A Silence That Speaks Volumes
While I cannot (by which I do not mean “will not,” but truly cannot) endorse the opening paragraph of Kevin Michael Derby’s ”The Silence of Father Neuhaus,” the rest of the piece is excellent, and even the fulsome praise in Mr. Derby’s first paragraph serves a rhetorical purpose, heightening the effect of the criticism throughout the rest of the piece. Mr. Derby demolished almost everything that Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote in his rhetorically clever but intellectually dishonest blog post, so I’ll confine my remarks to one rather curious comment that Father Neuhaus made. He writes:
“And all of this, of course, in defense of ‘authentic’ Catholic social doctrine before it was muddled by the likes of the Second Vatican Council and John Paul II.”
Let’s take a moment to unpack these words, because there are a number of possible ways to interpret them. Let’s start by reading them sequentially. Since Father Neuhaus is writing in praise of James Hitchcock’s article in Human Life Review, and Hitchcock’s discussion of social doctrine focused primarily on things that Paul Likoudis wrote, it’s reasonable to assume that the unstated object of this attack is Mr. Likoudis. Father Neuhaus and I can agree that Mr. Likoudis is defending . . . something. Here’s where things get a little more interesting. I believe, as does Mr. Likoudis, that Mr. Likoudis is defending Catholic social doctrine. Does Father Neuhaus? Well, probably not: The scare quotes he places around “authentic” echo those that Hitchcock placed around the words “Catholic Right” in the title of his essay.
Father Neuhaus, of course, makes no attempt--not even the feeble, guilt-by-association one made by Hitchcock--to prove that Mr. Likoudis misunderstands or misrepresents Catholic social doctrine. That may have something to do with the fact that (based on my familiarity with the writings of both men) Mr. Likoudis has, over the years, quoted the social encyclicals (including Centesimus annus, a point that will prove important in a moment) more often and at greater length than has Father Neuhaus. Father Neuhaus, like his friend and ideological soulmate Michael Novak, is fond of the quick, out-of-context, heavily ellipsed quotation from Centesimus annus, designed to show that John Paul II was, despite his own words to the contrary, an unabashed supporter of capitalism.
Continuing on with Father Neuhaus’s words, we come to a puzzle. Father Neuhaus writes “before it was muddled.” These words could mean at least two things. First, Father Neuhaus could be claiming that Mr. Likoudis believes that Catholic social doctrine was changed ("muddled") by Vatican II and John Paul II. If so, he is either unfamiliar with Mr. Likoudis’s writing, in which case he probably should refrain from commenting, or he is lying. At the heart of Mr. Likoudis’s many discussions of Catholic social doctrine lies the firm conviction that it hasn’t changed. Centesimus annus does not contradict Rerum novarum, any more than Quadragesimo anno did, or any more than Rerum novarum contradicted, say, St. John Chrysostom’s sermons on Lazarus and Dives. That probably has something to do with the fact that Mr. Likoudis believes that the Holy Spirit does guide the Church and that the Church is a divine, as well as human, institution, unlike the series of all-too-human political organizations that Mr. and Pastor and Father Neuhaus has been involved in over the years, which release documents that are sufficient to the needs of the day, and discarded as soon as they no longer serve their desired purpose.
Which brings us to a second possible meaning of Father Neuhaus’s words: namely, that he believes that Vatican II and John Paul II changed Catholic social doctrine. This interpretation has the advantage of allowing us to believe that Father Neuhaus isn’t lying; he simply assumes that it is obvious that the Church no longer believes in that old, outmoded social doctrine, passed down by popes who hadn’t lived through the collapse of communism and the triumph of democratic capitalism. Therefore, since Mr. Likoudis continues to refer to Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno and St. John Chrysostom and all of those pre-1962 types instead of referring exclusively to the one document--Centesimus annus, as glossed by Novak and Neuhaus and Weigel--that superseded them all, Father Neuhaus reasonably assumes that Mr. Likoudis must regard John Paul II’s contribution as “muddling.” It’s an honest mistake for an old-line progressive such as Father Neuhaus to make. Progressivism is not simply a doctrine but a way of thought, and even many who today call themselves “conservatives” find that way of thought awfully hard to shake.
We come now to the final part of Father Neuhaus’s statement: “by the likes of the Second Vatican Council and John Paul II.” Again, Father Neuhaus has put the reader who knows something about Mr. Likoudis’s writing in the very uncomfortable position of having to assume that Father Neuhaus is either lying or blustering on about things he simply doesn’t understand. After all, neither Mr. Likoudis nor The Wanderer has rejected Vatican II or bashed John Paul II. That fact lies at the heart of the break within the Matt family, between The Wanderer, which has defended Vatican II, the new Mass (as well as the old), and John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and The Remnant, which, to put it kindly, has unstintingly criticized all of the above. Unfortunately, the fact that Father Neuhaus alludes to the break between the publications would seem to indicate that he knows something about it, which suggests that he’s deliberately imputing the views of the latter to the former in order to score rhetorical points.
I have to wonder why Father Neuhaus went out of his way to heap praise on Hitchock’s attack on Mr. Likoudis and The Wanderer, and to do it in such an odd way, when (as far as I can tell) he’s failed to criticize a much more prominent dissenter from the neocon trinity’s interpretation of Centesimus annus: Pope Benedict XVI. After all, First Things editor Jodie Bottum has made it pretty clear, in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, that the current Holy Father brings some baggage to the throne of Peter, particularly on “economic issues,” that places him “to the left of his predecessor” and therefore outside “authentic” Catholic social doctrine, at least as Father Neuhaus would understand it:
“If the 1991 encyclical from John Paul I, Centesimus annus, might be described as three cheers for democracy, two cheers for capitalism. Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, would have gave only one cheer . . . ”
We’ll cut Mr. Bottum a break on his atrocious grammar; I’m sure the lights on the Meet the Press set are so bright that even the best-trained editor might occasionally forget the past participle of give. But Mr. Bottum and his colleague Robert Miller and Father Neuhaus seem to have forgotten something much more important: “Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI,” is indeed the Holy Father, and if our own interpretations of Catholic social doctrine or just-war theory don’t coincide with his, we should be questioning ourselves, not those who do agree with him.
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Comments
Well said Mr. Richert, and I believe your perceptive analysis, and Hitchcock and Neuhaus’s attempted excommunication point to an underlying scandal.
For many years after the disastrous implementation of Vatican II, in the face of the manifest apostasy of much of the Church in North America and Europe, a “conservative” Catholic establishment arose in the vacuum left by the episcopal hierarchy faced with open dissent and liturgical abuse.
This establishment served to assure many Catholics that Vatican II was just fine, and the catastrophic developments in the west were merely manifestations of an improper implementation.
In doing this, many of these “conservative” Catholics, many of whom, life Fr. Neuhaus and Michael Novak, were former liberals, and still are in the proper sense of the term, substituted their own understanding of what the “proper implementation of Vatican II” was, generally amended to encompass their own pet peeves with the “preconciliar” Church.
For example, Dignitatis Humanae was interpreted to have rescinded the syllabus of errors. Gaudium et Spes was interpreted to have contradicted Testem Benevolentiae, and Sacrosanctum Concilium was interpreted as, if not a correction of Quo Primum, at least a vital suppression of the preconciliar liturgical ethos.
The fact that the Conservatives decried the full scale revolt after Vatican II served to secure their position, and in many cases their livelihood as an alternative Magisterial authority, give the Episcopal hierarchy’s abdication of that role.
In fact, this alternate hierarchy has a symbiotic relationship with the clearly decrepit actual western hierarchy, because the latter’s refusal or inability to do anything about the doctrinal and liturgical abuse, and their “preoccupations” would naturally lead to criticism and perhaps even repudiation, were not some semblance of public criticism made.
Not to say this is a conspiracy, but the Conservative Catholic “establishment” does a service to the abdicating authorities by keeping the criticism of those authorities within bounds.
In this light we can see Fr. Neuhaus’s early assurances about the scandal of sexual abuse in the hierarchy as really about “Fidelity, Fidelity, Fidelity” and most definitely not about homosexuality.
And one of the main deceptions this movement (in so much as it is one) has perpetrated is the notion that Vatican II and John Paul II amended Catholic Social Teaching in favor of Democracy and Capitalism.
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Keep up the good work on this front, Mr. Richert. When I first read Fr. Neuhaus’s blog post my blood pressure definitely went up.
I also agree with Al’s comments about how a Catholic “conservative” establishment has set itself up as alternative Magisterium. When I first converted to Catholicism, I eagerly read everything written on Church issues by Neuhaus, Novak, and Weigel because I honestly believed they were reliable interpreters of the Church’s teaching.
The blog post was typical of Father Neuhaus’s style: do not actually engage the arguments and dismiss your opponents as being “too far left” or “too far right” and not in the “center”. And while you’re at it, why not casually toss out the accusation that all Catholics who identify themselves as “traditionalists” and who criticize the war by appeal to Catholic principles are anti-Semites? You don’t want to agree with an anti-Semite do you? Did you know that the “Lefebrvist” Bishop Williamson endorsed the book? Well, everything in it must be false, then!
Strange that a man so in love with liberalism has to resort to Stalinist tactics of labelling those he disagrees with as “politically incorrect” and hence to be ignored.
By the way, as far as Vatican II goes, there are legitimate questions as to how to reconcile its teachings with previous Church teachings, particular the teachings of the pre-conciliar papal magisterium. Pope Benedict acknowledged that there is work to be done here when he called for a “hermeneutics of continuity”. Even John Paul II, the great lover of Vatican II, said “Indeed, the extent and depth of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council call for a renewed commitment to deeper study in order to reveal clearly the Council’s continuity with Tradition, especially in points of doctrine which, perhaps because they are new, have not yet been well understood by some sections of the Church” (Ecclesia Dei).
But for Father Neuhaus you are either a “Lefebrvist” or you believe that Church teaching came into existence ex nihilo in 1962 with Vatican II followed by the papal magisterium of John Paul II. If you want to be in the “center”, you have to accept the second alternative.
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The Latin Mass was a symptom of what was the problem
that confronted the Church: the society had changed
around it, so that the answers that the Church gave were
not put in a way that they could be understood.
When the Church came into being Latin was the vernacurla.
Everyone understood what the priest said and could follow
it. Then with time, less and less people understood what
was said, and a wall began to rise between the
priesthood and the faithful, contributing to the idea that
church was unconnected to real life. It was high time
that the Mass was said so that the faithful could
connect with it.
A lot of things were like that. Since communication
depends on the ability of the hearer to undestand what
is said, it was incumbent that the Church change its
expressions to make itsefl understood, and that it also
understood the circumnstances of the hearer to use the
right turns of phrase and the right metaphors.
The II Vatican Council was meant to do that. Of course,
when you try to do in a few months the labor that should
have been carried out through the years, of course, you
make quite a number of mistakes. You catch the obvious,
and the not so obvious come back to bite you in the ass.
But it needed doing.
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@Adriana:
As a traditionalist (small t) Catholic who has had extensive experience with a number of the Church’s liturgies (and academic knowledge of even more), and who, with my wife and six children, now attends a Traditional Latin Mass, I think that you’ve oversimplified things.
Our oratory offers two Masses on Sunday. Between the two, about 600 people attend on an average Sunday. The average age of those people is probably around 30. Even though our oratory is not a geographical parish, it has perhaps the strongest parish life of any Catholic parish in Rockford. Far from there being a wall between beloved priest and the congregation, Father Bovee cannot keep up with the social invitations from members of the congregation.
My wife and I spent two years as active members of a Byzantine Catholic parish in Northern Virginia (and almost switched rites, until our daughter came along and we decided to move back to the Midwest). Our experience there was very similar, even though about half of the liturgy was conducted in Church Slavonic, rather than English.
I think that the problem that modern men and women have with the traditional liturgies of the Church has nothing to do with the language in which they are conducted and everything to do with the fact that, rather than being hard to comprehend, they’re all too understandable (once, of course, you’re used to them). Those liturgies stand as signs of contradiction to society today. That makes some (many? most?) Catholics very uncomfortable.
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Scott,
Your reflections are true and given the climate, very generous. But we must be honest, even in our charity, and call these fellows by name, and their name is legion. This is not the first time for any of these fellows to attack their elders. They like to drop names, boast of their connections, prefer abstract audiences to real friends and will never stand for any truth beyond the shadow of any current, cultural, prejudice. They are childish in temperment,sometimes clever in errudition, but more like kids than men in both the demonstration of their opinions or any given understanding of the real debate--the permanent things. They are minor league players in a rich and tawdry political endeavor that will not last for long because it lacks all substance and essence, and therefore, life. I do not say we should calumniate or lie about them like Mr.Frum so often does towards his betters, but simply take them for the shallow, hallow and petty men that they are and hoot them away from any serious discourse.
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Adriana,
While this isn’t the place to address all of the issues concerning Vatican II, your claim that Vatican II called for the abolition of Latin is false. In fact, Vatican II said exactly the opposite. In the document on the Sacred Liturgy it says:
“36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”
The implementation of the liturgical reforms called for in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was carried out by a commission after the council. That commission produced the rite of Mass that most of us are familiar with today. It is entirely in the vernacular, which is clearly contrary to what Vatican II called for.
This is a complicated issue, but this proves my point about Vatican II--that there are legitimate concerns about whether or not Vatican II and its subsequent reforms constitute a break with the Church’s condition. Concerning this very issue of the use of Latin in the liturgy, we have a case where Vatican II calls for one thing but what is implemented is the opposite. Catholics ought to be able to respectfully question whether such reforms are continuous with the Church’s tradition without being labeled “Lefebrvists” by the likes of Fr. Neuhaus.
As to whether Vatican II succeeded in presenting Catholicism to “modern man” in a more intelligible manner and renewing the Church ought to be judged by its fruits. Again, one ought to be able to respectfully say that it did not without in any way imputing heresy or error to the Council and thus being labeled as “rejecting Vatican II” or being “schismatic”. One can claim that a council failed to achieve its intended purpose without denying the presence of the Holy Spirit in that council which prevents error from being taught.
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@Scott
I am glad that the church you go too has such enthusiastic
parishioners, but I caution you against trying to draw
conclusions from their enthusiasm, because your equation
does not include those who left the church, that
continual bleeding which started with Luther and Calvin.
Seriously, if I were to make a comparison, I would
compare it with opera. For its devotees it matters
not that it is sung in a foreign language and they
cannot make out what it is said… they just are
carried out by the music.
But for too many people who would enjoy it otherwise
(since they enjoy musical comedies, and would like
meatier fare), the fact that they cannot undestand
what is being sung is a major turn-off. So when
you go the opera you only see the happy opera goers.
There are no unhappy or dispirted opera-goers because
they do not come to a spectacle they do not enjoy.
So, I caution against that type of argument. You should
rather look into churches who are gaining or retaining
members, and what their age is…
(Look at me. I took some basic statisctics ages ago
in college, and I am itching to show it off)
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@Adriana:
“ You should rather look into churches who are gaining or retaining members, and what their age is…”
Which is why I did. St. Mary’s Oratory is gaining and retaining members, and the average age of congregants is dropping. When I attend the Novus Ordo locally or while visiting my parents, I’m always surprised at the lack of children at Mass. And one of the first things that visitors to St. Mary’s say is, “I expected the people to be much older!”
This idea that people can’t understand the Traditional Mass or the Divine Liturgy when it is conducted in Latin or Slavonic is simply not true. If you want to understand it, you can. It took precisely two Divine Liturgies before I could follow it in the pew book, even when it was sung in Old Slavonic. The very first Sunday that my wife and I spent at the Byzantine parish in Northern Virginia, I sang in the choir (after two hours of practice the Wednesday before).
This isn’t because I’m some sort of liturgical whiz kid or rarefied musical type. I listen to country music and Bruce Springsteen, and I grew up with the Novus Ordo (literally). The fact is, the Catholic Church was not suffering mass attrition before the promulgation of the Novus Ordo and the nearly universal change to the vernacular. It was growing in numbers in the United States, and the rate of growth slowed in the 70’s and early 80’s, though it picked up later in JP II’s pontificate.
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@Scott
I stand corrected. This explanation satisfies my
amateur statitician’s sould
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This idea that people can’t understand the Traditional Mass or the Divine Liturgy when it is conducted in Latin or Slavonic is simply not true.
Here’s what I don’t understand: When will the RCC stop peddling mass immigration, wealth redistribution, anti-racism, social justice, universal human rights, Latin American solidarity, sexual justice, and the destruction of Western civility?
I keep asking and all I see are excuses and slogans. You can talk tradition until the cows come home, but the corrosive behavior of the Roman Church is public knowledge. That includes the shenanigans of the institution and 150 years of voting patterns.
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Dear Mr. Richert:
I’d suggest you read Fr. Neuhaus’s article. You completely misunderstood. It seems that you read the last paragraph without reading the rest of the article. Out of context, you failed to note that Fr. Neuhaus was making an ironic comment.
Fr. Neuhaus has a sincere appreciation of John Paul II teaching. I would never criticize it. Either you’re in bad faith or you should think before you write non-sense.
PZ
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@Paolo Zambon:
“I’d suggest you read Fr. Neuhaus’s article. You completely misunderstood. . . . Fr. Neuhaus has a sincere appreciation of John Paul II teaching. I would never criticize it. Either you’re in bad faith or you should think before you write non-sense.”
I didn’t misunderstand anything; you did. It is very clear from my piece that I understand that Father Neuhaus’s comment is ironic. What you’re missing is that I’m pointing out that Paul Likoudis, one of the chief people that Father Neuhaus is criticizing, does not believe what Father Neuhaus is, ironically, suggesting that he does.
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RohTtj U cool ))
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