Justice from top to Bottum

First of all, we are not here to defend First Things as a whole or even Bottum's article in its entirety. While there may be some issues regarding traditionalism that he has failed to appreciate properly, and indeed his apparent indifference to the liturgy is real deficiency in his approach, we think these things are mostly beside the point. Unfortunately, Iacobus and Iosephus seem to miss the point of the article in a serious way, and so, unsurprisingly, to fail to respond to it. First, let us attend to two major misunderstandings.

Misrepresentation

First of all, from what our friends said in their post, you'd get the idea that Bottum is a wild supporter of Vatican II and the changes that followed in its wake. Iacobus and Iosephus even excerpt the following quote to illustrate his attitude towards the reforms:

The arcanery of decorations on albs and chasubles, the processions of Holy Water blessings, the grottos with their precarious rows of fire-hazard candles flickering away in little red cups, the colored seams and peculiar buttons that identified monsignors, the wimpled school sisters, the tiny Spanish grandmothers muttering prayers in their black mantillas, the First Communion girls wrapped up in white like prepubescent brides, the mumbled Irish prejudices, the loud Italian festivals, the Holy Door indulgences, the pocket guides to Thomistic philosophy, the Knights of Columbus with their cocked hats and comic-opera swords, the tinny mission bells, the melismatic chapel choirs—none of this was the Church, some of it actually obscured the Church, and the decision to clear out the mess was not unintelligent or uninformed or unintended.

My my, he certainly does seem supportive! Unfortunately these good gentlemen neglected to include the very next sentence, in which Bottum shows clearly that he is using the very sophisticated literary device called "irony" (not to be confused with sarcasm):

It was merely insane.

He calls the destruction of Catholic culture in America "insane!" Bottum uses the destruction of the swallows' nests at Capistrano as a framing device for the article as a whole. He views this destruction as a foolish and even tragic act that ruined something beautiful (and indeed perhaps irreplaceable,) which occasions sadness and regret to this day. The sweeping away of Catholic culture in the wake of the Council was the destruction of an authentic Catholic culture that nobody, including the inherently reactionary traditionalist movement retains. It's hard to know whether the implication that Bottum is pleased about this change should be credited to very poor reading, intellectual dishonesty, or to some combination of the two, but in any case his meaning was grossly mischaracterized.

And yet they do it again in misunderstanding Bottum's intention in quoting the young man whose quote ends: "Left, Right, whatever....The best of them were failures, and the worst of them were monsters.” They assert, without grounds, that this is Bottum's own view. Yet again, they fail to notice the very next sentence in Bottum's article: "There’s something disturbing about that line, although one hears it often enough. Iacobus and Iosephus twice fail to include the very next sentence beyond their tendentious quotations, sentences which any fair reader would understand to undermine their mischaracterization. The fact that they do this twice in a relatively short space makes us wonder whether this represents something rather more than a forgivable solecism. Indeed this reminds the Doctor of a mistake he sees in his undergraduates when they are quoting a philosopher who is summarizing a position in order to critique it. The student will only quote the summary as if the philosopher is speaking in his own voice, rather than, in fact, attempting to give voice to a position he does not hold. This is just flat-out sloppy.

Bottum and Traditionalists

Iosephus and Iacobus indignantly protest Bottum's unfairness in portraying Traditionalists in a poor light; he hasn't fully understood their aims, he doesn't appreciate the importance of the Latin Mass, he isn't sufficiently sympathetic to the parishioners at St. Mary's by the Sea.

To the extent that he offers his views (which is much less than Iacobus and Iosephus seem to think) one can find Bottum's real attitude towards many traditionalists (not Tradition) in the following:

Rich local cultures may produce great works, but few people in the United States have that kind of cultural wealth anymore. Certainly not many Catholics. The number of Americans who grew up in a profoundly Catholic setting is smaller than it ever has been before—which creates a problem for a new culture. If Catholicism is something elected rather than received, can Catholics achieve what earlier cultures did?

Their children, perhaps, will come from a thick-enough world that they can write the kind of strong Catholic novels, make the kind of strong Catholic art, prior ages knew. But in the meantime, a rebellion against rebellion doesn’t escape the problems of rebellion, and a chosen tradition is never quite the same as an inherited one.

This is absolutely right. So much of the traditionalist movement today is "a rebellion against rebellion" and as such is not only deeply reactionary (not that there are not appropriate times—including now—for reaction), but also inauthentic. Is this self conscious effort to recover Tradition better than its wholesale rejection? Of course! But it is not and cannot be like the deep Catholic culture that was lost. For that culture was an organic growth of a people (Catholics in America) who were locked out of the mainstream by Protestant bigotry, but who with remarkable faith in their Church and themselves built a genuinely (if deeply flawed) Catholic culture in this country. The best we can hope for is that our self-conscious efforts at recovery may one day make for an environment that can sustain a new (and doubtless very different—to borrow a phrase) organic, and authetnic American Catholic culture. But we who are engaged in this self-conscious effort will never know that culture; it will only live after we are gone.

Jaroslav Pelikan once said something to the effect that Tradition is the living faith of the dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. It is Tradition towards which we must strive, yet so often those who support the Old Mass are more enmeshed in traditionalism than Tradition.

Bottum's Aims

Iacobus and Iosephus have also seriously misunderstood Bottum's article in a different way. They charge him with trying to chart a via media between left and right, and including traditionalists gratuitously, and perhaps spitefully, in his condemnation. This only shows that they have failed to understand the thrust of the argument. Bottum is not offering a normative analysis of what his ideal Catholic culture would look like. He is rather trying to understand the etiology of the incipient one which is now developing.

What is true is that Bottum piles scorn much more heavily on the heretical left than he does on the schismatic right; nonetheless, he does describe a few of those traditional figures who were most seriously unhinged by the chaos of the 1970's, and he has an excellent reason for doing so. The two are in reaction against each other, but they are united by a key shared conviction: the Church has been irrevocably broken by Vatican II. Their attitudes towards this change were very different, of course. The leftist bishops could hardly contain their joy, and went about cutting themselves free from the dead weight of the past as quickly as possible. The schismatics groaned in dismay, and jumped ship in order, as they saw it, to save themselves from sinking. But both were convinced that the old order, and really, the Church itself, was dead.

There are many Catholics today who don't feel that way, and it is this phenomenon that Bottum wishes to explore. The young Catholics he meets in Orange County are not, as Iacobus and Iosephus would have it, perfect mouthpieces for Bottum's views, but he is intrigued by their attitude: they want very much to be Catholics, but they want no part of the fractured '70s. They don't wish to throw everything old out the window, as can be seen by their enthusiasm for praying the Rosary in front of abortuaries and adoring the Blessed Sacrament, and defending the Church's teachings, particularly with regards to pressing moral questions. At the same time, they more or less accept Vatican II, and often have a defective understanding of the Church and her teachings.

Examining this generation of Catholics with interest, Bottum is asking a sociological question (not a doctrinal one): given the demise of the culture that once fostered America's Catholic youth, what sort of soil has generated these earnest young people? He identifies several elements: the writings and leadership of John Paul II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the urgent need to respond to pressing social issues like abortion. Note that Bottum is making empirical claims here; nowhere does he rhapsodize about the infallible reign of John Paul or the masterful moral guidance of the CCC. He is merely stating as a matter of fact that these are the building blocks from which an embryonic, but identifiable Catholic culture is beginning to emerge. It is true that he seems, in the end and after several reservations, to take this as a sign of hope. But these are only sparks of light showing through the ashes. Bottum states frankly that he has serious concerns about a Catholic culture that is itself formed in reaction to a defunct culture; he seems to place his greatest hope in the possibility that dedicated young Catholics, like the ones he met in Orange County, might at least be able to raise Catholics who know the faith as their heritage and not as a rebellion. So, ironically, he could not have agreed more strongly with Iacobus and Iosephus in their claim that the present generation has been 'abused.' He thinks that the damage is deep enough that it may take some generations to repair it; he only fosters some hope that the rebuilding may at least have begun. In his closing paragraph he returns to the swallows of Capistrano and a phone call from a friend who has seen one swallow circling the old belfries. Only one. There is hope that more may return, but the demolished nests can't be rebuilt just like that. This is Bottum's supposedly rosy vision of Catholic culture today.

A Call for an Honest Reply

How should traditionalists respond to such an argument? The very fact of our companions' irritation at the so-called "cath cons" lends credence to Bottum's description of their development and their salient characteristics. The main point of interest for us, then, is deciding how we ought to view this new variety of Catholics, and how their activities should affect ours. We could, in the spirit of Iacobus and Iosephus' post, assume a contemptuous and self-righteous stance towards anyone who has the audacity to think well of John Paul II or other Ecclesiastical authorities about whom we still wish to complain. We could dismiss as depraved or deluded any and all Catholics who fail to appreciate the vital importance of the Latin Mass or the Catechism of the Council of Trent. We could sniff about the "impiety" of publications which dare to include in their pages arguments which Leo XIII would have deemed ill-conceived.

But if the Church is to be the living Bride of Christ, it would be well to look also to the future. Iosephus asserts that Bottum is seriously mistaken about the future of Catholic culture in America. We would be interested in hearing, in more detail, what he envisions. And, in the spirit of Bottum's piece, let this not be a wish list, but rather a sober analysis of the situation, taking stock of some important facts. First of all, the second Vatican Council happened. It simply isn't possible to press "rewind." Either the Church will continue to move forward under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or it's all a lie and we might as well become Unitarians. We need not cease mourning for what was lost, but the very fact that it has been lost proves that it was not central to the deposit of faith. A Catholic future will have to come to terms with a past that now includes Vatican II and an era of cultural destruction. Secondly, along the same lines, the immediate future of Catholicism in America is going to feature the Novus Ordo Mass in a large way. We would rejoice greatly if every parish in American suddenly switched to the Tridentine Mass. But that isn't going to happen, and it is obtuse and unproductive to hold on a par every Catholic who doesn't appreciate the difference between a beautiful rendition of the "Asperges" and a congregational "Gather Us In." Some Catholics are deeply steeped in heresy, and need to be told to repent or leave. Others have a real desire to stay loyal to the Church and her teachings, and this needs to be encouraged, even if the sensibilities of these Catholics have been greatly malformed by the inhospitable conditions in which they were raised. But, thirdly, with regards to Catholic culture in America, things have gotten perceptibly better in the last decade or two. The priestly scandals have fallen off since the late 80's. The liturgy has started to improve in places, with the bishops even calling for badly-needed revisions of the English translation of the Novus. And young Catholics are starting to be proud defenders of their faith once again. If you think all of this can be credited to the work of traditionalists, you are delusional. Improvement is possible, even among those dedicated to the Novus Ordo Mass, and those improvements should be applauded and furthered, not least because they also make for a climate more hospitable to the Latin Mass.

This is not simply an argument for joining those we can't beat. Of course those of us who know the beauty and power of the Latin Mass should work to spread it as far and as quickly as possible, together with such beautiful remnants of Catholic tradition as we have been able to preserve. A somewhat-artificial Catholic culture is better than none at all, and the power of the Latin Mass shines through all ages. However, given the impossibility of simply transforming American Catholicism into a traditionalist paradise overnight, it is necessary to look on other developments within Catholic culture with a more discerning eye, distinguishing those that have some promise from those that are rotten to the core. We find it alarming that even intelligent and educated traditionalists like our friends in the Cornell Society for a Good Time can read a piece like Bottum's, and fixate entirely on a few pet issues that are quite peripheral to the his primary point. If traditionalists refuse to accept any Catholic culture that does not match exactly their idealized vision, they risk participating in the destruction of a somewhat different one which, without precisely duplicating what was lost, might nonetheless be developed over the course of generations into a flourishing culture which could nourish souls in the faith.

Finally, with regards to First Things as a whole, we will modify Clara's characterization and classify it as a journal of ideas, making contributors like Bottum public intellectuals. Iacobus misspoke when he referred to First Things as a "Catholic" journal. It has never claimed to be exclusively Catholic (though one might easily get that impression given the eye-opening list of orthodox Catholic intellectuals and cardinals who have published there, including the Holy Father.) Rather, it publishes the work of serious religious thinkers from various Christian groups, as well as some Jewish writers, and perhaps the occasional Muslim. Quite obviously, in a forum of this kind, one cannot assume that everything one reads will accurately reflect the teachings of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and if you think it inherently objectionable for heretics and non-heretics to converse publicly, then you certainly will not approve of First Things. We think that forums like this can be healthy, not least because they are often influential on those who are wavering, or those who have not yet come to see the truth. This is what intellectuals do, after all: they debate issues of relevance to their time with representatives of other positions. There is a long Catholic tradition of engaging heretics and non-believers in debate, spanning the centuries from St. Paul up through modern-day apologists like GK Chesterton or Archbishop Sheen, and we think that First Things follows in this tradition fairly admirably. But of course, if you're looking to converse publicly with heretics, you must also print the arguments of the heretics; it would be difficult to get them involved on any other terms. In addition, a journal of ideas is likely to print arguments on subjects on which the Church has not yet made her position fully clear, and some of these arguments will turn out to be wrong. There are some risks associated with this kind of speculation, but nonetheless, this is the process through which the Church has always refined and rarified the her truths so that faith can endure over the centuries. Catholics who engage in speculation with serious intention to be true to the teachings of Christ and the Magisterium can reassure themselves that their errors will be only materially heretical, and thus not sinful.

A person who is perturbed by this sort of exchange might certainly be an excellent Catholic, but he evidently is not well suited to be an intellectual, in which case it would be best just not to bother about such publications as First Things.


Clara et Doctor suus


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