by Charles A. Coulombe
Back during the Roaring ‘20s, a then-contemporary witticism had it that four institutions would prevent the takeover of Europe by Communism: the German General Staff, the British House of Lords, the Academie Française, and the Holy See. Eighty years have brought many changes, to be sure. On the one hand, Communism is as unlikely to remerge in Europe as Fascism or Nazism. But on the other, the four mentioned institutions have also undergone alteration. The German General Staff was corrupted by Hitler, and destroyed by the allies; the House of Lords has suffered the same fate (albeit in reverse order) at the hands of the late Tony Blair. The cultural supremacy of English has diminished the relevance and importance of the Academie severely: as one French friend told me, “it would not be so terrible for the language of Moliere to be eclipsed by that of Shakespeare; but by that of Rod McKuen?” A horrible fate for us all, to be sure.
Moreover, if Communism has departed for the happy hunting ground of evil philosophies, the civilization of the West has acquired other enemies, unthinkable in the Flapper age. Islam is the obvious external threat—not merely in terms of terrorism and the like, but by a seemingly inexorable birth-rate within the Mother Continent herself. This latter development is matched by a corresponding fall in the fertility of the native population, itself bound up with a sickness-of-self on the part of that same population. To a great degree, this is the result of a second, internal enemy: a secularism that hates all that Europe, North America, and Australasia once were, and that would replace it with—well, that’s just it. It is a state of mind that cannot build; it can only destroy. Worse, it is the dominant mindset among those of the Western elites who belong to that age-group called the “Baby Boomers” in America , and the “Generation of ‘68” in Europe. Despite the rapid onset of old age, they cling to the rebelliousness of their youth as though it were a mystic talisman, protecting them from Father Time. All that made the West strong, in culture, governance, politics, and most assuredly in religion, is intolerable to them. But if the identities of the nations they manage are destroyed from above and within, how can those countries possibly survive in the long run?The one remaining member of the quartet earlier mentioned is the Holy See. But it too is not what it was when Pius XI occupied St. Peter’s Throne. The horrors of World War II damaged the self-confidence in the Catholic ethos of the generation of clerics who lived through them. This would play a big part in the events of Vatican II and its aftermath. However one wishes to view those occurrences, the fact remains that by 1970, the Church appeared to be in an acute state of what Paul VI called “auto-demolition.” Although the Holy See under John Paul II contributed heavily to the fall of the Soviet Union , and its role in the diplomatic world expanded, the Church’s ability to counter the self-destructive tendencies in Western Culture became severely limited. Supposedly Catholic legislators throughout the West (even including such clerics as Congressman Robert Drinan, S.J.) joined gleefully in wrecking the moral and political heritage of centuries. Bishops themselves often quietly acquiesced in this, refusing to discipline such members of their flock as, say, Teddy Kennedy, for their anti-Catholic voting patterns. This was, however, emblematic of said prelates’ attempts to purge the Church of every vestige of the Catholic past.
Nowhere were these attempts more obvious than with the liturgy, the center of the Catholic religion. Most particularly, the classical form of the Catholic Mass and various other Sacraments was virtually banished from almost every nook of Christendom. With it went much of the distinctive Catholic identity—so much a part of the very foundation of Western culture. As the Harvard historian Christopher Dawson famously remarked, culture flows from “cult,” or worship; when forces internal or external root out the forms or content of religious practice in a civilization, they have essentially cut out its heart–the brain will follow.
After some 36 years of liturgical controversy, Pope Benedict XVI, on Saturday, July 7, 2007, in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, has liberated the ancient Roman liturgy, which, after September 14 of this year, may be celebrated by any priest anywhere in the Catholic world. This action was angrily attacked by a number of bishops and other liberal Catholics in the weeks leading up to its promulgation.
Now it may be objected at this point that this occurrence, while doubtless of interest to Catholics, would have little interest to those outside of their religion. But in fact, it has attracted angry denunciations by such as the ADL’s Abraham Foxman (admittedly, Mr. Foxman has been described by his co-religionist, comedian and ordained rabbi Jackie Mason as “more afraid of a real job than of anti-Semitism”). Catholics might be tempted to angrily respond that Foxman’s statements upon an internal Church affair are as impudent as Gentiles attacking elements of the Jewish liturgy that they might find offensive (such as Yom Kippur’s Kol Nidre prayer) would most certainly be. But such Catholics would be wrong.
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/could_the_latin_mass_save_western_civilization/