Old Rebels in Modern Dress

The Trojan Horse in the City of God, by Dietrich von Hildebrand. Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, $4.95

IF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH were a merely human institution, the present turmoil (the Church’s October Revolution, as Fr. Yves Congar calls it) would shake its foundations and would either abolish it or make it unrecognizable for “post-Catholic’’ ages. The Church has Christ’s word that neither will happen; after a period of revitalizing the ossified parts (the Council has done it in a series of admirable documents), the Church will carry on, as before, until the day of judgment. Meanwhile the internal work of destruction is reaching tremendous proportions. Needless to detail here its spectacular inroads, but it is essential that great Catholic writers examine its inspiration. Jacques Maritain did it recently in Le Paysan de la Garonne, now under scornful attack by progressive Catholics. Yet Maritain did not write a systematic – exposé. The task has been taken up — by Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose intellectual past, unlike Maritain’s, is unbroken and whose orthodoxy is – both Iuminous and broad. While Maritain’s book makes difficult reading for the ordinary layman, Hildebrand’s has the advantage of dealing in short chapters and in accessible terms with all the problems that are likely to concern the Jayman in the post-Conciliar period. The end product is not a volume of popularization but of intelligent restoration, which all may read with profit. Hildebrand knows that in times of Church crisis at least one sector of Christians always remains relatively unaffected by the disease. This is no doubt the work of Christ’s protective hand which, in such instances, either raises a strong Pope, inspires a saint or a great doctor, or, last but not least, extends special aid to masses of laymen. The layman’s sturdy resistance to the speculative excesses of the intellectuals restored sanity once before, in the time of the Arian heresy; strong Popes did the same in the eleventh, twelfth, and sixteenth . centuries; the saints at all times. It seems that it is now again the laity’s turn.

TM

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Thomas Molnar

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The Trojan Horse in the City of God, by Dietrich von Hildebrand. Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, $4.95

IF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH were a merely human institution, the present turmoil (the Church’s October Revolution, as Fr. Yves Congar calls it) would shake its foundations and would either abolish it or make it unrecognizable for “post-Catholic’’ ages. The Church has Christ’s word that neither will happen; after a period of revitalizing the ossified parts (the Council has done it in a series of admirable documents), the Church will carry on, as before, until the day of judgment. Meanwhile the internal work of destruction is reaching tremendous proportions. Needless to detail here its spectacular inroads, but it is essential that great Catholic writers examine its inspiration. Jacques Maritain did it recently in Le Paysan de la Garonne, now under scornful attack by progressive Catholics. Yet Maritain did not write a systematic – exposé. The task has been taken up — by Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose intellectual past, unlike Maritain’s, is unbroken and whose orthodoxy is – both Iuminous and broad. While Maritain’s book makes difficult reading for the ordinary layman, Hildebrand’s has the advantage of dealing in short chapters and in accessible terms with all the problems that are likely to concern the Jayman in the post-Conciliar period. The end product is not a volume of popularization but of intelligent restoration, which all may read with profit. Hildebrand knows that in times of Church crisis at least one sector of Christians always remains relatively unaffected by the disease. This is no doubt the work of Christ’s protective hand which, in such instances, either raises a strong Pope, inspires a saint or a great doctor, or, last but not least, extends special aid to masses of laymen. The layman’s sturdy resistance to the speculative excesses of the intellectuals restored sanity once before, in the time of the Arian heresy; strong Popes did the same in the eleventh, twelfth, and sixteenth . centuries; the saints at all times. It seems that it is now again the laity’s turn.