The 31^st of July is the dies natalis or heavenly birthday of one of the greatest priests and religious founders of Church history, Ignacio de Loyola, who died on this day in 1556 and was canonized in 1622. St. Ignatius is famous, of course, for having established the Society of Jesus (S.J.) or Jesuits. This order has given the Church many of her most daring and successful missionaries to the most far-flung corners of the earth. St. Francis Xavier comes to mind, who during his journeys baptized an estimated 30,000 converts, driven by the love of God and anxiety for the eternal loss of all who die outside of the Church.

A magnificent painting by the Flemish artist and devout Catholic Peter-Paul Rubens (1577–1640), painted right around the time of the saint’s canonization, vividly captures many of the qualities of Ignatius that made him and his order great.

He is shown looking up to heaven in prayerful meditation, awaiting the light of God’s will, the guidance and strength of the Holy Spirit. This no doubt is a reference to the Spiritual Exercises in which Ignatius, on the basis of his own profound spiritual life and his experience in directing others, formulated certain rules by which Christians could distinguish between the voice of God and the contrary voices of the world, the flesh, and the devil—a crucial tool for a world tempest-tossed by the Protestant Revolt, against which the Jesuits campaigned with a fervor that culminated in the astonishing fortitude of the host of Jesuit martyrs of Elizabethan England.

Rubens depicts the face of the saint as calm and resolute, determined to do what God wills, as He wills it, when He wills it. There is neither the agitated haste of one who rushes ahead into trouble with a false zeal, or the pusillanimous hesitancy that doubts, second-guesses, or shrinks in fear of pain and difficulty. With the spirit of Christian chivalry he is ready to take up arms against a sea of troubles.

He has drunk in peace from its very source—“in His will is our peace,” as Dante sang—and therefore can radiate it to others, attracting them to follow him in the friendship, the society, of Jesus. We can also detect, thanks to the subtle brush of Rubens, a combination of remorse for his own sins and lamentation of the sorry state of others, especially heretics, schismatics, infidels, and pagans, for whose conversion he and his faithful spiritual sons will exhaust themselves.

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When people hear that I lived for twelve years in the wild, wonderful state of Wyoming—the seventh largest in the USA, but the least populated—they assume that I must have been a wood-chopping, mountain-climbing, horse-riding, trout-fishing, backpacking kind of fellow.

The reality was, I did sometimes chop some wood, although we stopped heating with wood when a chimney fire nearly burned down our house; and I did ride horseback sometimes, though that began way back in grad school, when I was living in Virginia; and I liked being outside in the town of Lander. And as a kid, in Boy Scouts, I went on a lot of camping trips. But climbing mountains, backpacking, and fishing were foreign activities to me, and so busy was I with teaching, reading, grading papers, faculty meetings, choir practices, and the whole usual run of life, that I can’t say it looked like I’d ever take a crack at them.

But one year it was suggested that the faculty, for their own development and to better understand the students at Wyoming Catholic College, should go on a backpacking trip similar to the one taken by freshmen as their orientation. Now, that trip is three weeks of backpacking, with two re-rations, while the faculty trip would be a modest twelve days (in the end, it turned out to be eleven because we did the hiking planned for the last three days in two days’ time); and yet, we would hike over a boulder field, past mountain lakes, over a steep pass, into the Cirque of the Towers, over a different pass, then climb Wind River Peak, and finally exit at Bruce’s Bridge near Lander. In other words, very demanding.

The planner and leader of the trip would be Dr. Thomas Zimmer, head of outdoor education at Wyoming Catholic College. Since just about all the faculty were a few pounds overweight, we jokingly called our expedition “Slimmer with Zimmer.”

I signed up for it, and boy, am I glad I did. It was, physically, the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point in my life, and the first few days were pretty awful, but eventually we got into our stride, and by the end we were sailing along the trails like pros. (It didn’t hurt that our packs were getting lighter by the day.) The penultimate day, when we summited the mountain, was the hardest thing I had to do on that trip, and I felt like quitting over and over, but positive peer pressure is a wonderful thing; you don’t want to flake out when you’re with other men, and you encourage one another to keep going.

One highlight of our trip was that a priest of the Fraternity of St. Peter, the late and much-missed Fr. Dennis Gordon, accompanied us as our chaplain for about a week’s time (he had to peel off to join a group of WCC students towards the end as their chaplain).

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I would say that I have been a traditionalist, in thought and feeling, for a lot longer than I have used that specific term to characterize the movement to which I belong. Now, there are some who object to the term in principle, but I think we can use it in a pragmatic way; after all, language is meant to be useful, and having a term that refers to people who strive to adhere to Catholic tradition in theology, morality, and liturgy is useful. (I wrote about this matter here.)

But one thing I’ve noticed is that very few traditionalists know their own history well.

This, I think, is a problem—especially for people who are involved in conversations, whether online or in person, and all the more if they are going to produce podcasts or in any other way set themselves up as public spokesmen for the cause of tradition.

Why is it a problem?

Well, think about what it would be like for someone to be a spokesman on the USA without knowing American history extremely well, or on World War II without knowing the battles and negotiations backwards and forwards. Just being a Catholic, while it gets you very far in regard to the basics of salvation, does not automatically qualify you to set up as a Catholic apologist; and just attending the traditional Latin Mass does not suddenly qualify you to defend it or to interpret the many complex issues that arise in its ambit.

Over the years I have seen some very embarrassing “TLM apologetics” in which the arguments were so severely flawed that anyone who knew their liturgical history well would instantly walk away, more convinced of his anti-trad views than ever. Similarly, social media encourages people to feel confident about sharing every thought that pops into their heads on the SSPX or the Ecclesia Dei period or Bugnini or whatever, but in 9 out of 10 cases they are ill-prepared to address these topics.

I say these things not to discourage anyone from being involved in the melee, but rather, to encourage readers to remember that opinions and arguments will be taken all the more seriously when they proceed from a certain breadth and depth of knowledge — and, therefore, that we owe it to ourselves and to our fellow Catholics to take pains to acquire this knowledge by means of at least some study every day.

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All that by way of an introduction to this week’s and next week’s Professor’s Bookshelf. We will look at excerpts from Yves Chiron’s marvelous book Between Rome and Rebellion: A History of Catholic Traditionalism with Special Attention to France (Angelico Press, 2024), which is a must-read for those who want a close-up study of where and how the traditionalist movement started, and what are the major traits it has shown over the decades.

Chiron effectively conveys the immense drama of the period immediately after the Council, which was, in a lot of ways, far more rumbustious and scandalous than most of what we’ve had to experience in recent decades. Even during the Francis pontificate, as awful as it was, there was always a pretty substantial conservative and traditional counterforce, whereas reading about the late 1960s and 1970s one has the impression that just about everybody in the Church had lost their minds or their bearings.

Breathlessly moving from one upheaval to the next, Chiron sheds light on how things became as bad as they did, inspiring the reader with stories of the notable lay and clerical heroes who entered the fray and fought the good fight, in spite of being constantly harassed and accused of “disobedience” (not much has changed in that playbook). Chiron documents the vitality of the traditional groups at a time when everything seemed to be falling apart—and documents the violent rage of the Establishment against them.

Between Rome and Rebellion covers a vast amount of information that every traditionalist activist, writer, or speaker should know. In particular, if you want to understand why Lefebvre did what he did, and why the SSPX exists, there is no better resource.

I shall split these excerpts in two parts. Enjoy! As usual, the page number is given in parentheses. Any editorial remarks by me are placed in italics.

[All plain text is from Chiron; italics are my comments. PAK]

Ultramontanist origins

In establishing the intellectual genealogy of twentieth-century traditionalism, one finds that it is the direct descendant of intransigent Catholicism. It was born in opposition to the French Revolution. This is what Émile Poulat calls the “Catholic Counter-Revolution.” (1)

Initially, it was over-the-top ultramontanist:

“We are integral Roman Catholics,” reads the statement of purpose of La Vigie [a weekly that began in 1912],

that is to say, we place above everything and everyone not only the traditional teaching of the Church in the order of absolute truths, but also the directions of the pope in the order of practical contingencies. The Church and the Pope are one and the same. Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia [Where Peter is, there is the Church].

Benedict XV defined the modernist “spirit” as a search for “novelties” at all costs “in the way in which they carry out religious functions, in the ruling of Catholic institutions, and even in private exercises of piety.” (7)

Quoting Veuillot:

I believe that since the world cannot live without authority, it will come to seek authority at its source here below, which is the Holy See. . . . [t]o establish order, it will be necessary to begin with a solemn affirmation of the rights of the Papacy, which are the rights of God. (17)

So ironic!

In his June 19, 1913 Declaration mentioned above, Archbishop Benigni established the equivalence between “integral Catholicism” and “Romanity.” He affirmed that “integral Catholics” are “Catholics who want to be entirely, integrally Roman, faithful to the Holy See and to its directions in individual and social life.” He specified: “In the face of the minimization of Roman Catholicism attempted by liberal Catholics, modernizers, etc., they affirm the integrity of their Romanism. That is all.” When the appellation “integral Catholics” was prohibited by Benedict XV, “Romanity” remained more than ever a characteristic claimed by anti-liberals and anti-modernists. In doing so, they were in full agreement with the popes. (18)

The rise of progressivism

The crisis in the Church did not begin with the Second Vatican Council. In France, it began at the Liberation [from German occupation], in an unprecedented historical context in which the end of the war marked in all areas (political, international, economic, cultural, including religious) the end of one world and the advent of another. “A transitional age,” Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, would soon say, in Essor ou déclin de l’Église. … There is, he wrote, a “Church divided” between a “progressive mysticism” that pleads for “adaptation” and an “intransigence” that refuses “accommodations” and “compromises” and wants “an integral return to traditional forms.” (27)

As soon as the country was liberated, French Catholicism entered into “effervescence.” It was Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon, who used the word a few years later, describing “a kind of intellectual effervescence” which, “for some time now, has been troubling some souls” and “certain audacities of thought [that] were flying thick and fast.” (33)

Early liturgical experiments

This was happening in the 1930s!:

The effervescence was not limited to theology; it was also liturgical. The Liturgical Movement, born in 1909 in Belgian and German Benedictine abbeys, had spread to France in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, certain liturgical innovations began to spread. The practice of the “dialogue Mass” was approved under specific circumstances by the Congregation for Rites in 1935: when the priest celebrated a low Mass, the faithful might say the servers’ responses as well as the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. Other innovations spread at the end of the 1930s and during the war. At the Cité des Jeunes, a large sponsorship center he had founded in Jouy-en-Morin for children and adolescents from Parisian parishes, the Marist Father Fillère instituted “living” Masses: the priest celebrated facing the congregation arranged in a semicircle, the hymns were in French, and the kiss of peace was exchanged among the participants. (34)

In addition to these innovations and experiments in France, there were those of the four thousand or so priests, religious, and seminarians who were prisoners or deportees to Germany. In the camps, where religious celebrations were never forbidden, various “pastoral liturgical experiments,” as one stalag chaplain put it, were put into practice and lived. They transgressed certain liturgical norms in force at the time, and introduced new practices. When they returned from the camps, these thousands of priests, religious, and seminarians did not forget what they had experienced and practiced, and some of them wanted to introduce these new practices in their parishes or convents. (35)

The CPL [Centre de pastorale liturgique], through its sessions, conferences, and publications, carried out “activities of research, information, experience, and liturgical propaganda,” to use the formula of Father Dubarle, then director of Éditions du Cerf. It was a “great laboratory of new ideas.” The CPL encouraged, guided, and inspired the liturgical innovations and experiments that multiplied in certain parishes and communities up until the Council, all the while trying to temper the impatience and imprudence of the most daring. (35)

New alliances against “intransigents”

Georges Hourdin [editor of La Vie catholique illustrée, which began in 1945] said: “This trimmed-down faith, this insertion of Christians into the modern world as it was, prefigured the decisions of the Second Vatican Council; we were laying the groundwork for it in a completely disinterested way, since we did not even imagine that it could ever take place.” (39)

They [various new postwar publications] all shared “the same conviction that to give in to anti-communism would be to cut oneself off from the working class, the masses, in a word the people.” (40)

This earned the movement the approval of Emmanuel Mounier in Esprit: “It cannot be said that being Christian necessarily excludes any defined, lucid collaboration with the communists.” (41)

Card. Suhard in a 1947 pastoral letter used the terms “integrism” and “progressivism” for the first time in an official church document. He described the integrists as follows: “Against aggressively militant atheism they oppose a defensive dogmatism. . . .The Church [in this view] is not behind the times. It is man who is sinning and losing his reason.” He rejected this view as a “rupture” with the modern world. (48)

It can be said that in the 1940s and until the early 1960s there was a kind of tacit triple alliance between the Holy Office, certain professors of the pontifical universities, and various French Catholic publications with a view to denounce what appeared to them as theological deviations, and to defend the faith against threats. (55)

A few months later, in September 1952, Pierre Lemaire devoted a special issue of Paternité to the infiltration of Catholic circles by communist ideas. It contained an alarming account of how communist ideology was being imposed in the seminaries that remained open in China, and an article devoted to the “Marxist impregnation in France.” (67)

In September [1953], Father Congar published an article on the future of priest-workers in which he used a formula that was to become famous: “You can condemn a solution if it is faulty; you cannot condemn a problem.” (69)

Father Fessard, who was always a lucid and profound analyst, noted its persistence and explained it [in 1960]: “Poverty, justice, and the direction of history: so many ambiguous words through which the Marxist poison has crept in.” (70)

In the cases of both Pierre Lemaire and Jean Ousset, these first episcopal warnings or prohibitions occurred while other bishops, in private and in public, had given them support and encouragement. This support continued, which shows a division in the episcopate or, at least, attests to the freedom of the bishops at a time when Episcopal Conferences and their unwieldy structures did not yet exist. (70)

Jean Madiran in 1954. The same could be said of liturgical propaganda:

The worker-priests are “morally prisoners of the diabolical communist phantasmagoria. Therein lies the essence of this horrible drama: they are in the state of men who have gone through a long hallucination and who are unable to shake it off.” (77)

New lay apostles enter the fray

Bishop Lusseau complaining about a new “progressive catechism” circulating in France: He did not question the good intentions of the propagators of the new catechetical methods, but he pointed out a number of silences or insufficiencies on original sin, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation of God, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, etc. […]

Indeed, it is not possible for intelligences whose initiation from a young age to the truths of the revealed Faith is incomplete not to find themselves forever deprived of the deep convictions that make up the Christian life. (85)

Archbishop Marmottin of Reims was much warmer, and encouraged Pierre Lemaire to continue his fight [1957]: “I admire your courage and your ever ardent zeal, as well as your holy wrath against so many errors and deviations. You know that I share your ideas; but I cannot go to war as you do.” (86)

Pierre Lemaire considered leaving Angers at that time, where he was now persona non grata with the bishop. He did not leave the city until two years later, when he had found a suitable place to continue his activities: it was Saint-Céneré, in Mayenne, where he set up a printing house and published books, brochures, and reviews. For the time being, he did not decide to retire from all lay apostolate— he was not yet fifty-five years old— and he did not give up publishing, distributing, and fighting. (89)

In 1958, Lemaire launched a new periodical called Défense du foyer. In his first editorial he wrote of it:

It appears at a serious moment: because we have denied the Author of all good, all authority is disappearing. The evil is so great that our overseas empire is collapsing. . . .Our sons are fighting in Algeria, but it is in France that the real problems arise. The impotent State no longer defends essential values. It is sinking into anarchy and corruption. We, fathers, have the obligation— it is a matter of life and death— to restore order, first at home, and then in the city. (89)

Multiplying quotations from the teachings of Leo XIII and St. Pius X, the text concluded that in a political constitution “abstract notions, enchanting and flattering as they may be, are more prone to equivocation and error than are concrete realities such as God, family, country, and work on which any balanced society rests.” (91)

Sixties-ism

Mentalities, too, were undergoing significant changes, especially in the West. The Western world was embarking on what Canadian sociologist Louis Rade has called “Sixties-ism.” He defines it as “an ideology of modernity that reached its peak in the 1960s and continued until the mid-1970s. It is characterized by individualism, a more or less radical rejection of authority, the refusal of duty, the demand for rights, youthism, consumerism and, at the same time, the contestation of this consumerism.” This “1960s” state of mind had become widespread before the Council met, and the bishops gathered in Council could not ignore it. It can be said that many of them, without approving it, did not want to contradict it head-on.

From a strictly religious point of view, in the still predominantly Catholic countries of Europe and in North America, secularization of society and education, as well as other factors, had led to an ever-decreasing number of regular Massgoers. In 1962, the year the Council opened, in Austria only one-third of Catholics attended Mass regularly; in France, the proportion was between 27 and 28%.5 The de-Christianization of the Church goes back before the Council. John XXIII and a majority of the Council Fathers wanted to confront it with a new method and a new language. (110)

One can sympathize, in a way: they thought they might reverse this. But everything done by Vatican II and afterwards only accelerated the decline, adding fuel to the fire of secularization.

Thus, on October 23, 1964, in his intervention in the aula, the exiled Archbishop Yu-Pin of Nanking was indignant:

The schema on the Church and the modern world has an inexplicable omission: it says nothing about communism. But even if one wants to ignore the political-economic aspects of the system, it is not possible to ignore its ideology, which has the most serious consequences for the whole of life in the world. Communism dominates almost half of humanity and threatens the other half. It is the gravest danger in the modern world. (125)

Ignored then, ignored now. (Think of Cardinal Zen.)

Tough times call for tough men

On June 4, 1964, Promotion du laïcat sent an open letter to all the bishops of France, in which it gave the following warning:

Our action will continue to grow; it is not for us to reveal our plans; we will act —when necessary —where necessary —for as long as necessary. Such is the price of protecting our homes. Promotion of the Laity will not disarm until the progressives and crypto-communists who are ensconced at the head of Catholic organizations and media outlets have been kicked out by our Higher Clergy. (131)

Now THAT’s the spirit!

Father Coache, a simple country priest who until then had been unknown, began to make his voice heard and soon attracted the media’s attention. Ordained a priest in 1943 and pastor of various rural parishes in the Oise region, he had been concerned since the beginning of the 1950s about a growing independence among certain priests and religious “with regard to discipline, morality, and liturgy.” He noted at that time a “degradation of the Faith” which, he said, “always happened under the pretext of clarification or better expression, of adaptation or charity.”…

After the end of the third session of the Council he was concerned about what he was observing in many churches and what the press was reporting, and at Christmas 1964 he published at his own expense the Lettre d’un curé de campagne à ses confrères (“Letter from a country priest to his confreres,” 32 pages). He wanted to alert them to the

real tidal wave that is breaking on the various beaches of our Roman Church. In a great number of religious and ecclesiastical circles, there is a desire to shake the authority of the Church, to make a world religion for a world that must be pleased at all costs. . . .The authority and principles of the Church are being undermined under the silly pretext of abolishing triumphalism or clericalism . . . disobedience is taking hold, evil is no longer denounced; attitudes, virtues, and prayers that correspond to the most authentic Christian principles are condemned as rigorism, pharisaism or narrowness. (132)

You see how little has changed? The last sentence perfectly sums up what the anti-trads are still saying today.

Lefebvre begins to make waves

Without going into the details of all the debates, it should be noted that Archbishop Lefebvre, who had already intervened several times on religious liberty during the previous sessions, spoke twice on this theme during the fourth session: on September 9 and 15, 1965. According to him, and to many of the Fathers of the CIP or allied to them, the schema on religious liberty was based on an erroneous definition of liberty as immunity; in reality, “liberty is good and true insofar as it is regulated by the truth.” Without the will to do good, there is no dignity of the person, and under the pretext of respecting consciences, one must not give rights to error. At most, error can be tolerated if its repression would cause a greater evil. (136-37)

[Father Coache] protested against the “abomination of the catechetical sheets” in use before the expected publication of a new catechism, and the arbitrary liturgical innovations by which “an entire clergy is causing us to slide into heresy and abomination.”

And, predictably, this protest met with a chilly reception among bishops:

Coadjutor Archbishop Pierre Veuillot of Paris wrote to Archbishop Marty of Rheims (at the time): “Once again I ask myself the same question: can we remain mute in the face of a generalized and passionate attack on all the efforts at renewal in the Church?”

Soon thereafter, the episcopate issued this statement:

“The duty of Catholics is clear. They must filially receive and implement these teachings and decisions [of Vatican II]. However, a minority, with ever more assertive boldness, is challenging, in the name of fidelity to the past, the principles of the renewal now under way.” (139-140)

In 1965, Fr. Georges de Nante already predicted exactly what would come to pass with Pope Francis:

The Council and the Pope were aiming at making the Catholic Church abandon “its former title” and “replace it with the far more evocative acronym: MASDU (Movement of Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy). A decatholicized Christianity, the friend of men!” (142)

One sees revving up the whole “enforced optimism” machine that has been such a feature of postconciliar life. The French bishops wrote to the Vatican in 1966 that “shadows must not make us forget the light projected by the Council on the life of our dioceses. The symptoms of vitality are many and comforting, both among the clergy and among the laity.” (146)

Catechism crisis flares up

A new catechism was to be released in 1966. Le Monde noted “significant changes”:

The Precepts of the Church have purely and simply vanished. Mortal sin too, which so traumatized young children, has vanished. . . . Venial sin goes unmentioned. There is no definition of Original Sin. The very names of the devil, or demon, and evil spirits are not even mentioned. The famous “guardian angels” of so many generations’ lullabies no longer figure in this “obligatory fund.” All mention of hell has vanished, as well as its definition as a place of torment, of suffering, and of fire. All that is specified is that “those who refuse to love God to the end would not be able to live with God.” (150)

Madiran, in response, republished the catechism of Pius X and the catechism of Trent, and observed:

“Lay people must, today, vicariously provide the faithful with the Roman catechism that no one provides any more…. What is immediately striking in the new catechism is its revolutionary character,” particularly “the number of omissions”: “The new catechism makes no mention of angels, nor of the Ascension, nor of the Assumption, nor of the sacraments of order, marriage, and extreme unction, etc.” He also noted, and deplored, the fact that: The new catechism, referring as it does mainly to the Bible and Vatican II, completely ignores the great dogmatic formulations of the early Councils. (151)

He concluded:

“All in all, if one refers to the meaning of modernism as defined by Pius X, we can say that the climate of the new catechism is typically modernist.”

Pierre Lemaire reprinted the Grand catéchisme en images [a large-format illustrated catechism for children] that Father Bailly, founder of the Maison de la Bonne Presse, had published in 1909, and which had been reprinted many times until the 1950s. He also reprinted 10,000 copies of the catechism that was in use in the diocese of Paris in 1930, under the title Catechisme de nos enfants (“Our Children’s Catechism”). (158)

Maurice Clavel: “You have not gone out to the world, you have gone over to the world. The spirit of the age has taken hold of you, intimidated you . . . it got you.” (161)

First rumblings about the New Mass

Father Dulac, in Le Courrier de Rome—which was increasingly read by priests and faithful attached to tradition—was kept well-informed by his Roman friends and marshalled his theological verve against this “normative Mass” [of 1967] which

is allegedly destined to replace the one that Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Philip Neri, Bossuet, the Curé of Ars celebrated without ever suspecting that they were celebrating a passive, unconscious, individualistic, and complicated Mass. The normativa suppresses Kyrie, Gloria, and Offertory; it pulverizes the Confiteor; it glosses over the intercession of the saints, over the commemoration of the souls in purgatory, over anything that expresses the personal offering of the human priest; it proposes two spare Canons; it corrects the words of the consecration; and, of course, it replaces Latin with the national idiom. (177)

In France, the first full critique of the new Mass was that published by Father Dulac, who, as we have seen, had reacted against the liturgical reforms in the very first issues of Le Courrier de Rome, in 1967.

On June 27, 1969, in a long article that was to set the tone for a good many other commentators after him, he attacked an “ecumenical Mass” that could well suit Protestants, a “polyvalent Mass,” since some of its “rites [were] left to the celebrant’s choice” and it contained “equivocal” words; it “annihilated the Offertory”; it was a “Mass that hides its face.” The article ended with a clear and definite rejection: “We refuse to follow the Novus Ordo Missae.” (182)

Rather sad: because of neoscholastic reductionism, wherein only doctrine matters and not ritual, Journet simply accepts the pope’s word that doctrine hasn’t changed and accepts the new rite. But his words damn with faint praise:

Cardinal Journet, on the eve of celebrating the new Mass for the first time, said that he would do so “with great obedience,” and that Paul VI’s address had reassured him. “Of course,” he agreed, “we are losing great riches...[t]here is no doubt about it,” but he hoped that the monasteries would remain “islets” that would know how to “preserve the Latin tradition, as a witness to the catholicity of the Church through time.” (188)

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Jean Madiran observed that the text of the Mass remained “uncertain, variable, ever-changing, because the options offered to the celebrant and the liberties he may take mean that there is no longer the new Mass, but new Masses.” (190-91)

Card. Siri expressing the most irrational hyperpapalism imaginable:

The Council did not ask for such a revolution. The liturgical reform was done, the Pope approved it, and that’s enough: I adopt a position of obedience that one must always have with regard to the Pope. If he had asked me, I think I would have made some observations, several. But once a law is approved, there is only one thing to do: obey. (191)

In the event, it was grassroots “resistance” that allowed the traditional Mass to continue despite the prohibitions from Rome, from the Episcopal Conferences, and from the chanceries. (195)

A not inconsiderable number of parish priests were able to remain faithful to the traditional Mass. (196)

Stalwart priests resist the New Mass

Chiron then goes on to tell the fascinating stories of several priests who simply refused to stop saying the old Mass, and carried on in varying degrees of trouble with their superiors. But they would never back down, and this seems to have earned them grudging respect. But when these various priests died, in many cases it was only due to the SSPX that the Masses, which by then had been going for many years after the introduction of the Novus Ordo, could be continued for the benefit of the stable congregations. This kind of history puts meat on the bones when it comes to understanding the real-world situations to which Lefevbre was responding.

A journalist reported on one such priest in the diocese of Montpellier:

He [Father Caucanas] is reputed to be a formidable integrist. He says Mass in Latin. For years he has been in constant opposition to Cyprien Tourel, bishop of Montpellier, an old seminary chum. The bishop reproaches him for not applying the liturgical reforms of Vatican II? Each time, he retorts: “Get lost.” (199)

The association was registered at the prefecture under the name Association sacerdotale Noël Pinot (ANP), named after the priest from Anjou who was executed during the Revolution and who went to the scaffold wearing priestly vestments while saying the first words of the Mass: Introïbo ad altare Dei (“I will go to the altar of God”). (202)

At this point in the story, it is worth pondering the reasons for which Paul VI was so determined and inflexible in imposing a new rite of Mass. He himself, by temperament, was inclined to beautiful liturgies in Latin and Gregorian chant, as he had discovered them in his childhood among the Benedictines of Chiari, near Brescia. But since at least the 1950s he was convinced that the faithful wanted greater participation in the liturgy and/or were incapable of relating to a more intellectual worship (as he saw it). He soon felt that it was legitimate to sacrifice Latin, Gregorian chant, ad orientem celebration, and certain other practices, in order to make the Mass more accessible to the greatest number.

There was also a more subjective reason: Paul VI had entrusted the preparation of the liturgical reform to a new organism, the Consilium, which answered directly to him, and had left a great deal of freedom to the person actually in charge of it, Father Bugnini, whom he made a prelate and then an archbishop. Paul VI, an intellectual pope, put all his trust, for several years, in the army of liturgical specialists who had been at work in this Consilium.

The clergy and faithful attached to the traditional Mass, however, were not defending it solely on grounds of sentiment (for being the Mass of their youth or ordination) or aesthetics, but for primarily doctrinal reasons: the Mass as “propitiatory sacrifice” and “pure oblation” (to quote the Council of Trent), offered through the ministry of the priest whose primary function this is. Within this attachment to the traditional Mass, there is also a traditional notion of the priesthood. (202)

The need for traditional priests becomes urgent

Father Aulagnier reports [in a 2000 interview]:

Our way of life, too, was changing considerably. After four years, the rules of the seminary had practically disappeared. There was no more silence since everyone had a radio in his cell, no more liturgy since every morning saw a new improvisation. The Council had celebrated “openness to the world,” and the world had entered into minds and hearts. (204)

To the mystic Claire Ferchaud, he [Lefebvre] wrote on May 13, 1969:

I believe that at this moment in time, my most urgent duty is to train priests. This is my constant concern and it fills all my time. . . . I am also convinced that it is the holiness of the priesthood that will save us. This is why I’m devoting all my energy and prayers to that end. (205)

On June 9, 1971, in a clear and definitive manner, he [Lefebvre] affirmed his firm and irrevocable choice to preserve the traditional Mass and to refuse the new Ordo Missae. … The Mass, Archbishop Lefebvre explained, rests on “three truths of defined Catholic faith— de fide divina catholica”: the priest, “alone capable of consecrating the Eucharist”; “the sacrificial nature of the Mass and its propitiatory role”; and “the real and substantial presence” of Christ. Now, the liturgical reform, Archbishop Lefebvre affirmed, “directly or indirectly undermines these three essential truths.”

Archbishop Lefebvre, on the other hand, felt that “one cannot affirm in a general way that the new Mass is invalid and heretical” but “it leads slowly to heresy” and “the number of invalid Masses is on the rise.”17 Gradually, however, he would proscribe all participation in the Mass according to the new rite. The doctrine of the SSPX, to this day, is that it is better— during vacations, for example— to break the Sunday precept than to attend an “equivocal” or “questionable” Mass. (208)

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The envy kicks in…

In the early 1970s, the bishops of France could not help but notice the growing number of entries to the seminary of Écône, whereas their own seminaries were receiving fewer and fewer candidates. (210)

An attempt at a pre-seminary was started at Paray-le-Monial:

“There are young men who wish to serve God and the Church,” wrote Father Ladame.

But they ask, in order to commit themselves, to be offered something both serious and stable: not a Christianity reduced to social action tinged with politics, nor a priesthood in perpetual search of its identity and usefulness! The day, on the contrary, when these young people discover that the priesthood is first and foremost a loving response to a loving call from Jesus, Son of God—“Come and follow me!”—they decide to walk in the footsteps of the Master, in joyful renunciation of all that is not Christ, in complete availability to the tasks that the Church will one day entrust to them in the name of the Lord. (211)

It was therefore in a context of acute crisis among French seminaries that Écône was first condemned and Archbishop Lefebvre was first ostracized in the autumn of 1972. (212)

Here was the excuse for refusing to accept Lefebvre’s seminarians into dioceses:

“Who today can venture into this calling without being actually ‘taken from among men,’ that is, marked by the common demands of contemporary life?” (212)

This double rebuff against Archbishop Lefebvre—the refusal to allow him to come to Lourdes and the refusal to recognize his seminary—had no immediate effect on his work, which still had the approval of the Bishop of Sion and the Holy See. The number of entries to the seminary continued to increase. (214)

Father Louis Bouyer, an Oratorian and eminent theologian, noted in 1975 that the “crisis of Catholicism affected first of all the religious” and he denounced “the headlong rush to which religious superiors and prelates tried to give their blessing even as the fruits of their Council were massive defrockings and a generalized confusion of apostolate with apostasy.”

We will only call to mind the reactions and resistances of those who wanted to remain faithful to the Rule and traditions of their order or congregation, even to the point of leaving it in order to remain faithful to the spirit and letter of their order or congregation. (216)

A two-track proposal never implemented

Cardinal Daniélou (!) even proposed a sort of Benedict XVI solution, well in advance of Ratzinger—let there be two tracks in the Church for seminaries and religious orders — one that is “updated” and one that is “traditional” — and see which one works better!

But of course this was unacceptable to the progressives. They would never allow the slightest bit of “competition” either because their hatred for the old was so inextricably a part of their ideological commitment to the new, or because they were quite frankly aware that the revolution could never win in an open competition with the old (actually, these positions are compatible: a communist would say that people are wedded to habit and thus need to be broken from it, for their own good—or at least for the good of subsequent generations).

I think that the only and urgent solution is to stop the false orientations taken in a number of institutes. To do this, we have to stop all experiments and decisions contrary to Council directives; warn against books, magazines, sessions where these erroneous conceptions are spread; restore in their integrity the practice of the constitutions with the adaptations requested by the Council. Where this seems impossible, it seems to me that religious who want to be faithful to the constitutions of their order and to the directives of Vatican II cannot be refused the right to form distinct communities. Religious superiors are bound to respect this desire.

These communities must be allowed to have houses of formation. Experience will show whether vocations are more numerous in houses of strict observance or in houses of mixed observance. In the event that superiors oppose these legitimate requests, recourse to the Supreme Pontiff is certainly allowable. (216)

Next week, we’ll complete our tour through highlights from Chiron’s Between Rome and Rebellion.

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Note: At the end of this post will be found the monastic version of the Itinerary in Latin and English. The full prayer might be cut off in your email delivery, so simply click on the hyperlinked title of this article to be taken to the Substack, where you will find and be able to download the 3 pages. Alternatively, the text and a translation of the Itinerary from the Roman Breviary can be found online here.

Man is a stranger and a sojourner upon Earth. We are ever in via, from the day of our birth to our final breath. The roots of our pilgrimage go back even farther than our exile from Eden, back to the Heart of God from which we came, and to which we are going, the exitus-reditus described by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Life is a perilous sojourn, but one we travel peacefully if we remain under the shelter of God’s protection. Conversely, travel possesses tremendous spiritual potential. The devout Christian finds himself ever in need of divine assistance as he faces dark and dangerous roads, and unanticipated challenges to his virtue amid the mundane necessities of his transit.

To that end, one great treasure of the traditional Roman liturgy is the Itinerarium (or Itinerary), a venerable prayer invoking the powerful aid of Heaven for safe travels. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, two of its Collects are very ancient, and its spread may be attributed to the practice of monks, who prayed it in obedience to the 67th chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict. Today, it can be found in both the traditional Monastic breviary and the Roman Breviary. Familiarizing ourselves with its spiritual meaning, as well as incorporating it into our travel routine, will sanctify us and bless our journeys. To that end, may these meditations inspire you to entrust your ways to God through this miraculous, powerful prayer.

In Viam Pacis

The Itinerary begins with the antiphon, “In viam pacis,” followed by the Canticle of Zachary, the Benedictus. With radiant clarity, the prayer turns our eyes towards the Dayspring from on high and the mysteries of our Redemption. This is the principal action of the Holy Spirit: to draw our hearts day by day into union with Jesus, who said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

By placing the Benedictus on our lips at the beginning of our journey, Holy Mother Church teaches us once more how to set our steps on the way of peace: to bless the Lord at all times, to remember His promises, to do penance for our sins, and to immerse ourselves in “the merciful Heart of our God.”

Beautifully, the Benedictus sets before us the example of St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner, who was given the Divine vocation to “enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

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A friend of mine and I were once discussing Marshall McLuhan’s famous quip that the “the medium is the message” and how it applied to the introduction of microphones into churches in the mid-twentieth century.

One of McLuhan’s more salient general observations is the naivete with which humans stumble into the use of new media, without realizing the potential consequences incurred. For example, before reading McLuhan, one might think of the microphone as merely amplifying the natural voice—no more than a tool of convenience to enlarge the auditory range of the human voice.

But McLuhan argues that the microphone produces a synthetic version of the voice, analogous to processed foods: it is the human voice artificially othered, removed from its place and made omnipresent, with a dynamic disproportion that overwhelms other sounds (and silences). It’s the “placeless voice of God” phenomenon: the one with the mic ends up sounding from everywhere and nowhere (because of speakers all around), and at the volume of Big Brother (or Big Sister).

To feature microphones in the Mass, therefore, is to introduce an element that is alien to the ancient and sacred nature of the Mass. It is to change, drastically, the proportionality and aesthetics of the Mass. The microphone undermined the atmosphere of sound resonance that McLuhan thought essential to the old Latin Mass.

One might not mind the microphone’s being used for homilies, though this undoubtedly weakens the priest’s exhortational capabilities, his need to learn proper elocution and rhetoric. But, sadly, due to the assumption that there will always be loudspeakers, many churches are no longer built to carry sound naturally. Instead, they’re built around the microphone, almost as if it is the center of sonic gravity—as if the real presence has given way to the real audience.

A visual analogy would be the use of dropdown screens inside churches, spotlighting hymn lyrics, or, even worse, showing the altar (as one can see at St. Patrick’s in New York City, where screens litter the columns up and down the side aisles). One notices that even if people could see the altar perfectly without the screen, they can’t help but look at the screen. It’s almost like an idol whose thrall cannot be resisted. The screen pulls the viewer into itself and out of the reality around him—a phenomenon we’ve all noticed with smartphones, whose users often seem to be “glued” to them regardless of where they are or what they are doing.

Loudspeakers do something similar, in that it is nearly impossible to do or think of anything else as long as the amplified voice is booming its message. Put simply: when the words are coming through the speaker, there is no room, literally or metaphorically, for anything else.

McLuhan thought that inserting the microphone into the TLM prior to the Novus Ordo had put people into a synthetic sound bubble and made them crave more clarity. Rendered through the microphone, Latin prayers suddenly sounded annoying to human ears. These prayers are, of course, addressed first of all to God, and if those around hear them and understand, all the better, but by no means is this a “make or break” condition. After all, people pray in different ways; sometimes they know what an oft-repeated Latin prayer means, sometimes they read it in their missal, sometimes they are praying in their own words interiorly, which the predominantly quiet atmosphere (prior to mics and speakers) made ample room for.

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Let me begin today’s post with the famous and never-fading words of the heroic Vendée nobleman François Athanase Charette de la Contrie, before he was shot by the French revolutionaries:

For us, our nation is our villages, our altars, our graves—everything that our fathers before us loved. Our nation is our faith, our land, our king. But what is their nation for them? They want to destroy our customs, order, and traditions. Well then, what is this country, without love and fidelity, that defies the past? This country of disorder and irreligion? For them, ‘nation’ seems to be nothing more than an idea; for us, it is a land. They have it in their brain; we have it under our feet, it is much more solid. Their world—which they claim is new, and which they wish to find while omitting God—is actually as old as the devil himself. Yet we are said to be the henchmen of old superstitions. But compared to these demons that are reborn from century to century, we are the youth, gentlemen! We are God’s youth, fidelity’s youth!1

Then consider these seemingly unrelated words of Charles Coulombe from his book The Compleat Monarchist (Os Justi Press, 2025):

Is it not odd that Nazi, fascist, communist, and capitalist alike all opposed these corporatists [who were striving to implement Catholic Social Teaching]? One might be tempted to say that destruction of the unique Catholic social and economic vision was the one thing that united both Allies and Axis in World War II. (112)

Regardless of what side they fought on, no modern nation wanted the Catholic Church or its historic monarchies and aristocracies to thrive in Europe. Have you ever noticed how the wars of our era seem habitually to target not only actual or would-be enemies, but also traditional ways of life, which are seen as enemies to “progress”?

I imagine many readers of Tradition & Sanity became skeptics of modernity long ago—and there is every reason to be such. You might well be wondering: “If our ancestors were right about God, the Church, the family, beauty, virtue, holiness, and so many facets of life, could they not have been right about politics too? Is our preoccupation with democracy, as if it’s the best form of government or even the only just form, a mistake—perhaps even a serious one? What can be said, after all, on behalf of kings, princes, and nobles?”

It is providential that two recent books have appeared, perfectly suited to answering these and a host of related questions: the one I just mentioned above, Coulombe’s Compleat Monarchist—an exhilarating tour of the entire world of monarchism, in both theory and practice—and a collection of essays edited by Joseph Shaw called In Defence of Monarchy (Angelico Press, 2023), which focuses more on the British Isles, but contains an abundance of material on liturgy, ritual, and politics that stretches far beyond the UK.

In today’s post, I will be quoting from Shaw’s collection, as including Coulombe’s would make the post too lengthy. Plus, Coulombe is a well-known author and I suspect his book is better known, so I’d like to draw attention to the more obscure title. I will organize quotations under the names of the several authors, indicating pages for those who wish to look things up in the book when they pick up their own copies. —PAK

Sebastian Morello

A document or a flag will never be able to inspire the affections among a people that monarchy can effect in a nation. The reason for this is that a monarch is a person, and so the species of political affection in this case is interpersonal affection (this sort of warmth towards a nation embodied in a person was on full display to the whole world during the national mourning and funeral ceremonies for Queen Elizabeth II at the end of 2022). A man may pledge allegiance to a flag or an emblem or a written document, but such things have not pledged allegiance to him, and he may sensibly remain suspicious of any interpreters of such symbols.

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In the case of monarchy, one may not only be moved by loyalty to the monarch but reasonably believe that the monarch is moved by loyalty to his subjects. Given that it is precisely by interpersonal relatedness that we flourish (which is why we form political societies at all), a government centred on this deepest aspect of human nature is surely incalculably more robust than any government that centres loyalty on an impersonal object. (56)

The point of Bagehot’s bipartite distinction of the efficient and dignified aspects of government is as follows: any successful government must be capable of moving the nation’s members both from without and from within. The nation’s members are moved from without by means of law and regulation and the coercive enforcement of such. The nation’s members are moved from within by patriotic feeling and national loyalty. There is a tendency among modern people to dismiss the latter as being of no importance, seeing the dignified aspect of government as mere “window dressing” and treating efficient government as the only aspect of any consequence. This is a grave mistake.

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When a government cannot rely on the loyalty and patriotic feeling of its citizenry, it quickly depends more on coercion to maintain order and civil stability— the procurement of which is its job. As a sense of patriotism wanes, so too must the state grow increasingly invasive and intrusive, as it can no longer rely on its citizens to be “moved from within” for the good of the nation as a whole. This is largely why conservative governments prize patriotism and treat excessive statism as unnecessary if patriotism is properly fostered, and why liberal and progressive governments peddle national repudiation whilst escalating the emergence of a highly coercive surveillance-state. Admittedly, there is a liberal tradition of nationalist emotion—especially exhibited in the revolutionary upheavals of 1789 and 1848—but such nationalism was always a means to increased statism and political expansionism. The liberal anthropology of atomisation will always remain in tension with patriotic feeling; and thus, for the liberal, order and stability will be maintained by Leviathan alone. No such dilemma, however, arises from the conservative’s communitarian anthropology.

The English can take pride in the fact that the dignified aspect of their government isn’t founded on a mere “noble lie.” Rather, it principally comprises an ancient sacral monarchy, regenerated with each monarch, beginning with an anointing from a lord spiritual (a bishop)—a venerable institution that has come down through the ages with the destined rise of an island people. Through centuries of oscillating between violence and negotiation, they have found a beautiful way to belong together, and every facet of their government’s dignified aspect testifies to this work of providence.

As the philosopher Simone Weil pointed out in The Need for Roots, the French are condemned to conjure up a sense of loyalty from a lie— and hardly a noble one— that theirs is a nation born from an “Enlightenment” dream of universal fraternity, freedom, and equality. Theirs, they must hold, is a nation that sprang forth from a piece of paper as if by magic, whose sorcery required nothing more than the crushing of religion and the murder of their own people— a small sacrifice for the miracle of “the Republic.” The English, thankfully, must subscribe to no such fiction. Indeed, the English remain one of the few peoples left on earth who may claim to live under a noble truth, albeit one hampered by accumulated Whiggish myths which now have the upper hand in their land’s current condition of decay. (56-58)

Paradoxically, then, the dignified aspect of government possesses an efficient power of its own— one, however, that is subtle and tacit— on which the efficient aspect of government depends to prevent it from overstepping its own mark. It is because conservatives believe that their country should be not just orderly but “lovely,” and that its lovability prevents the encroachment of the sort of surveillance state that has now emerged to frustrate our lives, that they are prone to become incensed in the face of unworthy and corrupt ministers and the decline of accountability. (59)

Sohrab Ahmari

We are wired, it seems, for ritual: a pattern of words and actions characterised by formality, rigidity, and repetition. (64)

Peter Day-Milne

The greater number of the new prayers [used for the coronation of King Charles III] combines with their blandness to weigh down the rite of investiture, making it stodgy and slightly boring rather than inspiring and poetically enchanting. (96)

The above example also illustrates another way in which the writers of the modern prayers have spoiled the symbolism of the coronation rite. Like bad novelists, the new liturgists tell rather than show. Eleven times they announce that something is a “ensign,” “sign” or “symbol,” but without helping us to picture the symbolism that they baldly assert. In contrast, the old rites show rather than tell. Only twice do they call something an “ensign,” and never do they call anything “sign” or “symbol”; but they help us to see the symbolisms of the rite clearly. (98)

The Church’s liturgical practice thus reminds us that one’s state of life structures one’s pursuit of salvation: to be a saint, a married man must be a good husband, and a bishop must be a good bishop. He cannot become a saint by excelling in some other role. (99)

Without justice, there can be no mercy. The modern prayers make the rites self-defeating. Just as talk of punishment is removed from the modern prayers, so, one might add, is talk of victory…. It is hard not to detect a very modern cultural cringe about manhood in these changes: a refusal to acknowledge the role of the manly virtues in life. One also detects in them a very modern, very Rousseauian reluctance to acknowledge the existence of wicked people; one senses the editing pen of someone who talks about “challenging behaviours” conditioned into “individuals” rather than sins committed by men and women. The Catholic, of course, will acknowledge that even the worst sinners can be saved; but he will reject the feckless modern refusal to impute moral responsibility to people; a refusal which ultimately lies behind our modern reluctance to talk of evil-doers. He will reject the depressing cringing blandness of the modern prayers. (102-3)

In their tone-deafness to concrete symbolism and their downplaying of sacerdotal mediation, they embody an already outmoded materialism; in their squeamishness about evil, they embody a self-indulgent Rousseauism that is the death of order; in their attempt to unpick good rulership from salvation, they express (one suspects) the tired political liberalism of the composers. (104)

James Bogle

Within a family, it is the parents who must govern. For similar reasons, monarchs are called, in law, parens patriae or “parent of their country.” Just as the ancient Roman word for “emperor,” that is, Imperator, meant “commander,” the office of any leader must, like that of a responsible commander, be one of accepting responsibility, taking charge, and serving those whom one leads, sacrificing selfish desires for the greater common good. That is the ideal of Christian leadership and monarchy, the supreme example being that of Christ the King, the “servant-King” who took the fullest responsibility for His people, even for their sins and even unto death upon the Cross.

This, indeed, is the theological meaning of the Crown of Thorns (as royal crown), the Reed (as royal sceptre) and the seamless garment (as royal alb), symbols of service, sacrifice, and redemptive suffering. In turn, they are consciously and symbolically reproduced in the ceremonial vesture and regalia of kings and emperors alike, such as the alb, stole, cincture, cope, sceptre, orb, and crown. For the Roman emperors, this latter was the crown of Charlemagne, worn by them for a thousand years from AD 800 until AD 1806, when Napoleon Bonaparte effectively dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, the central cynosure of Christendom, the social kingdom of Christ upon the earth.

Further, monarchy, particularly Christian monarchy, is a form of government that is centred upon a family at the apex of the social organism, not merely upon a group of individuals who have, by fair means or foul, managed to claw their way to the summit of political power. Monarchy has the added advantage that, unlike a republic, it is forever young since, being based upon a family, it will have new and younger members every time a royal princess gives birth to another child. This tends to give monarchy a more human quality than other forms of government.

By contrast, a republic do es not produce children in a line of succession but only a selection of often ageing and greying politicians, of no particular background beyond the world of narrow party politics, who have merely managed to attain high office by outwitting, outlasting or outmanoeuvring (sometimes corruptly) their opponents. Higher and nobler feelings of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and duty fit naturally towards one’s monarch and sovereign, as to a father or mother, but perhaps not quite so well towards a mere politician who has managed to climb the greasy pole of political ambition. (119-21)

Unlike a presidency which, when the occupant dies in office, necessitates an inevitable, and exploitable, time lag between death and a fresh election, a monarch is immediately succeeded by his or her heir, in accordance with the hereditary principle. This, a principle that many see as anachronistic and outdated, is, in fact, a powerful and important bulwark against tyranny and a potentially vital protection for democracy. Indeed, this combination of the two principles— hereditary and democratic— may be the best constitutional safeguard for any state. (125)

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The prayers for the Emperor were no longer said after 1918. They were adapted for rulers in general in 1956. They were changed again following the Second Vatican Council, becoming a prayer pro omnibus res publicas moderantibus (“for those in public office”) and placed right at the end of the intercessions, behind the prayers for unbelievers and atheists, signifying the complete lack of importance that a clericalist and Modernist like Archbishop Bugnini now attributed to the laity and to the lay temporal power, in stark contrast to Pope St Gelasius I in his blueprint for Christendom, Famuli Vestrae Pietatis, of 494. (129n20)

Conversely, many so-called “modernisers” today so often think that modernising must necessarily mean abolishing colour, pageantry, and tradition, replacing it with the monochrome, the dull, the oppressive and even, occasionally, the outright tyrannical. They even pretend to call this “progress” or “progressive.” It is, in reality, neither. (135)

Joseph Shaw, “On Monarchy and Tradition”

I start with human— that is, non-divine— traditions because the anti-traditional attitude is so powerful in secular culture that even some Catholics who accept the importance of divine Tradition with a capital “T,” as a source of Revelation in Catholic theology, can be dismissive of any other kind of tradition. It is one thing (they might say) to acknowledge that Jesus Christ revealed things to the Apostles which were not written down in Scripture, which therefore come to us by Tradition; it is quite another to feel obliged to do (or believe) things simply because some fallible humans in the past happened to choose to do (or believe) them. And that is what human traditions are, are they not?

Well, not quite. I would define traditions as those practices which have been performed by our predecessors (ancestors, predecessors in the Faith, previous incumbents in the roles we fill, etc.), which (a) have been continued over time by successive generations (not necessarily without breaks), and (b) have been regarded as significant, and are therefore (c) regarded as binding to some degree on the present generation.

Thus, it is likely that we feel that we ought, in some sense, to continue various inherited cultural practices, such as Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas trees, attending Shakespeare plays, and so on….

These things have value because things characteristic of a cultural group are markers of identity. They give members of the group shared experiences and a sense of belonging, both synchronically, with other living members of the group, and diachronically, with previous generations…. Traditions teach and manifest values, and one’s induction into traditions is at the same time an induction into the values of the group whose traditions they are. A group with shared traditions, accordingly, is a group with shared values. Human beings do not absorb values as abstractions, but as embedded in what they do. (138)

If they [political traditions] are highly abstract, without ceremonial or culturally resonant appendages, it will be more difficult for them to serve as centres of solidarity. (140)

This [idea of the King as God’s “vicegerent”] might sound like a recipe for arbitrary rule, but properly understood, it is the opposite. The kings of the Old Testament were subject to God’s law and were held up to the mark by priests and prophets. A leader who claims to be the delegate of the people, on the other hand, can commit all kinds of crime in their name: whether because, as he claims, they desire it, or for their benefit.

What prevents any constitutional leader from ruling tyrannically is a sense in which there is a higher law, something that limits his actions, that ensures both fair play in politics and justice to ordinary people. This obligation, ultimately, is to God, and is expressed more clearly by a head of state who is appointed by God, as it is generally expressed, than one appointed by “the people.” The religious symbolism of monarchy, therefore, should not be seen as the co-option of the Church to serve the State, but as the State’s subordination to principles of justice which are ultimately interpreted by the Church. Stalin and the French revolutionaries were perfectly happy to co-opt the Church; what they did not want to do was to obey the Church.

It remains true that a wide range of constitutional arrangements are compatible with the Faith and have historically been blessed by the Church. The point is not that monarchy is the only legitimate form of government, just that it embodies in a uniquely clear way a Catholic understanding of political authority. (140-41)

To repeat, the temporal/spiritual distinction is not a secular/ religious distinction in the modern sense. There is no non-religious sphere of life in premodern thought: the word “secular” in this context simply means “pertaining to the saeculum,” the current age, as opposed to eternity: which is to say, “temporal things,” or “the world.” The distinction is, rather, between those means and goals which relate to eternal things, and those which focus on temporal things. God’s will is normative for each, and God is the only source of authority for either. If we want to know who mediates divine authority for a political community, considered as a political community, it is the secular ruler. The kind of ruler who symbolises this best is a single, lifelong ruler, wholly taken up in a role conceptualised as sacred: that is, a king. (167)

They [Protestants] would rather fine music, or subtle intellectual endeavour, or complex hierarchy, if they must exist, had no place in evangelisation. It is inappropriate to place any of these things between the individual believer and the Almighty, because as created things they are affected by sin and associated with human pride. Of course, created things cannot be entirely evicted from religious affairs, but this general tendency of thought leads to radical simplification, in music, art, and architecture, and to anti-intellectualism and radical egalitarianism. The Protestant hope, as Newman expressed it, was that a purified religion would be “much more powerful,” because the extraneous elements are holding it back…. On the contrary, the Catholic instinct is that the means by which, in the circumstances of our own history and traditions, God’s authority is mediated to us, is worthy of veneration precisely because God is worthy of veneration. (171–73)

Whereas the radical Protestant wanted to remove the monarch to see God more clearly, his modern descendant has come to see the flattening and erasing of all hierarchy and complexity as an end in itself. The glory goes not to man, and not to God, but is simply expunged from the world. (174)

1

European Conservative, Winter 2024, p. 109; also https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-world-they-say-is-new-is-as-old-as.html.

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Five years ago today, Pope Francis promulgated a motu proprio sardonically called Traditionis Custodes [TC], “guardians of tradition,” in which he dismantled the ways in which Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum had actually set in motion an organic process of recovering tradition. As many know by now, the word traditio in Latin can mean “betrayal” or “treachery,” and custos can mean “jailer” or “prison-guard,” so my preferred translation of the document is “Prison-guards of Treachery.” For that, in fact, is what the document came to mean for countless Catholics whose local TLM communities were shattered, whose budding life was cut down by the enforcement of this Herodian text.

My initial reaction on July 16, 2021, was an article published at The Remnant: “Traditionis Custodes: The New Atom Bomb.” I stand by every word and punctuation mark of that article. A few days later, on July 21, I did an extensive interview with Gerhard Eger: “Dr. Kwasniewski on Traditionis Custodes: Worst Papal Document in History.”

My Pelican+ colleague Michael Haynes, the Vatican correspondent for The Catholic Herald, asked me the other day what kind of effects I think TC has had in its run of five years. There is so much that could be said about this document and its contradictory effects. Here are a few thoughts.

On the positive side, TC greatly increased public awareness, both among Catholics and among non-Catholics, of the issue of the traditional Latin Mass itself; it brought more attention to communities that celebrate it, which often experienced significant growth in the wake of the motu proprio. Given the internet age we live in, TC was bound to alert a huge number of people to the long-standing critique of the liturgical reform that is now readily found online, together with a rich array of catechetical, devotional, and musical resources for the old rite.

In short, Pope Francis gave the traditional movement a massive advertising campaign it could never have afforded even if it had pooled all its resources into a common coffer. Let’s not forget that a similar boost had already occurred prior to the motu proprio thanks to the experience of Catholics during Covidtide, when TLM priests—Ecclesia Dei, SSPX, and diocesan—often went to far greater lengths to keep churches open and the faithful cared for than their mainstream counterparts. And, very recently, we are witnessing a new boost in attention and attendance thanks to the highly publicized actions of the SSPX and the Vatican’s draconian response.

It seems that every step the Vatican takes to “control” the dreaded trad virus only makes it spread the more. The older men and clerical attachés who sit in the Roman offices do not seem to have figured out yet that we are living in a new period dictated by the speed and crowd-pooled resources of the internet, where an institution no longer has complete control of the narrative—where, indeed, a narrative quickly turn against an institution when it is perceived as striving for a manipulative, hypocritical, or ridiculous control over the people it claims to serve.

Moreover, many Catholics began to question a certain version of ultramontanism (or, in my preferred formulation, hyperpapalism) that led to a reductio ad absurdum of a pope canceling out centuries of tradition, even millennia, and acting as if words can mean whatever he wants them to mean—shades of Alice in Wonderland. We don’t live there, we live in the world God has created by His Providence, in a Church whose traditions are likewise unfolded by His Providence. We have an objective duty to receive our inheritance and pass it on. Our failure to do so harms us grievously.

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Not a single word uttered by St. Joseph is recorded in the New Testament. Hence, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated him as the silent man, drawing lessons for us:

His silence is permeated with the contemplation of the mystery of God, in an attitude of total availability to the divine will. In other words, the silence of St. Joseph does not demonstrate an empty interior, but rather the fullness of faith that he carries in his heart, and that guides each of his thoughts and actions. A silence through which Joseph, together with Mary, guard the Word of God, known through sacred Scripture, comparing it continually to the events of the life of Jesus; a silence interwoven with constant prayer, a prayer of blessing of the Lord, of adoration of his holy will and of boundless confidence in his providence. It is not exaggerated to say that Jesus will learn—on a human level—precisely from “father” Joseph this intense interior life, which is the condition of authentic righteousness, the “interior righteousness,” which one day he will teach to his disciples (cf. Matthew 5:20). Let’s allow ourselves to be “infected” by the silence of St. Joseph! It is so lacking in this world which is often too noisy, which is not favorable to recollection and listening to the voice of God. (Angelus, December 18, 2005)

Not everyone, needless to say, is called to be a Carthusian monk or nun who lives in nearly total silence, but I doubt you will contradict me if I claim that all of us could use some more silence in our lives. God has so much to tell us, such profound and lofty mysteries, so overflowing with indescribable joy, that He does not engage in chitchat or texting, but speaks “heart to heart,” in prayer, in Scripture, in the liturgy.

That means if we want to hear Him, we need to open up a space of silence every day—this is why all the spiritual masters say we should commit some sacrosanct portion of the day to quiet prayer—and we should find ways to reduce the constant noise that surrounds us in the form of music, videos, and social media. Way back in 1935, the poet T. S. Eliot said that moderns are “distracted by distraction from distraction”; what would he say today, with Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Lord only knows what else?

Silence is uncomfortable. We flee from it because sooner or later it will make us think about ourselves, about God, life, the universe, our happiness or lack thereof, and these are uncomfortable if we are not yet who and what we ought to be. Conversely, for someone who is really striving to be a “just man” like St. Joseph, silence is no longer an uncomfortable no-man’s-land but a welcome opportunity to be alone with God, yet never lonely.

When you’re in the car or public transportation, don’t automatically turn on the radio or stick in the earbuds. Learn to be quiet. Say some prayers or psalms instead, or just sit still.

Give yourself plenty of “down time” from social media. It’s very hard to do—I know it from experience—but the benefits are huge and even secular people are writing book after book about why our psyche benefits from this down time. I think it’s the new form of asceticism: we need to fast from too much consumption of media. Some recommend the Sunday shutdown, that is, leaving all devices turned off on Sundays. Go to a park and take a walk in nature, listening to the natural sounds the world makes.

If you don’t take steps to put up appropriate walls, various kinds of noise will invade your life and colonize your mind, and you will become a messy room cluttered with whatever other people want to put there, and not much room will be left for yourself or for God.

I am going to tell you something that almost no one says anymore.

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Many readers will have heard of the name of French historian Yves Chiron (b. 1960), who has written over fifty highly-acclaimed works, especially in the field of modern Church history. He has written full-length studies of (inter alia) Urban V, Pius IX, Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, John XXIII, Paul VI, Annibale Bugnini, Dom Gérard Calvet, Padre Pio, Edmund Burke, and Charles Maurras. In recent years, thanks to the diligent efforts of Angelico Press and Angelus Press, Chiron has finally broken the language barrier, and now five of his important books are in English, all of which I strongly recommend:

• Between Rome and Rebellion: A History of Catholic Traditionalism with Special Attention to France

• Paul VI: The Divided Pope

• Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy

• Saint Pius X, Restorer of the Church

• Pius XI, the Man and the Myth

Given the article published earlier this week by Fr. Thomas Crean OP, who drew our attention to the ways in which Divine Providence used Montini as an unlikely instrument for combating certain trends of modernism, I thought it would be both timely and valuable to share some favorite passages from Chiron’s biography of Paul VI. After all, in light of the SSPX episcopal consecrations this past week, we should bear in mind that the most violent clashes Archbishop Lefebvre had with any pope occurred precisely with Paul VI, even if the formal rupture did not come until later, under John Paul II. It behooves us to try to understand better the peculiar man who, on the one hand, stood up against modernist trends, and, on the other hand, pushed forward an internal revolution in rites and symbols the likes of which the Church had never seen in its entire history on earth.

As usual, I will indicate the page numbers after the relevant paragraphs. Occasionally, I cannot refrain from offering a bit of commentary, which I shall do in brackets. Of course, internal footnote numbers have been removed; those who wish to follow up the details must acquire the book, which is a very good idea in any case. Most of the photos in this post are taken from the book as well. —PAK

Recollection at Mass

[Irony: this is just the kind of quiet, devout soul that Paul VI would later mock in his November 1969 addresses, explaining how much the Novus Ordo would upset people. E.g., “We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel some annoyance in this respect.”]

He would also say that he had learned “recollection,” the spiritual practice of attending to the presence of God in the soul, from his mother. A devout believer, Third Order Franciscan, and member of several other pious congregations, as well as a daily Mass-goer (along with her husband), Giuditta Montini revealed to her son what the interior life could be. (6)

The aloof seminarian

His status remained ambivalent. Everyone among his friends knew that he was preparing for the priesthood, yet he still declined to take up the cassock; right up until a few months before his ordination, he continued to sign his published articles as “G. B. M., Student.” He lacked the strength to survive twenty hours of classes at the seminary every week, but somehow still had enough energy to participate actively in La Fionda and in the activities of the Manzoni Association, and also to give catechism lessons to future first communicants. Finally, part of his time was consecrated to his priestly formation—a very scattered formation. (18)

A precise study of the works contained in his library, which he must have read at this time or in the following years, enables us to describe his breadth of knowledge, both religious and profane, as highly eclectic and without anchor point: “varied and heterogenous readings, vast and disorderly.” (19)

Two months after these memorable days at Monte Cassino, he finally took up the ecclesiastical habit. It was November 21, 1919. Six months later he would be ordained a priest. During the interval, the reception of minor and major orders was accelerated. This haste was perhaps the bishop of Brescia’s favor to an important citizen’s son who could not follow the traditional formation at the seminary. But it is also possible that these sacred orders were conferred on him so rapidly because his health gave greater and greater cause for worry. (21)

[On February 28, 1920, Montini was ordained a subdeacon. He wrote movingly to his best friend Andrea Trebeschi about an experience of which he would later deprive all seminarians when he tried to abolish the subdiaconate:]

“Look at me finally and definitively fixed on the path toward divine election. I am henceforth a subdeacon, after the most fervent days of tranquil and strengthening meditation that I have ever known in my life. I taste the joy of this transformation, which separates me forevermore from the past and its human desires...” (22)

“I find myself well, but fairly isolated, not having been accustomed to living in a disciplined intellectual environment.” (24)

Fr Montini’s commentary reveals an intellectual and spiritual orientation he would maintain throughout his life, continuing through to the end of his pontificate. He invokes the novelty of the modern soul, and its “chaotic complexity.” For this modern soul, religion is no longer “the one necessary thing”; also, to make him rediscover the Gospel he needs “conversations more than discussions; a truth expressed more by artistic words than by perfect words; prayer more than logic.” (27)

[Astonishing how much he knew, and yet how little it profited him:]

An eminent liturgist, he [Schuster] published, in nine volumes, the Liber Sacramentorum (1923–1932), an extensive historical and liturgical commentary on the Roman Missal. Fr Montini would possess all nine volumes and read them attentively. (29)

He immersed himself keenly into this Benedictine environment he loved so much, savoring again, as he wrote to his family, “the magnificent, austere, melodious office.” (33)

Montini’s writings from the twenties and thirties bear witness to an interiorist conception of religion (“the prayer of the soul where one can meet God”), as well as an optimistic vision of the world in which the Christian life should be a “witness.” They also betray considerable interest in modern culture. Aside from the numerous biblical references, contemporary writers in literature, religion, and history are much more frequently cited than classical authors on these subjects. Msgr Montini believed that a new religious culture appeared during the twenties and thirties, so that a “work of intellectual apostolate” was possible, where questions might be considered in a new light. This new religious approach would rarely cause any open conflict with traditional Catholic culture, which would take no notice of it, or pass over it in silence. Msgr Montini wanted to promote what he would later call “a new humanism.” A humanism nourished by multiple sources: the Gospel, a new conception of the liturgy and prayer, and finally, contemporary Catholic culture. (43)

A major reason for Msgr Montini’s decision to live in this neighborhood was the proximity of the Benedictine Abbey of Sant’Anselmo: he would be able to attend the monastic offices frequently and to keep in regular contact with the religious there, who had been carrying out liturgical research for decades. This interest in liturgy, along with the idea that it could be renewed through a simplification tantamount to purification, and through greater participation by the faithful, only grew stronger in Msgr Montini. (45)

[Thanks to what he did later, most Catholics today wouldn’t even know what he was talking about, since they rarely or never hear the Improperia…:]

During Holy Week of 1930, he preached the Spiritual Exercises at Frascati. One of the participants has kept a “precise, localized and even acoustic memory of the pathos and the characteristic voice, incisive and almost strident, in which he discussed the Improperia of Good Friday and the parable of the Prodigal Son.” (50)

But he also stigmatized the “pilgrimages of the devout before cardboard statues” and asked that “the useless and unhealthy multiplicity of candelabras, palms, flowers, etc.” be removed from the altars. (56)

University chaplain

At the same time, another fact likely poisoned the situation. Msgr Montini wanted to publish a book of the religion lessons he had given to the students of FUCI over the years; some had already appeared in the review Studium. To be published, the book, La Via di Christo [The Way of Christ], had to pass scrutiny by the diocesan censor of Brescia, where Msgr Montini was still officially incardinated. The ecclesiastical censor of Brescia, Fr Ernestus Pisani, whose duty was to check that the doctrine being expounded was orthodox, apparently raised several objections. Msgr Montini likely had to justify himself in writing or orally. The nihil obstat was granted with great reluctance in April 1931. On August 9, when the work had finally appeared, Msgr Montini wrote to his family that it had cost him “more controversy to have it published than study to write it.” The reluctance manifest at Brescia regarding the moral teaching of Msgr Montini must have been known in Rome. (57)

Had Msgr Montini resigned in the interests of the student movement, or had his resignation been forced? Evidently a number of prelates and religious judged him to be suspect, and asked that he be removed from his position. The final decision lay with the pope. (58)

Emotional, fickle, and uncertain in his judgments

[Wladimir] D’Ormesson addressed a long report to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs at the conclusion of his mission. It featured a portrait of Msgr Montini, based on several months of frequent meetings; not all the details are flattering:

The pope holds him in such affection that Msgr Montini seems to have a halo. He is a bit of a choir boy or favorite child for the Holy Father, and this reputation, which he upholds with a pious authority, allows him special consideration. Emotional, fickle, and uncertain in his judgements, he is at the same time easy to like, very sincere, very open, and yet inscrutable. That he has been profoundly formed to the Secretariat of State’s ways is tangible. The balance between his natural temperament, which enables him to maintain some independence of spirit, and the nature of his duties, enables a sort of spontaneous equilibrium in him. And it is at the very moment when one believes one has discovered a friend that one finds oneself before an impenetrable bureaucrat.

This sketch would be incomplete if one did not add Msgr Montini’s indisputable fondness for France, his sense of justice (the current news causes him great sorrow) and his professed horror for the methods of the Nazis. But all that does not push him all the way to action. Speaking one day in front of me about the atrocities which the Germans were committing in Poland, he had this to say: “Is there no one to condemn these crimes?” The day when he becomes pope—for everyone agrees in predicting that Msgr Montini will one day be pope (which is obviously dangerous for him), he will ask himself, I fear, the same question, without realizing that he himself is the answer . . . (79)

The personal opinions of Msgr Montini at this time will not be found in these official texts, but in the statements of those with whom he met. All bear witness to a man “open” to innovative and audacious theological currents, with a simultaneously accommodating and prudent nature. During the post-war period he very soon became conspicuous as having a different sort of spirit at the heart of the Vatican. It has been noted: “Each ad limina visitor bearing a thorny dossier knows that it is better to begin the Roman tour with him rather than with someone else . . .” The office of the Substitute was also open to entreaties from condemned theologians, theologians who risked condemnation, ecumenists who wanted the Church to soften her positions, and also diplomats who sought to defend authors who were at risk of seeing their books put on the Index, or else had other favors to ask. (106)

[Interestingly, Montini seems not to have been a fan of the Bea psalter:]

Sometimes Msgr Montini intervened directly in situations, other times he knew merely to give advice, act as an intermediary, or else counsel prudence and recommend patience. An untranslatable play-on-words soon spread in well-informed ecclesiastical circles: “Why go to the mountain [Pius XII] when you can pass by Montini?” One of the first to take this route was Father Yves-Marie Congar. He had published with Fr Henri-Marie Féret, in the review La Maison-Dieu, a harsh critique of the new Latin translation of the psalter. Pius XII, who had this work done by a commission overseen by his confessor, Fr Augustin Bea, a German Jesuit, was upset at the two Dominicans’ criticisms. Fr Congar visited Msgr Montini for the first time on May 21, 1946, and learned that a memorandum in defense of the Psalter, undoubtedly written by members of the commission, was in circulation. The Substitute counseled him to respond. Frs Congar and Féret did so a few days later after obtaining a copy of the memo in question. (107)

Msgr Montini, in his conversations with diplomats and visitors, strove to minimize the weight of the encyclical [Humani Generis]. In a conversation a few weeks later with the philosopher Jean Guitton he explained: “The encyclical never speaks of errores . . . . It speaks only of opiniones. That indicates that the Holy See aims not at condemning errors, but at condemning modes of thought that could lead to errors, but in themselves remain respectable. . . . The French are wrong to interpret as condemnation what is merely a warning— an appeal to prudence, to gradualness, to maturation.” (114)

[On his friendship with Guitton:]

The work [Guitton’s La Vierge Marie] pleased Msgr Montini because of its strong insistence on the distinction between “faith” and “devotion”; also, it had been written in an ecumenical spirit (it was dedicated “to our Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox brothers”). September 8, 1950 marked the birth of a great friendship between the two men. Msgr Montini had Jean Guitton promise two things: that each year, on September 8, he would come to visit him, and that he would always tell him the truth. Jean Guitton was faithful to these two promises, even after the man who had “saved him from the scourges of the Inquisition” became pope. (117-18)

Pius XII’s growing distrust

It is difficult to ascertain precisely why Pius XII never created Msgr Montini a cardinal, and ultimately sent him away from Rome. Yet some educated guesses can be made. Jean Guitton who, in the course of time, became a confidant of Msgr Montini’s, later acknowledged that a shadow hung over this situation. “There are things I know that are difficult to say. Certainly, it was dramatic. At some point, Pius XII began to distrust Montini. He understood that it was his duty to prevent Montini from becoming pope.” When this distrust began is hard to determine. Yet clearly there were some in Rome who wished for his removal from the Secretariat of State. From the end of 1948 onwards, there was a rumor that he was going to be removed from Rome and named to the then-vacant patriarchal see of Venice…. Incontestably Msgr Montini was increasingly out of step with the Vatican. (120-21)

Msgr Montini considered this promotion [to the archbishopric of Milan] to be a sanction. The pope was pushing him away from Rome; the fact caused him great pain. His nephew stated: “It was a drama for him in every sense of the word, particularly the emotional sense: at that time I saw him with tears in his eyes.” On November 1, the nomination was officially made. Le Monde, in commenting on the news, asserted that he would soon be named cardinal and that one could already inscribe him on the “short list” of the papabili. The prediction was half right. Pius XII created no more cardinals during his lifetime. He did so to avoid having to elevate Msgr Montini. (129)

On November 6, Msgr Montini gave a farewell discourse to members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See. He did not allow any pain or bitterness to show. But no one was fooled. Wladimir d’Ormesson bluntly informed his government: “He had exercised a power of ‘resistance,’ opposing with discreet tenacity, but not ineffectively, the power of the zealots.” The “reactionary” clan had obtained his transfer. (131)

Cardinal Archbishop of Milan

Having never been in charge of a parish himself, he was going to find himself at the helm of a diocese with more than nine hundred highly diverse parishes…. For the first time in his life as a priest [he is 58 years old at this moment!], in a pastoral duty entrusted solely to him, he had to make decisions on his own and have them applied by his collaborators. (132)

[Ah, that kind of prelate…:]

“When we approached him to kiss his ring, he quickly withdrew his hand,” remembered Fr Congar, Une vie pour la verite, 117. (136n26)

[Montini’s ideas as archbishop of Milan were the rough drafts of his ideas during and after Vatican II:]

A “general mobilization” of the Church was necessary to “repair the losses, defend the positions, recuperate lost members, and win new ones.” He therefore concluded that it was imperative to adapt Church institutions “to the spiritual needs of our era,” “reform” them, and “modernize” them. These terms of adaptation, reform, and modernization would become, in the following years, the marching orders of a large number of bishops. (137)

Archbishop Montini had asked preachers to favor “goodness” over “polemic”: “Let this preaching offend no one, satirize no one, attack no one; instead, let everyone be invited, informed, almost called and awaited.” (141)

The disillusionment was not long in coming. In Milan, after a brief eruption of fervor, the results of the Great Mission were profoundly disillusioning. The religious and moral situation of the city deteriorated. The archbishop complained of it bitterly. In 1960, when the meeting of an ecumenical council was announced, with the declared objective of realizing an aggiornamento (“bringing up to date”), did Archbishop Montini see another chance for the Church to go towards the world, with other methods than those which had failed during the Mission of Milan? (142)

John XXIII and Vatican II

On November 4, the coronation took place in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Beforehand, John XXIII wrote a letter to Archbishop Montini to announce that he would hold a consistory soon, and that he and Tardini would be the first cardinals named. The pope asked the archbishop of Milan to keep this secret until the official announcement. By this thoughtful courtesy, the new pope showed his desire promptly to repair what seemed in some eyes to be an injustice on the part of his predecessor. It was also a mark of special esteem, and the first in a series of favors demonstrating that John XXIII saw in Montini his successor. (144)

Over time, as the opening of the Council drew closer, the cardinal became more and more optimistic. In August 1960, during a course on “cultural aggiornamento” organized by the Catholic University of Milan, he declared:

This council, unlike many of those which have preceded it, is being called in a moment of peace and fervor in the life of the Church. It does not have to resolve worrying or distressing internal problems; instead, uniquely, it has been convened to continue internal progress. No heresies, schisms, or dramatic difficulties at the heart of the Church will assemble the bishops around the pope; instead they are meeting out of their desire to enjoy the Church’s own internal unity, their obligation to make the Church’s own vitality more effective, and the need for sanctification and internal growth. (151)

It was essential to adopt a new attitude towards the Communists, who had experienced “our severity, but not our charity.” (153)

Writing about the necessary “internal reform” of the Church, he announced: “She will take care to update herself in casting off, if necessary, this or that old royal cloak resting upon her sovereign shoulders to dress herself in the simpler clothes that modern taste demands.” (156)

This first thunderclap at the Council [i.e., the overthrowing of the lists of council commission members] was not an isolated intervention but the result of a coordinated action by a few. Paul VI himself would later admit to Jean Guitton that the intervention of Cardinal Liénart had been decided a few days before during the course of a restricted meeting of six or seven cardinals, of whom he was one…. John XXIII had put a small house adjoining Saint Peter’s Basilica at the disposal of the archbishop of Milan. This special favor allowed Cardinal Montini to see the pope discreetly, and also just as discreetly to receive visits within the Vatican from bishops, periti, and theologians. (162)

After these two extraordinary discourses, John XXIII announced an upheaval of the Council: a coordinating commission would be created to unite the other commissions and follow their work (it included Cardinals Suenens, Léger, Lercaro, Montini, and Döpfner), and more importantly, the seventy some schemas to be studied would be reduced to seventeen. (164)

According to his secretary, on his deathbed John XXIII announced the name of his successor: “My successor, in my opinion, will be Cardinal Montini. It is for him that the votes of the Sacred College should be cast.” (167)

Montini as Pope

Out of concern for his personal comfort and his fondness for modern art, which he shared with his faithful personal secretary, Fr Macchi, he [Paul VI] commissioned numerous works in the following months, calling mostly upon decorators and artists from Milan. In the apartments the heavy garnet-colored tapestries and the gilded furniture were replaced by light toned fabrics and furniture in a modern design. Green plants and works of contemporary art combined to give a less solemn touch to the high rooms. The papal chapel was also entirely renovated: the marble floor, a glass ceiling, stained-glass windows, the way of the cross, even the tabernacle; all was redone in a modern style that resolutely broke with the anterior style. (171-72)

He notably declared [in 1964]: “We must give the Church’s life a new mode of feeling, willing, acting; to have her rediscover a spiritual beauty under all its aspects, in the fields of thought and word, in prayer and the methods of education, in art and canonical legislation.” This announced renewal for the rediscovering of a “spiritual beauty,” which the Church was supposed to have lost in all aspects, was bold. Few paid any attention to it. (184)

On February 3, 1964, Msgr De Proença Sigaud gave the pope a document signed by five hundred and ten archbishops and bishops of seventy-eight countries, imploring him to acquiesce to a request made by the Virgin during the apparitions at Fatima: that the pope in union with the bishops of all the countries in the world should consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially Russia that she be converted. Paul VI refused this solemn consecration, but in order not to seem like he left this request unheeded, the following November 21, during the third session of the Council, he “entrusted the human race” to the Virgin Mary and give her the title of “Mother of the Church.” (186-87)

On his return to Rome, the pope discovered an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty that had been generated by the last difficult days of the third session of the Council. Among even the cardinals, the divisions were great. The council texts then hanging in suspense, notably those on religious liberty and the Church in the modern world (with its numerous practical implications), had created factions which seemed impossible to reconcile.

The pope was greatly troubled. After Christmas, he asked his secretary Father Macchi, the man of confidential missions, to go to France to consult with Jean Guitton and Jacques Maritain in his name. Fr Macchi went to fetch Jean Guitton in Paris, and then they went together to Toulouse where Jacques Maritain had retired to a community of the Little Brothers of Jesus. It was on December 27. There they discussed the different questions which had divided the Council assembly. Jacques Maritain proposed to write memoranda for the pope on some of them. The following March, Maritain sent four texts to Paul VI, on subjects that at times go beyond the conciliar problems themselves: “On the notion of truth”; “Religious liberty”; “The apostolate of the laity”; and “Common prayer and private prayer: the vernacular language and sacred texts: studies.”

The first two only reinforced Paul VI’s determination to have the Council adopt a declaration on religious liberty. Maritain insisted on the right for each individual to think freely, even in religious matters, without the state being able to contradict him. “The state,” wrote the philosopher, “no longer has any right to intervene in matters of the conscience.” It was a legitimization of the separation of Church and state—a separation which Paul VI had always supported. The memorandum on the liturgy was more critical. But, on the whole, Maritain’s reflections were well received. Certain practical suggestions were implemented, such as the abandonment of Latin for the teaching of philosophy and theology in seminaries and Catholic universities. (198-99)

[Here is what Paul VI was saying in May 1965. How ironic! The liturgical reform in fact relaxes all of this:]

“Whoever sees in the Council a relaxation of the prior teachings of the Church, towards her faith, her tradition, her asceticism, her charity, her spirit of sacrifice, and her adhesion to the Word and the Cross of Christ, or worse still, an indulgent concession to the fragility and fluid, relativistic mentality of a world without principles and without any transcendent purpose—a sort of convenient, undemanding Christianity—will be making a serious mistake.” (203)

Maritain arrived in Rome a few days later, on the 11th, and would be a low-key guest of the pope’s in Castel Gandolfo. Did their discussions bear on the declaration on religious liberty which was going to be presented for a vote again in the following days? Did Maritain meet with other persons besides the pope, notably Cardinal Journet, his friend, who was preparing to make a bold declaration in favor of religious liberty? Surely yes. In any case Paul VI is known to have asked Maritain to prepare some “messages” to be read at the end of the Council. (206)

[Speaking of freeing Italians to vote for Communists:]

“We desire Italians to make their own way freely.” (208)

[In October 1965 (!!!):]

“Besides the crisis of faith in the world, there is not, happily, a crisis of the Church.” (216)

The liturgical reform in full swing

The liturgical reform that Vatican II called for, and its implementation during the pontificate of Paul VI, constitutes without a doubt the Council’s deepest change in the life of the Catholic Church. It is also the most obvious change, and it gave occasion to the greatest number of excesses and deviations. It most directly concerned all Catholics and affected everyone intimately, clergy as well as the faithful. It was the most controversial, and met with the strongest resistance.

Paul VI followed this liturgical reform step by step with scrupulous attention, because he had longed for this reform for decades. One of the artisans of this reform has said: “Nothing was decided, much less promulgated, without Paul VI being aware of it. He received the plans, which he annotated with his own hand, making his preferences clear and sometimes also his demands or refusals, so much so that sometimes real crises were created.” (217)

In October 1965, as we have seen, Paul VI still thought that the Church was not undergoing a crisis. In 1966 and 1967 he began to perceive things differently, although this did nothing to modify the general trends of his papal policy. (225)

[Anticipating Europe’s suicidal loss of courage to remain itself and to keep the Turks out, here’s what Paul VI did in 1967:]

To facilitate the diplomatic negotiations for his visit to the mostly Muslim country [of Turkey], where Catholics numbered only a few thousand, he returned to the Turkish government the battle standard which had been captured from the Turkish fleet after their defeat at the naval battle of Lepanto and which had been kept in Rome ever since. (231)

[Didn’t he see how complicit he himself was in this drifting??!!:]

These groups “do not escape from the influences of a world in profound mutation, in which so many certainties are contested or questioned. We see even Catholics allowing themselves to be taken in by a passion for change and novelty.” (241-42)

[Was he really so lacking in self-awareness, or any kind of awareness? Complete divorce between creed and cult—assuming we are to take him at his word:]

Paul VI corrected and denounced a phenomenon to be observed among people who call themselves religious and Christian, which is an anthropocentric religion, that is to say, a religion oriented towards man as the principal center of interest. But religion should be, by its very nature, theocentric, and oriented first of all towards God, its principal and its ultimate end, and towards man as a secondary concern, who is conceived, desired, and loved according to his divine origin and consequently according to the relation and duties which flow therefrom. (242)

The very conception of the Mass was altered as well: now it was defined as “the sacred synaxis, or the assembly of the people of God uniting under the presidency of the priest to celebrate the memorial of the Lord.” This definition recalled nothing of the traditional definition of the Mass as a renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross and allowed one to believe in a solely spiritual presence of Christ. Instead, it was closer to the Protestant doctrine of the Eucharist.

This Novus Ordo Missa would paradoxically win praise from various Protestants, while earning open or covert criticism from eminent members of the Catholic hierarchy. Max Thurian, of the Protestant community of Taizé, wrote some weeks after the publication of the new Ordo that it was “an example of a fruitful concern for open unity and dynamic fidelity, or true Catholicity: one of the fruits may be that non-Catholic communities could celebrate the Lord’s Supper with the same prayers as the Catholic Church. Theologically, it is possible.” (251)

[Paul VI was autocratic when he shouldn’t have been, and not autocratic when he should have been:]

All bishops had been consulted on the opportunity of authorizing the distribution of the consecrated host into the hands of the faithful. 1,233 pronounced an unfavorable opinion, 567 a favorable opinion, 315 a favorable opinion with reservations. The majority of the bishops of the world were therefore hostile to a modification of tradition on this point. The Congregation for Divine Worship, at the request of Paul VI, nevertheless published an instruction which maintained communion on the tongue while allowing communion in the hand in countries where the practice had already been established, as long as there was a vote of the episcopal conference and the formal approval of the Holy See. Out of concern not to hinder the liberty of episcopal conferences, and anxious to respect diverse opinions, Paul VI refused to establish a common law for the Church on this matter, even though he was personally hostile to communion in the hand. (253)

Ostpolitik’s casualties

[It may come as a surprise that Pope Francis was only continuing in his China policy the attitude first marked out by Paul VI: see p. 263.]

But the Holy See and Cardinal Mindszenty quickly fell into disagreement. When the primate asked to be able to name suffragan bishops to take care of the various Hungarian communities in exile, he was denied. In July 1973 the “Secretariat of the Catholic Committee for Peace” was created in Hungary to organize priests who were favorable to the regime, and to control the Church. The Holy See did not protest.

Meanwhile, Paul VI, who had received the manuscript of Cardinal Mindszenty’s memoirs and had read them, dissuaded him from publishing them. Then, on November 1, 1973, he asked the cardinal to renounce his archiepiscopal see. Cardinal Mindszenty refused. Had not the pope himself promised to allow him to keep his position? After another request by Paul and another refusal by the primate, on February 5, the decision of the pope to declare the archdiocese of Esztergom vacant and to nominate an apostolic administrator, Msgr Lékai, to replace the deposed archbishop, was made public.

The news sparked indignant commentaries in the press. The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini, despite his ties to the pope, declared that there was “something Machiavellian in the deposition of the cardinal: la raison d’Etat.” Graffiti on the walls in Rome near the Vatican read: “The pope betrayed Cardinal Mindszenty.” On February 6, the Primate of Hungry made a public declaration in which he made known that he had not resigned, but that the decision had been taken “unilaterally by the Holy See” and that “the leadership of the Hungarian dioceses is in the hands of an ecclesiastical administration put in place and controlled by the Communist regime.” (267-68)

The press office of the Holy See published a press release explaining that the decision had been made to allow the Church to secure her mission in Hungry. One year later, Paul VI named five new bishops in Hungary and, after the death of Cardinal Mindszenty, Msgr Lékai would be named archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary. (268)

This synod [in 1971] also gave Cardinal Slipyj an opportunity to recount how Catholic Ukrainians in the USSR were persecuted, and then to call “Vatican diplomacy” into question with respect to its prudence, its silence, and its politics of compromise. (271)

The clash with traditionalists

[So, this advice apparently doesn’t extend to the liturgical tradition?:]

“Fidelity” (to the pope and Vatican II) and “openness” (to distinguish themselves from “integralism” or “traditionalism”) were combined to affirm the rejection of the “current debacle” and, at an hour when “the essence of the faith is a stake,” the necessity for intellectuals “to exemplify that which had given life to the Church for two thousand years.” (272)

On October 27, 1972, Jean Madiran, editor of the journal Itineraires, addressed a letter to Paul VI beginning “Give us back the Scriptures, the catechism, and the Mass,” that is to say a faithful translation of the Bible, the teaching of the whole deposit of Faith, and the Traditional Mass. “We are more and more deprived of these,” wrote J. Madiran,

by a collegial, despotic, and impious bureaucracy which claims, rightly or wrongly, but which claims without contradiction that it is imposing itself in the name of Vatican II and Paul VI . . . . A party that you knew well when it played innocent and hid its plans, a party whose success has revealed it to be cruel and tyrannical, now diabolically dominates the Church’s administration. This currently dominating party is that of submission to the modern world, of collaboration with Communism, of immanent apostasy. It holds almost all the command posts and reigns over the lax through intimidation, over the weak through persecution. (274-75)

[Except that, for the liturgical reformers, these two things were not believed to be active in the historical unfolding of the liturgy—it was the great parenthesis:]

On May 9, he published an apostolic constitution on Christian joy, Gaudete in Domino. Once more, he demonstrated how much he placed his confidence in the Holy Spirit and Providence. (279)

In a speech before the cardinals on May 24 of that year [1976], speaking especially of Archbishop Lefebvre, Paul VI complained that:

They cast discredit on the authority of the Church in the name of a Tradition for which only material and verbal respect is shown; they separate the faithful from the bonds of obedience to the See of Peter as well as to their legitimate bishops; they refuse the authority of today in the name of that of yesterday.

In the same speech he called on the Catholic traditionalists to adhere to all the reforms initiated after Vatican II:

In the name of Tradition itself [!!!] we ask all of our sons and all the Catholic communities to celebrate, with dignity and fervor, the rites of the renovated liturgy. The adoption of the new Ordo Missa is certainly not left to the free decision of priests or the faithful . . . . We command, in the name of that same supreme authority which comes to us from Christ, the same prompt submission to all the other liturgical, disciplinary, pastoral reforms ripened these last years by the application of the conciliar decrees. (284-85)

Paul VI was outraged by the accusations brought against himself and the Council. He declared, “if there is later a schism, it is not I who will be responsible for it, but the insane and now morbid obstinacy of Archbishop Lefebvre, who is tearing apart and scandalizing the Church by his disobedience.” Paul VI had other harsh words for Archbishop Lefebvre: “He is a lost soldier…. He belongs in a psychiatric hospital…. He is the thorn of my papacy.” (286)

Even the theologian Hans Küng, who was opposed in every way to Archbishop Lefebvre, regretted the attitude of the pope. Soon after the pope’s death, he wrote, “I was always pleased about the fact that Pope Paul VI excommunicated neither Archbishop Lefebvre nor the Traditionalists. Everything hung in suspense. It left a door open to reconciliation. I regret however that the pope did not permit them to celebrate the Traditional Mass.” In the same article, Hans Küng wrote: “I am personally grateful to the pope for having protected me over the course of these years.” It was not until the next papacy that the rebel theologian would be sanctioned. (287)

Hans Küng attests also: “as far as I was concerned, he always refrained from disciplinary measures, and indeed prevented them.” (288)

As if to reassure himself, the pope had added: “I have fought the good fight. I have run the race. I have kept the Faith…. I have done what I could.” (294)

[Evidently, he thought so. But… was it true?]

At this Substack, I have often published articles critical of Paul VI. Most recently, I posed the question: “Bugnini, Francis, Paul: Who’s Most Radical of Them All?” I have also publicly called into question the validity of Montini’s canonization. So, my publication of the following essay by my friend Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., is by no means intended as a sort of “retraction” of my well-known views. But I desire to be scrupulously fair-minded, giving praise where praise is due and blame where blame is due; and from this vantage it must be said that Fr. Thomas brings forward material worthy of any Catholic’s consideration. —PAK

If one were to ask which of the twentieth-century popes was the staunchest ‘anti-modernist’, the most obvious answer would be Pius X. A three-fold cord is not quickly broken, says Ecclesiastes: and in his magisterial triplet Pascendi (an encyclical ‘against the errors of the modernists’), Lamentabili (a new ‘syllabus of errors’), and Sacrorum antistitum (better known as the ‘anti-modernist oath’), this pope gave the faithful a powerful arsenal for responding to the assaults of his time, and ours.

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Paul VI would come at the top of anyone’s list of papal anti-modernists. Was he not the pope who suspended the obligation of swearing the anti-modernist oath, an obligation that had been binding on all office-holders within the Church for the preceding fifty years and more? Did he not preside, someone might ask, over the greatest dismantling of ecclesiastical traditions in the Church’s history? Was he not a disciple of Jacques Maritain, speaking as if the United Nations, rather than the social kingship of Christ, was the best hope for world peace?1

We must distinguish. Temperamentally, it is only too clear that Giovanni Battista Montini was not an anti-modernist in the mould of Giuseppe Sarto. Hamish Fraser, a convert from practical Communism to ardent Catholicism, and founder of the journal Approaches, once remarked that while Paul VI was not a communist, he was nevertheless anti-anti-communist. That is to say, he instinctively disliked anti-communist rhetoric and activity. In the same way, we can say that although he was not a modernist, he was temperamentally anti-anti-modernist. His natural sympathies were for the scholar, not for the warrior, whether the warrior in arms or in words.

But this makes it all the more impressive, and a striking sign of the divine protection of the Church, that it was given to Pope Paul VI to issue several anti-modernist documents of prime importance.

First, however, we should explain what is meant by this slippery term, modernism.

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As everyone knows, on July 1st, two bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, in a pontifical ceremony, consecrated four more bishops, and on July 2nd, the Vatican announced in a Declaration that these six bishops had suffered excommunication latae sententiae by performing a schismatic act. In a further Note appended to the Declaration, Cardinal Fernández went on to state that all the clergy, as well as any laity who “formally adhere” to the SSPX, would also fall under latae sententiae excommunication. A process of “reconciliation” was put forward for priests and laity. Thus for a bare outline of the facts.

What interests me more is how to interpret the facts.

Since there’s a lot to cover, I shall try to be as brief as possible, without sacrificing clarity. Much of what follows is developed from commentary I have offered this past week on social media.

Where I stand

I have said all along that I am not taking a public stance against or in favor of the SSPX, and that remains true. As a result, fire-breathing opponents of the Society — some of whom (I am ashamed to say) even rejoice in the excommunications — will no doubt write me off as a duplicitous agent, while adamant defenders of it may call me a coward or a half-hearted defender of tradition.

But it’s not fundamentally about attitudes, it’s about theology. As a philosopher and theologian, I can make convincing arguments on both sides all day long.1

The one side takes as its first principle that communion in the Church requires, above all else and before all else, union with and submission to the pope of Rome; and therefore absolutely nothing could ever “compete,” as it were, with this good, or qualify in any way how one adheres to it. It is the summum bonum as far as the Church on earth is concerned; one may never, in any circumstance whatsoever, defy church authority.

The other side takes as its first principle “salus animarum suprema lex” (the health, welfare, salvation of souls is the highest law)—a law, they argue, which can, in peculiar circumstances, suspend or modify the usual rights of the Church hierarchy, which has as its raison d’être bringing souls the goods they need and deserve (the pope as “servus servorum Dei”; another way of putting it is that authority loses its binding force when it threatens or undermines the common good).

Obviously, this is a mere sketch of the two sides, and whole books have been written from and for the one or the other perspective. I have contributed to this literature with several books, among them True Obedience in the Church: A Guide to Discernment in Challenging Times and Bound by Truth: Authority, Obedience, Tradition, and the Common Good, plus a collection that I edited, Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith.

If you think the one or the other position is obviously, self-evidently, exceptionlessly correct — a “no brainer” — then I believe you might be a simpleton. You might be deceiving yourself if you have no moment of hesitation or doubt, no sympathy that might tug you toward the opposite point of view. That is why I consider this moment to be especially tragic: it causes division not only within the Church at large, but also within the breast of every educated and attentive Catholic, in whom the tension between tradition and authority is like a perpetual tug of war. It should not be this way, and that itself is a sign of the depth of our crisis.

So much is being written about these things that one can feel overwhelmed, like a swimmer drowning in a stormy ocean. For this reason, I would recommend two essays that seem to me to convey effectively the two positions sketched above: one, against the SSPX, by Eric Sammons; the other, by Kennedy Hall, in favor of it.2

I defy anyone to read these carefully and then to say, of either one, “It’s worthless, he has no case to make, it’s a closed book—just obey! (or: just shake the dust off your feet!).” I don’t think anyone, not a single person, has a slam-dunk case at this moment. To be completely honest and transparent, that is why I don’t come down more definitively on these questions. My conscience would not allow me to do so, and I’m enough of a disciple of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John Henry Newman to know that I cannot act against my conscience.

No one, at any rate, could call into question my devotion and dedication to liturgical tradition, which I consider the single most important issue facing the Latin Church—yes, in a way, even greater than doctrinal issues. After all, in the very diverse world of Catholic traditionalism, the traditional Roman Rite is perhaps the one and only thing on which every type of traditionalist agrees. It has at least a pragmatic priority as a non-negotiable pastoral good. Regardless of how much the SSPX may insist on “doctrine” as its principal focus, the TLM is inseparable from its overall case (can you imagine an SSPX with the Novus Ordo?).

And that is why, as long as Traditionis Custodes remains on the books and bishops are allowed to destroy TLM communities with impunity, there will be no prospect of peace on the horizon, and the Society will continue to expand. The key to overcoming this purported schism rests firmly in the hands of the Church hierarchy, which can end the liturgical (and doctrinal and moral) crisis whenever it truly desires to do so or even begins to desire to do so. That may still be a very long time.

“O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple… We are become a reproach to our neighbours: a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. How long, O Lord, wilt thou be angry for ever: shall thy zeal be kindled like a fire?... Remember not our former iniquities: let thy mercies speedily prevent us, for we are become exceeding poor. Help us, O God, our saviour: and for the glory of thy name, O Lord, deliver us: and forgive us our sins for thy name’s sake… Let the sighing of the prisoners come in before thee.” Psalm 79 (DR)

Are the excommunications valid?

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We are glad to publish today, on the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States of America, a thought-provoking essay by Thomas Storck, one of the greatest living exponents of Catholic Social Teaching (you can see his books here). While the essay is critical of Americanism, Mr. Storck writes with a genuine love for actual Americans, their rugged and beautiful land, their diverse cultures, and their Christian aspirations. His concern is that patriotism be purified of ideology.—PAK

“It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs.” —Daniel Webster

“Honor the Flag. America is freedom.” —from a bumper sticker

Can a Catholic be a patriotic American? The very question seems absurd, no doubt the rantings of some nineteenth-century Know-Nothing or one of his contemporary ideological descendants such as Jimmy Swaggart. But I am afraid that in their haste to assure the American public that the Know-Nothing harangues against Catholics were preposterous, our forefathers in the Faith may have been guilty of a failure to examine sufficiently what patriotism in America is all about anyway. Or, to go deeper still, what it exactly is we are called to be patriotic toward here in the U.S. Or, if we were to put the matter in theological terms, is their any necessary relation between the heresy of Americanism and the common patriotic idea of America?

Before one gets too excited by my raising the question of a possible conflict between ones duties as a Catholic and one’s patriotism, let me state the thesis that I will attempt to prove, and then see what sort of evidence I can bring forward in support. My thesis is simply this: That though there is never any real conflict between one’s duties to the Church of God and one’s duties as a citizen or subject of some temporal state, we here in America are in a strange position. This is because what is almost universally held to be patriotism in the U.S. is not loyalty to a nation but loyalty to an ideology, incarnated in this nation, to be sure, but essentially and primarily an idea, an idea which is regarded as important for the whole human race. Moreover, the history of America is viewed not merely as the history of a country, one among many, but as a sacred history with universal significance for all men, again, because it is the history of the establishment of the regime that embodies that idea or ideology.

There is ample evidence for this quasi-official belief. One of my favorites, and undoubtedly the most striking, is a quote attributed to the late Senator Hubert Humphrey: “America is not a piece of geography between two oceans and two borders. America is an idea....” This statement captures perfectly the reigning notion of patriotism in America, but one can also find the same or similar ideas in the speeches of those considered eminent among us, as the following show. Note also that these statements come from both those called liberals as well as those considered conservatives, Republicans as well as Democrats.

1. Daniel Webster, “A Discourse in Commemoration of the Lives and Services of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,” August 2, 1826:

It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is distinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of. America, America, our country, fellow-citizens, our own dear and native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with them; if they stand, it will be because we have maintained them. Let us contemplate, then, this connection, which binds the prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness.

2. James K. Polk, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845:

Who shall assign limits to the achievements of free minds and free hands under the protection of this glorious Union? No treason to mankind since the organization of society would be equal in atrocity to that of him who would lift his hand to destroy it. He would overthrow the noblest structure of human wisdom, which protects himself and his fellow-man. He would stop the progress of free government.... He would extinguish the fire of liberty, which warms and animates the hearts of happy millions and invites all the nations of the earth to imitate our example.

3. Woodrow Wilson, Second Inaugural Address, March 5, 1917:

We are provincials no longer.... And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind.

4. Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1925:

We stand at the opening of the one hundred and fiftieth year since our national consciousness first asserted itself by unmistakable action with an array of force. The old sentiment of detached and dependent colonies disappeared in the new sentiment of a united and independent Nation. Men began to discard the narrow confines of a local charter for the broader opportunities of a national constitution. Under the eternal urge of freedom we became an independent Nation. A little less than 50 years later that freedom and independence were reasserted in the face of all the world, and guarded, supported, and secured by the Monroe doctrine. The narrow fringe of States along the Atlantic seaboard advanced its frontiers across the hills and plains of an intervening continent until it passed down the golden slope to the Pacific. We made freedom a birthright. We extended our domain over distant islands in order to safeguard our own interests and accepted the consequent obligation to bestow justice and liberty upon less favored peoples.... Throughout all these experiences we have enlarged our freedom, we have strengthened our independence. We have been, and propose to be, more and more American.

And, to make it clear that this sentiment continues in our own times, consider the following:

5. George Bush, State of the Union Message, January 31, 1990:

America—not just the nation, but an idea, alive in the minds of people everywhere. As this new world takes shape, America stands at the center of a widening circle of freedom—today, tomorrow and into the next century.

Now what do these statements have in common? They are characterized by several leading ideas.

First, that America is something essentially new in human history, not simply another nation, or a rearrangement of previous systems, but something new introduced for the first time into mankind’s annals.

Second, that America is important because she is the bearer of liberty, and this liberty is actually meant for all, for America “invites all the nations of the earth to imitate our example.”

Third, that since America fundamentally is an incarnation of freedom, the principles of America are not peculiar or narrow or somehow have to do with only one particular people or nation. No, they are “the principles of a liberated mankind.” Americanism is thus universal, or should be, for “America stands at the center of a widening circle of freedom,” though some “less favored peoples” have perhaps not yet realized their birthright. In other words, to be fully a human being is to be an American!

Yet, paradoxically (so our ideology says), in carrying out our “obligation to bestow justice and liberty upon less favored peoples” we are not imposing something alien on them, as if (say) one attempted to impose German culture on the Poles or English on the Irish. For our principles and way of life are those of all “liberated mankind.” We hold in trust, as it were, values and ideas which it was our good fortune to be the first to exemplify, but which it is also our good fortune to be able to extend around the earth.

Now, according to this doctrine of America, we hold in trust ideas and a way of life which are meant for all. The chief idea, as I have said, is that of freedom, freedom to have abortions and engage in homosexual conduct, to be sure, but also freedom to destroy culture and disrupt communities for the sake of profit.

I think it is extremely interesting that Michael Novak’s foray against Liberation Theology was based on the thesis that in fact democratic capitalism is the true liberation theology. Indeed, he is right. Democratic capitalism destroys traditional cultures and communities and liberates man from the customs of his ancestors much more readily than does the Marxist state. In one sense, then, the U.S. is the New Order of the Ages, as the Great Seal of the United States says. It is in revolt against the entire fabric of our civilization and its customs and traditions. Perhaps, then, one translates Novus Ordo Seclorum better as the “New Order of Secularism"“!

If this is so, however, it also has a curious result for those of us already enjoying or suffering the American way of life. It is this: Since our nation stands for something universal, to be patriotic is basically to adhere to certain universal principles, primarily that of freedom. It is not loyalty to a nation or a people, but to certain universal ideas. These ideas are embodied in a regime, it is true, but that regime is important because with it the “new era” of freedom for mankind has begun. In other words, to love America is necessarily to love what it is presumed to stand for. It is thus impossible to be a patriotic American and to reject or question the regime of 1776 and 1787, or to fail to revere the sacred set of historical events that led to the founding of that regime, together with its savior, George Washington.

Now I regard this notion of America, namely that America is the embodiment of an idea, the idea of freedom, a kind of freedom and a way of life essentially new in human history, meant as a model for all men; I regard this, I say, as a kind of blasphemy.

It is the political and social expression of the Americanist heresy. It affirms that mere political arrangements can essentially alter the human condition. It rejects the need for grace. It subordinates Christ’s Church to the regime of 1776 and 1787, making Washington and the other Founding Fathers the saviors, not Jesus Christ. And although the Great Seal of the United States proclaims officially, Novus Ordo Seclorum, the New Order of the Ages, only the one Church of God can claim that title, for only the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and the introduction of saving grace into human history have essentially changed anything. It is not America that produces the new man or the new way of life but Jesus Christ and his Church.

Our way of looking at the United States Constitution is another facet of this kind of patriotic loyalty to an ideology. Americans practically worship the Constitution. Yet the document itself is a workable but hardly sacred arrangement for governing, embodying few if any statements of ultimate value and not mentioning Almighty God at all. At one time it was perfectly compatible with human slavery and was, for decades, judged to allow the unborn to be freely slaughtered. Though this last aberration was undoubtedly not a correct extrapolation, as Dodds demonstrated, nevertheless the Constitution is largely a procedural document, and cannot be depended upon for upholding the fundamental moral principles that ought to characterize a political community.

In addition to appropriating for America honor that rightly belongs only to the Church, this reigning notion of patriotism in America is not the traditional Catholic conception of patriotism. Patriotism is loyalty to a nation, not to an idea, especially an erroneous and blasphemous one.

True patriotism, which is largely lacking in the United States, is love of one’s country, the people, and the land, based on affection.

Now affection is a kind of love among those who happen to be together. It is the kind of love we have for children, parents and other relatives, one’s neighbors, fellow townsmen, etc. The love of charity should extend to everyone. In friendship and romantic love we obviously choose based on our likings and tastes, but affection is the love we bear simply because someone is near to us and we have grown accustomed to him. With affection we love people because they are ours and we are comfortable with them. We do not necessarily claim anything special about them, simply that they are ours and their ways are familiar to us.

But this love of one’s own extends beyond family and neighborhood to one’s region and nation, to the people and the entire way of life of the nation, and especially the land, the very soil. Not because it is beautiful or fertile, but because it is this land, this mountain. As Leo XIII wrote, “the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up.” This is patriotism in the Catholic sense, the patriotism Chesterton speaks so much of—something that is a duty and, for most of us, a natural pleasure as well.

But note that it has nothing to do with any political philosophy or type of government. It is directed to what is permanent in the nation, not to the ideology of any particular regime. Does a Frenchman have to accept their Revolution to love France? Or must a Russian cheer on his regime, whether Soviet or post-Soviet, to love Russia?

Yet here in America, enthusiasm for the regime and what it stands for is equated with love of country. Patriotic oratory in America typically includes a recital of our sacred history of the establishment of freedom incarnate in the events of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, usually ending with a peroration lauding us as the greatest nation on the earth precisely because of this freedom and the prosperity allegedly resulting from it, and as a model for other nations. The uncritical acceptance of the patriotism that regards us as bearers of freedom for the whole world has, I think, actually tended to diminish the other kind of patriotism, the traditional and healthy sort. There is no contradiction between the traditional kind of patriotism and the Faith, and America could well use much more of it.

Former Secretary of Education William Bennett in an article “Horatius at the Bridge” in Journal of Family and Culture exemplified the fallacy rampant in America from the confusion of these two types of patriotism. Bennett introduced the Roman hero Horatius, who held an army at bay on a narrow bridge to give his fellow Romans time to cut the bridge behind him. He thus faced nearly certain death to save Rome. Bennett quoted from Macaulay’s poem:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can a man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?”

This is the quintessence of the correct sort of patriotism. Not allegiance to a political ideology or regime, but simply affection and reverence toward the things that are one’s own.

But interestingly, Bennett continued by censuring some American high school students who “saw no moral difference between the United States and the Soviet Union.” Bennett went on to say:

I have to wonder what Horatius would say about such moral confusion. I wonder what he would say to the greatest nation on earth; a democracy that has attained gifts of political and individual freedom equaled for centuries only in dreams; a country that raises some of its brightest children to regard the values of a totalitarian police state as morally commensurate with it own.

Now which is it to be? Are we to love the U.S. because she is alleged to be “the greatest nation on earth” or because her soil contains the graves of our ancestors and the shrines of our faith? Macaulay’s Horatius did not say he was glad to die for Rome because Rome was the greatest nation on earth. No, he said he would die for her simply because she was his own. Moreover, if the reason we are to be patriotic Americans is because America is said to be “the greatest nation on earth,” then obviously no other peoples in the world can be patriotic because their poor countries are less than the greatest. They have nothing to be patriotic about!

I anticipate two objections.

First, I recognize that perhaps many peoples consider that their countries have special missions in the world, perhaps even universal missions. But this is different from considering the nation only as the incarnation of an idea. To love Spain or France or Russia as one’s own, and to believe that each is entrusted with a mission for the rest of the world is one thing; to regard love for America as simply love for the ideology of freedom is surely another and very different thing.

The second has to do with the traditional conception of patriotism as affection for one’s own, just because it is one’s own. Some, perhaps, may fear this this could lead to a Nazi-like irrational exaltation of one’s own country at the expense of its own citizens and of neighboring countries. But this is not so. True patriotism is a reasonable affection for one’s own nation, and just as reasonable affection for family need not conflict with the demands of justice, so true love of country need not either. As a matter of fact, the patriotism of America as universal ideal is much more apt to lead to aggression and injustice, because we can interpret all our acts as being acts on behalf of mankind, bestowing “justice and liberty upon less favored peoples.”

Before ending, I must quote from what is perhaps the most unusual example that I know of the patriotism of the ideal, this political expression of the Americanist heresy. This is from a text called “I Am an American,” written by a law professor at a midwestern Catholic university in 1938 and inserted in the “Congressional Record” in 1984 (page E2210). The document consists of ten assertions and, appropriately enough, begins like the other ten commandments.

I AM AN AMERICAN

Thou shalt not put strange gods before me. I will not adore them nor serve them...

1. I am an American. I hold that Americanism is more than a creed; that Americanism is a pattern of life, designed upon these principles: Honor to God, love of neighbor, reliance upon self.

And the author concludes with assertion number 10:

I hold it heaven upon earth to be an American. I pray to the great God in whom I trust to spare me the errors, the mists and the tempests that fill this vale below; in His mercy and goodness to grant to me, in adversity as in prosperity, to stay what I am, an American.

Can more be said? Pity Jesus Christ, who, when he preached honor to God and love of neighbor, did not realize that he was establishing two pillars of Americanism, or that every just man throughout history has, unwittingly, been an Americanist. Then in our trials and sorrows in this vale below, let us remember to invoke St. Joseph, now no longer called “just man” by the Holy Spirit, but simply The American.

This article was first published in 1990 in Fidelity magazine.

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The following essay was written by Daniel Schwindt, who has kindly offered it to Tradition & Sanity. I highly commend his penetrating analysis, which opens up a line of critique I have never seen before, and which I find compelling.—PK

The shift in Catholic teaching toward the language of “dialogue” and “synodality” in recent ecclesiastical discourse represents a fundamental move away from the defense of objective truth and toward a framework of process and subjective experience. This is not an accident; it is a strategic shift in how institutions manage dissent and maintain control while facilitating a transition toward a more malleable, socially integrated, and ultimately secularized mission.

Historically, the Church operated on a basis of propositional truth—doctrines that are either true or false, unchangeable, and binding. “Dialogue” and “synodality” replace this with a focus on modus vivendi (a way of living/operating) rather than creed (what is believed).

As noted in the 2018 International Theological Commission document, Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church, synodality is defined as a “specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church.” By framing the identity of the institution as a “process” or “journey,” the focus is successfully diverted from the content of the Faith to the experience of the participants. If the Church is defined as “walking together,” then the primary metric of success is the maintenance of the group’s relational harmony (hence the endless calls for “unity”), not the preservation of doctrinal integrity.

This framework effectively acts as an administrative mechanism to neutralize hard stances through three primary methods:

Read more

On this feast of Saints Peter and Paul—two of my personal patrons (as my confirmation name is Paul, deliberately after the apostle)—I would like to address, in a public and formal way, various accusations that have been leveled at me over the years by people who have not read my work with any care and who therefore grossly err in their opinion of what I actually hold as a Catholic. I say the following not so much for their benefit, as they often do not seem to care whether or not they are correct and in fact would prefer to continue thinking the worst, as for the benefit of the very many readers of good will who may genuinely wonder about where I stand on various issues.

I have been accused, inter alia, of being a sedevacantist, refusing submission to the Roman Pontiff, asserting that Francis fell from his office due to heresy, and rejecting the teaching of Pastor Aeternus of Vatican I. These issues I will now take up.

Against Sedevacantism

First, I affirm that Pope Francis was the legitimate Roman Pontiff, and that Pope Leo XIV is now his valid successor and the rightful pope. I always accepted that Francis was the true pope, the successor of St. Peter and Vicar of Christ. I argued frequently against the various hypotheses of the sedevacantists and “benevacantists” who tried to maintain that he was not.

Likewise, I accept Leo XIV as the true pope; indeed, it is a serious part of my spirituality, in keeping with my patron saint and my identity as a Benedictine oblate, to pray daily for the pope by name at the Kyrie litany of the monastic Divine Office and in the prayer “Deus omnium fidelium pastor et rector.” I have always attended Masses in which the celebrant commemorates the current pope by name and would not attend Masses in which he refused to do so.

Submission of Intellect and Will

Second, I accept that Catholics, even when raising theological concerns or difficulties, owe the Roman Pontiff “religious submission of intellect and will.”

When I was a professor at the International Theological Institute in Austria (1998–2006), I took the prescribed Oath of Fidelity, which requires exactly this commitment, and made the Profession of Faith in the presence of Cardinal Schönborn, who granted me the mandatum to teach theology. Similarly, when I was a professor at Wyoming Catholic College (2007–2018), I took the same Oath and made the same Profession annually (as was our custom for all the faculty, even though it was not required by church law), and received the mandatum from Bishop David Ricken, a mandatum that was extended by his two successors. Nothing in my thinking or acting has changed in this regard even though I am no longer serving in an academic position that would require said Oath and Profession.

At the same time, in the company of other scholars (Edward Feser, Thomas Pink, Michael Sirilla, Fr. Thomas Crean, Fr. Thomas Weinandy, José Antonio Ureta, Roberto de Mattei, et al.), I have tried to contribute fruitfully to ongoing theological discussions about the limits of this submission precisely in regard to teaching that appears to be contradictory or revolutionary. I recognize that there are “dubia” concerning the concrete meaning and application of certain teachings of Vatican I and Vatican II (see Postscript below). The respectful efforts of theologians to raise questions and examine difficulties is ultimately a service to the Magisterium, as is recognized in the Instruction Donum Veritatis.

The Open Letter of 2019

Third, when I signed the twenty-page Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church, published on April 30, 2019, I did in fact believe—and I continue to believe—that Pope Francis’s words and actions indicated that he held heretical views on seven propositions having to do with conjugal morality, conscience, conversion from sin, absolute moral norms, and the plurality of religions. The Open Letter provided evidence in the form of repeated statements about these matters, contrasted them with authoritative teaching from Scripture and the solemn Magisterium, and showed that he favored bishops and theologians who agreed with his views. It then asked the bishops of the Catholic Church, as successors of the apostles, to investigate this matter and to assume responsibility by admonishing the pope and taking steps to free the Church from a distressing situation.

This Letter was signed by, among others, one of our greatest living theologians, Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, and one of our greatest scholars of antiquity, Dr. John Rist.

In fact, I put my signature to a number of major documents of this kind, all of which can be found in the valuable collection Defending the Faith against Present Heresies: Letters & Statements Addressed to Pope Francis, the Cardinals, and the Bishops, with a Collection of Related Articles & Interviews, which, though published by Arouca Press, is available in the United States through Os Justi Press. I do not regret signing any of the documents, in spite of the enormous professional difficulties they entailed. My conscience is at peace; indeed, it could not have been at peace had I not protested against Francis’s abuse of his office and abuse of the faithful.

More evidence of Francis’s errors and crimes may be found in the recent book The Disastrous Pontificate: Pope Francis’ Rupture from the Magisterium by Dominic J. Grigio.

Loss of papal office

Fourth, as noted above, I always recognized Pope Francis as the pope until his death on April 21, 2025. This answer is compatible with the preceding answer because—in sharp contrast to sedevacantists—I do not concur with, indeed I reject as impossible, the theological opinion that a pope immediately loses his office under suspicion of being a heretic or by teaching a heretical proposition in his ordinary (non-infallible) magisterium,1 even were an individual Catholic to have arrived at moral certainty that such was the case or had occurred.

Since the Church has never defined the one and only view to be held on this complicated issue, Catholics remain free to hold one of several views that have been argued by theologians and canonists over the centuries.2

One permissible view is that a pope retains his office as long as he has not been proved guilty of pertinacity through the intervention of the college of bishops, his fellow successors to the apostles, or through the intervention of the cardinals, his senate in the governance of the Church, and, accordingly, that no individual Catholic can, on his own authority and by his own initiative, declare that a man who is recognized as having been elected pope in conclave has either failed to receive his office or has lost an office once received.

In short: the man who is universally recognized as the pope is indeed the pope, and, in the view I accept, a formal procedure would be required on the part of the bishops and/or the cardinals in order to call this into question, as doing so is inherently beyond the competence of a mere layman.

Communion with the Church

I remain and desire always to remain in communion with the Roman Catholic Church—specifically with the bishops united to the current Holy Father—and reject any position that would separate me from that communion.

I believe the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church and that its visible head on earth is the pope, the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, the principle of unity for the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy. As I profess the faith of the Church without equivocation, seek to follow her precepts without exception, and reject anything incompatible with Catholic faith and morals, I believe with reasonable confidence that I am in living communion with all the bishops, a gift for which I give thanks to the Lord.

The Roman Catholic Church is the communion, the koinonia, into which I was baptized; it is the communion to which I hope that my every reception of the Holy Eucharist may further unite me; and it is the communion in which I hope to breathe my last breath, with the sentiments of St. Thomas Aquinas in my heart, if not verbatim on my lips:

I receive Thee, price of my soul’s redemption, I receive Thee, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched, labored; I have preached Thee, I have taught Thee… If I have taught anything poorly on this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I leave this life.

Postscript: The First Vatican Council

The intention behind, interpretation of, and long shadow cast by, Vatican I’s dogmatic decree Pastor Aeternus are complex and difficult topics—ones that I wrote about recently at this Substack:

In addition to that post, I recommend reading the following articles, and in the order given:

• Pauper Peregrinus, “Papal Infallibility After One Hundred and Fifty Years”

• Timothy Flanders, “The Dubia of Vatican I”

• Peter Kwasniewski, “Objections and Replies on Pastor Aeternus”

• Darrick Taylor, “Can We Learn Anything from the Critics of Vatican I?”

• Robert Lazu Kmita, “The Hyperpapalist Interpretation of Pastor Aeternus: Why Modernists and Sedevacantists are Both Wrong”

• John P. Joy, “Is There a Charism of Infallible Safety?”

• Thomas Pink, “Papal Authority and the Limits of Official Theology”

• Jeremy Holmes, “On non-infallible teachings of the Magisterium and the meaning of ‘obsequium religiosum’”

For those interested in a deeper dive, I recommend these books:

• John P. Joy, Disputed Questions on Papal Infallibility (Os Justi Press, 2022);

• Peter Kwasniewski, ed., Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith (Os Justi Press, 2024), which includes essays by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Phillip Campbell, Stuart Chessman, Charles A. Coulombe, Roberto de Mattei, Edward Feser, Timothy S. Flanders, Rémi Fontaine, Matt Gaspers, Jeremy Holmes, John P. Joy, Robert W. Keim, John Lamont, Sebastian Morello, Martin Mosebach, Clemens Victor Oldendorf, Thomas Pink, Enrico Roccagiachini, Eric Sammons, Joseph Shaw, Henry Sire, Thomas Sternberg, Darrick Taylor, and José A. Ureta;

• Peter Kwasniewski, The Road from Hyperpapalism to Catholicism: Rethinking the Papacy in a Time of Ecclesial Disintegration. Volume 1: Theological Reflections on the Rock of the Church (Arouca Press, 2022).

2

The anthology Ultramontanism and Tradition: The Role of Papal Authority in the Catholic Faith explores these views in some detail.

As you know by now, Saturday’s posts are free and open to the public, while Monday’s and Thursday’s are paywalled. My heartfelt thanks to all who read the content here — both mine and that of my collaborators — and especially to those who have taken out paid subscriptions, which keep us writers fed, clothed, and housed.

Just a reminder for those who may not know, or may have forgotten: if you subscribe to Pelican+, of which I am a co-founder, then you get full access to all the particular Substacks associated with Pelican authors (including Tradition & Sanity), plus a whole lot more that you won’t find on Substack. For this reason, I most of all encourage you to take a look at Pelican+. To help familiarize people with what it’s all about, I wrote up a 2-minute introduction:

Those who, in addition to becoming members, are open to the call to be patrons of Pelican+ should check out “The Fleet” and “The Holy League.” Such supporters enable us to ride the present storms into the future calm when faith, culture, and tradition will be restored.

Second Vatican Council

Inevitably, with the SSPX episcopal consecrations looming, and with a synodally-straitjacketed consistory of cardinals in Rome, the question of the last ecumenical council is on nearly everyone’s mind.

It’s been on my mind, too — and for a long time. In a podcast recorded with Conor Gallagher of TAN Books and released last week, we delved into many aspects of the Council, especially its historical context, its aim, its nature as an event, its aftermath, and some sticky points. People are saying it’s a helpful conversation. I pray it will be for the good of souls in this challenging time, when it is so easy to miss the forest for the trees, the means for the ends, the substantial for the ephemeral:

Footnote: How exactly is it reasonable to single out the SSPX for not assenting to certain confusing or problematic elements in Vatican II, when there are many Catholics (perhaps even the vast majority of those who claim to be Catholic) who would not assent to the traditional content repeated in Vatican II, if it were put into propositional form?

While we’re speaking of TAN, I’d encourage you to watch the shorter special video they produced on the riches of the Roman Canon, based in part on my book The Once and Future Roman Rite:

Those who enjoy reading a good book and getting multiple perspectives will appreciate the anthology I edited: Sixty Years After: Catholic Writers Assess the Legacy of Vatican II.

My take on the council as articulated in conversation to Conor Gallagher is developed more fully here:

On the Present Situation

I do a fair number of interviews. Naturally, they vary in how much is covered, how deep the answers go, and how “on fire” I happen to be in forming my responses. By the grace of God, this interview with Adrian Milag was full of fervor and clarity. I hope you’ll watch it:

Laurence Gonzaga, a good interlocutor of mine on Facebook, watched this video and wrote up his reactions, which, I think, well express the anxieties some people feel about traditionalists (the text has been slightly edited for length):

It’s always a struggle listening to any interview I’ve watched in full with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski because it sort of pushes me back a few, and sometimes many, steps towards the traditionalist worldview. I hesitated to press play but glad I did.

My overall affinities have ventured far from the typical set of traditionalist worldviews but I will still say that the traditionalist apologia, if you strip it of all its polemics or “better than the NO” language, is still quite compelling, and that’s why many young people and converts have been attracted to it, once they discover it. Dr. Peter is masterfully able to distill all the best articulations pro-TLM in such a short period of time. All of this summarized for me the countless hours and books I’ve read early on from the Traditionalist movement, across the Michael Davies classics, the SSPX liturgical books, Rhine Flows into the Tiber, Iota Unum, De Mattei’s history of Vatican 2, etc.

I’ll just add this:

1. Again, even while I can appreciate how and why Trad apologists and scholars will inevitably compare and contrast the TLM with the NO, I don’t think it is necessary. The TLM liturgy speaks for itself for those who ultimately have a psychological affinity towards all or most of the elements that the TLM provides for the human personality. This is why you can bring some folks to the TLM and either they are not into it, or they may like it, but not enough for it to become their mainstay liturgical preference.

2. I would probably be categorized by PK as a hyperpapalist on this but maybe I’d like to modify it just a bit. When I was a TLM-only Trad in the late 2000s there was an increasing cognitive dissonance in my experience considering my previous years of studying and apostolate in apologetics. Here’s this principal anchor of unity ecclesiologically in the papacy, while the more radical forms of traditionalism would, practically speaking, ignore or even oppose what he says and does, and same for the mainstream administration. After all, what function does the global Church really have if all you really need to do is preserve your TLM liturgy and catechism, closed off in your corner of a parish integrated with the NO, or your exclusively TLM parish, never to interact or consider anything that’s happening at your local diocese or neighboring parishes?

3. I agree that Traditionis Custodes was not good. It destroyed TLM communities which for the most part are not made up of the type of folks that TC was supposed to address. The anti-NO and pseudo-Sedevacantist types really do need to be dealt with. The schismatic mentality found in many of the loudest proponents of the TLM are the folks that need to be addressed. You don’t have to look far online to find these folks. Watch for these words: “new church”, “Freemason”, “true Mass”, “Novus ordite”, “Peterite”, etc. While this may not meet the definition of the canonical crime of schism, it may meet the definition of the sin of schism.

4. I like the admission that the NO can certainly be celebrated ad orientem. Early on my friends and I kept pestering our Carmelite priest friend to offer the Mass ad orientem. One day, at an evening Mass on Tuesdays that my friends regularly attended, instead of walking to the normal side of the altar, he walked and stayed at the front of the altar. We were so excited. With another priest friend, at the funeral Mass for my uncle, I requested the Liturgy of the Eucharist be entirely in Latin with the chanting of the Dies Irae. It would have been too radical for this young priest to do ad orientem at this parish. It certainly would have branded him politically at that time. But now, several years later, more and more of the priests being ordained for my diocese are regularly wearing their cassocks. Gregorian chant has been returning more and more to Episcopal celebrations of Mass. The more traditional liturgical elements are no longer being rejected. I think that’s because they are realizing that the vocations that are coming in are mostly conservative or traditionally minded men. And if they are to be consistent with their Spirit-led theology of Church culture, then it must be the Holy Spirit that is guiding this swing back towards tradition.

5. Just like within the TLM there are gradations of celebration with increasing degrees of ceremonial, personally, I prefer to add the NO and the Ordinariate forms in a full spectrum of liturgical options. This of course is just for me and my affinities. NO, Ordinariate, TLM, Eastern Rites. In a matter of a few years, the Anglican use will have a new church within 15 miles of where I live. I suspect, this will become my exclusive parish and I would no longer have to be this “roamin’ Catholic.” Until then, I have learned to tolerate and sometimes appreciate the local offerings of the NO, even with the frustrating homilies, the jazz band music, and happy birthday songs at the final blessing. Yes, it still bothers me. But I can get over it. Whether I like it or not, it is still the body of Christ.

Here was my reply, initially left as a comment on his page:

Historically the pope has been the center of unity, but he had almost nothing to do with the daily living of the Catholic life in this or that parish church or village. We need the unity, but we also need the sense of an organic tradition that we receive with our mother’s milk and practice because it’s good and true, right and holy — not because it’s been through a bureaucratic review process and stamped Approved.

For 3/4ths of the Church’s history, the liturgy Catholics worshiped with (or, more accurately, the wide range of local rites and uses) had never passed across a pope’s desk. It wasn’t until 1570 that a pope issued a universal missal — and even then, with guardrails to prevent the loss of other historic rites.

I am grateful that in revolutionary times like ours (post-French-Revolution), we have popes to remind us of fundamental truths of faith and reason, and even more, to condemn errors (e.g., Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae). However, normally, the pope should not be or be seen as everyone’s local pastor who calls all the shots and determines what Catholicism means day to day. This is indeed papalism on steroids.

Thus, “ignoring the pope” can mean two very different things. It can mean dismissing him when he’s teaching an unpopular truth like the evil of homosexuality or abortion or contraception. Or it can be getting on with a thoroughly Catholic life of prayer, worship, works of mercy, family life, local culture, without constantly looking over one’s shoulder to see if the pope is nodding his head in approval, or fearing that he will decide one fine day to cut off a traditional practice like kneeling for communion that we’ve been doing all our lives and for many generations, or to impose a radically new custom that will throw everything into confusion. You see what I mean? That’s not the pope’s job, and I rejoice that there are still some Catholics left who understand that there isn’t a big fat equal sign between “Catholicism” and “the current pope.”

It is one of the signs of our religion’s internal crisis that people so often end with “after all, it’s the body of Christ.” This kind of reductionism and minimalism has not kept souls in the Church, has not prevented churches from closing down, has not kept vile abuses, horrible negligences, boredom and lameness at bay. We should desire the Church to be as strong and healthy as she can possibly be — not just for ourselves but for an increase in her evangelizing power! — and the strength, health, beauty, and holiness of how we worship have EVERYTHING to do with it.

Obedience is a very tricky thing. It can be used as a weapon for wickedness in the hands of the wicked, and we have seen exactly how that plays out in the sex abuse crisis.

People are too quick to assume that the overthrow of the traditional liturgy is “not a sin,” and that ordering a priest not to celebrate his own Roman rite or to stop celebrating it is “not a sin.” I am absolutely of a different mind. I think it is very sinful, destructive to the common good of the Church and the spiritual good of the clergy. Therefore, it is rightly resisted. In this case, disobedience is justified for a higher obedience.

Thus, my reply to Laurence.

The Society of St. Pius X

Some folks who watched the podcast with Adrian Milag were disappointed by my comments on the SSPX. Well, I agree — I could have done better on that topic. It’s not always easy to respond well “on the fly” to difficult questions. So, here’s a fuller response.

If there is any reason for the SSPX to exist, there is reason for it to continue to exist. I believe the way the Vatican and many chanceries have treated the Society for a long while now shows that its existence has been acknowledged as a pastoral reality in the Church’s life that is not simply to be condemned.

Now, if you say to over a million Catholics who are rightly attached to the traditions of the Church, “You need to become extinct by having no bishops after a certain point, and simply reintegrate into your local dying and heterodox diocesan parishes” (since very often there are no other alternatives, especially outside the USA and France), then you are simply denying that there is or ever was any reason for their existence. And this, to me, is absolutely ridiculous. I would call it delusional to the maximum.

The SSPX would not exist if the successors to the apostles were doing their jobs, if they uncompromisingly preached the truth, defended and handed on the traditional liturgy, nourished all the good the Holy Spirit is raising up. But manifestly they have not been doing that for a long time; exceptions are few and far between. Thus, it is obvious that the SSPX has a legitimate raison d’être; and thus, a legitimate claim to continue.

This is why, if Leo XIV were thinking clearly and were well advised on this matter, he would have extended a palm branch by approving their episcopal candidates, so that there would be a real and active connection between the Holy See and the SSPX—a possibility of working together for the good of souls. But I’m afraid that he will take a “hard line” at a time when a hard line is taken on almost nothing else.

The other day, I saw an amazing juxtaposition of headlines (Exhibit A):

Exhibit B: The archbbishop of Detroit savagely extirpated Latin Mass sites in Detroit and prepares to shut down 90 parishes, but praises a huge Islamic center. Which master is he working for? What religion does he belong to?

Until the kind of cognitive dissonance summed up in such headlines is resolved, the ecclesiastical chaos will continue, and so will diametrically opposed and necessarily divisive responses. Unity must be rooted in truth, not in will-power. And since this statement can itself be interpreted in opposed senses, let me be clear: until the traditional Roman Rite is free everywhere and always, and the rupture introduced after the Council is healed, there is no question that the Western Church is and will remain in a state of crisis.

Before we leave the topic of the SSPX, readers are no doubt aware that the headquarters released, on June 24, 2026, an Open Letter to the pope and the cardinals, accompanied by an extensive Profession of Faith.

You may read the Open Letter here:

The Profession of Faith (at the very bottom of that web page you’ll find a PDF version that includes all 127 footnotes) is a well-formulated, refined credal proclamation, utterly Catholic, through and through. It raises the question: How many of the current hierarchs of the Church could, in good conscience, make this Profession their own?

I believe the ante has just been significantly upped: it’s as if the Society is saying to the Vatican, “Here’s what we believe, in detail. Tell us where we have gone wrong, or why this is not a more than sufficient basis for working together.” More subtly, they are saying: “Do you believe the same things we do? Because if not, it is you that stand condemned, not we.”

Of particular note, Vatican II is not directly attacked; they say, more modestly: “I acknowledge in particular that modern errors represent a dreadful threat to the whole of the Catholic order, and that their penetration into the life of the Church, under the influence of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar reforms, has provoked a crisis of exceptional gravity.”

Some of my favorite passages are nos. 96-109 on the social kingship of Christ and Catholic Social Teaching, a perfect summation of integralism; nos. 122-126 on the Holy Mass and the liturgy (practically a synopsis of what I’ve been writing for the past 20 years in my books and articles on the sacred liturgy; I was relieved that they did not specify the 1962 liturgical books but simply spoke of “the traditional liturgy of all time,” which, in fact, means the pre-55 Roman Rite), and nos. 145-50 on modern errors and why denunciation of them is necessary, not just reaffirmation of truths.

I must say, the hyperventilating reactions against this document by some professional, mainstream Catholic theologians are extremely telling, as are the contemptuous insults they direct at the Society and anyone who dares not condemn it utterly. In fact, many of these people are now busily and enthusiastically “outing” themselves as modernists of one stripe or another. This, too, is Divine Providence at work: it’s beneficial clarity when the wolves tear off their sheep’s clothing and show their fangs.

One more interview!

On Friday, June 26, Robert Nugent of the Decrevi Determined to Be Catholic YouTube channel interviewed me. We had a wonderful conversation. Although it started with the topic of ad orientem, it quickly moved to other related topics — mystery and mysticism, the way the old rite facilitates prayer and the new rite impedes it, the fallacy of modern man as uniquely different, the role of the senses and fine arts, the errors of iconoclasm and naturalism, the reintegration of Thomism with its liturgical milieu, the “sunk cost” fallacy that entraps ecclesiastical Boomers, and more. Quite a lot, in fact!

Postscript: A New Novel

And now for something completely different…

Os Justi Press is pleased to announce the release of The Garden of Perfect Clarity, a powerful, gorgeously-written novel by Roy Peachey. Set in China, the story follows the fortunes of a youth flung violently from one social environment to another, facing ordeals in the midst of political upheavals. Finding unexpected friends, mysterious manuscripts, and narrow escapes, he discovers that nothing is quite as it seems—neither Asia nor the West, neither the past nor the future, neither wisdom nor foolishness.

Evoking the works of Borges, Dickens, and Vodolazkin, The Garden of Perfect Clarity contemplates time, transformation, memory, and repentance in the engrossing story of one man’s search for his identity—and his awakening to the deepest truths about life and fidelity. The novel has won acclaim from its first readers.

Poet and essayist Dr. Anthony Esolen: “A work of genius, conceived and executed with the sure touch of an artistic master.... There is no preaching here, but an honest and often sorrowful foray into that wilderness known as the heart of man.”

Sinologist Dr. Anthony E. Clark: “Peachey has accomplished what few writers have.... As an historian of China's long history of exchange with the West, I finished this novel with a new and illuminated way of viewing of the worlds I have studied for decades.”

Novelist Eleanor Bourg Nicholson: “Draws us compellingly into a wood between the worlds... . The place we will find is as mysterious as it is beautiful.”

Superior of the English Apostolate of the FSSP, Fr. Armand de Malleray: “Peachey’s captivating novel starts fast and carries on at similar pace as the main character undergoes one trial after another…. An urban metaphor for Chinese civilisation and the harrowing Cultural Revolution, the city is vividly described, to the point of feeling alive to the reader.”

Biographer and man of letters Joseph Pearce: “A mystical odyssey and a musical tapestry, where the epic imagination meets the Catholic poetic muse.”

For a look inside or to purchase, visit the publisher’s site. It’s also available at Amazon sites around the world.

Robert Morrison reviews The Garden of Perfect Clarity at The Remnant, calling it “a deeply Catholic novel about revolutionary deception, the loss of reality, and the light that only grace can restore… a meditation on our own age of puppet masters, confusion, and the urgent need to reclaim truth… one of the most important books you’ll read this year.”

I’d also just mention that the book itself turned out very beautifully, in both paperback and hardcover editions.

Here’s the author reading us an excerpt:

Nowadays one often hears invoked the phrase “sensus fidelium,” which could be described as the supernatural instinct the faithful have for what is and is not compatible with the faith they profess. If the sheep hear a suspicious teaching (or see a suspicious practice), they may well reject it because they do not recognize the shepherd’s voice. In that sense, they refuse to receive the novelty.

A friend once asked me what counts as “reception” of a liturgical rite, and whether we might say that the faithful never, in fact, fully and perfectly received the Novus Ordo, because the sensus fidelium balked at it. I agreed with him, for two basic reasons.

First, the introduction of the Novus Ordo coincided with, and certainly partially caused, a mass exodus of Catholics from the Church the likes of which had not been seen since the time of the Protestant Revolt in Europe. Catholics who abandoned the Faith obviously did not receive the liturgy but rejected it; believers who aren’t there can’t receive what they don’t want. And the ever-decreasing number of practising Catholics, at least in the Western world, may be taken as a sign that, whatever else may be the case, the new liturgy does not positively appeal to modern man—which was the entire rationale for its creation.

Second, and more to the point, with earlier liturgical “reforms” of the post-Tridentine era, each new edition of the missal totally replaced the previous edition and was used by all clergy and faithful without exception.1 The new missal, in contrast, was introduced by an apostolic constitution lacking the legal forms necessary to abrogate the previous missal (as a committee of cardinals under John Paul II found to be the case, and as Benedict XVI formally declared in 2007—see this article for a full explanation), and, in point of fact, some clergy received from Paul VI indults to keep using the old missal—not that indults were actually needed, but they were thought to have been needed. And with the birth of the traditionalist movement ca. 1965 (even prior to the promulgation of the Novus Ordo), there was always a core group of Catholics who continued with the ancient rites of worship and had as little to do with the modernizations as possible.

Consider the telling fact that the traditional communities such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, the various old-rite Benedictine monasteries, Carmelite nuns and hermits, etc., altogether completely reject the notion of “instituted ministries” and maintain the immemorial practice of ordaining members to the four minor orders and the subdiaconate.

Since 1965, this minority in the Church has always been on the increase, at first slowly, then more dramatically after the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum—a momentum that has not waned even with the damage caused by Traditionis Custodes.

In short, there was never a universal acceptance of the new liturgical books and their unprecedented innovations by the Church on earth, either at any given time or over any period of time. All this suggests that the sensus fidelium yields a distinctly mixed verdict when it comes to the Novus Ordo.2

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The following parable was written by a friend; with his permission, I share it now for the benefit of readers. It is in fact strangely illuminating.—PAK

In a quiet valley bordered by orchards and golden fields lay the Land of PBJ. From its earliest days, the people had known one simple meal: bread spread with peanut butter and jelly. It was more than food. It was memory, identity, and a shared inheritance handed down from parent to child. The elders spoke of it not as invention, but as something received, something preserved. For generations, no one questioned it.

In those days, the King himself was known to have a deep love for the PBJ. He spoke of it fondly in feasts and gatherings, and it was said no other meal brought him such simple joy. Yet as time passed, the King departed on a long journey beyond the borders of the kingdom, entrusting its daily governance to his Chief Steward until his return.

While the King was away, a group of celebrated chefs arose in the capital. They were clever and imaginative, admired for their skill and boldness. “Why must the sandwich remain as it always has been?” they asked. “Is not the spirit of PBJ greater than its form?”

And so they began to spread mayonnaise where jelly had always been. They presented it with confidence and called it, still, PBJ.

At first, the people were puzzled. Some tasted it and found it strange but intriguing. Others recoiled. Yet the chefs insisted, “It is the same, only better! Now it is adapted for modern man.”

Word of the innovation reached the King’s Chief Steward, who, acting in the King’s absence, gave it his approval. “Let it be known,” he proclaimed, “that this is the New PBJ.”

In the villages, however, a small number of families quietly continued as they always had. They took bread, spread peanut butter, and added jelly—nothing more, nothing less. To them, the matter was not one of taste or preference, but of fidelity. “We have received this,” they would say, “and we do not have the authority to change what was given.”

Yet when they spoke, they did not frame their resistance as opposition to the King or to his Steward. Rather, they would say the Chief Steward had exceeded his mandate, and that true loyalty required holding fast to what the King himself had always loved and taught. “We must do,” they would insist, “what we know the King would want, not merely what the Steward has declared in his absence.”

At first, they were largely ignored, being inconsequential in number. But as time passed, their numbers grew and murmurs began.

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Among the best books I’ve ever read on the allegorical features of the traditional Roman Rite is Fr. Claude Barthe’s Forest of Symbols (Angelico Press, 2023; also available on Amazon). If you’re interested in an overall review of this book, along with many particular examples, you’ll find it at New Liturgical Movement here.

Today, in keeping with the modest purpose of the Professor’s Bookshelf, I will be sharing a bunch more passages from the book that caught my eye, as I hope they will catch yours. It is quite marvelous how Fr. Barthe, drawing on centuries of commentary, effortlessly unfolds the solemn liturgical life of the Church out of the templates provided in Sacred Scripture.

In parentheses I will indicate the page numbers from which the passages are taken; if there’s more than one paragraph, the page number will come at the end of the group of paragraphs. —PAK

The allegorical sense of liturgy

The allegorical or mystical meaning, or again the spiritual meaning, of the liturgy as a whole and of the Mass especially, has for a long time been poorly understood. Today’s task is to rediscover this meaning, just as we have rediscovered the whole importance of the spiritual sense of Scripture. The purpose of this work therefore is to put right an omission that long predates the period of chaos that has overtaken Christian worship since the 1960s.

The Christian liturgy, and the Roman liturgy in particular, developed and thrived, in the Middle Ages especially, within a tradition of commentary and meditation that was fundamental for its understanding. To enter the liturgy of the Mass without this key is like trying to understand a cathedral assisted only by an architectural summary and a background knowledge of Christianity. In fact, nowadays you are lucky if you have this background knowledge of Christianity. But even so, such a collection would not lead you into these “forests of symbols” to which Baudelaire refers in his poem Correspondances, in which he sees nature as a “temple” of “living pillars,” itself a metaphorical counterpart for a religious structure. (1)

Just as Christian worship was adapted, for example, after the Spanish and Portuguese conquests, to the cultures of South America, so it was thought that it needed to be adapted today to the modern world. But the promoters of this “inculturation” into modernity did not realize that they were naively trying to domesticate and incorporate into the Christian liturgy a worldliness that was not a matter of culture, but was essentially anti-liturgical, since it was radically anti-Christian. (2)

If we are to achieve this understanding of the divine cult, we must recognize the fundamental parallelism between the Bible and the liturgy. Holy Scripture was written, certainly, to be studied and to be understood in its theological import, but it was also written to be meditated upon in lectio divina. That means that the knowledge of the sacred texts, in the manner of the Fathers of the Church and the medievals, such as St Bernard (1090–1153) or St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), starts, continues, and finishes in meditation: the Bible in reality is both human speech and divine speech, and God unveils its meaning progressively by granting knowledge of that meaning from on high. According to the principle of St Gregory, Scripture is received by the preaching of the masters and deepened under the action of grace. Scripture “grows in a certain way alongside those who read it.” St Bonaventure (1221–1274) applied the term “revelation” to this progressive discovery by the Christian soul, under the guidance of the Church, of the spiritual sense of Holy Scripture. This is ultimately nothing other than its Christic sense. Just as Holy Scripture, including the Old Testament, is the speech of Christ who reveals himself definitively, so the liturgy is the prayer of Christ who extends himself and spreads himself out in the souls of the faithful. (3-4)

Moreover, this spiritual commentary on the liturgy is already at work in the New Testament, particularly in the Apocalypse, but also in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in the Gospel according to St John. The Apocalypse itself proceeds in this way to complex mystical interpretations of cultic objects that will go on to serve as models for patristic and medieval authors: the seven lamps are the seven spirits of God (4:5); the gold cups full of perfume represent the prayers of the saints (5:8 and 8:3–4); and the fine linen with which the Spouse is clothed signifies the virtues of the saints (19:8). (10)

Here it is particularly important to underline the twofold character of the liturgical scenes in the Apocalypse: they are at the same time both sacrificial and royal. They describe this triumph of the sacrificed Christ that all the Christian liturgies will go on to elaborate. One could furthermore, on this subject, point to interlinked references between the Apocalypse and the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of St John: the epiphanies, or solemn appearances of the king, when he is enthroned in majesty, seen in the baptismal Epiphany of the Lamb of God (Jn 1:28–34) and in the slaughtered Lamb on its throne (Rev 5:6); the royal entries, or the great procession along the highway prepared for Priest and King to enable him to enter his country, his city, or his Temple, seen in Christ’s solemn Entry into Jerusalem (Jn 12:12–19) and in the Lamb on Mount Sion followed by the procession of men without spot (Rev 14:1–5); and the public and royal banquet, seen especially in the marriage of the king’s firstborn at Cana (Jn 2:1–11) and in the marriage of the Lamb (Rev 19:7).

Moreover we find this liturgical coloring of the book of the Apocalypse, whose sources are in the Gospels (that is to say, are based on Christ’s words and actions as they are reported by the inspired authors) in the most liturgical of the four Passion narratives, that of St John: the Ecce Homo of Christ clad in the crown of thorns and the purple mantle (Jn 19:5); the procession to Golgotha and the royal superscription (Jn 19:17–21); and the Church, the Spouse of the Lamb, issuing from the side of the new Adam with the blood and water of the sacraments (Jn 19:34). So, as we note the fundamentally priestly and royal character of the book of the Apocalypse (consider the institution of a royal people of priests, 1:6, 5:10, 20:6), we can legitimately say that the great visionary canvas of Scripture’s final book contains the spiritual archetypes of all the forms that Christian worship will go on to take.

One could cite many other references, particularly related to the three main aspects mentioned above of the reverence that was given to rulers, and developed in many profound ways, first in the world of the biblical and Hellenistic periods, then in the Christian society of Late Antiquity, and finally in the medieval world; namely first, the solemn entry of the king; second, the appearance of the king to receive his subjects’ solemn homage; and third and last, the participation of the king’s favored friends in festive celebrations.

Christian worship has thus borrowed, as much as it has inspired, the ceremonial that accompanied public life in the periods of its greatest development. So, we will find that, along with other elements of this type, such as lengthy prayers modelled on petitions to the sovereign, gestures demonstrating allegiance, and the reproduction in the communion rites of rituals associated with the receiving of gifts, all Christian liturgies will contain the following three elements. First, the solemn entrances, of which three are particularly important: the entry at the Introit (the entry of Christ in the form of his ministers); the entry of the Gospel (the Gospel procession, the entry of Christ in the form of his word, corresponding to the Little Entrance of the Gospel in the liturgy of St John Chrysostom); and the entry of the oblations (corresponding to the Great Entrance in the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the entry of Christ in the form of the Eucharistic elements). Second, acts of adoration of the Lord that take place at various times but particularly at the elevations, introduced in the medieval period, of the consecrated elements. Third, the communion rites at the sacred banquet reuniting the friends of the Lord.

In summary, the Apocalypse is a key source for one of the essential lines of spiritual interpretation of the Mass: the triumph of the immolated Christ, given in communion to his disciples. This victorious aspect of the sacrifice of Christ, which is repeated on the altar and whose merits are applied to the church, is certainly at the root of all mystical interpretation of the Christian Mass and of the Roman Mass in particular. (10-11)

One of Amalarius’s principal ideas, which he acquired as part of an already well-established tradition and which became a key element in the spiritual interpretation of the Eucharistic sacrifice, is that there is a link between the unfolding of the Mass and the history of salvation: the Mass represents the mission of Jesus Christ, from the proclamation of his arrival on earth, to which the Introit corresponds, sung by the choir, who in their turn represent the choir of prophets who foretold Christ’s arrival, up to his Ascension, to which corresponds the Ite missa est, the dismissal of the faithful (we will return to this), with which those assisting at the Mass are dismissed just as Christ dismissed his apostles on the Mount of Olives. From the ninth century to the end of the twelfth century, the age of the cathedrals, this genre of explanatory descriptions of the allegory of the Mass, the expositiones missae, underwent an extraordinary flowering. (14)

But what has been called “the crisis of the European mind” was growing unavoidably, with its complex thrust that comprised a positive element, the demands of rationality, but also a negative element, rationalism. This led to a crisis of the mystical sense in the interpretation of Scripture and the liturgy, as well as elsewhere a crisis in mysticism, in the sense of passive prayer, something that is a separate story, though caused by the same developments. This decline accompanied the rise of scientific criticism in the study of the Bible. Though this criticism was a positive development, its rational method was often confused with rationalism, and in fact the application of the historico-critical method to the Bible, as with the liturgy, progressively eliminated all interest in tracing the spiritual meaning. Even from the point of view of the historical knowledge of the text, this is an aberration in that we cannot separate the development of the spiritual hermeneutic of both Bible and liturgy from the story of their transmission and composition. (15)

And if the spiritual exegesis of the Bible is now regaining its former glory, that is still far from the case for the spiritual exegesis of the liturgy. Now, without understanding this wave of allegory in which an entire Christian and sacral society was immersed, we can no more understand, even scientifically, the Roman liturgy, and the Roman Mass especially, than we can understand the planning and construction of the early Christian basilicas and of their successors, the cathedrals. (16)

Mary’s womb

Mary’s womb was like a sacristy: there the Son of God put on his fleshly vestments before entering the world for the great liturgy that he was going to carry out there, which ended with the holy Sacrifice of Calvary. (30)

Why so many signs of the cross?

The sign of the cross, a summary of faith in Christ, is moreover the most specific cultic symbol, unlike other gestures known also from the usage of the courts of Late Antiquity, like processions and censings. (38)

Childlikeness

The ministers, as they approach the altar [reciting Psalm 42], express their wish to recover the baptismal purity of spiritual children. (38)

The memory of Greek

The texts, the quotations, and the biblical references are in fact the backbone of the liturgy; and the clergy had now sufficiently digested the Latin of public life, of the orators, the rhetors, the officials, for it to be possible for them to render the liturgy in a Latin of adequate nobility. Nevertheless, no one forgot that Greek had been the first language of Christian prayer in Rome (more because it was the language of culture and the Bible than because it was the vernacular). Its retention at this point by the Roman liturgy [i.e., in the Kyrie eleison] thus affirms the fundamentally traditional nature of the sacred action. (47)

Why a crucifix above the altar

We cannot emphasize too highly the fact that always, and right from the start, the sacred action is directed and oriented towards the glorious and victorious Cross, whose representation stands over the altar. (49)

Perfection of Latin style

For this purpose liturgical prose makes use of different Roman rhetorical registers—the petition, the supplication, the celebration—and of stylistic devices highly valued by the very literate, including antitheses (earthly goods vis-à-vis heavenly goods, for example), parallelism and balance, asyndeton (between nouns or adjectives, for example), assonance (repetition of a sound), hyperbaton (separation of a subject from its verb, of a noun from its qualifier), chiasmus, and wordplay with similar-sounding words, paronomasia, etc. The literary success of this renewal of Latin solemnity and of the Roman gravitas is the achievement of a Christian Rome that was determined to surpass the ancients in the honor of Christ. The best examples of this style are the Collects, with their rhythm, their concision, their balanced antitheses, their oratorical flow; as also are the Prefaces; and, with its tone at once solemn and well constructed, the unsurpassable masterpiece of Christian Latinity, a sublime piece of poetry in prose: the Roman Canon. This liturgical Latin of Late Antiquity became a mold imparting its shape to a greater or lesser extent to all the subsequent compositions; much as the basilican plan, reinterpreted by Christian worship, remained visible in all the subsequent architectural variations. (53-54)

Ritualized readings

This part of the holy mysteries joins two cultic acts: a ritual proclamation of the word of God and a meditation based on a psalm, with the whole having the manner of a solemn ceremonial prayer. As we have seen in the case of the Gloria, these proclamations of the sacred texts can just as well remind us of a herald’s proclamation. The ritualization of the announcement is part of the message: it is a sacred and mysterious word, passed on and receive as such. We can note also in the course of a solemn or pontifical Mass a progression in the dignity of those playing a role: the lector sings any lessons that precede the epistle, the subdeacon sings the epistle, the deacon sings the Gospel, and the bishop, the teacher of his people, pronounces the homily, and if he does not pronounce it himself or is not present, the priest who preaches does so with at least the tacit delegation of the successor of the apostles. The same would be true of a homily preached by a deacon. (58)

Number of readings

From the sixth century, there were never more than two readings in Rome: the epistle and the Gospel. Originally, there were probably more readings (the common practice among the Gallican, Milanese, Visigothic and yet other rites was to have three readings: an Old Testament reading, an epistle, and a Gospel). Even today, in certain Masses during the Ember Days and at certain vigils (Ember Saturdays being regarded as vigils), the epistle can be preceded by up to five readings (or even, before the reforms of the 1950s and 1960s, six or twelve prophecies).20 Generally, however, the Roman liturgy, like the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, has preserved only one text before the Gospel, often taken from the New Testament, but sometimes from the Old. (59)

Direction of reading

Even if the text that is read or sung is most frequently taken from the New Testament, it is still considered as a preparation for the preaching of the Gospel. At the altar, the priest reads the epistle on the left-hand side, from the point of view of the cross, the Old Testament side. The subdeacon sings it on the same side, which is of course the right-hand side from the point of view of the faithful, and he sings it at the foot of the altar steps, or at the corresponding ambo, or from the right-hand half of the rood or chancel screen, the large and high screen closing off the choir, from the top of which the readings of the Divine Office were read, preceded by the reader’s request to the celebrant: Jube, Domine, benedicere, “I beg you, Father, bless me,” from where the screen derived its French name of the jubé. Since this reading is the final preparation for the Gospel of Christ, this announcement is identified with that of St John the Baptist, the last of the prophets (Mt 11:9), who sums up in himself the entire Old Testament. It is sung facing the altar, that is, facing east, in other words towards the Christ who will return “as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west” (Mt 24:27). (60)

Ceremonial detail

It will be seen that after reading the epistle the subdeacon kneels before the celebrant, in order first to kiss his hand, as a sign of peace, and then to receive his blessing; unlike the deacon, who after reading the Gospel comes to the celebrant to kiss his hand and to receive his blessing, but does not kneel. That reflects the fact that the prophets, though certainly joined to the power of Christ the Word of God, did not enjoy an intimate relationship with him until much later, when he descended to hell. The apostles, by contrast, who are represented by the deacon, received Christ’s peace and blessing at his Resurrection, by the virtue of his death, receiving therefore the power to preach and to announce the Gospel of the Word of God. (61)

The Gradual is a follow-up to the epistle: the Alleluia is an introduction to the Gospel. (62)

(Good commentry on Gradual, Alleluia, Sequence, and Tract: see pp. 61–64.)

Ceremonial for the Gospel

The ceremonial of a low Mass, and even more of a solemn Mass, shows that, with the Gospel, we enter one of the great moments of the celebration. Up until that point, everything has effectively taken place on the left-hand side of the altar cross, the “epistle side,” representing the Old Testament. Now, the altar missal moves to the right-hand side of the altar cross, the “Gospel side,” representing the New Testament.

In a solemn Mass, the minister of the Gospel (that is, the deacon) undergoes a double preparation, like an apostle of Christ. First, at the altar, on his knees on the highest step of the altar on which he has placed the Gospel book, he asks God for a purification similar to that undergone by Isaiah in the Temple at his calling (Is 6:6–7): Munda cor meum ac labia mea. . . (Cleanse my heart and my lips, O God almighty, who didst cleanse the lips of the prophet Isaias with a live coal: vouchsafe, of thy gracious mercy, so to cleanse me, that I may worthily proclaim thy holy Gospel).

Then, in front of the celebrant, the deacon, holding the Gospel book against his breast, comes to ask the blessing of the celebrant (Pray, sir, a blessing. The Lord be in thy heart, and on thy lips . . . ). After the deacon has been blessed by the celebrant, the celebrant places his right hand on the Gospel book and presents it to the deacon to be kissed as an indication that Christ confers his power and his virtue on his apostles, giving them the gifts of his spirit that flow out from him, especially from his hand, the source of good works. Christ passes on to him in particular the gifts of languages, of speech, and of the voice, with the hand of the celebrant touching the purified mouth of the deacon and the purified mouth of the deacon kissing the consecrated hand of the celebrant. From then on, the Lord’s right hand passes on his Spirit, which alone can give an understanding of the mysteries, uncovering what is hidden within them, can give the grace necessary to talk of them, and can communicate the power to make them heard. This kiss is a kiss of respect, but it is even more designed to plumb the depths of the divine force of Jesus Christ’s holy humanity, and in particular the force of his humano-divine speech.

The triumphal procession that escorts the Gospel is a real entrance of Christ in the form of his Word. It moves forward thus: the thurifer walks at the head, his censer smoking with the incense that burns on the fiery heart of Christ and that spreads abroad the sweet fragrance of the virtues of the Lord, breathing out the prayer that rises perpetually from his holy humanity; the two acolytes follow, with their candles representing the light of Jesus Christ expressed in his Word, spread by the apostles, the bishops, and the doctors (or again by the two Testaments, the Old containing Christ in figures, the New containing Christ unveiled).

When the procession arrives at the place from which the Gospel is to be proclaimed, the Gospel book, representing Christ, is censed three times in the same way as the celebrant or the Holy Sacrament. The book is supported by the subdeacon, who functions as a sort of living lectern (if the book is laid on a lectern, the subdeacon stands behind it and places his hands on it). The subdeacon represents the Old Testament, which supports the New Testament that it foretells….

The Gospel is sung facing north, that is, towards the icy land of the infidels, which is going to be enveloped in the fire of the preaching of the apostles (in the same way that the altar missal is placed, for the reading of the Gospel, at an angle on the north corner of the altar….

All his assistants, all the members of the choir, all the ministers, including the celebrant, face towards the Gospel book, which during the singing of the Gospel extract becomes the axis around which the entire church revolves; for this Gospel book, held up, illuminated, censed, is nothing other than the representation of Christ speaking through the mouth of his apostles and the voice of his Church.

This then remains the situation until the celebrant has respectfully kissed the Gospel on the incipit: the subdeacon brings the book back to him for him to do this, without any genuflection or other form of greeting, as if he were carrying the Blessed Sacrament itself. This kiss of respect and love given to the start of the text is accompanied by a short apologia recited by the celebrant (By the words of the Gospel may our sins be blotted out), which shows that the Gospel has the power of a sacramental to wipe out venial sins. […]

Finally, after the Christ-book has been kissed by the celebrant, Christ the Priest, he is censed three times: the same honor is thus shown to the image of Christ in the form of the altar cross, the word of Christ in the form of the Gospel book, and Christ in the person of his minister, in the form of the celebrant, as will be shown to Christ when he is really present at the Elevation. (64–68)

Oblations

The veiling and unveiling of the oblations had great importance in the ancient forms of the liturgy. (81)

One can with equal justification draw attention to another formal “doublet” (among many others, for imitative repetition is a characteristic of the rhythm of a liturgy): just as in the Byzantine rite, the Great Entrance of the oblations is a more imposing doublet of the Little Entrance of the Gospel Book, which is transferred solemnly and placed on the altar before the chant of the Trisagion, so in the Roman rite, the honors paid to the oblations are a doublet of those paid previously to the Gospel. (89)

The Roman Canon

It must be emphasized that the principal characteristic of the Roman Eucharistic liturgy is the unique position of its Eucharistic prayer, already attested at the beginning of the fifth century. The very name itself, Canon actionis, unchangeable “action,” given to this unique Eucharistic prayer brings out the specific character of the rite that is being celebrated (in this case, the Roman Mass) and its immutability (the same is true of other immutable liturgical Canons, such as the central part of Matins, the orthros, in the Byzantine rite, an invariable Canon formed of nine poetic odes). In this case, the term Canon missae therefore reminds us of its uniqueness, of its invariable nature, of the immutable rule of the faith, since Rome asserts that she is completely free from all error, including, and above all, in the heart of hearts of the sacramental life: let us not forget that Rome was slow to introduce into the Mass the Credo, of which, from the Christological and sacramental point of view, the Canon was already the living expression. There is therefore nothing more characteristically Roman than its unique Eucharistic prayer, its Canon missae, which is a veritable and venerable statement of belief regarding the Eucharistic sacrifice. (104-5)

The Kiss of Peace

The celebrant starts the Canon by raising his hands and by bowing, just as at the start of the hymns and of the Preface, except that here, at this particularly solemn moment, he bows in a deep bow that he completes by kissing the altar. More so than all the other solemn embraces of the sacred stone, this kiss, given at the entry into the sanctuary of the Canon, embodies the symbolism of which we have already spoken: it is the kiss of the most holy marriage of humanity and divinity in the Son of God incarnate and it is the kiss of the Christ, who at the Ascension, glorious and victorious over death, returns in his humanity to his Father. The celebrant again extends his hands in the attitude of the orant, since the Canon continues the great priestly prayers that began with the Preface and was interrupted by the triumphal insertion of the Sanctus. More than at any other moment, the celebrant, an alter Christus, is in the position of Moses, interceding for his people at the battle against the Amalekites (Ex 17:11–12). (106-7)

Scripture is more extrinsic to the Mass

The Mass does not take place when the holy scriptures are read in the church, but when the gifts are offered and the Body and Blood of the Lord are consecrated. For you can just as well read the lessons at home, whether they are taken from a prophet, from the Apostle, or from the Gospel, or you can listen to other people reading them; but you can hear and watch the consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ only in the house of God. That is why anyone who wants to participate in the entire Mass and benefit his soul thereby must stay in the church, in a humble posture and with a contrite heart, until the moment when the Lord’s Prayer is said and the blessing is given to the people. (126: a quotation from St Caesarius of Arles, d. 542)

The Resurrection phase

The final blessing, a repetition of the blessing after the Fraction and the Commixture, which eventually became the only blessing, finds its allegorical explanation in a certain parallelism between this final part of the Mass and the final part of Our Savior’s life on earth, namely his Resurrection. This entire section of the Mass, consisting of the ceremonies of the Fraction and the Commixture (with or without a solemn blessing), the Communion, and then all the ceremonies that follow, envelops the celebrants and their assistants in the spiritual climate experienced by the apostles and the first Christians between the first Easter and the Ascension. (131)

On Christ processing to us, not we to him

The thought of “approaching the Lord” invites us to ask whether we can talk about a “Communion procession” and so about an antiphon to accompany this procession. Yes, we can, but it is not a procession of communicants. The reality is that here the Body of Christ draws near to those who are going to receive him and who present themselves to him, as we will recall, in due order, at least as far as the clergy are concerned, but also, normally, as far as the magistrates and the people are concerned. Consequently, if there is a procession, it is rather the Holy Sacrament that processes, accompanied since the High Middle Ages by the torches of the torchbearers. (141)

At a solemn Mass today, one will usually see the priest, accompanied by the deacon and subdeacon, “processing” from one kneeling communicant to the next. In this way Christ is the one who comes to meet us and give Himself to us.

Every little detail

When the prayer is over, the missal is closed but without being moved away. (The missal is left with the spine facing south and the fore-edge facing north, so that it is ready to be opened again to face those without faith in order to spread the warmth of the Word.) (144)

Postcommunion

The Oratio ad Complendum is therefore said on the Jewish side of the altar, on the other side from the Gentile or New Testament side (which covers those who convert to Christ). This is because the preaching of Christ and of his Gospel started with the Jews, then transferred to the Gentiles, and will at the end return to the Jews, who will enter the Church of Jesus Christ. In between the two, the middle of the altar represents the faith in Christ that draws the two peoples together and makes them into one (Eph 2:14), “the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10). (144)

The German clerical author who writes under the name Vigilius recently published an important essay in which he maintains that modernity—in the form of Cartesian epistemology and Hobbesian absolutism—crept into the modern Church’s response to it, taking the form of hyperpapalism.

Long before reading Vigilius’s essay, I was already convinced (and have said in various places) that hyperpapalism is a distinctively modern response to a distinctively modern epistemological crisis: moderns no longer know where to get certainty from (materialism has removed it from physical objects encountered through our senses; psychologism has removed it from our interior states; historicism has removed it from Scripture and other written sources; etc.). So the modern individual is thrown into a world of frightening cognitive anarchy and he is desperately in search of an authoritative spokesman who will always tell him the truth, always be the beacon to guide the ship to port, without fail, without the possibility of failure. And by a neat trick, extrapolating from the ambient ultramontanism, we find that the pope is this spokesman who speaks nothing but the truth, an oracle of the living God.

I’m not claiming that people think all of this explicitly, but rather, imaginatively describing the larger crisis of knowledge from which this “it’s infallibly safe to follow the pope” position gains its seductive appeal—and in which it becomes possible to think that there is, practically speaking, nothing off limits for the pope to change as he wishes. As Michael Hanby writes in “Synodality and the Spirit of Truth“:

The many questions provoked by the unfolding of the synodal process and the political and sociological lexicon of its lay champions boil down to the question of the relationship between auctoritas and potestas, which finally turns on the question of truth. Once historicism and sociologism have annihilated the transcendent basis of truth, reducing “truth” to the sum of antecedent conditions and “what we have the power to effect,” authority becomes just another expression of the will to power. One cannot throw every truth up for grabs—“male and female he created them,” for example—while holding onto the truth of papal primacy from Pastor Aeternus, without treating the pope as a Hobbesian sovereign and basing his authority on his power rather than the reverse. Authority without truth is finally not authority at all. Mere “doctrinal policy” can effect changes in structure; it can even compel obedience, to the cheers of the Sodalitium Franciscanum; but it cannot bring one to believe as true what one knows to be false. Power can compel, but it cannot oblige.

In a private communication to me that I share with his permission, Robert Keim of Poetic Knowledge reacted as follows to Vigilius’s essay, which I had sent to him:

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On June 13, 1691, a Spanish expedition arrived at a great and broad river set amid rolling plains in the province of Coahuila y Tejas. Delighted with the country, which Governor Domingo Terán de los Rios called “the most beautiful in New Spain,” the Spaniards named it, San Antonio de Padua, “because it was his day.” On the 14th, which was the Feast of Corpus Christi, Father Damián Massennet, a Franciscan, arranged for Masses to be said at the site, and later recorded the events in his diary:

I ordered a large cross set up [on the 14th], and in front of it built an arbor of cottonwood trees, where the altar was placed. All the priests said Mass. High Mass was attended by Governor Don Domingo Terán de los Rios, Captain Don Francisco Martinez, and the rest of the soldiers.... The [Payaya] Indians were present during these ceremonies....

The Mass crowned the long journey made from Mexico, and marked the future mission site and city that would famously bear the name of Saint Anthony. Around the humble altars raised near the fertile banks of the San Antonio River grew a uniquely Christian civilization, marked in its very foundations by Franciscan spirituality.

The beautiful Mission churches built to house the Mass sheltered the faith of the people of San Antonio through poverty, plague, and war. Continually ruined and continually rebuilt, four of the five original mission churches today serve as parishes, a testament to the deep faith planted by the missionaries so many centuries ago. For the poor and the pilgrim alike, the crumbling stones still point upward, echoing the eternal “Sursum Corda” they were built to serve.

Mission San Francisco de la Espada

Mission San Francisco de la Espada was “the first mission in [the province of] Texas, founded in 1690 as San Francisco de los Tejas near present-day Weches, Texas. On March 5, 1731, the mission was transferred to the San Antonio River area and renamed Mission San Francisco de la Espada. A friary was built in 1745, and the church was completed in 1756.”1 Mission Espada was one of the most remote of the missions, and therefore in constant danger from the Apaches. Several church structures were erected and then were subsequently torn down because they were unsafe.

Following complete secularization in 1824, Mission Espada was neglected for many decades. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Fr. Francis Bouchu, a complete restoration was completed in 1907. Of the ancient structure, only the facade remains, yet the mysterious herradura (horseshoe arch) and Espadaña (bell tower), like the remains of the outworks surrounding the small church, speak enduringly of ages past. Each stone reflects the unique harmonization of cultures that was the fruit of the sacramental life in the missions.

The interior of the Espada church is lovingly Franciscan. The austerity and simplicity of the building is counterpointed with the evocative statues in polychrome, a unique colonial painting style that layered multiple colors of paint and gold leaf on wooden statues. Local tradition claims that the 18th-century statue of Saint Francis of Assisi once held a sword (hence the name of the Mission, “Espada”), a possible allusion to an episode in the life of St. Francis recorded by Saint Bonaventure, who identifies the sword with the Holy Cross. Saint Bonventure recounts that on Mount Alverno, Saint Francis “rejoiced at the gracious aspect wherewith he saw Christ, under the guise of the Seraph, regard him, but His crucifixion pierced his soul with a sword of pitying grief.”

Espada remains a deeply prayerful and meditative place. Descendents of the original families still come there to pray, drawn to the faith of their ancestors who built the churches, tilled the ground, and sanctified their lives under the paternal hands of the missionary priests. One may sense at Espada the paradox of an edifice of invisible spiritual height hidden in heaven, though its base rests on the most humble foundations.

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