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Entry: Remembering WFB Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/remembering_wfb#22703 Post contents: Dear Dr Cathey, Many thanks for your kind words and comments as insightful as always. I certainly agree with you and "I am not Spartacus" on the historical account of the degeneration of liturgy and teaching in the Church. I have been stealing some time away from the demanding mistress (the Law, OK?) to dip into a couple of John Hellman's books on the French Personalists (especially Alexandre Marc, Mounier, Dandieu, de Lubac, etc.) in the interwar years,and during Vichy, and there he (obviously a liberal Catholic) gives another, but concurrent version of the same history. It is interesting to see how they evidently thought (influenced by Berdyaev) that events both in society and the Church needed to be directed by a new elite, in a way corresponding to the "new man" one hears about so often, and reflecting the new realities of the world. Their idea was that they would form the elites according to their updated notions. Interestingly, there is even a photo of a priest sympathetic to them (and to Vichy -- to be sure, the "Vichy that might have been" on the early period) celebrating (the old) Mass facing the people in some large outdoor Mass type of event. Trying to be charitable to those who, holding the levers of power in the Church today and favoring this kind of new approach reflected in the art [sic!] and architecture of so many modern church buildings, including, one regrets to say, evidently the new co-cathedral here, I assume that they believe that modern times require the kind of radically altered approach to Catholicism that they not only offer, but enforce, and that this will be the best thing for souls, who, already altered in sentiments and thought, if not ontologically, will thus be attracted to the "new order" in the Church which corresponds to the new order in society at large. Of course, facts, such as the recent Pew poll, cannot be allowed to dissuade them. Faced with this situation, I entirely agree with what I gather to be the core of both of your remarks, that we must do what we can to preserve Tradition, and as a faithful remnant, await a better time. Indeed, our own prayers, small sacrifices, mortifications and sufferings borne in union with those of Our Saviour, can be counted on to speed along the true renovation, a real revolution, a revolution of love, that, in the mercy of the Good Lord, will surely come. Sent at: 2008 11 23