“I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how such a fraud
could become president.”
“Neither do I.”
“People must be that stupid.”
“Of course they are! They don’t work in business.”
“They don’t believe anything.”
“No, they’ll believe anything.”
“He can’t win.”
“We can’t let him win.”
“He won’t win.”
“Stop him at any cost!”
So developed a group therapy session in a well-appointed
finance manager’s office across the hall from my own office. Four or five sons
of white baby-boomers, degreed and earning low six-figure salaries,
commiserated over the ascendance of Donald Trump. I probed them gently:
“Have you ever considered that Trump is a symptom and not a
cause?”
“No, never.”
“Yep, he’s caused everything wrong with this country, or at
least 99% of it.”
I continued, “Have we perhaps left the Republican politics
of the ‘90s and you don’t see it?”
“Nope.”
“Absolutely not!”
“We know what it takes to win.”
“We can’t win with him.”
“He won’t win.”
“We cannot let him win!”
“Is it too late for a third party?”
“The Weekly Standard
is promising a neo-conservative independent. If not, it’s the libertarians.”
“I don’t care about marijuana, bitcoin, or Ron Paul, though.
Maybe I’ll stay home.”
“Good choice.”
“Yes.”
* * *
The fact is that the Republican party of 1984 and of 1994 is
over. Whatever cultural currency Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” or reform
legacy Newt Gingrich left behind is long spent and structural Republicans
cannot come to grips with the change. No Republican is going to win the
Hispanic vote by putting the son of a Cuban immigrant on stage. The antiquated
political calculus epitomized by Karl Rove lives twenty years in the past. It
does not understand the populist rise of Trump on the right and Sanders on the
left, nor does it want to. It is too narrow, too content seeing the narrow path
within its blinders to realize its burden has been lightened and its passengers
have begun to traverse the streets themselves.
There is nothing particularly remarkable about Donald
Trump’s policy positions. His “America first” attitude reflected the general
American outlook until George Bush decided it was America’s responsibility to
engender democracy among the Muhammadans. Several other candidates wanted to
build a wall bordering Mexico. Trump’s brashness makes him popular. It attracts
the frustrations of marginalized white, middle-class men who have found
themselves marginalized by university politics, hiring preference programs, and
the chilling of free speech by media shaming. As “alt right” diva Milo
Yiannopoulos points out, it almost does not matter what Trump thinks; his
supporters project their desires onto him. Trump and his less potent Democrat
counter-part, Bernie Sanders, reflect a reinvention of the American political
paradigm. The conventional “conservative vs. liberal” contrast, “limited
government” vs. FDR’s welfare state narrative is over. The future paradigm will
pit the nationalist against the arrant socialist, which has been emerging in
Europe for nearly decades.
No reformer has ever accomplished anything by engaging
existing structures as they are. No one has ever beaten the hometown referee
and the hometown team. Reform changes the narrative as much as it changes the
policy. Only the soulless are convinced by listening to calm, considered public
debate. Men are instinctively passionate and vigorous beings who want to
channel their energy to some worthwhile purpose. The most successful reformers
in both State and Church did not offer ideas, they offered movements.
Gregory the Great was an unwitting leader of reform. A son
of an ancient Roman family and former imperial governor of the city, he retired
and adopted the then rural monastic life of St. Benedict within his family
home. After the death of Pelagius II, the clergy and populace of Rome elected
Archdeacon Gregory their new bishop. He was drawn into St. Peter’s basilica and
consecrated to the sacred episcopate. Upon his accession to the Petrine chair
one could imagine most plotters concerned themselves with their deteriorating
position with Byzantium, the ambitions of the archbishop of Constantinople, the
threat of barbarian raids, the effects of plague, and the role of the papacy in
governing the city of Rome. Remarkably, almost none of Gregory’s legacy could
be ascribed to addressing the concerns of his day directly. Gregory enriched
the Roman See’s liturgy with a few oriental ornaments, he reserved the Pater to the celebrant, he added five
words to the Canon of Mass, and he moved the pax. Gregory promoted monasticism by setting the seeds for
contemplative life within the diocese of Rome, giving several communities at a
time access to the great churches of Rome; a century later St. Peter’s basilica
would be served by three monasteries before evolving into canonries. While he
protected his See’s historical prerogatives against the “ecumenical bishop” of
New Rome, he generally removed himself from Imperial politics. Above all,
Gregory saw in monasticism a way of leading Christian life unspoiled by the
temptations of “vanity”, as he described St. Benedict’s motives for leaving
“the world.” In sending monks rather than Roman priests to the Anglos, Gregory
showed the world a higher form of Christianity, one focused intently on God
rather than on Greek politics, on the heavenly court rather than the imperial.
Gregory’s fasting took his life, but he left treasure upon earth. In the
following centuries the Byzantine papacy had ended, the Empire receded, and
Europe left in a Dark Age illuminated only by the monks Gregory had dispersed
throughout Europe who worshipped God with the Eucharistic Canon the saint
codified.
Four centuries later the son of a blacksmith found himself
in the backwaters of Christendom. Far from the gilded walls of the Hagia
Sophia, in decrepit Rome he entrusted himself to a priest named Gratian for
instruction. The City and the See of Rome were nominally ruled by the Bishops
of Rome, but in fact had been under the consistent influence of a series of
whorish female nobility who realized the potency of women’s sexual prowess. Papal
reigns last until family feuds made the Roman ordinaries expendable, usually a
few years. The priest Gratian’s despicable nephew, Benedict IX—who one
historian described as a “demon from hell disguised as a priest”—sold the
papacy to his pious uncle—all too happy to remove the whelp from the papacy—and
then reclaimed it by arms when his would-be suitor turned him away. The emperor
sacked them both, as well as two other claimants. Hildebrand, the blacksmith’s
son and Gratian’s student, took refuge in the monastery of Cluny, singing four
Offices a day, before returning to Rome years later as Archdeacon. From his
vantage as counsel to the popes he influenced several attempted reformers who
were inevitably still beholden to the Frankish emperor and the Roman
aristocracy. At Pope Alexander’s funeral fortune smiled. Ugo Candidus, the
Cardinal-Priest of St. Clement, who would later oppose Hildebrand, took to the
ambo at the Lateran Cathedral and incited the masses, “Let Hildebrand be pope!”
The crowd followed the priest’s inspiration and un-canonically elected
Hildebrand by acclamation. The Archdeacon hid in a monastery, fitting at the
church of S. Petri ad vincula, until
he was found and compelled to accept election; after ordination and
consecration, he took the regnal name Gregory VII and began a reforming program
worthy of his namesake, if more deliberate than his namesake’s.
Brooks Adams, a long descendant of the second and sixth
American presidents, summarizes Gregory VII’s papacy in depicting Henry IV’s
reconciliation after spending days on his knees in the frigid winter outside
the papal residence. Gregory carried a consecrated host to Henry, fractured it,
consumed a portion, and pressed the other to the king’s lips; Henry dared not
consume it under excommunication, lest he exacerbate his sins with the offence
of sacrilege. To the secularist Adams, Gregory’s gesture represented the
triumph of superstition. In fact it represented a small victory in a longer
path to reform, but the most significant of all victories. For nearly two
centuries small towns leaned on monasteries for spiritual direction and Eastern
Churches heard nothing from Rome while the popes were the play things of minor
nobles and harlots who readily liquidated the incumbents when their position
grew tiresome. Pope Hildebrand’s triumph over Emperor Henry, not unlike the
modern political changes energy industry financiers cannot swallow, made that
paradigm obsolete. If the pope could excommunicate the Emperor and “win” then
the Duke of Spoleto’s position in the Curia was no longer relevant.
Perhaps no Latin Church reform better represents the
importance of new narratives than the various rebirths of religious orders. Save
the Order of Preachers, most religious orders purified themselves by fracturing
into the existing group and the purified, new branch more attuned with the
earlier spirituality. Effectively, the multiplication of monastic orders in the
Middle Ages were attempts to isolate the monks from the communitarian and
administrative elements that pervaded medieval Benedictine spirituality,
especially in abbeys descended from the Cluniacs. Indeed, the Order of
Carmelites Discalced and the founding saints of that order—John of the Cross
and Teresa of Avila—are blessed with a greater renown in the Latin Church than
the original Carmelites of Ancient Observance and any of its associated saints.
Succinctly, true reform and renewal does not address
symptoms of the problem that contemporaries see, but introduce new fluids and
cells into the body that treat the real diseases in the Church. Traditionalists
wield the twin rapiers of the Roman liturgical patrimony and reproduction and
they use neither effectively in combatting diseases in Latin Christianity
because too often they refuse to look beyond the fever and when they caught it
in the high-flying plane of Vatican II. The “Conciliar” clergy will continue to
hold the upper hand in any conversation about the Second Vatican Council and
any discussion of liturgical revival as long as the options are between parish
life in 2016 and 1956. They play a game against the referees and cry “foul
play.” Above all, traditionalists fail to do what previous reformers and
revivers of the Church did, that is, produce great saints for their cause whose
fruits cannot be ignored. Archbishop Lefebvre’s legacy is the only one of any
post-1965 traditionalist that even has enough following to cause the faithful
to seek his posthumous intercession.
Breaking from the established narrative is difficult. Past
Romans watched the papacy whither for years before Hildebrand emerged. In
modern times, “conservative” politicians have struggled to express any reason
for voters to support them outside of “low taxes, limited government,
pro-Israel.” Traditionalists may well have to swallow the Second Vatican
Council if they desire to better the Church Universal beyond the walls of Dulcis Devotio Traditional Latin Mass
Chapel. Self-enclosed communities are like blinders on a horse, they leave a
very intensely focused view on very little. Like the Cluniac monasteries of the
Dark Ages, such communities stabilized people’s spiritual fluctuations during
the turbulent years of Paul VI and the John Pauls. The situational standing of
“Latin Mass chapels,” under diocesan auspices or otherwise, is unlikely to
improve one way or another. Yet, they are established and their places unlikely
to change. Cognizant of the tranquility of these places, provided they do not
go out of their way to anger their ordinaries, it is time for traditionalists
to look at other means of breaking the narrative and the established order.
As mentioned earlier, the two strengths of the
traditionalist movement are its liturgy and its numbers, especially as far as
vocations and multiplication of the human species. While these elements seem
potent, only a minute percentage, even of men in the traditionalist sphere, are
willing to dedicate their lives to the proliferation of the “liturgical books
of 1962.” The Church will not benefit from a return to the “old ways” and an
age long gone, but she may well benefit from a return of the old ways.
Communities and orders founded on basic, established
practices unfettered by modern compromises that happen to use the old liturgy have proven far more successful than
communities crafted on lollipop theology which exist to enable the 1962 Missal
and 1961 Divine Office. A new Benedictine monastery seemingly opens every other
year in France. Indeed, in a Christendom with Mount Athos and the Egyptian
Anchorites, Christian monasticism thrives nowhere in the world like it does in
modern France. These Benedictine monks do not operate schools, charge for
spiritual weekend retreats, or even utilize a central air conditioning system.
Their houses are cold stone hulks replete with sons of St. Benedict focused on
God and singing the Latin psalms all the day long. More than the Atlantic Ocean
separates Fontgombault from Collegeville.
The Franciscans of the Immaculate had the potential to be
another modern example of genuine revival if not for the unilateral change of
liturgies on the part of their leadership without consulting older members of
the order and if not for the arrant blindness of their female leaders. Complain
about Fr. Volpi and the Pope all you want, the same Vatican that suppressed the
FFI also confirmed the constitutions of the ICRSS and may well sanitize the
FSSPX without requiring anything of them.
Another area where traditionalists should excel, and which
the established authorities wish they could, is in serving others through
outreach and missionary work. In his 1990 series of spiritual vignettes, Nearer My God, William F. Buckley’s
laments the halving of the number of nuns and the doubling of their average age
since the Second Vatican Council. What, pray tell, have advocates of the older
liturgy done to return to missionary religious life or to revive religious
communities that serve the poor and dying?
The Fraternity of St. Pius X exceeded the Vatican’s ability
to cope with them four decades ago because of the missionary zeal of their
founder, Msgr. Lefebvre. Right or wrong, he had love of souls few could doubt
and which he imbued in many of his priests. The Fraternity seems simple-minded,
and it is; its education and spirituality are imitations of the same missionary
and spiritual formation Lefebvre himself would have received and imparted in
the Holy Ghost Fathers before the Great War. These tools are basic enough to
translate into other missionary settings. A missionary band in South America
combatting the Pentecostalists or in Africa converting pagans, fortified by the
Latin psalms and an intense realization—clear in the old Latin rite—that God is
above and demands everything, will encourage more young men and women to
explore vocations than simply celebrating the 1962 Mass for a community of
third generation traditionalists in North Carolina.
Indeed, an outwardly oriented society that utilizes
traditional forms could render redundant the endless discussion of removing the
Last Gospel or the errors of Lumen
Gentium. Thirty year old nuns who have no prior exposure to the old liturgy
could do far more for the Church by working in hospices, serving shelters, and
looking to protect women endangered by newer concerns like international human
trafficking than existing 1962 communities ever could, if only we let such an
instigating saint arise and do not swat her down.
Perhaps one more conventional setting for the return of the
old liturgy is one that has not suffered very much spiritual displacement, the
Congregation of the Oratory. English Oratories retained their identities rather
well after 1965, a provost in one city exempt. Several new American Oratories
have appeared, all modelled after their English counterparts, not the extant
Oratory in Philadelphia. The loose structure of any given Oratory should permit
the open and casual use of the old Mass ad
libitum by its priests without disconcerting the local bishop. A Jesuit
once described the Oratory as “twelve eccentrics under one roof without rules.”
With enough Theosophy, the old liturgy and the faithful should both thrive
under the patronage of St. Phillip Neri.
If the traditionalists can look beyond their own walls, ordain
a hundred new priests annually, and baptize a million souls into Christ, the
inherited obsession with holding on to the Council’s legacy and the new rite
will obsolesce. Both reforming popes named Gregory walked into a Church wrapped
in family power struggles and passed unto Judgment after leaving the Church
still wrapped in disputes among the existing authorities, but also injected a
cure that would revive the Church from its disease, not from its discomforts.
When I suggested that special attention in the form of a
community dedicated to ministering to the wayward youth on university campuses
(campi?) ought to be pondered, one commenter contemned my concern for the elite
and my all too human machinations; where, in my suggestion, was room for the Holy
Spirit? The Holy Spirit came once on Pentecost Sunday nearly twenty centuries
ago; He passes on to the faithful by the laying of hands. The Spirit may
inspire and confirm, but He leaves cooperation with grace up to us men. If you
have a better idea, please share it, but if not you may find yourself no
different from the finance manager who cannot understand how his comfortable
surroundings have transformed into something else without his consent.
Above all, pray.
"a century later St. Peter’s basilica would be served by three monasteries before evolving into canonries." - canons are cancer :P
ReplyDelete"until he was found and compelled to accept election" - I love hearing these anecdotes. Why? Because it shows that the Church is indeed alive and not a machine pre-programmed by canon law. How many trads were considering conspiracy theories when BXVI abdicated? What we need to do is what has been done before - exile or imprison Francis and compel someone like Sarah to accept the Papacy. It has been valid yesterday. It will be valid today.
"Dulcis Devotio" - I lol'd
A question, not strictly related to the article.
Whaddya think about the canonical fingers, i.e. how small is too small for Real Presence?
I don't mind the idea of canonries. Providing the full Office and Mass in major churches, especially pilgrim destinations, is a wonderful thing, but too often canonries are signs of favoritism and prestige.
DeleteI rather like the canonical fingers. I think searching high and low on the altar cloth after each Mass would be too far, but as a measure against any major fragment losses, I think it's quite fine. In the Greek rite there is a similar procedure to the Latin wherein the priest or deacon rubs/purifies his fingers whenever he touches the Holy Bread and has a pad to wipe off particles into the diskos. As a casual step that doesn't really require extra effort it is a small price to pay. I wonder if it is a leftover from when the hosts were made out of more substantial bread?
"Providing the full Office and Mass in major churches" - that's the idea. But boy are their lifestyles lavish.
DeleteYes. The pad/sponge thing. But then what?
Ordo Romanus I doesn't mention ablutions after communion, but we can't assume that the Church of Rome treated the Holy Things with disrespect and sacrilege for 800 years. All the Fathers direct that the Holy Things are to be treated with respect, be watched over so that none of it falls to the ground and so on, but that's about the communion pieces (i.e. particles which the Council of Trent talks about). Now what about the almost microscopic particles? I would wholeheartedly like to know the mind of the Church towards those. You know? Those tiny specs you can barely see with your own eyes, but you can see them.
The teaching is that as long as the accidents last, the Presence lasts too. When we look at the chemical level, the accidents last even down to microscopic levels, but human agency can't do anything about that. But then there is one letter of the CDW that talks about phenomenon of bread.
I can't find it but it's along this way http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.hr/2012/07/fragments-of-eucharistic-species.html
So i'm conflicted between my own reasoning and the long tradition of the Church which even dared to put the hosts in the hands of communicants without the need for ablution after that.
What we need to do is what has been done before - exile or imprison Francis and compel someone like Sarah to accept the Papacy.
DeleteGood luck with that.
Most Catholics are malformed and inattentive enough that they actually think Papa Bergoglio is actually good pope.
"Most Catholics are malformed and inattentive enough that they actually think Papa Bergoglio is actually good pope."
DeleteYeah - absolutely dreadful.
"Most Catholics are malformed and inattentive enough that they actually think Papa Bergoglio is actually good pope."
DeleteVery true. In the spirit of the Euros, I am calling for a substitution in the 87th minute. Francis out and Sarah in.
The Missionaries of Divine Mercy under the auspices of Mgr. Rey and to an extent the ICRSS are what you are describing.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of the Missionaries of Divine Mercy. The ICRSS is something like what I am describing in that it is not primarily all about the old liturgy, but I still cannot figure out exactly what they do or their purpose.
DeleteThey are a small community in France which use the traditional books and are dedicated to the devotion as promoted to St. Faustina, fidelity to the sacraments and the care of souls (they have at least one church), and the evangelization of Muslims living in the south of France.
DeleteAs to the ICRSS: liturgy for the salvation of souls and serving as faithful administrators of the sacraments for those in their care seem to be the biggest elements as well as simply being there for those in need. The English apostolates exemplify that last part well. They also seem to aim to elevate our culture through music (they hold concerts often in bigger houses) and art. They did the New Evangelization (what it really means, not committees looking for programs) before it was cool, and of course they have the Gabonese missions, which are missions in the proper sense.
DeleteI don't want to be offensive but what i will say will most probably be offensive, so i apologize in advance.
DeleteICRSS seem to me like a bunch of French culture imposing homosexuals who have rococo as their fetish.
They seem to me like that, and i my perception is not infallible.
Uh, Marko, for heavens’ sake, what you said was as offensive as possible. And yes, I for one am glad your perception is not infallible.
DeleteYes indeed!
DeleteThat comment on the ICRSS was over the top and a bit crass.
DeleteThe ICRSS initially had a very different flavor than now. I remember reading an old article c.1994 on an apostolate they opened in the US that went something like "We reject Vatican II and all the litugical changes." They were an outgrowth of Opus Sacerdotale and used the old rite without much fuss, as I gather. I think after Rome smacked them down c.2003, took them away from the bishop of Libreville, and began to integrate them into PCED they had to find a new reason to be: enter the "canonries," the Salesian outlook (which they may well have had in some measure before), the elevation of baroque ascetics, and the like. Honestly, the same could be asked of the FSSP: what are they other than not the FSSPX? I poised the question about the ICRSS because they were not directly created as an alternative to the Fraternity and would hence be more in line with the sort of communities that the Latin Church needs.
Looking at the mission statements of both the ICRSS and the FSSP as they are now, they're not different from the FSSPX. Different approaches and charisms for sure, but the same mission.
DeleteThe missions are splendid and all should look up to their misionary zeal. But on the continent... hm... Seems to me it's all about fancy robes.
DeleteI apologize for the crass comment. Let it remain as a testament to my weakness.
In the 'good old days' Canons were a very good thing indeed. The Canon of a Cathedral or Collegiate church was exceptional value as they had two clerical deputies, their vicars, the 'Benny' beneficiatus and the lower-ranking mansionarius. So one Canon counted for three clerics. A proper collegiate church is what the arena for the Roman liturgy is really all about.
DeleteI know from 2003–2007 there were troubles, which led to people leaving. But those formed in the old rites, pre–1955, loved it, and I know that their MC is favorable to recovering the older rituals at some point, albeit an indefinite one.
DeleteSome of the points you have raised similar to those written by Leah Mickens(a lifelong atheist who for a time was a Traditional Catholic).
ReplyDelete1. Christian monasticism thrives nowhere in the world like it does in modern France.
ReplyDeleteYou weren't necessarily going here, but the way you framed the history of previous reforms really IS suggestive of the proposition that genuine monasticism probably needs to be at the heart of any major reform movement in the Church. Fr. Chadwick has toyed with a variant of this, suggesting small monastic communities as the new arks of what can be salvaged of the Church in the West, replacing parishes for the most part. That's not quite what we're talking about here; the new traditional communities are not really trying to serve lay flocks. But I do hope that we can see this flowering of traditional monasticism in France replicate itself a lot more on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe see where it goes. What it gives birth to.
But I think it's early days yet. It may be that we're just not ready yet for a genuine new reform movement to sprout up. Perhaps it's germinating out there now, hidden. When it does sprout, I think Vatican II will be a largely moot point, a relic out of living memory.
2. The loose structure of any given Oratory should permit the open and casual use of the old Mass ad libitum by its priests without disconcerting the local bishop.
Should, but doesn't always, alas. So many of the new oratories are still in formation, and that leaves them vulnerable to the whims of the ordinary until they're established permanently. Such is the case with the one in my archdiocese, which has retreated from much of any public offering of the traditional liturgy after some unpleasant reactions from the chancery. We may need some more time to see how they fare. But one does understand why they're becoming popular with secular priests.
3. I think the shots taken at the FFI are mostly unfair - I mean, these are Franciscans, and factionalism is part and parcel of who they are - but I'll let the subject pass without further comment.
I would agree that a full revival of genuine monasticism—neither small, quasi-monastic communities nor hybrid groups that are free and open—is a requisite condition for a resurgence of the Roman Church. In the monastery the Christian life is lived fully and without attachment. Once monks sour, communities and secular priests run afoul, too. Look at what happened in France in the 17th and 18th centuries without the boundless "abbes."
DeleteI took no shots at the FFI, I simply analyzed the Roman intervention cognizant of some information I know about their female leadership. I did not mean to insult anyone. The fact remains that their female leadership was problematic and their male community was founded as a new rite group and went to the old without much consideration for how divisions might foment.