of the Pope, the Vatican, and the institutional Church against “dissenters” of all kinds. Yet are we not seeing today the commitment of the “feudal powers” (Molnar’s term) of Western civil society ( law, finance, industry, education, think tanks, NGOs etc.) to radical progressive ideology?  Hasn’t the government bureaucracy (the military, police, the intelligence services, prosecutors, courts, etc.) also united with them in this endeavor? And how different is the current “woke” frenzy of the West  – and, increasingly, the details of its concrete application – from the practices of the Soviet empire? Similarly,  the institution of the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis has reaffirmed its final capitulation to these same secular forces and their ideology. By any objective measure, moreover, in the West religious practice itself  – even baptisms and weddings – seems to be in irreversible decline.

Molnar already had chronicled this accelerating decadence of Western society, its increasingly closed mind.  He (and others as well) had still been able to publish fairly freely books and articles through the early 1960s – now, these would not be permitted to see the light of day (Thomas Molnar made this remark, I recall, in the 1990s!). In 1961, Molnar’s Decline of the Intellectual, perhaps his best-known book, was accepted for publication even though the editor of that publishing house openly disagreed with what Molnar had had to say  (The Decline of the Intellectual, Introduction to the 1994 edition). As we all know, that doesn’t happen anymore.

Now Thomas Molnar was not only a keen analyst of the politics and culture of modernity but ranged over many other topics in his books and essays.  As I noted, he devoted a great deal of interest over the years to the so-called “Third World.” (Le Socialisme sans Visage: l’Avènement du Tiers Modèle, (1976); Tiers–monde: Idéologie et Réalité (1982)) His thought here was less systematic and is less well-known than his reflections on the West. In part,  this is so because there is no one “non-Western” world: Black Africa is not India; the Islamic countries are not East Asia. Molnar emphasized above all the otherness of the Third World. An example of that are the overwhelmingly strong tribal identities encountered especially in Africa. After the departure – or flight – of the Western colonial powers, older local forms of loyalty and administration – tribes, families, and villages  – regained their significance. Furthermore, in most of these countries,  religion remains a major integrating force. In contrast, the central governments of these states remain corrupt, remote and generally irrelavant to daily life. In the future, Molnar saw the developing world as trending towards monolithic, “socialist” and nationalist forms of government. These countries will not conform to Western capitalist society , but neither will they adopt the Communism of the old Soviet Union. Could this third “way” or “model” be called “fascist”?  Perhaps, but this is also imposing a Western political concept. Of course, Molnar was initially reacting against the ideas of the United States and the United Nations,  which, in the early 1960s, were forecasting an easy transformation by stages of the former colonies into copies of the West. I cannot say Molnar worked out a systematic theory for the non-Western world – but he had identified the issues that even today need to be considered in dealing with it. After the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq,  have we not all seen the futility of trying to impose a Western model on a society having radically different beliefs, ecomomy and social stucture? And is not “communist” China, a socialist and very nationalistic power, now rising up to challenge the United States for domination – first in the South China Sea and afterwards,  who knows?

Molnar himself described a bleak picture in Moi, Symmaque( I, Symmachus). The title of this late work reveals Molnar’s personal identification with Symmachus, one of the last of the articulate Roman pagans in the 4^th century, who saw Christianity sweeping aside his pagan world.  In this book,  Molnar tells of his ideals and their subsequent betrayal. He cherished a love of France, its culture and language – only to see that crushed by the modern “Atlantic culture.” He took up an academic career – only to experience higher education being reduced to a farce.  He supported the Church – and endured the greatest betrayal of all in the 1960s. Indeed, Molnar’s situation was worse than that of Symmachus. For if that Roman author saw his temples and gods being erased, he could at least take comfort that another regime of the sacred was taking its place: the new alliance of the Christian Church with the empire. In contrast, Molnar could only see in his time an accelerating “eclipse of the sacred” with no institutional way out. 

Yet Molnar did not despair. He didn’t pose as the last of the Christians or of the cultured Europeans. He viewed with the greatest pleasure the recovery that took place starting in the 1980’s in Hungary and elsewhere in Central Europe – of nations who in the face of the greatest hardship had fought for and recommitted to Christianity and to their links to Western Europe, rejecting both Marxist ideology and “Asia.” He couldn’t help admiring, for example, a kind of Hungarian “rock opera” about St. Stephen, the apostle of Hungary. Today, we are witnesses of the continuing resistance of Hungary, of Poland and others – this time, against the EU and United States – led modernity.

More importantly, Molnar deeply believed that the soul of man is open to the sacred – that God is closer to every man than that man’s very self.  In union with the ancient and the scholastic philosophers, Molnar affirmed that contemplation is the highest calling of man.  In his later years,  Molnar increasingly wrote works more purely philosophical in nature: God and the Knowledge of Reality(1973); Theists and Atheists: a Typology of Non-belief (1980): Archetypes of Thought (1991, 1996); Return to Philosophy (1996). The philosopher’s vocation to explore truth and the real is eternal –  the modern robotized and secularized world of this age will have no permanent victory. Upon the ruins of European culture, in ways, in places and in the souls of men unknown to us, a new civilization will arise with the “same quest for harmony, the same thirst for the transcendent.”  3)

1. The Church and the State (Cluny Media, Providence, RI, 2018)
2. Mezei, Balasz M., “Thomas Molnar’s Place in American Conservatism” (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 6/10/2015; originally published in Modern Age, Summer 2013)
3. Cf. Molnar, Thomas, Moi, Symmaque at 103-104