Intelligence in Danger of Death

By Marcel De Corte

Translated by Brian Welter

Introduction by Miguel Ayuso

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

Why is this an issue?

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

After the Council:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Peter A. Kwasniewski

Foreword by Fr. John A. Perricone

TAN Books, Gastonia, NC, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the September issue of Chronicles Magazine James Kalb has written an important article on the state of the Church today. (hint: it is not good). The entire September issue of that magazine, by the way, is dedicated to “America’s Great Apostasy” In his article, Kalb shows a historical sense rare among Catholics.

The State of Catholicism

The basic problem is the relation between the Church and the modern world. The Second Vatican Council was intended to revitalize the Church and her witness under new and challenging conditions. It dreamed of bringing Christ into the world by eliminating barriers and entering fully into its life. But instead it brought the world into the Church.

In what Catholics call her human element, the Church had evidently bitten off more than she could chew. The Council said that she “carries the responsibility of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.” Catholic functionaries responded by seeing a movement of the Holy Spirit in every secular trend. That was the path of least resistance, since it let them ingratiate themselves with secular powers while wrapping themselves in the flattering mantle of prophecy. So they took it.

But the problem was not only human weakness. the question raised by the failure of the post-Vatican II opening to the modern world is whether aspects of that world, for example the emphasis on technological ways of thinking, are fundamentally at odds with Catholicism. The concrete issue is whether the Chuch should become basically a component of the all-embracing technocratic order that now seems to be emerging globally as the endpoint of modernity, or insist instead on her independence, authority and vision, as she did in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

The essence of Kalb’s characterization of the current regime in the Church is entirely accurate:

(Pope Francis) is inclined to align with power, and look for ways to join with those who dominate the emerging world order.

That is in fact what is going on the Church today.

Yet what is to be done? Kalb does indulge in a bit of wishful thinking, historically speaking: Anything(=the Church) so enduring must be well founded, so it seems likely after current adversities she will once agan return to type. More concrete proposals? “There is a limit to what laymen can do in a hierarchical Church.” (actually, in the governance of an Ultramontane Church, they can do nothing.). What they can do “includes prayer and the sacraments, keeping the Faith, living rightly, supporting whatever trends and initiatives seem positive and doing everything we can to oppose obvious falsehood and stupidity, in the Church as elewhere.”

Kalb believes that “the future belongs to those who show up.” “So a winnowing (in favor of conservatives and traditionalists) seems likely as the indifferent drop out and the committed stay.” This is not at all only the fond hope of traditionalists, but a real fear of the Catholic Church establishment. 1) It has motivated the actions of Francis from the beginning of his papacy. The ongoing confrontation of these forces of Catholic reform with the progressive Vatican, Church institutions and hierarchy will shape the Church in the next decades. What will be the outcome, in my opinion? The use of brute force and administrative repression alone have rarely, if ever, eliminated a spiritual opponent.

Kalb himself concludes his article with these words:

Catholics are assured by their faith that the Church will ultimately prevail and that in the meantime all things will work together for those who love God. That confidence has often kept Catholics going in discouraging times. For a sufficient number it is likely to do so again today.

1. See, e.g., Christoph Paul Hartmann, “Autor: Durch Austritte werden Traditionalisten einflussreicher” (One author: Traditionalists are becoming more influential because of people leaving the Church), Interview with Thomas Schmidinger, Katholisch.de (9/4/2023)

Infallibility, Integrity and Obedience

The Papacy and the Roman Catholic Church 1848-2023

John M. Rist

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

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

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

But what about that dreadful Pope?

German Lutheran pastor (female) encountered in Iceland.

Best Pope For 300 years.

John M. Rist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gli Imperdonabili

By Cristina Campo

Adelphi Edizione, Milan, 1987.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Il Pastore e I Lupi: Ricordando Benedetto XVI

By Aldo Maria Valli

Chorabooks, Hong Kong 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter A. Kwasniewski, Ed.

Os Justi Press, Lincoln, NE 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Joseph Shaw

Os Justi Press (Lincoln, NE, 2023)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

….

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

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

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

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

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

I have aleady written of the sombre, little-known funerary chapels of Paris. They commemorate the victims of political crimes and tragic accidents between 1789 and 1896. To these I must add Notre-Dame-des-Otages, dedicated to the memory of the hostages massacred by the Communards (the Commune was a proto-Communist movement) in 1871. Unlike the other chapels, however, the current church was built in the twentieth century and completed in 1938. It later became a fully functioning parish church.

Notre-Dame-des-Otages is situated in the Belleville district, far from the Parisian centers of business and tourism. Traditionally a poor area, I am told it has recently been “enjoying” gentrification. The church is located in the Rue Haxo, where most of the executions took place on May 26, 1871. The current structure replced a series of prior chapels dating back to 1889.

Located on a nondescript street, the facade does not make a very strong impression. The interior is one of the few attempts to employ the Art Deco style in ecclesiastical architecture. Although pleasant and interesting, I regret to say it reminded me somewhat of a subway station. An inscription encircles the main altar:

Sanguis Martyrum Semen Christianorum

This, and references on two plaques commemorating the dead of the wo world wars, are strangely enough the only allusions I could find to the rather unusual dedication of this church.

I gather the commemoration of these martyrs later became somewhat of a political embarrassment for the Church. After all, hadn’t thousands of Communards been massacred by the government in crushing their uprising? And aren’t communists some of the best Christians, as Dorothy Day and later Pope Francis have claimed? In any case it was only in this year 2023 that five of the martyrs were beatified, on Saturday, April 22nd in the church of Saint Sulpice (which is currently functioning as the Cathedral of Paris). Henri Planchat, Ladislas Radigue, Polycarpe Tuffier, Marcellin Rouchouze et Frézial Tardieu will be commemorated on May 26. But there were many more martyrs under the Commune between May 24 and 27 in 1871 – the most prominent of all being Archbishop Georges Darboy of Paris. He had been a resolute opponent of Ultramontanism – does this still count against him?

( Dr. John Lamont has kindly sent us the text of the lecture he gave on Thursday, March 16 in Greenwich, Connecticut)

The Significance of Pope Francis for the Church

By John Lamont

Jorge Maria Bergoglio was elected Pope in 2013, and is now 86. He is in poor health. Most of his pontificate is behind him, and we are in a position to draw some general conclusions about the nature and significance of the man and his tenure of the papal office.

One conclusion that can be drawn is that a dominating goal of Pope Francis’s pontificate has been the destruction of the work of his two predecessors. This work must be understood in the context of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). During this council and its aftermath, every aspect of Catholic faith and practice was attacked by powerful forces within the Church. These attacks were described by their initiators as being the implementation of that council, and they were largely successful, producing a transformation of the Catholic Church, a deep crisis, and a catastrophic decline that began in the 1960s and continues unabated to the present day. Neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI opposed these attacks on a broad front and as a whole. Instead, each of them concentrated on preserving and promoting a particular feature of Catholic teaching and tradition, hoping that their favoured element of tradition would provide the solution to the crisis in the Church.

John Paul II upheld and defended Catholic teaching on priestly celibacy, the impossibility of ordaining women to the priesthood, marriage, sexual morality, and the existence of moral absolutes. Benedict XVI’s initiative was to attempt to free the traditional Latin liturgy of the Church and make it accessible to all Catholics. Neither of these projects reversed the decline of the Church, but both of them had some success. Francis is ideologically committed to the total attack on Catholic faith and practice. He has accordingly made it his aim to defeat the counter-attacks of his two predecessors.

Pope Francis’s attack on the legacy of John Paul II was a major effort that involved calling a synod of the bishops of the Church. His strategy was to verbally affirm the indissolubility of marriage, but to insist that persons in a valid Catholic marriage who were civilly married to someone else could receive the Eucharist. The Catholic Church has always refused the Eucharist to such persons, on the ground that they were publicly living in an adulterous relationship. John Paul II had firmly upheld this refusal. The strategy was largely successful. Pope Francis understood that his doctrinal opponents were weak and afraid of a direct confrontation with him. A small number of Catholic scholars and ecclesiastics denounced him for attacking the faith, but no cardinals and almost no bishops put up any real opposition to his initiative. This initiative effectively denied the existence of marriage. It did not accept that one can cease to be married to one person and can then marry someone else, as is the case with Protestant and Jewish teaching and the civil law of marriage. Such a concept of dissoluble marriage at least stipulates that one has an exclusive relationship to a spouse when a marriage exists, and certain duties towards that person alone that follow from the relationship; and that this relationship must cease to exist, via divorce, before one can enter into another relationship of that sort with a different person. Pope Francis’s position, on the other hand, permits simply walking away from a marriage that continues to exist, and taking up with someone else. This empties the notion of marriage of content.

Pope Francis’s attack on the legacy of Benedict XVI has focused on the traditional Latin liturgy. Some historical background is needed to understand this attack. In the twentieth century, two movements concerned with the liturgy arose within the Roman Catholic Church. The first of these saw the traditional liturgy as a neglected treasure that needed to be better known and practiced by Catholics, both lay and clerical. According to this movement, unfortunate historical and intellectual developments had led Catholics to turn away from the liturgy as a source of salvation and sanctification. The influence of the Jesuits, whose approach to the spiritual life centred on individual prayer rather than the liturgy, was considered to be one of these developments. This thesis was advanced by the Benedictines Dom Lambert Beaudoin and Dom Maurice Festugière in the first half of the 20th century, and opposed by the Jesuits Jean-Jacques Navatel and Louis Peeters. The Benedictines argued for the priority of the public liturgy of the Church in the spiritual life, whereas the Jesuits argued for the priority of personal prayer. The Italian priest Romano Guardini took the Benedictine side, and his book The Spirit of the Liturgy was a formative influence on the young Joseph Ratzinger. The liturgy here was understood to be the traditional Latin liturgy that took its substantive form under Pope Gregory the Great (ca. 540-604). It included not only the ceremonies for the Mass, but the rites of the other sacraments, the Divine Office (the public prayer of the Church said by monks and priests), and the various blessings and other prayers reserved to the clergy. Substantial initiatives of this first liturgical movement were the publication of missals containing both the liturgy of the Mass in Latin and a facing page translation in the vernacular, and an effort to restore sung masses with Gregorian chant as the normal form of worship.

The second movement was concerned not with reviving the Latin liturgy, but with replacing it. The Latin liturgy of the Church was seen as obsolete and inadequate not just in its use of the Latin language, but in its theology, ceremony, music and architecture. In a sense this movement accepted the Jesuit idea of the primacy of personal prayer, and sought to implement it by changing the liturgy to suit the personal preferences of its adherents. This second movement had the goals of eliminating the use of Latin in Catholic worship, changing the dogmatic content of Catholic liturgy, and replacing traditional Catholic music, art, and architecture with modern forms. These goals were presented as necessary to make Catholic worship accessible and attractive to modern man, and as a means of attracting Protestants to the Church, but this presentation was largely a sales tactic. In fact the members of this movement hated the old Catholic liturgy and the dogmas it embodied, and sought their destruction as an end in itself.

The new Catholic liturgy introduced by Pope Paul VI in 1970 carried out the programme of this second movement. This liturgy was not a translation of the old Latin liturgy into vernacular languages, but a new production. Only 13% of the old prayers of the mass were preserved in a substantially
expanded liturgy. The composition of the new ritual was entrusted to mediocrities, whose lack of talent gave a free field of operation to their ideological zeal. References to divine punishment, hell, the devil, dependence on divine grace, salvation of the soul, reliance on the merits and intercessions of the saints, and the sacrificial character of the Mass were purged from prayers and Bible readings. Scriptural texts containing these unwelcome elements were bowdlerized or removed entirely (Psalms 57, 82, and 108, for example, have been excised). The traditional architecture and music of Catholic worship, one of the great cultural treasures of the human race, was rejected – in a process often involving vandalism and destruction – and replaced by modern design and pop music of the most banal and talentless kind.

The importance of this liturgical change has sometimes been acknowledged by sociologists, but is not generally realized. The destruction of Catholic worship was one of the most important and damaging events of the 20 th century. It abolished the religious culture of the Roman Catholic countries of Europe and Central and South America, and of the substantial Roman Catholic minorities in other countries. In Europe, the traditional Catholic culture was not replaced by a different religious culture that could be made to serve as the basis for a society, as happened when Islam replaced Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa. It was replaced by unbelief. In the first five years after the liturgical changes of Paul VI, a large percentage of priests, religious, and lay Catholics walked out of the Church. This decline has continued, slowing down at times but never ceasing. The Catholic Church in Western Europe is facing extinction. The formerly Catholic cultures of Europe, having lost their spiritual and cultural foundation, are threatened with the same fate. Even the secular and anti-clerical currents in European society have been mortally wounded by this change. Having lost their Catholic competition, they have no inducement to keep up their own intellectual and cultural standards, and have declined into imbecility.

Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, saw that this change was a disaster, and attacked it as an abuse of papal authority: “The pope is not an absolute monarch whose will is law; rather, he is the guardian of the authentic Tradition and, thereby, the premier guarantor of obedience. He cannot do as he likes, and he is thereby able to oppose those people who, for their part, want to do whatever comes into their head. His rule is not that of arbitrary power, but that of obedience in faith. That is why, with respect to the Liturgy, he has the task of a gardener, not that of a technician who builds new machines and throws the old ones on the junk-pile. … What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.” 1)

After his election to the papacy, Benedict XVI acted on this conviction. He issued a decree, Summorum Pontificum, acknowledging the right of priests to celebrate the traditional Latin liturgy, and obliging bishops to provide this liturgy to lay groups who requested it. The decree produced or expanded traditionalist communities all over the world, whose congregations were characterized by large families, low average age, and doctrinal orthodoxy. Traditionalist communities also produced vocations to the priesthood and religious life out of all proportion to their numbers.

This was an extraordinary result. Anyone looking at the preservation of the Latin language inthe Catholic Church prior to 1965, when it quickly began to be abandoned, would have seen the civilizational connections of that language as an essential part of the case for using it. Latin was the language of civilization for Western Europe from the establishment of the Roman Empire up until the 13th century. The use of Latin in the Roman Catholic Church meant that the Catholic Church preserved that heritage of civilization. Keeping Latin meant not just keeping alive the Catholic theology and worship that was bound up with that heritage, but keeping alive the heritage itself, and extending it beyond Europe to people who would benefit from it.

This was a good argument prior to 1965, but by the time Benedict XVI restored the Latin mass, it had become obsolete. Cultural links to the Latin civilization of Europe had been largely obliterated. The traditional communities that sprung into being after his restoration were almost entirely composed of Catholics to whom the heritage of Latin literature, culture and history were unknown. In Europe and North America, the culture, if it can be called that, in which these communities were born was a complete negation of the cultural basis of the Latin mass. The success of these communities has few parallels in religious history. Africans and Native Americans had adopted the Latin liturgy with enthusiasm when exposed to it by missionaries in the 16th to the 19th centuries, but this adoption could be seen as benefiting from the prestige and power of the European states from which the missionaries had come. There is now no prestige attached to the Latin mass, which is still often celebrated in school gyms and the chapels attached to funeral homes. Its growth can only be reasonably explained by a purely religious power inherent in the traditional liturgy.

Pope Francis moved against the Latin mass in July 2021, after addressing the legacy of John Paul II. This was no doubt partly due to a prudent policy of dealing with one enemy at a time. He issued a decree, Traditionis Custodes, which imposed severe restrictions on the celebration of the Latin mass, that were designed to lead to its eventual extinction. Prior to issuing the decree, he sent a questionnaire to all the Roman Catholics bishops of the world inquiring about the use of the Latin Mass in their dioceses. Reliable leaks of the responses to the questionnaire indicate that the majority of the bishops reported favourably on the Latin mass and the communities attached to it, which would explain why these responses were not made public by the Vatican. In his public letter accompanying the decree, Francis announced that ‘the responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene’; this need not be taken to be a lie, since he would consider a favourable attitude of the bishops towards the Latin mass to be extremely undesirable. In a typical maneouvre, he has used one of his creatures, Cardinal Arthur Roche, to enforce the programme of the destruction of the traditional liturgy set forth in Traditionis Custodes. Roche, a mediocrity who is nothing without Francis, is to attract the blame and opprobrium for doing his master’s will.

There is a sense in which Francis has failed in destroying the legacies of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and a sense in which he has succeeded. He has failed in suppressing belief in the religious and moral truths that John Paul II insisted on, and in suppressing the traditional Latin mass that Benedict XVI restored. He has succeeded in destroying the projects of harmonisation that accompanied both those legacies. John Paul II’s project was the harmonisation of the Second Vatican Council with the Catholic truths he chose to uphold, and Benedict XVI’s project was some sort of fusion of the traditional Latin mass and the Novus Ordo – with the former being dominant – rather than a simple scrapping of the ritual of Paul VI and a return to the old mass. Benedict XVI included both these projects of harmonisation under the term of ‘hermeneutic of reform’, which he opposed to the ‘hermeneutic of rupture’. The latter hermeuneutic was the understanding of the Second Vatican Council as a rejection of Catholicism, and the attack on the faith that implemented this understanding. The projects were the personal initiatives of these popes, who did not manage to impose them in a way that would survive after their pontificates. Pope Francis rejects both of them, and thanks to him they are now dead.

Pope Francis has not restricted himself to a reactive policy of destroying the work of his predecessors. He has taken positive steps to advance the programme of eradicating the faith. One of these steps is the adoption of a theme from that pontificate of John Paul II. John Paul II made a number of gestures and statements that could be seen as favouring the idea that all religions are paths to salvation. The best known is his interfaith meeting at Assisi in 1986, where Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus and an assortment of other religious believers all prayed, sacrificed or performed other rituals together. His kissing the Koran and praying together with Togolese animists are other examples. (Animism is the African ancestor of Haitian Voodoo, and furnished Voodoo with some of its gods; it is largely concerned with detecting and eliminating witches and placating malign spirits.) Implicit in these actions of John Paul II was the idea that all religions are ways to God, with Christianity being simply the best developed of these ways. Pope Francis has explicitly endorsed this idea and participated in a number of activities that embody it. These activities include presence at an idol-worshipping ceremony in the Vatican gardens and the signing in Abu Dhabi of a syncretistic document, the Declaration of Human Fraternity, together with the imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

Pope Francis’s other positive initiative is a personal one. It is an attack on the legal and institutional structure of the Church. By ‘institutional structure’ is meant the actual personnel that compose the Church leadership, and the agreed practices and traditions outside of canon law itself that determine the way the Church is governed. These include administrative practices and the criteria and practice concerning the selection of men to fill ecclesiastical offices.

Francis does not follow canon law, and he prefers not to use it as an instrument to enforce his will. His policy on marriage and the Eucharist contradicts canon law, but he does not deal with this contradiction by changing the law; he leaves it on the books and ignores its existence. He has consistently shielded sexual abusers from ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Of course the usual practice in the Church is for bishops and religious superiors to protect sexual criminals and conceal their crimes. But the goal of this policy is to prevent these criminals being caught. Once they are caught, the policy is to say that no-one knew anything about them. Francis’s approach is different. He protects and even promotes such men after they have been caught as well as before. This can be seen in the cases of Fr. Julio Grassi, Fr. Mauro Inzoli, Fr. Marko Rupnik, and Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta. He seems to consider that having been caught for such acts gives a priest a title to respect.

When confronted with a task or a subject matter to be examined and pronounced upon, Francis generally does not make use of the responsible curial office. He uses other advisors, and often makes his bypassing of the responsible office obvious, in order to demonstrate its impotence and establish that his untrammelled will decides everything. He does not show loyalty to his subordinates, official or unofficial, and eventually turns on them after having made use of them. As far as possible he only appoints bishops and cardinals who agree with his agenda, and he has no standards of education or experience that his appointees must meet.

Francis’s policy, especially when it comes to appointments that carry real power with them, is to choose individuals who are compromised in some way; either by committing crimes, or by covering them up, or both. His approach to American appointments is worthy of note. Francis is a Latin American leftist and as such detests the United States. He detests the American Catholic Church in particular for its support of John Paul II’s role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. He appears to have made a special effort to appoint leaders of the American church who will cause the most possible discredit.

Francis’s approach to governance is a tried and tested one. It has been well described by one of its more talented practitioners:

If you really want to do something new, the good won’t help you with it. They are self-satisfied, lazy, they have their God and their own pig-headedness – you can’t do it with them. ‘Let me have men about me that are fat.’ An anointed king can say that, but not a leader that has made himself. Let me have men about me that are arrant knaves. The wicked, who have something on their consciences, are obliging, quick to hear threats, because they know how it’s done, and for booty. You can offer them things, because they will take them. Because they have no hesitations. You can hang them if they get out of step. Let me have men about me that are utter villains – provided that I have the power, absolute power over life and death. The sole and absolute leader, whom no-one can interfere with. What do you know of the possibilities in evil! Why do you write books and make philosophy when you only know about virtue and how to acquire it, whereas the world is fundamentally moved by something quite different? 2)

This policy was known in influential circles before his election to the papacy, and helped his rise to that office. Cardinal McCarrick before his disgrace boasted of how he helped to secure Bergoglio’s election. McCarrick had addressed the General Congregation before the conclave that elected Francis, and urged upon the assembled cardinals the desirability of choosing a Latin American pope. No influential cardinal supports a papal candidate without first informing himself about that candidate and about what the candidate has to offer him. McCarrick knew that Francis was his man and that he was Francis’s, because he knew that Francis’s method of government relied on men like himself.

What is the significance of Pope Francis? I think the answer to this question is suggested by Johann Chapoutot, the brilliant French scholar of Nazism. In 2018 Chapoutot and Christian Ingrao published a biography of Adolf Hitler that sought to understand Hitler’s significance. In a talk presenting the biography, Chapoutot gave this account of their thesis:

One of the most common explanations for Nazism, without explaining it in relation to one’s self, and in the end evacuating it of significance, is to say that Hitler was a madman and that all those Nazis were caught up in a sort of St. Vitus’s dance, morbid and macabre, that carried away Europe and their era in a whirlwind of suffering and horror. This is an explanation that does not explain. It is far too convenient; one can see how it provides psychological reassurance, but it is not accurate. Hitler poses a problem for us not because he is a madman, but because he is a monster. He is a monster. What is a monster? A monster is an individual that we find difficult to explain today – today, and for let us say perhaps two hundred years. A monster is a thing, a phenomenon, that several centuries ago had a meaning and made sense. Consider the etymology of ‘monster’; it comes from ‘monstrare’ in Latin, which means to indicate, to show, to give a sign of something, to be a sign of something. And in fact, in a world saturated with the divine, saturated with transcendence, saturated with magic perhaps, the monster, the one who is an extreme departure from normality, who is extreme by his evil acts for example, is the sign ofsomething; a sign of the anger of God, of the divine vengeance that is striking us. 3)

Chapoutot and Ingrao’s discussion of Hitler has merits and defects that do not concern us here. What does concern us is their explication of of the concept of a monster. This concept provides the interpretive key for an understanding of Francis and his papacy. Francis is a monster. He has been described and explained as a Peronist, a modernist heretic, a Jesuit who exhibits the worst failings that characterize members of that order. These descriptions are not wrong, but they do not get to the important truth about him. The extremity of his evil acts identifies him as outside the normal order of things, as a phenomenon that does not belong to the natural or supernatural structure of human life.

What is he a sign of? Francis, in his personality, actions, and beliefs, is a sign of the true nature of the transformation of the Church that occurred during and after the Second Vatican Council. The arrogance, hatred, criminality and love of destruction that he manifests so clearly were the motive forces for this transformation and its leaders. He is a sign of the failure and the fundamental dishonesty of the projects of ‘harmonization’ undertaken by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He is also a sign of the corruption of the Catholic priesthood and episcopate. With very few exceptions, Catholic priests and bishops have either supported his destructive acts or kept quiet about them. There have been other manifestations of this corruption. The offence of criminal sexual abuse is widespread among Catholic priests and religious. The persons who are best informed about these offences are other Catholic priests and bishops. The offenders are however absolutely never denounced by their fellow clerics. These offences are kept secret as far as possible by the criminals, but Pope Francis’s crimes are public knowledge. The silence of priests and bishops in the face of his crimes reveals their baseness and treachery in an unmistakable way.

When the topic of the sins of priests is raised, one often encounters this quotation from St. Anthony Mary Claret:
…. when His just indignation reaches its climax, He sends the last and most atrocious of His punishments by allowing unfaithful ministers, stained priests, scandalous shepherds to appear among men. Then it happens that the abominations of the people are the cause of the bad priests, and the bad priests are the greatest punishment with which God chastises the people.

This quotation is often used to support the fallacious inference that since God sends bad priests to punish a bad people, if priests are bad it is because the people have sinned. The responsibility for a corrupt priesthood is thus handily shifted from the priests to the laity. There is no evidence that this shifting is justified when it comes to Francis and the progressive, ‘conciliar’ cause that he champions. In 1960, the Catholic laity around the world were not notably corrupt, certainly not in comparison to many other historical epochs. Fr. Bryan Houghton asserts that the opposite was the case:

This issue was that the new reforms in general and of the liturgy in particular were based on the assumption that the Catholic laity were a set of ignorant fools. They practised out of tribal custom; their veneration of the Cross and the Mass was totem-worship; they were motivated by nothing more than the fear of hell; their piety was superstition and their loyalty, habit. But the most gratuitous insult of all was that most Catholics had a Sunday religion which in no way affected their weekly behaviour. This monstrous falsehood was—and still is—maintained by bishops and priests who, for the most part, have never been adult laymen. Every day the Catholic workman had to put up with the jeers of his colleagues, as the more educated with their sneers. Every night they took their religion to bed with them. … I am not in a position to judge other priests’ parishioners. I am, however, in a position to judge what were my own. No words are adequate for me to express my admiration for the conscious faith and piety of my flock, both in Slough and in Bury. This is where the trouble lay. The reforms were based on criticism; I was unwilling to take any action which might make me appear to criticise the wonderful people whom I was ordained to serve. I was perfectly conscious that I learned more about God from them than they were likely to learn from me. 4)

The significance of Pope Francis is that Catholic priests and bishops as a body have betrayed Our Lord and the Catholic faithful, and that they must repent, make atonement for their sins, and work to undo the harm they have done.

1. Ratzinger, Joseph, Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Alcuin Reid, OSB (Ignatius Press, 2005), 2nd ed.
2. Hermann Goering, quoted in Joachim Fest, The Face of the Third Reich; Portraits in Nazi Leadership, tr. Michael Bullock (Ace Books: New York, N.Y., 1970), p. 124-125.
3. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEQvVDGVWNE , voir jusqu’au 12:55] The original text of Johann Chapoutot’s remarks is as follows: Hitler est un paravent commode pour nous tous. C’est celui que nous identifions au nazisme, au mal absolu, et qui au fond fait écran et nous empêche de penser un phenomene, le nazisme, dont nous participons nous aussi, puisque ce phénomène est né culturellement et pratiquementet s’est deployé en Allemagne, c’est a dire en Europe, c’est-a-dire en occident. Et jusqu’à preuvedu contraire nous sommes aussi des européens et des occidentaux. Mais avoir affiché – voyez le couverture [c-à-d du livre, montré sur un ecran derrière les auteurs] – le paravent Hitler, cet écran-la – nous détourne de ce questionnement-là, puisque nous attribuons beaucoup de choses à ce personnage et a son entourage avec une réduction personnelle, personnalisante, psychologique, psychologisante, qui nous empêche encore une fois de penser le phenomene. Et une des explication les plus courantes pour expliquer le nazisme, sans en expliquer vis-à-vis de soi-meme, et au fond de l’évacuer, c’est de dire que Hitler était fou et que tous ces gens-la étaient saisis d’une forme de danse de saint-guy sadique, morbide, macabre, qui a emporté l’Europe et cette époque dans un tourbillon de malheur et d’horreur. C’est une explication qui n’en est pas une, elle est beaucoup trop commode, on en voit le, comment le dire, le confort psychologique, celui qu’on en retire, mais elle n’est pas exacte. Hitler de fait nous pose problème, non pas parce qu’il serait fou, mais parce qu’il est un monstre. Il est un monstre. Qu’est que c’est qu’un monstre? Un monstre c’est un individu dont on a du mal a rendre raison ou a se rendre raison aujourd’hui – aujourd’hui, disons, depuis peut-être deux cents ans. Un monstre, c’est quelquechose, c’est un phénomène qui il y a quelques siècles était porteur de sens. Voyez l’etymologie du terme monstre; ca vient de monstrare en latin, qui veut dire faire signe vers, envoyer une signe, etre une signe de quelquechose. Et de fait, dans un monde saturé du divin, saturé de transcendance, saturé de magie peut-etre, le monstre, celui qui est exorbitant à la normalité, celui qui est exorbitant par ses actes maléfiques par exemple, est le signe de quelquechose; de la colère de Dieu, de la vengeance de la divinité qui s’abat sur nous. Le monstre a un sens; il a un signification. Dans un monde désenchanté, désenchanté au sens positif du terme, dont l’enchantement, dont la magie a disparu, eh bien l’aubépine qui fleurit dans l’hiver n’a plus de sens, de la même manière que le monstre n’a plus de sens; d’où notre fascination médusé devant les grands criminels, devant les tuers en série, qui font l’object de series et d’émissions a repetition, de romans. Nous nous interrogeons sur ces personnages. Eh bien, nous avons voulu prendre le monstre au sens etymologique au pied de la lettre, Christian Ingrao et moi, et nous avons voulu le lire comme un signe. Ce personnage-là est un monstre que nous avons voulu relire comme un signe; sans l’apparat de transcendence, sans l’appareil de transcendance, mais tout simplement en historien.
4. (Houghton, Fr. Bryan, Unwanted Priest, p. 81).