Kneeling Before the World, 60 Years On

What then do we see around us? In large sectors of both clergy and laity (but it is the clergy who set the example), hardly is the word “world” pronounced when a gleam of ecstasy lights up the face of one and all. And immediately what is talked about are the necessary epanouissements (blossomings of dear human nature) and the necessary engagements (commitments), as well as the communitarian fervors, and the presences, the ouvertures (openings to the dear world), and their joys. Anything that would risk calling to mind the idea of asceticism, mortification, or penance is automatically shelved as a matter of course…

Accordingly, at least in practice and in their way of acting, and even—for those who are boldest and most determined to go the whole way—in doctrine and in their way of thinking (of thinking about the world and their own religion), the great concern and the only thing that matters for them is the temporal vocation of the human race, with its march, embattled but victorious, to justice, peace, and happiness…they make of these earthly goals the truly supreme end for humanity.

One might think the long quotation above to have come from some “tradCath” corner of the internet, complaining uncharitably about some statement from the hierarchy. Maybe they are upset at an Italian bishop extolling the virtues of John Lennon’s “Imagine” and lauding the idea that “there is no Heaven.” Or maybe they are American Catholics and are up in arms about an American bishop extolling the virtues of a mosque? Or two cardinals thanking Fr. James Martin for his work in normalizing homosexuality? Or perhaps they are simply “backwardists,” who still haven’t learned that equality and social justice are more important than chastity and other old-fashioned ideas? Or maybe he was exasperated at another papal visit designed to commemorate the martyrs of one of the contemporary Church’s most cherished doctrines—that of mass migration?

But no, my friends, our author unfortunately—or fortunately—shuffled off this mortal coil long before I wrote this essay. In fact, our author is not a “trad” at all; rather, he was one of the intellectual architects of Vatican II: Thomist philosopher and writer Jacques Maritain. Maritain did as much as any figure to urge the Church to embrace “modernity,” actively urging the Church abandon its longstanding teaching that the state must uphold the true religion and instead embrace modern religious liberty and liberal democracy. Maritain was one of the prime movers behind the United Nations Declaration on Universal Human Rights, issued as a response to the horrors of World War II.

Maritain was also one of those who firmly believed, as his fellow countryman Lamennais had a century before, that only if the Church ceased to insist on the social privileges it had acquired over the course of centuries when it dominated European life could it reach the heart of “modern man” and finally win the approval of that mythical beast. He was harshly critical of many aspects of the Church in the 19th and early 20th centuries and, therefore, enthusiastically welcomed the Second Vatican Council as a monumental step in that direction, an enthusiasm he never abandoned.

By 1966, however, Maritain had become alarmed at what actually transpired as a result of the council and took up his pen to denounce it in his book of that year, The Peasant of the Garonne. The passages excerpted above are drawn from a section in that book titled “Kneeling Before the World,” in which Maritain excoriates a tendency which every devout Catholic born since that time has encountered, above all in the hierarchy: a worldliness that sets aside every difficult, demanding, or out-of-step-with-the-times doctrine the Catholic Church has held and practiced in the past—seeking, instead, to adapt to contemporary mores.

1966 was the year of the Dutch Catechism, which made the first steps toward undermining the Church’s teaching by adapting it to modern mores. (Paul VI’s “Credo of the People of God” was partly a response to the Dutch Catechism, which Maritain initially drafted.) In fact, a number of catechisms appeared that year which softened or downplayed her teaching on a number of key doctrines. The interim liturgical reforms introduced in 1964 were already causing confusion and chaos, as national episcopal conferences introduced vernacular and other changes into the liturgy—in anticipation of further changes to come. Two years later, Humanae Vitae and its fallout capped what seemed to be an institutional nervous breakdown in the Church.

Maritain, despite reaffirming his critique of the Church in the early 20th century, drew criticisms from all sides. He never again addressed the contemporary situation in the Church, instead publishing theological works and spending the last three years of his life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery. (Paul VI offered to make him a cardinal, but he refused.)

I sometimes wonder what Maritain would make of the Church today. What would he have made of Pope Francis or his still-prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Fernández? Would he see in their efforts the continuation of his legacy or that of Vatican II? It is hard to believe he would.

But he could not himself recognize that Vatican II was part of the problem, and indeed many more today who are otherwise orthodox and faithful still can’t bring themselves to admit it is a major problem. The reluctance of those who brought about the Council to recognize the obvious role it played in bringing about the chaos that followed I find more forgivable than its defenders who did not. It is terribly difficult to admit that something you have committed your heart and soul to with the best of intentions could ever cause harm.

This is why I always admired Joseph Ratzinger, whatever his shortcomings as a Supreme Pontiff. Of all the people of his generation—those who eagerly expected a great renewal but found the Church in crisis instead—he came the closest to admitting that something went really wrong with the Council itself. Of course he never went that far, but his diagnosis of the problem was the most incisive among his generation. He was concerned with far more than liturgy when he issued Summorum Pontificum, as he made clear on several occasions.

He once explained that his support for the Old Rite was based on the perception that at Vatican II “people were already beginning to talk about making a break with the pre-conciliar Church, and of developing various models of Church—a pre-conciliar and obsolete type of Church, and a new and conciliar type of Church.” In a general audience in 2010, he said that “after the Second Vatican Council some were convinced that everything was new, that there was a different Church, that the pre-conciliar Church was finished and that we had another, totally ‘other’ Church.” And in his 2017 interview, Last Testament in His Own Words, he said that

the reauthorization of the Tridentine Mass is often interpreted primarily as a concession to the Society of Saint Pius X. This is just absolutely false! It was important for me that the Church is one with herself inwardly, with her own past; that what was previously holy to her is not somehow wrong now. 

Ratzinger, whatever his flaws, recognized that the leaders of the Church today talk and act in ways that unmoor the Church from her past, save in the realm of dogmatic formulations. You can see this in the way people casually refer to the “postconciliar Church” or the Church in its “postconciliar form.” The notion that there is a “postconciliar Church” that somehow has left the “preconciliar Church” behind is precisely the problem, as Joseph Ratzinger understood.

The irony of this exaltation of the “postconciliar Church” is that its adherents intended to break with the past but the leadership of the Church today exhibits many of the same tendencies as their “preconciliar” predecessors. In particular, they make the mistake of confusing the time-bound aspects of the Faith with those that are more enduring. They treat “modernity” as a permanent aspect of human nature and society rather than a transient condition. Many today treat “religious liberty” and liberal democracy the same way Pius IX treated throne and altar arrangements or the Papal States, as permanent, nonnegotiable aspects of the Faith.

The constant affirmations of religious liberty, climate change, immigration, and a host of other matters as if they were intrinsic to the Faith are obviously meant to curry favor with the great and the good. They have little to do with the Faith or the “marginalized” they are always droning on about. But those “issues” are popular with elites in Western society, so there is no danger they will suffer any criticism or blowback in promoting them. Some embrace these secular nostrums with genuine enthusiasm, but most Church leaders simply don’t have the courage to go against the fundamentalist egalitarianism that dominates Western society.

The reason isn’t hard to fathom. Even the most innocuous departure from that elite consensus would bring a firestorm down upon the bishops that they simply will not risk.

Everyone knows how dire the vocations crisis is in the Church, just as everyone knows that limiting altar service to men and boys encourages vocations. Just imagine if a pope, or even a prominent bishop, simply gave his approval to such a policy—not ordered it to be implemented as a policy but merely made a public statement that it would help encourage vocations. You can’t imagine it because the media onslaught that would ensue would be so great that no bishop would ever dare to voice it publicly. And if our leaders cannot even broach such a seemingly trivial subject publicly, it is no wonder the hierarchy is largely impotent to do things like defend the unborn or honestly come to terms with the Church’s sexual abuse problem.

This lack of courage is related to that chasm Joseph Ratzinger identified. For every time a group, a bishop, even popes, have tried to address the gap between the Church’s present and its past, they have been viciously attacked both in and outside the Church. Just think of Humanae Vitae; John Paul II’s efforts to rein in moral theology; Benedict’s XVI’ s Regensburg speech; and, of course, Summorum Pontificum. All of these suffered widespread rejection within the Church and have either been formally overturned (Traditionis Custodes, Amoris Laetitia) or made null and void through institutional capture or subversion (the gutting of the John Paul II Institute, the firing of the three professors in Detroit, among others). The forces of separation have triumphed at every turn, even when an apparently “conservative” direction took hold in the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

The dangerously exaggerated loyalty to the papacy that characterizes modern Catholicism was the only thing holding back the forces that wanted to make the separation of the Church from her past permanent. That domino fell with the last pontificate.

I recall reading somewhere that upon hearing of the election of Jorge Bergoglio, the late Theodore McCarrick exclaimed, “We did it!” This sounded ominous at the time; but in retrospect, it makes my blood run cold. McCarrick and his “nephews”—many of whom still hold high positions in the Church—understood that once they had a pontiff sympathetic to their agenda, they could demonize anyone who opposed their agenda as “schismatics” or “dissenters.” And this agenda is now enshrined in the “ordinary magisterium” of the Church thanks to Pope Francis.

One should not misunderstand my meaning. I am not saying the crisis is merely about the past but about the Church’s very being. One of the marks of the Church is apostolicity. Yet since the 1960s she has increasingly become less and less connected to the apostolic age—and, therefore, less and less plausibly apostolic in her teaching, worship, and identity. And the modern exaltation of the papacy as the one and only center of the Church’s unity has helped erode her unity with the apostolic age to the barest of threads. No one understood this better than Joseph Ratzinger.

No modern pope conceived of the papacy in more modest terms than he did, and this is because he understood that treating the current pontiff as if his every word were divine law makes the Church a slave of the present age and alienates her from her apostolic origins. This alienation is suicide for the Church, since “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” No amount of exaggerated obedience to the pope will stop the decline of the Church until she ceases to sever herself from those apostolic origins. And this blatant betrayal of the Faith by a small coterie of ideologues is made possible by the mundane cowardice of the many.

This is what Maritain realized, to his horror, 60 years ago; and it continues today. I would love to talk to Maritain, for he was a convert, as I am. I want to ask him if he expected the Church to be this way—all your fondest hopes dashed, the comfort and consolation you expected turned to anguish and bitterness, your trust betrayed by the very people tasked with protecting the Church and her faith. It is a dismal situation, and there are no easy answers to it.

So, what then? What are we to do? Despair? That is impossible. There is only one thing to do: refuse to kneel before the world, even if “an angel from heaven”—or anyone else—demands that you kneel. You will suffer for it, but you will have been faithful to Christ in the end.

If we are honest with ourselves, however much we may not want to admit it, we have taken the joy we have received in Christ Jesus for granted all our life long. Our present suffering is the hour to recall that joy and look forward to that eternal joy that awaits those who persevere. Even in this life, betrayed and forlorn, through grace we may have a foretaste of it in our greatest trials. As one of Jacques Maritain’s greatest fellow countrymen once urged in another desperate hour: “Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.”