The Trouble with Russia

There’s been a surge in sympathy for Russia among some American conservatives in recent years. There are a few clear reasons for this. But there are more compelling reasons why this is misguided and misunderstands the reality of modern Russia.

Reasons for conservative russophilia

The number one topic that comes up is Russia’s law banning “homosexual propaganda.” To conservatives in the West who face required legal acceptance and reeducation on the topic at work, public schools, and in media, Russia seems like an oasis. Putin seems like a strong leader willing to push back against progressive moral rot. Any talk critical of Russia is chalked up as a liberal temper tantrum at a major power not giving into their cultural imperialism.

I’d say the second is the perception that Russia has triumphed over communism. After 70 years of communist rule, with groups like the League of Militant Atheists running state-supported propaganda, Russia is no longer a Communist nation. Over 70% of Russians identify as orthodox christian, up from 31% in 1991. The number of churches in the country has gone from ~2,000 in 1991 to over 20,000. 

To those in the West seeing a constant collapse in religious affiliation and practice since the 60s, Russia’s “conversion” seems like a miracle. Jordan Peterson’s publicizing of works by Russian anticommunist Alexander Solzhenitsyn also contributes to widespread admiration for Russians’ struggle and eventual triumph over communism. Catholic figures from Bishop Barron to Pope Benedict have spoken of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Fulton Sheen spoke of Dostoevsky’s warnings about communism. 

Third is probably the perception of personal friendliness between Trump and Putin among Trump supporters. Though this was overblown given the real actions taken by Trump and Congressional Republicans during his administration. 

A distant fourth may be the reality that Russia has been the main power taking action to protect Christians in the Middle East. 

Why this is a bad idea

Look past the cosmetics and you’ll see that Russia is by no means a nation dedicated to rebuilding Christian society. 

First, only six percent of Russians attend Divine Liturgy regularly, which is worse than Mass attendance in most western nations. It’s tough to make a case that Russia has converted and that their society has a Christian foundation when the “I’m Christian, but” attitude is worse there than anywhere else. And remember, even practicing orthodox christians fully accept divorce and many accept contraception. 

Second, abortion rates in Russia are significantly worse than in many western countries, including the US. It is tough to stomach people going on and on about Russia’s supposed moral superiority to the west given that abortion was and remains more prevalent there than elsewhere. 

Third, the communists are still around and retain much cultural influence. The Communist Party in Russia remains the second largest political party in the nation, with membership far outstripping the membership of the Communist Party of the US despite Russia’s much smaller population. Thousands have petitioned the Russian government to change the name of the city of Volgograd back to Stalingrad. Russian churches are being built with murals of Stalin and Russian Orthodox prelates are kissing the feet of Stalin statues. 

Fourth, many of the practicing Russian Christians are anticatholic. While we may appreciate Patriach Hilarion Afeyev’s denunciation of Western immorality, we must oppose his wish to suppress Eastern churches that wish to enter into full communion with Rome. It is not exactly difficult to guess what might happen to Ukrainian Catholic churches if Russian soldiers gain control over them. And members of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (ROCOR) do seem to have an anticatholic streak. 

Fifth, the Russians have staked their foreign policy on an alliance with Communist China, which may be the biggest political threat to the faith. Certainly they are a direct threat to any catholic and orthodox christians within their borders, just ask Cardinal Zen in Hong Kong. 

Sixth, the Russians have also made common cause with increasingly militant islamic Turkey. Russia didn’t exactly speak up when Turkey reconverted the mother church of Eastern Christianity, Hagia Sophia, back into a mosque. 

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Russia is not a genuinely Christian nation in any real sense. At best it is mission territory whose few practicing christians are mostly in fervent schism and dissent from critical moral laws. It is a nation dominated by a cult of personality around its current opportunistic leader, allies with nearby antichristian states when convenient, and has scenes of idolization of dead communist leaders dotting the landscape. 

Publicly endorsing Russia as some sort of Christian ideal or healthy counterweight to the secular west is shallow thinking that makes one look foolish. Yes, it is a miracle that Russia has emerged from decades of communism with the faith that many of its people genuinely possess. But don’t lose the forest for the trees. 

And remember that the Leonine prayers following traditional Low Mass are still for the conversion of Russia. Pope Pius XI issued that intention after the resolution of the Roman Question, and that intention has never been changed. 

Historical Conflation

 

There is a lively trend of historical conflation these days. It goes like this:

—-

Coworker: I recently read this book called Braiding the Sweetgrass. 

Me: Ok, sounds interesting. 

Coworker: It’s about how the judeo-christian tradition encourages this mentality that’s harmful to the earth and how we can find a healthier view in indigenous cultures. 

—-

Were I not so slow-witted, I would’ve said that blaming the judeo-christians for modern environmental degradation makes about as much sense as blaming FDR for deregulation. 

It was not the theologically orthodox Christians and Jews who strip mined the earth and created modern suburbia but their enemies, the classical liberals, who acted the part of the materialist while sometimes masquerading as mainline protestants (oh hey, Rockefeller). 

This is a larger trend of assuming that if something bad happened in recent history, it must have been even worse before, or it must have been caused by a specific group of people who had long since lost their influence. The problem most often shows up in the context of blaming christianity for just about everything that went wrong in the late 19th/early 20th century. 

Christians were warmongers, despite the fact that wars were indisputably worse before and after Christendom (bookended as it was by the ghastly Roman civil wars and the Thirty Years War). Christians were indifferent to the poor, nevermind that the real dreadful rabbit holes of poverty came about during the Renaissance and after, when Europe was abandoning its Christian roots. Christians were racist, despite the fact that modern racism was an invention to justify race-based slavery, which itself was condemned by the Church as soon as it started and numerous times over the next 400 years. Christians were intolerant, despite the fact that modern progressives want to censor everyone from Dave Chapelle to JK Rowling while Christians like Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s wrote dialogs incorporating work from Muslims like Averroes, Jews like Maimonides, and pagans like Aristotle. Christians were no fun, despite the fact that pre-Reformation England (of all places) played host to churches erupting in riots of color, raucous plays and festivals for major feasts, and good beer. Christians were absolutist, despite the fact that Christendom seems like a positive anarchy compared to modern day governments. 

Most damaging, I think, is the blame placed on Christians for the world wars. It should be obvious that Popes Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, and Pius XII all but threw their bodies in front of the warring armies to bring about peace, besides running missing person bureaus, critical relief programs, backchannel diplomacy, and even a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler whilst hiding thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. 

Our modern society aims its post traumatic stress at Christianity for the ghoulish episodes of the transatlantic slave trade, European absolutism, the dehumanizing industrial revolution, and the world wars. It should re-aim at the proper targets: blind faith in the state and government centralization, unregulated technology, corporate monopolies, the greed of the secular rich, and nationalism. 

A Traditionalist Call to Arms

“Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

'Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?' Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fightand to hit with wicked fist. Fasting like yours this daywill not make your voice to be heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast,and a day acceptable to the LORD?

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am. If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.

If you turn back your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day,and call the sabbath a delightand the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;

then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Isaiah 58:2-14

The Blind Leading the Blind

Today opened with a Bible study on the passage in Luke’s Gospel where Christ remarks about the blind leading the blind into a pit. 

It continued with the “shock and awe” of Russia’s “demilitarization” of Ukraine and the predictable reaction from western media. All the predictable handwringing of “worst since 1945”. While this is rather serious, almost no articles I read mentioned the invasion of South Korea (early 50s), or Czechoslovakia (‘68, which my father-in-law witnessed by seeing the Russian signals he was intercepting for the US Army in West Germany), or Afghanistan (‘79). 

It is difficult to argue with the logic below, showing as it does the uncomfortable truth that these days the political fringes often get closer to reality than the mainstream. 

When a known aggressor takes steps to stage for a possible invasion, Christ illustrates the only two options in Luke 14: 

“Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.” 

The Biden administration instead chose option 3: refuse to provide reasonable diplomatic concessions despite having neither the force nor the will for military resistance. The results are the deaths of thousands and risk of serious escalation.

The blind have led us into a pit with no way out. There were clear options, and multiple months, for “the adults in the room” to avoid this crisis. The first was to insist that Ukraine abide by the Minsk Protocol and provide the eastern, Russian-speaking provinces of Dontesk and Luhansk with the promised autonomy. The second was to publicly guarantee to Russia the reality that Ukraine isn’t joining NATO in the foreseeable future. Both moves would have been easy, with strong international consensus, and minimal costs to global economic and security interests. 

Maybe Putin would have invaded anyway. But that seems unlikely given that it took him 8 years to launch an invasion outside of the disputed provinces. What is more likely is that Putin’s troop maneuvering was meant to provide leverage and bring serious concessions from the West. In Alexander Hamilton’s words, an overwhelming show of force often renders the actual use of force unnecessary. 

A man who could see could have read Putin’s autobiography in which he describes the terrifying ordeal in 1941 of his father hiding from German troops by diving into a swamp and breathing through a hollow reed, then nearly starving in the resulting siege of St. Petersburg. Putin views Russia’s security through that lens. After watching the military infrastructure of NATO, always intended as a weapon and deterrent against Russia, creep closer and closer to Russia, he decided his line in the sand was keeping NATO out of Ukraine, and keeping Kiev’s government out of Donetsk and Luhansk for good measure. 

As Bernie Sanders pointed out, everyone knows perfectly well that Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries near us have no practical right to host anti-US military assets. It is unreasonable for us to treat Russia’s backyard differently, particularly when they have a powerful, trained land army in the area and we do not. 

Instead, the West pursued an incoherent strategy, refusing all compromise, promising sanctions that have been proven not to work, while not imposing the most impactful sanctions of banning purchases of Russian energy or removing them from the SWIFT payment system. There was a lot of waffling on whether Germany would use the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as leverage. Biden publicly admitted that there would be arguing over how to respond to a minor incursion. And much of this discussion heads of state was happening on Twitter. I thought Trump left office in 2021. 

Bottom line, sanctions haven’t worked on Russia in Ukraine for 8 years, and the oligarchs have had plenty of time to figure out exactly how to avoid them. 

And beyond that, there’s no legitimate plan. No plan to make the necessary diplomatic concessions to permanently bring a lasting peace to the region. No plan to impose energy sanctions that might actually cause the Russians to pause. No plan to militarily defeat the invasion. In other words, no plan to avoid serious escalation. 

Now Putin calls all the shots. If he wants, he can establish a permanent land bridge from Russia to Crimea, peel off various eastern states from Ukraine, leaving a rump Ukraine with thousands of refugees and an unstable economy. This seems like the best case scenario. 

In a middle scenario, he goes for broke and decides to roll back NATO by striking in the Baltics, exposing the alliance’s inability and unwillingness to seriously defend its eastern members or strike back. 

Worst case scenario, someone’s able to convince Biden to unleash serious cyberwarfare, touching off a witch’s sabbath of internet and electrical outages that will end who knows when. 

Worst worst case scenario, miscalculations and retribution build until the nukes come out of hiding. As Bertrand Russell said of nukes early on:

You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.

It is likely that this remains fairly local, devastating for the locals with mostly supply chain and inflationary consequences for the rest of us. 

But if this is the beginning of the end of the postwar order, let us arrogant moderns reflect on how we have managed our communities, our politics, our economies, our environment given unprecedented access to information, wealth, and material comfort. 

It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.

And pray for Ukrainians and the Ukrainian Catholic Church. A local Ukrainian Catholic priest already harbors memories of suppression under the Soviets and the church in the motherland is not likely to fare well if Russian soldiers give Patriarch Kirill the go ahead to suppress Catholic parishes.

A Scoffer’s Road to Tradition

 

I grew up assuming that everything about the Catholic Church before 1965, and much of Church teaching after 1965, was outdated, corrupt, narrow minded, and rigid. Contraception was off limits, Sunday Mass was missed, even for lengthy stretches, and holy days of obligation were frowned upon. I could not stand most classical music, particularly choral music. Incense was an irritation. I rebelled at going to CCD. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were infinitely preferable to the Bible. It did not help that those I knew who were more “conservative” and traditional rubbed me the wrong way personality wise. 

The first chink in the modern heart of stone came during a Confirmation class, likely in late 2003. Our classes were hosted by parish families in their own homes, not in the church school. I vividly remember listening to a recorded talk of a priest assuring us that if Mother Teresa arrived at the Last Judgment tried to enter Heaven on her own merits she’d be condemned, as well as an assertion that missing Sunday Mass just once was the equivalent of falling off a cliff. 

The second was a flash of insight during a Palm Sunday Mass. This is my culture. In a modern America that has so little ritual, so little history, so little family tradition, and so little in common, this sprinkling of holy water, singing of hymns, and the Eucharist was a valuable heritage. 

My convert mother also enjoyed bringing me to Easter Vigil, which I loved right away. The rich, participatory symbolism of the darkness, the Easter Fire, the story that spoke through the marathon of Old Testament readings, the sacraments of initiation for converts, they all called me home. 

I arrived at college, got involved with the Newman Center, which was also an Oratory of St. Philip Neri, run by the Congregation of the Oratory. And thank God. I was in shock that college students actually attended daily Mass, prayed holy hours (some in the middle of the night), and even chanted rosaries. 

It happened that the Oratory, always more liturgically traditional within the Novus, began layering tradition into the 11 AM Sunday Mass. I got used to the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei quickly. Ditto for the requirement for vested male altar servers. I positively rebelled at the Pater Noster, bowing during the censing, and the idea that we would even consider a Latin Credo. But I got used to it. 

Strangely enough, at this time I began watching a scandalous HBO show called The Tudors. Ignoring the fact that it was clearly for women, I skipped the lurid sex scenes and was enthralled at the scenes involving Saint Thomas More and his martyrdom (not to mention the pilgrimage of grace and terrifying iconoclasm). He quickly became my favorite saint, and I was startled during one of the scenes before his execution to hear him praying the Hail Mary prayers in Latin and hearing priests during Mass scenes administer Communion with the phrase “Corpus Christi.” 

Of course, you dummy, all those old saints you love would have prayed in Latin, not English. 

I dutifully learned the rosary in Latin, largely in the Oratory chapel. 

The Oratory chanted the Regina Caeli in Latin after Masses during Easter season. 

Then when I moved to Virginia a priest, who soon after died of cancer, chanted the Parce Domine after Masses during Lent. I was deeply moved. 

My then fiancé wanted a Tridentine Mass for our wedding, but this was too much for me who had no experience with full on Tridentine Masses, and anyway how could we use our wedding to, in a small way, catechize our families and friends if no one could understand anything? We went with an Oratory style traditional Novus Nuptial Mass. 

My wife and I attended a fairly traditional Novus parish for a year and a half after marriage. We began attending the traditional Latin Mass, a low Mass, offered on the third Friday of the month. It was a stereotypical 50s style Mass with almost nothing audible and the prayers positively raced through. It was impossible to follow. But I still went. 

We had friends who were deeply traditional, celebrated the Ember Days, and had their children baptized in the traditional rite. We were scandalized at their children coughing on the salt and didn’t consider it for our eldest three.  We met them leaving All Saints Day Mass in 2012 when I was insolently quizzing my fiancé on the names of the 12 Apostles. 

We moved to another parish after our daughter was 7 months old and we needed more space. The church was 70s drab interior with guitar at every single Sunday Mass. I had lived with this for most of high school but now it was rather irritating. Surely there could be just one Mass more traditional in style? But we thought it was our duty to stick with our geographical parish so we soldiered on. At least the pastor (now at Christendom College) was solid. 

We moved again, this time out of state. Our new parish had priests who were good homilists and fairly with it, but they would take liberties with the liturgy, especially the Scripture translation and the responsorial psalms. We bounced around parishes. What we could not find, though, was anything like the Oratory Mass we missed. I later found out there was an Oratory in Philadelphia about an hour away. 

Our irritation with our local parish grew, and we eventually decided it was untenable as our daughter approached CCD age. 

I had always been interested in history, and finished a massive dive into Father James Macaffrey’s History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution (and his sequel for the 19th Century). I tried to find some book, any book, that took a thorough and honest look at the Church after the Second Vatican Council. 

By some stroke of inspiration I found Iota Unum and began reading the portions free online at the SSPX Asia’s website (I can’t stand the SSPX but the prudent man will not look a gift horse in the mouth). 

That did it. 

To my utter shock and dismay, I discovered Veterum Sapientiae, an Apostolic Constitution written by Pope John XXIII in 1962, less than 9 months before Vatican II. My entire narrative of the modern Church was that Saintly John XXIII was inspired by the Holy Spirit to call a Council which, under the inspiration of the same Divine Spirit, reformed the liturgy. 

This was, to say the least, entirely mistaken. I could not worship or think of the Church in the same way again after 10 minutes of reading the Pope who called Vatican II demand that the Church return to universal study and use of Latin in liturgy, theology, and administration; and deemphasize the study of modern science if necessary. 

I discovered a Latin High Mass happening at a local parish for Easter of 2018 and took my wife and two kids. This time I came with a truly open mind, accepting that I wouldn’t “master” the liturgy on day one. I immediately understood the motif of the Song of Songs: this was a liturgy I would have to pursue. It would not unfold itself automatically before my distracted brain. It demanded focus and contemplation. I got over the poor choir. It helped that the pastor was a scholar and a master homilist who pulled no punches. 

It also helped that the night before I attended an Easter vigil at my local parish in which the baptistry was one of those side-opening bathtubs and in which the liturgy took 4 hours because the Scripture readings were interrupted with cringey ad libitum songs that I’d never heard in my life. 

I came back the next week, alone with the kids after the loss of a close relative. Already the community seemed more inviting and supportive than any I’d seen in a previous parish outside of the Oratory. It was a trying time, as our house had also been destroyed by a burst pipe and reconstruction dragged on for over a year. 

We bounced back and forth between our local parish (mostly because we had good friends who went to Mass there) and the Latin Mass for quite some time, interrupted by a brief move back to Virginia. Foolishly we did not seek out the local Latin Mass in Virginia (now, though another try, ‘twould be too late). 

Just over a year in, I wanted to learn more. Providentially, I met a guy at our local Catholic mens group’s axe-throwing event who was just what the doctor ordered. He sent me The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform by Laszlo Dobszay, available free online. 

My history, and now liturgy-minded, brain went into overdrive. As my daughter did ballet at the YMCA I learned to my shock that the new Mass was not just the old Mass translated and facing the people. Nor was the calendar I’d followed the traditional calendar. Nor was the Divine Office I’d tried and failed to pray regularly for 9 years the traditional Divine Office. Nor was the extra fasting I had taken on in my plucky teenager years and then recently with Exodus 90 anything even close to traditional Lent. 

I broke down and called my trad Ember Day friend, unsure how to live with the fact that every element of the Church’s liturgy and discipline was torn down in five years, against the express wishes of the Pope who called the Council. He calmed me down and recommended I purchase the Monastic Diurnal from St. Michael’s Abbey. 

The package arrived during work and I eagerly tore it open and pored through it. I’ve had a regular rhythm of daily prayer for the two years since, something I was never able to do before. It also explained the struggles I had with the modern liturgy of the hours: too many options for opening psalms, hymns, and a confusing calendar and 4 week psalm rotation. The Monastic has a one week cycle, with one option for hymns. 

We switched over to the Latin Mass parish full time soon after, just in time for covid to drive our geographical parish into crazytown. 

I read Memoriale Domini, Pope Paul VI’s plea to maintain the traditional manner of receiving Communion on the tongue. I read Sacrosanctum Concilium to learn what the Second Vatican Council actually said about the liturgy. Very much a mixed bag. I dove headfirst into the Rad Trad’s blog, particularly his excellent series on Reasons for the Reform of the Roman Rite. I zipped through Malachi Martin’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, as well as Mary Ball Martinez’s Undermining of the Catholic Church, reviewed in a separate article. 

The problem with traditionalists, as Chesterton said of rationalists, is that they are not traditional enough. 

Paradoxically, I became more politically liberal the more traditional I became. If throwing out traditional liturgy was wrong, so was throwing out the Church’s teaching on usury (see Benedict XIV’s Vix Pervenit), Leo XIII’s Catholic social teaching, and Leo XIII (and previous popes’) warnings about American style political liberalism. And watering down the Franciscan ideal of poverty, and buying into the ever increasing ultramontanism that was already causing traditional triple doctor Adrian Fortescue to label Pope St. Pius X an “Italian lunatic.” 

In an effort to do my part, I sing our High Mass in the choir with my two older kids in tow. My trad Ember Day friend and I sing the Monastic Office in common when we visit one another. 

I do not see a way out of the Church’s current crisis without a full, and unconditional, embrace of tradition. To reject out of hand the Church’s tradition does violence to the faith, whether that tradition is the Bible, a translation like the Vulgate, the writings of the saints and doctors, definitive statements by the popes on economic and political systems, or the liturgy expressed in the Mass, Divine Office, and offshoots like processions (especially Eucharistic processions), music, architecture, and art. 

After all, it was the liturgy that gave us the Bible in the first place, quite literally as in the case of Saint John the Evangelist receiving the Apocalypse/Revelation as he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day on Patmos. 

Do we trust the Holy Spirit’s promise that He would teach the apostles all truth, or not?

I am inherently skeptical of anyone, especially conservatives, who promise a restoration and renewal but maintain a firm rejection of large swaths of tradition. 

I do not see why this is so controversial. True renewal in the Church has always begun locally with those who wish to restore the Church’s ancient discipline and worship, whether Saint Benedict, Gregory the Great, Gregory VII, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Philip Neri, Pius V, Dom Gueranger, and Leo XIII. 

I view the traditional movement as firmly within that mold. You will always have excesses and those within the wider movement who take things too far. Yet the opposition we receive today recalls the opposition many of those figures faced in their own day. 

They were able to have the joy of the despised and persevere, in faith and in healthy obedience, to give us the faith we have today. I pray we may do the same and that restoration comes, if not for us, then at least for our children. 

Pearl Clutching Parishioners

 

We’ve wound up at a downtown parish in a not so nice city. 

When I was in college in Pittsburgh I lived half a block from an Oratory with perpetual adoration, daily confessions, and multiple daily Masses. The cathedral a block away from there had the same, minus adoration.

The local cathedral has one daily Mass three days a week. Confession once a week. And shares its two priests, one of whom is himself shared with a religious order, with two other downtown churches (including my own). Its total weekly collection is roughly $1,400.

Why? Because it’s in an impoverished neighborhood with elevated crime. 80 years ago my great great grandfather would take a streetcar there from several miles north to go to a well attended Mass. Now the only ones left are mostly older folks who have resisted the urge to go suburbia for Sunday Mass and who flock to any young family who happens to show up.

The third church in our parish has 20 people show up to its lone Sunday Mass on a good day and its location makes the hair on most peoples’ spines stand up.

Which begs the question; why haven’t we done anything about this? The Beatitudes, the Last Judgment, the parable of the old widow, the testimony of the early Christians in the Book of Acts, solid Catholic social teaching from Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum) and Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), and further writings from Chesterton, Day, and Belloc are evidently not enough to soften the hearts of stone of us pearl clutching parishioners.

Clearly these parishes are in these neighborhoods, in their modern state, for a reason. Yet the general attitude among many parishioners is that they will not deign to interact with the neighborhood surrounding their own parish. 

There certainly are safety considerations and one has to keep one’s eyes open. Yet the priests and remaining parishioners are downtown regularly, often after dark, and I have heard of not one incident of violent crime or theft. 

To be honest it is mostly entitled, bourgeois arrogance. We are not willing to risk even the slightest setback to our wealthy, convenient lifestyle. We seem not to remember that people LIVE in these neighborhoods that we will not touch with the tips of our fingers. Why are we entitled to better things than the locals?

There are a few inspirational exceptions. At a synod meeting yesterday a woman from the cathedral and a man from the danger zone church both mentioned how they continue to live in down neighborhoods despite the hardship and risk. During a poignant moment, the woman ask a fellow cathedral parishioner: “Will you trade Heaven for Hell? Will you give up suburbia to become my neighbor?”

I am not a good example and do not claim to have the answers. Yet it seems obvious that our role is to help restore these neighborhoods which conservatives have left to rot and which liberals have cynically pumped for votes to shore up their power base. 

In this I think the distributist movement linked with more classical education is likely the soundest approach. But before we march in there with our 12 step programs we have to be there. If the only ones there are the political grifters and social engineers, we shouldn’t be surprised that what we get from our cities is endless dysfunction and creeping socialism. 

Down with Pews

 

I sent this picture to a group of friends for the Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran. A friend responded with a snide comment about the presence of movable chairs rather than nice pews. Pews in St. John Lateran? Well, then we’ll know we’re in serious trouble. 

I responded with “Down with pews.” A friend replied with the obligatory eyeroll emoji. 

Still, the fact remains that St. John Lateran, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Nativity, Hagia Sophia, and other ancient churches do not have pews. In Medieval times, there might be stone benches on the sides of the nave for use by the elderly, infirm, very young children, etc. A quick online search corroborates this: pews are a modern invention. 

As one blogger says: 

In other words, seating in churches didn’t really become a thing until parishioners got bored enough to wish they were sitting down—that is, about the time of the Protestant Reformation.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. 

We are physical creatures. We respond to visual cues, positioning and physical posture. When you walk into a church and the interior is dominated by wooden pews, you’re going to assume that this place is for sitting passively for prolonged periods. 

Except that the purpose of a Catholic church is to provide a fitting place for the holy sacrifice of the Mass and reception of the sacraments generally. 

Which of the sacraments do you ordinarily receive sitting? 

The homily is one of, if not the, least important aspect of the Mass. Yet I have had family and friends who regularly attend Mass each Sunday speak about the Mass as if the only part that mattered was the homily. One acquaintance even went so far as to say he wouldn’t receive Communion during Mass if he didn’t “get anything” out of the homily. 

What do we expect? The church interior is covered in pews, the majority of most modern Masses is attended while sitting, one of the most common and visible “ministries” is usher, and the latest Council demanded homilies every Sunday Mass. 

Ah, you might say, but at our traditional Latin Mass we spent most of the time kneeling (Low Mass), or desperately trying to figure out whether to stand or kneel at the preface (High Mass). Still though, you remain “the man in the pew,” not a particularly felicitous designation. 

This is not to mention the fact that pews make having children at Mass infuriating as it is entirely unnatural to expect a two-year-old to remain inside a tightly confined space for an hour. 

If the latest Council wanted “full and active participation above all else,” they could’ve started by making a recommendation to scale back on pews. Why should the Mass be heard sitting? Why not allow the faithful to move throughout the liturgy as the Spirit moves them, toward particular stained glass windows depicting a saint or salvation history scene that comes to mind during the Mass, or a side altar, or station of the Cross? With the whole congregation moving closer during the Canon and Consecration? 

Families could bring pillows for kneelers and children’s seating, as many did in the olden days and some still do when attending chapels with minimal seating. And who cares if children are running around inside the church or joining together to form little clouds like at a four-year-old-league soccer game? That sounds a whole lot more like the Christ child’s trips home from the Jerusalem festal pilgrimages (where children evidently had healthy separation from their parents throughout the trip) than a typical, often miserable, Sunday Mass experience. 

This sounds like pietistic nonsense, but it wasn’t pietistic nonsense to the first 1,500 years of Christians. 

When I attended Eastern Rite liturgy for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the faithful stepped out of their pews multiple times to prostrate themselves in the aisle. 

And why not? I imagine there were plenty such traditions in local cathedral liturgy in the West in pre Tridentine days when liturgy was handed down locally and organically and not received via orders from a book published by a centralized bureaucracy. 

The Sunday before last, I descended from the choir loft to find a chunk of congregants earnestly debating about whether to stand, kneel, or sit at points like the Kyrie, Preface, etc. when their Missals had different instructions. I shrugged my shoulders and said it was local custom. But we seem incapable of accepting that some things really are not standardized and can be decided locally and informally. 

Pews aren’t going anywhere until we’re relegated to house churches. Still, I pray for a time when “full and active participation” extends to physical posture and motion during liturgy, emphasizing the faithful uniting themselves to the sacrifice of the Mass (and free movement of children) rather than passively hearing (and judging) the latest homily and NAB translation of Scripture.