Letters to the Editor: October 2025

No Longer Just Your Neighborhood Weirdos

Jason M. Morgan has written — expectedly at his capable hands — a lively and astute survey of the modern drift toward overt or quasi-occultism (“Medium Unwell,” Cultural Counterpoint, Jul.-Aug.). What makes it doubly valuable is his professional aptitude for a temporal perspective, a greatly undervalued virtue in our age of historical illiteracy.

Yes, as Dr. Morgan points out, this indisputable trend can no longer be chalked up to simple Californication or neighborhood weirdos anymore, however tempting that easy dismissal is among sophisticates and non-believing elites. At an academic discussion at an Ivy League institution not long ago, I pointed out the strange rise of neo-Paganism (in its highly diverse forms) in our midst here in the Land of the Free. My comments were utterly incomprehensible to the secular academic discussants. Only the relatively youthful members of the audience readily concurred that, along with growing interest in mediums and other modern-day accompaniments of spiritualism, there are numerous people today actually performing ceremonies to seek the wisdom of Isis or offering obeisance to Osiris or Zeus, as well as a re-emergence of literal witchcraft and open Satanism — all to the astonishment of the more out-of-touch senior panel that afternoon.

Due to modern culture’s growing estrangement from established religion, we should not dismiss that there has indeed been a recent proliferation and even an inevitable acceleration of New Ageism and its occult bedfellows: energy healing, channeling of the dead, Western shamanism, the whole shebang.

Morgan could easily have taken his essential argument back even further, beyond the memories of our younger years, when seemingly tamer but not unrelated things like horoscopes, Ouija boards, and fortune tellers were, as he says, hardly uncommon. In truth, mankind has been beset by often pervasive preternatural intrusions and weird, dark practices in every era. Such common historical phenomena, dubbed paranormal (a pseudo-scientific term) beginning in the early 1900s, constitute a perennial batch of highly varied, strange experiences found throughout human history.

Nefarious demonic strategies have for millennia continuously aimed to corrupt, mislead, and fool for their bent purposes those prone to odd and false beliefs of all sorts. Like paganism more generally, ancient heretical movements nearly always showed obvious signs of experiential origins, classically Gnosticism par excellence, with its imaginative thinkers and visionaries of the truly phantasmagoric. Other heterodox movements, which emphasize their own sets of false prophets and seers — think, for instance, Mormonism — represent still further and more contemporary examples. “Religious” ages, too, were frequently beset by variants of diabolic deceits, with their many supposed heavenly signs, messages of a bizarre nature, and false spiritual “gifts” and “pseudo-revelations” meant to cloud sound orthodox teaching, about which St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross, both true masters of the now so-called parapsychological, warned centuries ago.

I have argued in past issues of the NOR how even highly respected modern figures like Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr were similarly tricked by these spiritual illusions, to use the traditional theological terminology (“Private Revelations: Authentic, Paranormal & Preternatural,” Oct. 2022, and “The Variety & Theological Implications of Private Revelations,” Nov. 2022). Lyra Pitstick and I recently published an in-depth analysis of the highly spiritualistic nature of the decades-long practices of both, along with their unhealthy interest in other unequivocally esoteric endeavors, such as arcane numerology and the Swiss theologian’s evident interest in horoscopes, trance states, and automatic writing (“A Deeper Look at the Balthasar-Speyr Collaboration”: Part I: “Three Little Known Texts and Their Preliminary Assessment,” Part II: “The Supernatural vs. Preternatural Hypotheses,” Forum of Catholic Theology, vol. 41, Feb. 2025).

Admittedly, our fallen intellects need wise counsel not to see such trends everywhere, in the QAnon phenomenon of our time or the Satanic panic that veered into hysteria in the 1980s, or to ascribe all spiritual ignorance and errors to the diabolic. However, C.S. Lewis’s astute observation holds that the Devil is pleased with common human errors of both sorts — either the tendency by materialists to dismiss such demonic tricks as simple nonsense or misperceptions, and the excessive practice of and/or exaggerated preoccupation with such unsavory phenomena, as well discussed in Morgan’s fine column, not just here in America but throughout supposedly enlightened Western societies.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Richard E. Gallagher, M.D.

White Plains, New York

JASON M. MORGAN REPLIES:

I thank Richard E. Gallagher for elaborating powerfully on the theme of my column. Overt Satanism is indeed spreading. Right around the time the editors forwarded me Dr. Gallagher’s letter, I watched news reports of a shooting at a Mass in Minneapolis. The shooter claimed to be “transgender,” hated Christianity, and scrawled Satanic and other demonic symbolism on the weapons he used to kill children in a Catholic church. Politicians and talking heads immediately called for more gun control. Self-styled elites call demonic attacks on the human person “gender liberation,” ignore the howls from Hell that people doing the Devil’s work often cry and scribble, and blame the murder of Christians on the guns used — as though the bullets hated God, not the twisted souls who fired them. The Minneapolis murderer’s hate-filled notebooks are a kind of spirit writing, aren’t they? The elites have long thought that kind of occult work “high culture.” It’s no wonder the media seem to think Satanic manifestoes are not worth reporting.

As Dr. Gallagher points out, automatic writing has a long pedigree in the West. Balthasar and Speyr are good examples. The other day I was reading about Harry Houdini’s meeting with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, and his wife, Lady Jean, in Atlantic City in 1922. Lady Doyle claimed to have contacted Houdini’s deceased mother and to have transcribed her words to her son from beyond the grave. In 1926 Houdini testified at a Senate hearing in support of a bill to regulate mediums in America. The hearing was, according to a contemporary government report, “packed with local fortune tellers, astrologers, mediums, and spiritualists.”

The 1920s were hardly the first time the occult had put in an American appearance. Mary Todd Lincoln held séances in the White House and, in the 1870s, sought out the services of William H. Mumler, a “spirit photographer,” who obliged the widowed First Lady by allegedly taking a picture of her and her dead husband’s ghost, tenderly caressing her shoulder in spirit form. The Puritans two centuries earlier were witch-drowners like nobody’s business. Nothing ever changes. The “letter” from Houdini’s dead mother — written, curiously, in English, a language she never knew, and filled with Christian symbols, despite her having been Jewish — is on display at David Copperfield’s International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas.

Readers might be familiar with Copperfield. I sure am. When I was a kid, I thrilled to his performances on TV. I distinctly remember his making the Statue of Liberty disappear in April 1983. I was so inspired that I bought a deck of trick playing cards at a local magic shop and tried to convince my family that I was clairvoyant, that I knew the cards they were holding as part of my “magic” routine. Later in life, I watched another magician, David Blaine, levitate in front of small crowds on city streets and boardwalks. This was not so thrilling. In fact, it terrified me. Magic didn’t seem so fun anymore. I swore it off after that, but Blaine remains as popular as ever. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he tied himself to dozens of balloons and floated some 25,000 feet up over the Arizona desert, eventually parachuting back down to earth. Videos of that stunt — what Blaine called his “Ascension” project — have been viewed tens of millions of times online.

Our society is chock-a-block with sorcery. Satanism has now entered the mainstream, with officially approved After School Satan Clubs in elementary schools, Baphomet statues in state capitols, “Satanic convocations” at local legislative sessions, Satan-worshiping musicians like Lil Nas X, and the demonic disfiguring of the human body with witchcraft-like tattoos. The preparation work done by the Doyles, Mrs. Lincoln, Copperfield, Blaine, and, yes, Houdini (he claimed to be against mediums but was himself a master of dark-art entertainment) is bearing rotten fruit — not for human beings, of course, but for our ancient enemy.

Dr. Gallagher is speaking up about it. God bless him. May he speak loudly, and may many others join him.

Ed. Note: For more on Satanic influences in contemporary America, see Pieter Vree’s New Oxford Notebook column “Mirror of Society” in this issue.

Man’s Deliverer from Deadly Isolation

I am grateful to Inez Fitzgerald Storck for her 90 percent positive review of my book In the Beginning: Crucial Lessons for Our World from the First Three Chapters of Genesis (Jul.-Aug.). Regarding that other ten percent: She takes issue with my exegesis of what it means for Eve to be the “helpmate” of Adam. I argue that Eve is the savior of Adam, that she rescued him from the problem of original solitude. Mrs. Storck characterizes this as “a surprising and unusual reading of the text.” As a correction, or at least an alternative perspective, she cites Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), in which he emphasizes the “reciprocity of assistance” — in other words, Adam and Eve mutually provide assistance to each other. Storck then refers to the interpretation in the Jerome Biblical Commentary by Fr. Eugene H. Maly, who states that man was meant from the beginning to “dominate” the woman — and that such domination is “part of the order of creation” but was wrongly “intensified” by the Fall. Yet there is nothing in chapters one and two of Genesis that even hints that God intended man to “rule over” or “dominate” the woman. Rather, such domination is a result of the Fall!

Storck omits the fact that the Hebrew word ēzer is commonly translated as “helpmate,” “suitable partner,” and “helper fit for him,” and so on. This very precise word, as I explain in my book, is used in the Old Testament to identify someone who rescues another person who is in danger. Thus, the true sense of what the creation of Eve does for Adam is save him from what is “not good” — the problem of original solitude. As savior to Adam, it is the woman who brings the isolated man into human communion and completes him. When it comes to what it means to be female, this is a profound anthropology — yet it is lost in the shallow translations that simply refer to Eve as a “helpmate,” as if the man has all the important work to do and the woman is just there to serve as his aide.

Here is what I wrote in my book:

The use of helper of Genesis 2:18 hardly means that the woman is ancillary to the man, as if she were simply his assistant. At the same time, however, this English word is proper if understood in its most profound biblical sense: as the one who aids another who otherwise would be left in a desperate situation; someone lost, stranded, or wounded. The noun ēzer is derived from the verb azar, which means “to succor”: to save from extremity, to deliver from death. In other Semitic languages, the word can refer to the action of giving water to a person dying of thirst or the placing of a tourniquet on the limb of someone bleeding to death. The woman thus emerges not simply as the “helpmate” of man (in the traditional sense that Adam is primary and Eve secondary); rather, she is his savior. She is the bringer of hope, health, peace, and life.

The woman provides for the man a deliverance from the void of alienation. Because of this, she is the queen of the created order. With the creation of the woman human communion is possible. Indeed, she is “suitable” (kenegdo) because she corresponds to the man’s dignity; another self. She is suitable because she is equal to him, unlike the animals with whom he could not find communion.

We are told in Genesis 2:24 that it is the male who leaves father and mother and clings to his wife. The directionality here is very instructive. The woman brings the man into human communion — and it is the man’s relation toward the woman, moving in her direction, that establishes the “communion of persons” — again in the language of John Paul II. Even the word “cling” is significant. To cling is not merely to hold onto something, but to hold tightly — to grasp actively. Adam must cling to the woman, lest he fall back into that deadly isolation from which she has delivered him.

I agree that certainly in their unity as one flesh, man and woman offer mutual, spousal support to each other. But in the order of creation, Eve is the one who rescues Adam from radical isolation, radical individuality — as indeed is the role of woman until the end of time.

Monica Migliorino Miller

South Lyon, Michigan

INEZ FITZGERALD STORCK REPLIES:

Monica Migliorino Miller bases much of her reading of the relationship between Adam and Eve on one Hebrew word, ēzer, which she interprets as “savior,” meaning Eve is Adam’s savior. Dr. Miller objects to my comment that this is “a surprising and unusual reading of the text.” Yet I could find no Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish version of the Bible that translates ēzer as “savior” or anything similar. The most frequent use of this term in the Old Testament refers to God, who, in helping us, acts as our savior. On the other hand, the prophecy in Ezekiel 12:14 applies the word to the assistants of the Babylonian king, who help him not as his savior but as his subordinates.

In one sense, Eve does save Adam, as her presence sets him free from original solitude. However, he also delivers her from that solitude. As Pope John Paul II said in “The Original Unity of Man and Woman” (general audience, Nov. 7, 1979), “When God-Yahweh speaks the words about solitude, it is in reference to the solitude of ‘man’ as such, and not just to that of the male.” (Here man refers to the species.) Permeating the saint’s reflections is the concept that man and woman are a gift to each other.

In attributing headship of the husband to the Fall, Dr. Miller ignores a body of scriptural and traditional teaching. When St. Paul writes that “the head of every man is Christ; the head of a woman is her husband; and the head of Christ is the Father” (1 Cor. 11:3), he is referring to fundamental realities: the headship of the husband no less than the headship of the Father. In quoting Ephesians on this subject, Miller omits the verses before and after the ones she cites. These are: “Wives should be submissive to their husbands as if to the Lord because the husband is the head of his wife just as Christ is head of his body the church, as well as its savior. As the church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (5:22-24), and a man “should love his wife as he loves himself, the wife for her part showing respect for her husband” (5:33). As St. Paul indicates, the headship of the husband is one of service.

Like Pope Leo XIII in Arcanum Divinae (1880), Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930) upholds the principle of the subjection of the wife to her husband, though not without nuance. Pius refers to the headship of the husband in several addresses to married couples. It must be noted, however, that modern Church documents have tended to sidestep this teaching, stressing the mutual quality of subjection in marriage.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

The writer who, whilst critiquing a stylistic choice of another writer, employs said stylistic choice, exhibits his own wit and skill in the midst of giving the discerning reader an opportunity — and here Will Hoyt comes in for praise in his recollections on the work of Cormac McCarthy (“Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists,” Jul.-Aug.), whom he has convinced me to go and read more deeply, for I only took up The Road to allow myself to watch the movie, as I had become a Viggo Mortensen fan after his stellar performance as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy — to chuckle internally and pat himself on the back for noticing, and then to write a letter to the editor, to share in the fun.

Greg Dolan

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The First Firm Foundation

In the course of reading the NOR from cover to cover for several years, I have discerned an ambivalence that appears to bother the editor: How to address the claims of modern physics that appear to conflict with the Catholic faith. The NOR, after all, is not a professional journal of physics, nor should it be. Yet the subject is of consuming interest, especially when observers see the presumed conflict as an open source of leakage from the faith, particularly among the young. So, I have been minded in a desultory way of writing to suggest a remedy.

Physics, as a science, is knowledge and, as such, needs to be able to communicate its ideas. So, a language must be involved. And here the NOR has an edge. Modern physics brims over with nonsense, contradictions, and ambiguities, making it a ripe target for what founding editor Dale Vree called “cheeky” remarks. For instance, when a physicist claims the universe is 13.797 ± 0.023 billion years old, he is citing a precise value. What, however, is a year? Can he mean that this is how many times the Earth has revolved about its sun? Of course not. So, his precise statement is meaningfully absurd. Here, then, is fertile soil for a “cheeky” response.

For another instance, consider Isaac Newton’s famous formula F=ma. The “m” in the formula, Newton insisted in the face of previous understanding, is mass. However, the mass of previous understanding and the mass of Newton’s formula are easily shown to be two different ideas. When a word is used in different senses, the result is ambiguity and confusion. Such has plagued Newton’s physics from its first formulation and led its adherents into error. The error has only been compounded by Einstein’s formula E=mc². Einstein insists that the “m” in his formula is the same as the “m” in Newton’s formula. They are, in fact, different ideas.

A well-sharpened “cheeky” thrust in the NOR could benefit its readers as well as challenge the reigning secular Gnosticism of modern physics.

And now, along comes Edmund B. Miller’s article “Three Critical Moments in the History of the Cosmos” (Jul.-Aug.), in which he simply embraces the gnostic errors of modern physicists. Even more, he sees their contradictions as firm foundations pointing to and proving God’s cosmic interventions. Ah, but the proof is mighty shaky, more fantasizing imagination than proof. After citing evidence from modern physics for the “Big Bang” (alias: initial singularity), Miller concludes “that that history does indeed have a beginning — a beginning for which there is no explanation, a beginning that seems to come out of nowhere.”

Proving a cosmic beginning is, however, a difficult task. To know that a beginning is really a beginning, we would need to know the situation before the event, during the event, and after the event. The before part is hard to know, since there is nothing to know. Admittedly, we can imagine a previous nonexistent universe, but imagining is not proving. We might attempt to prove that an always-existing universe is a contradiction and so the existence of a beginning. Still, that would not be the initial singularity.

As for the “scientific evidence” Miller asserts, curious readers may consult my book Playing with the Big Bang for reasons why none of the cited “evidence” amounts to a proof. The very best proof of an initial creation comes not from modern physics but as a dogma of the Catholic faith, a revelation from God, formally defined by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and reiterated by the First Vatican Council (1870).

Though I admire Miller for his intent, he has the problem backwards. Modern physics needs the Catholic Church much more than the reverse. He is much like modernist theologians in attempting to reconcile the contemporary Zeitgeist with the ancient faith. It’s an admirable goal, but it never works unless faith is the first firm foundation.

Joseph R. Breton, Ph.D.

Walpole, Massachusetts

Regarding Edmund B. Miller’s article: The physics term singularity is an odd word choice when ruminating on the workings of the Eucharist. A singularity is usually associated with black holes, which destroy whatever comes within their range.

Regarding the workings of the universe, Miller writes, “Some suggest that while [the universe is] now, perhaps, in a period of expansion, it was preceded by a period of contraction, and the cycle eternally revolves…. Scientifically [this argument] doesn’t work, as it assumes the material universe is eternal — a notion that is in flat contradiction to the law of entropy.” Sir Roger Penrose, a theoretical physicist, mathematician, cosmologist, and genius, would not agree. Penrose is one of the biggest names in physics. He was appointed Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University in 1973, was knighted in 1994, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. In an interview with New Scientist magazine (Spring 2023), he said, “I’m just writing a paper with a colleague about conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC). This is the view that the big bang was not actually the origin of our universe, but the continuation of the remote future of a previous aeon. So, the universe expands and contracts and then indulges in this exponential expansion…. The expansion of the universe accelerates. And it continues.”

Rosalyn Becker

Fort Myers, Florida

Edmund B. Miller’s article should have been titled “One Critical Moment in the History of the Cosmos & Two Critical Moments in the History of the Earth.”

Miller writes, “Life has not been found in any other part of the universe.” The present estimate (guesstimate) of the number of galaxies in the observable universe ranges between 200 billion and two trillion. These galaxies contain trillions of stars, many of which, we can reasonably presume, are similar in size and age to our sun. We can further reasonably presume that there are many planets, if not perfectly similar to our own, that are chemically and environmentally constituted to support some kind of life, whether animal, plant, or microscopic.

Due to cosmological quantities (galaxies, stars, and planets), many logical persons conclude that life, even intelligent life, exists elsewhere in our universe. Here on Earth, we cohabit with other intelligent mammals, such as dolphins, killer and sperm whales, and even sea otters. All display intelligence far beyond mere instinct but far below human intelligence. Thus, it is reasonable to maintain that intelligent life very likely does exist elsewhere in our universe. The most important question, however, is whether an intelligent being (somewhat similar to Homo sapiens), made in the image and likeness of God, exists elsewhere in our universe. That’s the really big question!

Regarding Miller’s use of the word singularity: For his purposes, he defines it as “small things appearing out of nowhere and becoming very big things.” That’s a connotation more inclusive than its strict definition as something “remarkable, unusual, or unique.” But in physics it’s well suited to the sudden creation of the universe at a particular point (Fr. Georges Lemaître’s primeval atom). It is, however, less well suited to the appearance of life on Earth and the appearance of Homo sapiens. My understanding of the beginning of life is that it was an evolutionary process. For the appearance of Homo sapiens as a singularity, there must have been an Adam and Eve, instantly endowed with the human soul and its attributes of intelligence, free will, and the need to love. We simply don’t know.

I offer these thoughts not to criticize Miller’s fine article but to thank him for stimulating my own thinking on such splendid topics. Lastly, I cherish his recognition that the Eucharist, the richest gift of all, began as a singularity in the hands and words of Our Lord on the night of His betrayal and has become one of the “very big things” in this errant world.

Joseph Lewis Heil

Muskego, Wisconsin

I appreciated Edmund B. Miller’s excellent article, though, probably like many readers, I felt it could have been longer. He mentions language as a marker of the sudden difference between modern man and lesser iterations, which Tom Wolfe explored entertainingly in The Kingdom of Speech. After portraying the founding fathers of evolutionism as petty charlatans right out of Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers, and mercilessly skewering Noam Chomsky, Wolfe arrives at (or maybe just gets into the neighborhood of) the conclusion that language is an “artifact,” and he comes no closer to answering the “why” and the “how” than any of his lampoonees.

John Updike roasts the search for God somewhere in the ones and zeros of science in Roger’s Version, in which, despite man’s best algorithms calculating and recalculating time and space, God proves maddeningly elusive. Must we pursue indefinitely, when, as Miller says, our beliefs fit the pattern of our (and our forebears’) experience?

In the well-known thought experiment in which you pull ball after ball from a bag, and all the balls are blue, reason goes from permitting to encouraging to all but requiring the belief that every ball in the bag is blue. You could continue pulling balls out of the bag, but what’s the point?

Paul Tormey

McKinney, Texas

EDMUND B. MILLER REPLIES:

I sincerely thank Joseph R. Breton and Rosalyn Becker for their careful, critical readings of my article.

I would like to address a shared misunderstanding of my intent (a misunderstanding that, I am willing to concede, is probably my fault). First of all, I am not trying to prove anything, because nothing finally can be proven (which is one of the simple reasons why faith is a gift). There are, however, patterns, and we do not seek these patterns in order to prove the existence of God but simply to know better the face of the One we love.

I heartily agree with Dr. Breton that “modern physics needs the Catholic Church”; for the Catholic Church has always affirmed the basic outlines of the pattern: man (and all the created world) imperfectly strives toward a final perfection, and while he does so, he meets a river he cannot cross: the river of death. Therefore, the One who is Love, and who has shown He is Love by the very unnecessary act of creation, reaches into those very same waters of death to take us Home. That is the pattern. Nevertheless, for example, we see the pattern on the Tilma and know its story, and yet we continue to research it and research it — not, ultimately, out of conceit but out of a desire to know better the face of the One on whom we gaze.

I thank, too, Joseph Lewis Heil, from my beloved Wisconsin, where in my youth I worked as a historical farmer and where — on a couple occasions — the beauties of creation reduced me to tears. In response to his remarks, I will simply clarify that my use of the term singularity, with reference to ensouled life on Earth (which is part of the cosmos!), is perhaps an overly subtle affirmation of what the Church continues to hold as doctrine — that is, the original parentage of Adam and Eve. In the article, I’m having a bit of poetic fun with the term singularity. It is used in physics to describe the initial atomic point of the universe; so, more loosely, it means almost infinitely immense things in small points — kind of what C.S. Lewis was playing with when, in The Last Battle, the stable becomes the doorway to the new Heaven and Earth. Likewise, in the doctrine of original parentage, one maritally embraced couple is the seed of generation after generation after generation.

Finally, Paul Tormey is correct. The article was too short. I wish I could have done more with the mystery of language — not necessarily to pin down the final answer (or to pull more blue balls out of the bag) but because wonder waters love.

Volleys in the Liturgy Wars

John M. Grondelski’s article “Two Immediate Threats to Contemporary Liturgics” (Jul.-Aug.) takes issue with, in his words, “how liturgical studies uses history and canon law” but “fails to use theology.” Grondelski’s article proceeds to show some of the weaknesses of historical analysis in liturgical studies and wonders why, when it comes to modern liturgical development, some cherry-pick particular time periods for guidance and for defense of certain claims or initiatives.

One must also not forget the service of natural reason in combating inorganic liturgical initiatives. When natural reason is used properly, denoted by the search for truth by genuine seekers, and when used in service to theology and liturgy, natural reason’s argumentation methods can be helpful in combating attempts at swift liturgical change based on biases, passionate desires, and trends and fashions.

Theology, employing here a very basic definition of “the study of God using revelation as evidence,” considers — and considers primarily — as evidential that which is referred to in philosophy as “revelation.” In the philosophical tradition, revelation denotes principles, premises, and suppositions that cannot be evidenced by way of natural reason, which is the mode by which proper philosophy pursues its end of truth.

Serving — as the Lord Himself taught explicitly — denotes neither lesser importance nor servility. Rather, when one serves in accord with how one should be serving, one is fulfilling oneself according to one’s nature. Philosophy, likewise, serves theology insofar as it can evidence by way of natural reason that which the faith teaches. Thereby, philosophy, by way of its evidential methods of natural-reason argumentation, can (a) bring unbelievers to the faith, (b) strengthen the faith of believers, and (c) strengthen believers’ pursuits in a pluralistic public square.

In addition to serving the faith on a macro level in the above three ways, natural reason can (d) be employed within the faith to answer micro-level questions. Liturgical questions — broadly and colloquially speaking, dealing with “how to worship” questions — fit into this area.

Grondelski’s article discusses the act of kneeling for the receipt of the Blessed Sacrament. The methods used in proper philosophy can assist here. (For space reasons, the proceeding example is considerably abbreviated, and it is easy to find holes in the argumentation because of the need for brevity. The example is not presented as worthy for technical argumentation, for complete and proper argumentation requires considerable detail, and the defining and qualifying of all terms and claims. The goal with the example is only to demonstrate in brief how natural reason can be employed when it comes to liturgical matters.)

Consider the following. If the Church teaches that:

(a) in the mystery of transubstantiation, God Himself becomes present (theology); and

(b) during transubstantiation, material bread and material wine substantially change, with the accidents of “breadness” and “wineness” remaining (a theological claim served by natural reason in describing the “how” with regard to the relevant material change); and

(c) a being called God exists, and God’s definition includes being the highest being and the Creator of all things; this being, unless this being directs otherwise, may reasonably be expected to be revered, particularly by the being’s creations (natural reason); and

(d) justice is to be pursued, then acts of reverence would be due to God, especially when a mere created being is about to receive God materially (a theological claim served by natural reason); then

(e) kneeling is a sign of considerable reverence by created humans and would be appropriate during receipt of the Blessed Sacrament. (A theological citation can also be included in this conclusion, with a view toward closing with, and lending support to, the theology: St. Paul’s exhortation that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend” [Phil. 2:10]. The argument would proceed that if Paul’s theological premise is taken as an accepted starting point, and that at the mere mention of Jesus’ name one should show reverence, then at the material consumption of this same Jesus, reverence would be appropriate.)

Consider in the above abbreviated example how deeply enmeshed are the theological principles and premises and the natural argumentation, as well as how the paradigm overall illustrates natural reason’s serving theology.

Grondelski’s article rightly calls for attention to theology with regard to liturgical discussion. In such an endeavor, it is necessary to recall that natural reason is a faithful servant. As in competitions requiring skill, intellect, planning, and prudence, it is not always the leading move in the front that wins the battle; rather, a move from the back emanating from a servant of the leading movant is often that which ultimately wins the battle.

Gerard T. Mundy

New York, New York

I was hoping John M. Grondelski would make a theological case for the equal offering of the Novus Ordo Mass and the Traditional Latin Mass at Catholic parishes (and let the best Mass win).

I realize Dr. Grondelski does not have an affinity for the TLM, and he did not intend to compare the Old Mass with the New Mass. But I always compare the two. I have attended plenty of both, and I much prefer the TLM. The number one reason for my dislike of the Novus Ordo is that the priest faces the congregation and seems to believe he is the center of attention. His back is to the tabernacle (if the tabernacle hasn’t been shunted away to a side wall), and all eyes are on him. There are no jokes at the TLM, but every priest I’ve witnessed offering the New Mass has jokes in his homily. The really loose priests can’t help but add impromptu jokes at any time. Overall, Novus Ordo priests are more masters of ceremonies than emissaries of Christ.

A traditional-rite priest once explained to me that ad orientem is the only way to offer the TLM. The priest leads the congregation in prayer and worship in the correct liturgical direction: facing east. I learned more about the importance of facing east from The Church: Unlocking the Secrets to the Places Catholics Call Home, co-authored by Mike Aquilina. The chapter titled “The Shape of a Church” says a Catholic custom of centuries past was to have graves in churchyard cemeteries facing east so that on the day of Final Judgment, when Christ comes again, the dead can rise to meet Him.

Looking east is biblical, too: “For as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth, even unto the west: so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (Mt. 24:27). And praying east is traditional: St. Basil the Great (in the fourth century) said, “Thus we all look to the east for our prayers, but few of us know that we are seeking our old country, Paradise, which God planted in Eden, in the East.”

Dan Arthur Pryor

Belvidere, New Jersey

I appreciated John M. Grondelski’s timely article highlighting pressing concerns. That said, there is something deeply offensive about his treatment of the topic of liturgy and — excuse me while I vomit — “liturgical studies.” I know precisely when it hit me that his article is only accidentally right and he is too steeped in the modernist milieu: when he defines “tradition” as “what he knew.” In other words, tradition is no more than the biases and practices we inherit from our experiences. But tradition is not the unthinking inertia of past actions any more than Holy Writ is a series of writings accumulated a long time ago. Both are living and lifegiving forces. For any Catholic with a sense of what Catholicism is, tradition is sacred and holy.

Catholic Tradition is only superficially like every other tradition. It is unlike the others in that it is binding and is the measure by which we judge all that comes after it. Perhaps Grondelski is using a secular definition of tradition instead of Tradition with a capital “T” and would argue that he was not speaking of Tradition but of traditions, which can and do change. Well, liturgy should be the ultimate form of Tradition, which is why so many of us “traditionalists” object to the liturgical projects of the past 60 years as something horrendous and unseemly. The idea that the liturgy is something we work on — or, worse, “improve” — is nauseating. More than that, it treats liturgy as something manufactured and curated by men, which is exactly what the historicist critique of Christianity posits. No Catholic should believe he has the power to amend or revise the right worship of God — God gives us that. You do not improve the liturgy; the liturgy improves you. The entire Vatican II project of the wholesale updating of the liturgy contains within it the most lamentable form of human conceit — and someday, not long from now, men will ask incredulously of these liturgical scholars, “Who did you think you were?” What temerity!

By their fruits you shall know them. Grondelski alludes, albeit in passing, to some of what the Catholic flock has lost due to the destruction wrought by contemporary liturgists. Well, it is much worse than he appears to appreciate. It is not merely that some things have been lost; it is as though we were living in the ruins of a spiritual nuclear war. Think of how many seminaries have been shut. How many dioceses have filed bankruptcy. How many vocations have disappeared. How many outright heresies have been permitted — or, worse, taught — by prelates. How many parishes have merged. How many Catholic schools have closed. How many of the faithful deny the Real Presence, use artificial contraception, or get divorced and “remarried.” How bad does it have to get for people to understand the full extent of the disaster?

Yet it is even worse than all that: Catholics have lost the sense of how to be Catholic. They have been cut off — no, they have been deracinated — from their patrimony. Centuries upon centuries of sacred music have been shelved. Introits and collects written by veritable saints have been discarded in favor of groovier modern versions written by men of lesser talent and sanctity. We are not merely living through some disagreements over liturgical practices, and Grondelski does not occupy the sane middle space. No, we are watching the complete auto-demolition of the Church in practice, liturgy, and doctrine, presided over by a group of bureaucrats who are better suited for an anodyne NGO than God’s true and most holy Church.

The answer is not, as Grondelski appears to suggest, to live and let live. No, the answer is that we have no remit to go beyond the traditions of the fathers, and the only sure path is to restore to the faithful all that has been stolen from them by a group of feckless and arrogant men, namely, Catholic Tradition. For the sake of clarity, the answer is simple: GO BACK.

I understand that the TLM and its associated devotional practices and customs are not etched in stone, that they themselves represent an accumulation of changes from the first liturgies in Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. But here is the difference with respect to every liturgical change from the beginning until the mid-20th century: those changes were organic, accretive, limited, and glacial. In other words, the changes made to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass were to add some devotional practice and gloss to better honor God — and each change was so limited, in and of itself, that no one would have noticed the change at all.

Compare that to the 1960s liturgical mutilations, which were carried out in conference rooms by men who took a hatchet to the missal, removing seemingly as much as possible and in a hurried way. Every Catholic understood that something dramatic had happened to the liturgy on the First Sunday in Advent 1969. The same cannot be said of any change made by the Church fathers of any earlier era.

It is beyond impolitic for me to say that we should not strive to live and let live — after all, as someone deeply attached to the TLM, it is probably better for me to cower and thank anyone who does not call for its immediate destruction. Aren’t I just advertising my offensive “rad trad” tendencies, which should be demolished because I have Jansenist inclinations? Maybe. But I’ll say this to Grondelski: If God wills us to have grandchildren — or, better yet, great-grandchildren — I am sure they will be assisting at the TLM, which, by then, will again be the normative liturgy in the Latin Church. The present discussion will not even be academic to them — it will seem ridiculous, as will the days when churchmen got the insane idea they could “improve” the liturgy and the Deposit of Faith as if they were testing out new marketing strategies. Again, the temerity of it!

The crusading faction in the Church that is determined to stamp out the TLM will fail in its effort, and the voices of people like Dean Grondelski will help ensure that they do. So, I have no “beef,” as the young people say, with Grondelski. I appreciate that he is not insane compared to the liturgists he references, and that he seems to think my family and others like us who are attached to the TLM ought to be left alone. But he is only scratching the surface of the problems implicit in the revolution of the past 60 years. It is not mistakes at the margins that are the problem; the entire project itself is rotten.

Christopher Gawley

Danbury, Connecticut

Ed. Note: For more on the Liturgy Wars, specifically the role of the Traditional Latin Mass in them, see Victor Bruno’s article “The Danger of Equating the Church with the Mass” in this issue.

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