Saturday, May 12, 2012

Trads and Progressives: is the truth in the middle?

I have only recently got hold of a copy of Dietrich von Hildebrand's 'The Devastated Vineyard', a critique of the post-conciliar problems of the Church, published in 1973. Hildebrand is a fascinating figure, from a well-connected and highly cultivated family, he pursued a career in Philosophy and converted to Catholicism in 1914. He was a staunch opponent of the Nazis and fled Germany, and then Austria, and then France, as they advanced across Europe. He ended up teaching in the Jesuit university of Fordham, New York, from 1940 until his retirement in 1960.

He did not fit in well at Fordham, because he was not a Thomist. His philosophical background was Phenomenology, like St Edith Stein and Bl. Pope John Paul II. One of his early books, 'In Defence of Purity', strikingly anticipates many of the themes of Theology of the Body. In the 1940s, it was a common view that Catholic philosophy had to be Thomistic. Such a view is historically indefensible: however much honour the Church may, and should, accord St Thomas Aquinas, other philosophical systems and methodological approaches cannot be ruled out in advance.

In any case, he went on to be one of the great early defenders of Catholic Tradition, and founded the Roman Forum / Hildebrand Institute to carry on his work of giving a reasoned defense of the Faith in its fullness. (Dr John Rao, the Director of the Roman Forum, is giving a talk at the approaching Latin Mass Society Conference on 9th June.) Hildebrand found that many other defenders of Tradition took the same narrow-minded attitude to Catholic philosophy as his Fordham colleagues had in the 1940s. He called them 'Integrists'; I'm not sure if this is the right word but we need a label, and it'll do. It is extremely interesting to read what he has to say about them, because the Catholic traddy scene is still, and perhaps inevitably, populated by people who can be described in this way. Hildebrand examines the question of whether 'conservative extremists', 'integrists', are just as bad as the opposite, progressive extremists. He rejects it.

'The narrowness of the integrists may be regrettable, but it is not heretical. It is not incompatible with the teaching of the holy Church. It views certain philosophical theses as inseparable from orthodoxy, though they in no way are. But these philosophical theses are are also in no way incompatible with with Christian Revelation. Therefore, it is completely senseless to place those who hold a philosophic thesis to be inseparable from Christian Revelation, i.e., from the teaching of the holy Church, on a level with those who promulgate philosophic theses which are in radical contradiction to the teaching of the holy Church, ...' (Devastated Vineyard, p16)

He goes on to give a psychological explanation for the tendency to equate the 'two extremes' among Catholics inclined towards a conservative outlook.
'Men who have had to suffer much under the narrowness of spirit of the extremists, and who have been unjustly suspected of being heretics, have developed such an antipathy toward this fanaticism, and they shun and fear it so much, that they are inclined to put this evil on the same level as grave errors of faith, or indeed as explicit heresies.' (p18)

The question of what philosophical, theological, political, indeed cultural and educational attitudes are compatible with the Faith is, of course, the question of the day, and perhaps the question of every era in the Church. There will always be people who take a broad view, and people who take a narrow view. The narrow view is the safer view; the broad view promises exciting possibilities of various kinds. If we are allowed to do this, teach that, or permit the other, we may have more tools to spread the Faith, we may be able to lift burdens off people's backs. In the end the Church makes the judgement, but only after public debate, sometimes going on for centuries. The latitudinarians think everyone else is an integrist; the integrists thinks everyone else is a latitudinarian. But Hildebrand makes the important point: however wrongheaded, even destructive, an integrist may be, he does not lack the Faith. He is always on the safer side. There is no moral equivalence between someone who thinks it is not safe to say that NFP, or evolution, or women in trousers, or liturgical innovation, is compatible with the Faith, and someone who says that you can be saved through Buddha, or denies the Real Presence, or thinks there's nothing wrong with sex outside marriage. On the one hand you have someone who is, perhaps, annoying, and if mistaken is obviously mistaken on certain (highly complex) theological questions, but he is not denying any truths of Faith. On the other hand, you have someone who clearly is denying truths of Faith, even if they claim that they are merely presenting a new interpretation of it.

What is the error of someone who holds a narrow view of what is compatible with a doctrine? In a certain, sense, he hasn't got the doctrine right, because he is drawing implications from it which it does not have. But no human, on earth, is able to see all the implications of a doctrine, they are infinite. About the implications of doctrines, we work out what we can, and await the definitive judgement of the Church, which may be a long time coming. What is required of Catholics is to believe the doctrine, in the form presented by the Church, and the integrist is doing this even if he gets some of the implications wrong. But when you hear someone saying that the truth is compatible with the denial of the doctrine in its familiar formula - Jesus isn't really God, Mary isn't really sinless, there's no original sin - they are denying the doctrine, as presented by the Church, and that is a completely different matter.

These debates will always be with us. The more narrow-minded type of Catholic is on the rise, in the Church, and that is a good thing, because it is evident, to anyone willing to look, that there has been a type of broadmindedness at work for the last two generations which takes away all content from the Faith. It is compatible not so much with the Catholic Faith as with a indeterminate blancmange of positive attitudes. Yes, it is possible to be too narrow, but don't run away with the idea that this is just as bad as being a heretic.

8 comments:

  1. Unfortunately Dr Shaw the rise of the Integrists has had an unfortunate effect on Vocations.

    Whilst it may be true that Orthodox/Trad congregations and societies tend to have more vocations than the 'progressives' they don't have as many as they should due a mindset that weeds out anyone who comes from a less than perfect background, I've been told that becasue my parents are divorced, the vast majority of VD's will dismiss me out of hand and won't even meet me before they damm me.

    The Integrist makes the pharassies look like nice guys with bad PR

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  2. "There is no moral equivalence between someone who thinks it is not safe to say that NFP, or evolution, or women in trousers, or liturgical innovation, is compatible with the Faith..."

    Well, indeed, but he who denies evolution is in danger of saying truth can contradict truth; he who opposes women in trousers is in danger of dogmatising modern western cultural mores (or at least, the mores of 1950s America), and he who anathematises liturgical innovation altogether is both speaking nonsense as to the history of the faith, and in danger of putting liturgy before dogma. The Integrist position may be safer, but it is not therefore necessarily safe.

    "What is the error of someone who holds a narrow view of what is compatible with a doctrine? In a certain, sense, he hasn't got the doctrine right, because he is drawing implications from it which it does not have."

    Again, yes, but it is also the error of the Pharisees, I fear, in that it places an undue burden on the Faithful which is not of God, and then judges them for failing to live up to their standards (see the comments beneath a recent "Rorate" post on modesty).

    "The more narrow-minded type of Catholic is on the rise, in the Church, and that is a good thing, because it is evident, to anyone willing to look, that there has been a type of broadmindedness at work for the last two generations which takes away all content from the Faith."

    Here I must disagree with both premise and conclusion. What has been at work for two generations was not broadmindedness but a different kind of narrowmindedness, I think.

    But more to the point, the Integrists must not be allowed to set the agenda. First, because we absolutely must learn from the terrible mistake of the Sodalitium Pianum and the mason and modernist scares under Pius X.

    Second, and more importantly, they will anathematise the past. They are almost always wrong in their conception of Tradition, and in the narrow limits they set on it, and if they area allowed to wrestle domination of the Church, they will surely lead her to folly (and no, relying on Christ's promise an resting on our laurels is not enough - God helps those who help themselves, after all...).

    Their other effect on the intellectual culture of the Church will be stifling it. Any new discussion or new avenue of research, and potential new tool will be hastily destroyed as suspect and modernist, or masonic, or satanic, because it is not Traditional in the Traditionalist (tm) conception of Tradition.

    And third, they will drive people away in droves by their impossible attitude.

    They must be fought, and the battle-lines must be drawn, and drawn clearly. Our battle-cry must be: nec sinistra, nec dextra, sed ubi Petrus.

    Bella premunt hostilia:
    Da robur, fer auxilium!

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  3. A pity DvH chose the term 'integrist' (as you write, "I'm not sure if this is the right word but we need a label, and it'll do") since the French bien-pensants tend to label anyone not a subscriber at Golias an integrist.

    An excellent post, but I do share Evagrius's apprehension of the "different kind of narrowmindedness"; perhaps because for years now I've lived in parishes that, while not 'embracing Tradition', reject, in their celebration of the usus recentior, all but the least inescapable nonsense (unecessary EMHCs and female altar servers, here on the US West Coast): if I had to endure all of it from the 70s and 80s again I probably wouldn't care if an agent of la Sapinière sat at the back of the church during Mass-- or, more to the point, in the bishop's office.

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  4. 'Mad Catholic': I know of at least one FSSP Seminarian whose parents are divorced, so your informant is wrong.

    Evagrius: 'truth against truth': maybe, but since our salvation does not depend upon right belief on scientific or cultural questions, the asymmetry remains.

    NB we'll all be called narrowminded for not supporting abortion and infanticide, by the extreme progressives. We can't condemn integrism as a phenomenon, really: we have to address the issues one at a time.

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  5. Dr Shaw

    Perhaps this is true for the FSSP, but my informant (a vocation director himself) seemed pretty sure of his information.

    That coupled with my own experience of being on the recieving end of sanctimonious abuse from an 'integrist' VD has left me with something of dislike for Traditional Catholics; sure I love the Old Mass, but dislike many of the lay people who assist at it and the Priests who say it.

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    1. May I ask - were these diocesan vocations directors?

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    2. No; both of them were Vocation Directors for Religious congregations, sadly here in England I get the impression (and my parish Priest agrees) that even if I were to convince a Bishop to take me, my commitment to Orthodoxy would shortly result in my expulsion from Seminary.

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  6. "Perhaps this is true for the FSSP, but my informant (a vocation director himself) seemed pretty sure of his information."

    Sorry, I don't understand this. The FSSP is not a marginal exception to the traddy orders. It is by far the biggest, of those in good standing, it probably admits as many young men as all the others put together. Your informant may be sincere but he is just wrong, wrong, wrong. There are many misconceptions about the traditional scene: please don't cling onto them. As it happens with the case I have in mind the information is in the public domain, though I'd rather not shout about it here, there's no need to draw attention to the young man's circumstances.

    Why not ask them? St Benedict says the postulant must be persistent, not put off by the first perceived difficulty.

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