The Talking Church

(cf. chapter 13 of Unwanted Priest by Fr. Bryan Houghton, Angelico Press)

Of course, living in a cathedral city in France, I meet quite a number of clergy. Also, of old driving through France on my holidays, I had met a great number of village priests, wherever I stopped off to say Mass. The two groups scarcely seem to me to be composed of the same people—by and large.

The old curé, riding round the village in his soutane on a lady's bike, with his chest heavily stained with snuff, who deprecated shaving more than twice a week, who lived in a presbytery full of books, wine bottles, junk, cats and what you will, is in outward appearance very different from the dapper, clean-shaven man, in collar and tie, beige suit and polished shoes, who emerges from his clean limousine to wish you good-morning. They may look very different, but is there the same person beneath the appearance? I really do not know—but I suspect that the old curé was far more pious and considerably more learned. Of course, he said his prayers and read books instead of watching television; but, even apart from that, he loved God and wished to explore the depths of his religion. His modern counterpart is extremely affable but he does not strike me as terribly pious. For instance, since the suppression of the Chapter in 1973, I have never caught a priest saying Mass or his prayers in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the cathedral. Doubtless they say Mass at home in their dining rooms and their prayers in their study; but it is not quite the same thing. The old priests said Mass and the Rosary in church. It is the same with their learning. The old curé thought nothing of reading through his Saint Augustine and his Bossuet; his contemporary counterpart perhaps reads a progressive review.

As I have said, living in an episcopal city, I am surrounded by clergy: the bishop, the vicar-general, the chancellor, the officialis, the vice-officialis, the administrator, two other priests and the last surviving canon, aged ninety-six, who is determined to see the bishop out. They all go out of their way to be kind and agreeable to me. I am fond of them as men and even grateful to them; but I should not dare talk “religion” to any of them. That is a closed book. We are all Catholic priests, but we have a different religion. How pathetic!

Thus, the same problem confronted me in France as in England: what had induced the clergy to give in to the new ideas? I still believed—as I do to this day—that prayer is the basis of the problem, and that “Prayer, Grace and the Liturgy” gives the real answer. But how had the clergy been induced to give up praying—in fact, had lost the faith? It struck me fairly forcibly that it was the second time France had lost the faith: once in 1789 and once in 1969. Perhaps the same mechanism was at work. Anyway, I wrote the following article in March 1975.

———————

In the revolution from which the Church is still suffering, there appears to me to be a matter of some interest which has received scant attention. How comes it that changes affecting every aspect of Catholic life have been introduced without raising an audible murmur from the vast host of clergy, bishops and priests alike? The phenomenon is far stranger than any political revolution or, for that matter, than at the Reformation, because the personnel has remained largely identical. The same bishop proscribes today what he prescribed yesterday. The priest whose range of sermons was limited to confession and company-keeping now conducts penitential services with general absolution and turns a blind eye to Humanae Vitae. Most astonishing of all, the holy Mass, for which every one of them would have died at the stake, has been jettisoned in the only form known to them and their flock without blush or wince. Moreover, not only was each change received without any opposition but, until quite recently, with a fair measure of applause.

That is the problem. Is one to believe that all the bishops and the overwhelming majority of priests are as unprincipled as their actions are inconsistent? Such a supposition is obviously absurd. What, then, has been the mechanism which has enabled them to make such a complete volte-face and keep their self-respect? By what process have they swallowed dishfuls of their own words without showing any visible sign of indigestion?

It was Rousseau, a great habitué of Masonic Lodges and Sociétés de Pensée, who in his Social Contract first drew attention to the fact that in any discussion group, intellectual association, philosophical, political or religious club, the volunté générale or “collective will” was not the same as the volunté de tous or sum of “individual wills”; indeed, the two might be clean contrary. As Augustin Cochin pointed out in his masterly little work Les Sociétés de Pensée et la Révolution Francaise, the reason for this is not difficult to determine: a discussion group will inevitably become involved in general ideas, so that its “collective will’ has as its object an abstract proposition; whereas the “individual will” always plays on given realities. Thus, it comes about that the same man may vote for “equal shares for all” but refuse a crust to a beggar. He is not inconsistent. He is in favour of the abstract idea of equal shares but is against concrete charity. He is willing to change the structures but not to practice the virtues. Incidentally, this is so true that people who constantly talk about “changing structures” can be assumed to be members of discussion groups. The “collective will,” dealing as it does with general ideas, tends automatically to decide what other people should do; the “individual will,” what one should do oneself.

There are, of course, certain requirements for the collective will to germinate and reach perfection. It is a hothouse plant, in need of a steady flow of hot air. The members of the group must all be considered as equal; on entering the meeting all authority must be discarded, be it of status, intelligence or experience. Specialists in a given field should be excluded or silenced when that field is under discussion; not only would they introduce prejudice, but they would be likely to embog the discussion on the technicalities of reality. The agenda should emerge from the group itself; it is not there to pass judgment on the ideas of others but to produce its own. The discussion must be open-ended and anything can be questioned; as the members are all equal, so are all opinions. Authoritative and dogmatic statements alone are to be disallowed because they are not open-ended but exclusive. It will help the group along if some of its members are endowed with instant wisdom and little knowledge; a couple of modernists will do, to provide the clap-trap. Under such conditions it is quite surprising how rapidly a few perfectly decent people can “renew the face of the earth”—far more effectively than the Holy Ghost.

Once this is pointed out it is fairly obvious, and anybody with a minimum of knowledge of discussion groups can verify the fact from his own experience.

Now, perhaps the greatest tragedy in the history of the Church occurred when the Fathers of Vatican II decided to be a pastoral discussion group rather than a dogmatic council. In matters of dogma they possessed divine authority and human competence. As a pastoral discussion group they had no more authority and less competence than the village debating society. The documents it produced are monuments to the “collective will”; they are there to be read by anyone with a sufficient supply of anti-soporifics.

Whatever one may think of Vatican I, it has had one undeniable result: it has turned the whole Church, the immaculate Spouse, the Ark of salvation, into a vast, sprawling mass of discussion groups. There are the Roman Synod, national and regional councils of bishops, the same of priests, commissions for this, commissions for that, diocesan senates, refresher courses, study days; even deanery meetings, days of recollection, retreats and in some instances the Mass itself have all been turned into discussion groups. The wretched laity have not been spared but have been dragged into commissions and councils at every level. Nobody does anything of course, because that would require an act of the individual will, but everything is discussed in an abstract, irresponsible, open-ended way. Everything is questioned, down to the foundations of religion itself. In the world of reality very little can be discussed, so hemmed in are we by circumstance, by God’s divine Providence. Not so in a discussion group: at last man is free in the abstract world of his own mind, of his own irresponsible opinions. It is here that the “collective will’ germinates, blossoms and fructifies.

There is a further point which should be borne in mind. The word “pastoral” has a very different meaning in the world of discussion groups and in the world of reality. The old pastoral priests used to think of their work as testifying to the dogmas of the Church by right of her divine authority. But neither authority nor dogma is allowed in a discussion group, so the word “pastoral” acquires exactly the opposite meaning: it signifies non-dogmatic and non-authoritative. When Vatican II declared itself a “pastoral” and not a dogmatic council, it did not imply that the dogmas could be taken for granted and that it wished to devise better means of imparting them to the faithful and faithless alike. What it meant was that dogmas should not be allowed to influence and prejudice the discussions at all. “Pastoral” in fact is a euphemism for “existential”; it is the adjective from “orthopraxis,” since one cannot say “orthopractical.” The word has deceived many good bishops and priests. Take a simple example: remarried divorcees. The old pastoral priest would talk about sanctity, heroism, living as brother and sister, or attending Mass but not going to Communion, and the like, all of which depended upon dogma. Today, however, if we are told to take a “pastoral view” of remarried divorcees we know that we are expected to abscind from all dogmatic teaching of the Church and encourage them to be daily communicants and members of the parish council.

The fact that discussion must be open-ended on the one hand and not thwarted by authority on the other leads to a curious phenomenon. The resultant collective will is permissive of any innovation no matter how outrageous, but is absolutely impatient of all tradition, no matter how desirable. This is because tradition is the most fundamental form of authority. Inevitably we witness this phenomenon all around us in the Church today, since she has become a swarming mass of discussion groups. It constitutes the revolution.

Anyone could quote a thousand examples. I shall just give one because it illustrates the matter very clearly and is taken from Roman documents. Early in 1974 the Sacred Congregations for Clergy and for Discipline of the Sacraments issued a joint statement the tenor of which was to maintain the traditional practice of the first confession before first Holy Communion. This looked much too like asserting the authority of tradition and was immediately questioned by the National Council of Canadian Bishops. Straight away the Sacred Congregations climbed down and in an addendum to their recent Catechetical Directory write: “Our declaration is not intended to impose constraint, moral or otherwise.” Of course not; the Sacred Congregations saw the light through the open end. In the meantime, in October 1974 the Sacred Congregation for the Liturgy [recte: Divine Worship] issued a “notice” that the new Order of Mass was obligatory, “immemorial custom notwithstanding.” The point of interest is not the legal value (if any) of this notice but the attitude of the Sacred Congregation. As against the permissiveness in the first case, in the second there is “every intention of imposing constraint, moral and otherwise.” The reason is clear: the immemorial Mass in the old rite is the most universal, most venerable, most dogmatically exclusive and consequently most authoritative tradition in the Catholic Church. Go it must if ours is to be an open-ended religion. Lex odiosa non est restringenda: (1) yes, vexatious laws should not be made to bind too rigorously, except when it comes to the immemorial Mass. The shelves of the Index have been emptied of all their rubbish in order to make way for that stupendous volume, the old Roman Missal.

Indeed, precisely because of its enormity, the persecution of the old rite provides admirable examples of the conflict between the collective and individual wills. The vast majority of bishops could be labelled “decent scouts,” men who are keen to please, eager to do their good deed. There is not an ounce of cruelty in their make-up. They would not swat a fly if they could avoid it. That is at the individual level. Yet collectively they are party to the most flagrant act of cruelty which the Church has ever perpetrated by depriving millions of the faithful of the Mass they love. The cruelties of the Wars of Religion or of the Spanish Inquisition pale into insignificance beside it; they affected vastly fewer people, cut far less deep and were infinitely less unjust. True, the few priests who cling to the Mass of their ordination are not burned at the stake. It might be better if they were, like Joan of Arc by Bishop Cauchon, probably himself as decent a scout as any.

Apart from the cruelty there is the question of hatred. The majority of bishops taken individually are incapable of sustained hatred; collectively they hound down the old rite with a bitter venom worthy of a better cause. There was scarcely a frown for the most sacrilegious Eucharistic innovations. The fact that they are illicit and the priests disobedient matters not at all. But woe betide the priest who innovates with [i.e., resumes] the old rite! Clearly, it is not the question of liceity and obedience which makes the difference; it is the Mass that counts. Like Carthage, Missa est delenda. There is not a bishop who wanted such a state of affairs to arise. It has not come about by the sum of their individual wills. What has happened is that in their diverse discussion groups they have generated a formula inimical to tradition; the collective will has spoken and they themselves must bow.

It would be idle to multiply examples. The point is that bishops and priests are not as unprincipled as their actions are inconsistent. They have merely allowed their individual, responsible, God-made will to be submerged by a collective, irresponsible, man-made will. It is not a good swap. This is doubtless the same in all revolutions, political and religious alike. Man is perpetually attempting to impose his own intellectual, abstract conception of order on to the reality of God’s exuberant creation. Man always appears to be on the verge of success yet forever fails, as, no matter how tight the strait-jacket, reality bursts out at the seams.

Anyway, if the present auto-destruction of the Church is to be halted, the first thing to be done is to stop talking. In the ensuing silence we shall again be able to hear the still, small voice of God at Mass, and in the world the Church proclaiming the eternal truths.

———————

It was in the following year, 1976, that I spent a couple of nights at Northampton as the guest of Bishop Charles Grant, on my way up to Hoghton Tower in Lancashire. There was a fairly large luncheon party the day after my arrival: half-a-dozen clerics and as many laymen. In the course of conversation, Charles said to me: “It is all very well for you, Bryan, to criticise me over the old Mass, but what would you actually do if you were in my position?” “My dear Charles,” I answered, “I do not want to bore the assembled company with an answer but shall send you a written reply from Viviers when I get home.”

I sent him the answer early in 1977. It is “The Bomb,” the first chapter in my book Mitre and Crook, pages 11 to 19. The rest of the book is pure imagination, but not the first chapter: it is a real document sent to a bishop. When, in 1977, I stayed with him again on my way north, dear Charles merely jeered at me: “You are a joke, Bryan! I have rarely laughed so much in my life imagining bishops X and Y reading your Bomb!” Anyway, I decided to use it as the basis of a book. Mitre and Crook was published in America in 1979, and in France in 1982 as La Paix de Mgr Forester.” (2)

Actually, and in spite of Charles, I find the suggestions made in the Bomb perfectly sensible. The old Mass (1962) and the new (1969) become equally licit. There are a few minor corrections to the new Mass. A hybrid Mass is also allowed: “I see no reason why the pre-Mass, up to and excluding the Offertory, should not be said in alb and stole according to the new Order and calendar, facing the people from the ambo. The celebrant will then ascend the altar, don the chasuble and celebrate the Mass itself, back to the people and in Latin, according to the immemorial rite, up to and including his own Communion. For the Communion of the faithful he could revert to the vernacular and, after purifying chalice and fingers, end the Mass according to the new ordo.” There are some simple rules as to which Mass should be said. The hybrid Mass would satisfy the obligation of a progressive priest to say the old Mass, and the traditionalist to say the new.

Actually, I am surprised that my suggestion has not been taken up officially. It seems to me highly desirable that all priests of the Latin rite should have a Mass in common—the hybrid—as well as the Masses which differentiate them, even if both be allowed.

Incidentally, Mitre and Crook sold quite well. It had to be reprinted both in English and in French. The French editor sent several copies to Rome. He had a surprising reply from one cardinal: “There are passages in the book one cannot read without their bringing tears to one’s eyes.” So I have made a cardinal cry! That is a bit of an accomplishment, isn’t it?

I also delivered several lectures on “Peace in the Church” with my hybrid solution—to a university summer school at Fanjeaux, in Paris and in Geneva. The principal opposition came from the Lefebvrists—which I well understand. They are fighting for the integrity of the Mass and of the religion, pure and unadulterated. But they forget the vast sprawling mass of desolate Catholics who have neither the liturgy nor the doctrine. How in practice is one going to try to give them back both? It is certainly not through the intransigence of a few hundred Lefebvrist priests that it is going to be done. By hook or crook one must somehow get the old Mass back—for the sake of the people, not for the sake of being right oneself.

Notes:

(1) The author is misremembering the axiom: what he writes would mean that an odious or vexatious law should not be taken restrictively, i.e., as narrowly as possible, whereas the opposite is true: the old axiom is odiosa restringenda, favorabilia amplificanda, or, as Buontempi says, “Lex odiosa non est extendenda, quia odia sunt potius restringenda, non vero amplianda” (a vexatious law is not to be extended [to include more in its scope}, because odious things are rather to be restrained, not amplified). The axiom is found in the 1983 Code of Canon Law as canon 18.

(2) The English edition was republished by Angelico Press in 2019.