Crisis Magazine, July 14, 2023

When men want religion without God, they enclose themselves in a claustrophobic world. Things are left with gaping metaphysical holes. They are not what they are supposed to be. And since nature abhors a vacuum, that metaphysical hole is filled by the whims of men. Those whims are the stuff of terror.

Easter is the unleashing of the Revolution of the Cross. It should be unsettling, like an earthquake. Wondrous, as the explosion of galaxies. Penetrating, as the sound of a thousand marching armies.

For the poor are like the rest of us, the same as us—not a class apart. Our Lord does not see rich or poor, privileged or unfortunate, low class or high. He sees only fallen men and women whom He loves.

Christ’s only preference is for poor sinners. Who dares improve upon that?

Indeed, it must seem to the decent Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass that a kind of Berlin Wall is closing in upon them. Yet, though bewildered and downtrodden, they are not petulant; confused, but not vitriolic; sorrowful, but not inflamed. Their reaction to The Suppression is serene, but not unintelligent. Terribly bright, they appreciate the theological/canonical dynamic at work, and they respond intelligently but never disobediently.

So thorough was this transformation of Eucharistic theology that well-meaning Catholics now confidently call the Mass “a meal” and the Holy Eucharist “bread of fellowship.” Under this logic, it is quite hostile, to say nothing of actionable, to refuse any man or woman access to the Holy Eucharist. Not a few bishops growl at a priest even publicly repeating the traditional requirements for reception of Holy Communion. So very “unwelcoming,” you see. This alarming doctrinal breakdown entrenched itself so deeply that it even dictated new architectural forms for churches, confirming the Marshall McLuhan principle: the medium is the message.

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

Malcolm Muggeridge undoubtedly read this text when he wrote about the “inhumanity of the humane” in a 1978 New York Times editorial. Humanism without truth does indeed become inhuman because truth has ceased to be its compass. Today’s young guerillas call for love as an answer to the “rigidities” of the moral law.

It is always a defeat to steadily gaze at the chaos, for gradually our souls turn to salt. Even a doctrinaire Nihilist like Friedrich Nietzsche possessed the genius to recognize the ugly powers of evil, "Do not look long into the abyss, for you will find it looking back."

Clearly, Catholics have the obligation to know perfectly the evil they face, but not to obsess about it. Such rot does not deserve our attention. We look enough so as to conquer. No more; no less.

Yes, the Church jealously “guards” so that she can boldly proclaim. And, indeed, she did. And she did it with supernatural gusto during all those centuries to which Mr. Weigel happily bids a fond farewell.

With all due respect to the Second Vatican Council, it does not meet the demands of a secular world. For that we need a virile, unequivocal, and full-throated Catholicism.

If a Catholic denied traditional music is not allowed to be struck to the depths by the likes of “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” or Franck’s “Panis Angelicus,” then he is left to be drowned beneath the indulgent waves of sentimentality. The former hymns steel the soul for supernatural contest, the latter for mindless self-absorption.
Sacred Music is the indispensable instrument of the Holy Spirit in leading souls in their march toward Heaven: it is gravity and solemnity wrapped in the stunning beauty that only music can offer.

“Thus when we thirst for holiness, curiosity for theoretical knowledge of it can only drive it further from us. We must put speculation on one side, and with simplicity drink everything that God’s designs present to us in actions and sufferings. What happens to us each moment by God’s design is for us the holiest, best, and most divine thing.”

“This Society was founded for whomever desires to serve as a soldier of God, to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the Faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine.

And what feats of valor would adorn their ranks. Such prodigies could only have appeared because of Ignatius. The secret of their supernatural success was the saint’s Spiritual Exercises, a never ceasing torrent that would produce breathtaking results both in the men who joined Ignatius’ ranks as well as in every part of the world where their feet would take them.”

The Church’s divine mission is to give humanity a contemplative gaze into the Most Holy Trinity, not to embrace the secular causes du jour or sterile programs of self-realization. Tragically, these have already seeped into the bloodstream of most Catholics who know nothing of the Nicene Creed but everything about inclusivity; Catholics who have been weaned on the burlesque titillations of flattened liturgies and homilies of anemic
bonhomie rather than on the majestic Masses which bring men’s hearts to the Heart of God.

But as they say, where there’s smoke, there's fire. There would not have been such a rush to this modernist architecture unless there was first a rush to modernism. How else to explain the new church’s absence of any traditional sign of Catholicism? Even the architectural details are designed to disorient: vastness as emptiness, light as blindness, sterile non-description as a deconstructionist nod to transgressive non-conformity.

“God’s opportunities do not wait; they come and they go. The word of life waits not – if it is not appropriated by you, the devil will appropriate it. He delays not, but has his eyes wide always and is ready to pounce down and carry off the gift which you delay to use.”

O Priest! Thou are not thou, for thou art God;
Thou dost not belong to thyself, For thou art the servant and minister of Christ; Thou are not thine own, for thou art the Spouse of the Church; Thou are not for thyself, for thou art the Mediator between God and man; Thou art not of thyself, for thou art nothing. Who art thou then, O Priest? Nothing and everything.
O Priest, beware lest what was said of Christ in His Passion, be said of thee: “He saved others, himself he cannot save.”

"Even a superficial glance at the prayers of the Ancient Roman Mass resonates with a clarity, beauty, and spiritual refinement that sweeps the faithful into the depths of the mystical sacrifice. This prayerful reverence is sustained at every moment. The faithful are never victimized by idiosyncrasy or idiocy, precisely because the inflexibility of the Ancient Roman Mass protects them."

"Even though he might campaign for an existence without standards, the steady interior voice demands some calculus of absolute evil and absolute good. And if man won’t let God declare what they are, then man will. When he does, despotism reigns.
If truth and God no longer govern a man’s life, darker forces do, and man’s desire for absolutes descends into absolute terror. You see, as Chesterton once put it, “the atheist is not one who believes in no god, he is one who believes in any god.”"

“For St. Thomas, the whole world of reality was made by God and for God and reaches its only fulfillment in God. Man is created by God to find God so that he might find himself and so find happiness. Man is not made to look into himself but always to look at God. When he wants to hear God, he doesn’t listen to his “inner voice”; he listens and surrenders to the voice of His bride, the Holy Catholic Church.”

“Each time someone enters a Catholic Church it should seem strange because its splendor and majesty is unlike any other thing in the world.”