From the Publisher: A New Generation

Twenty-five years ago this October, I stood with my wife late at night in the piazza of St. Peter in Rome under a full and silver moon, rejoicing in the victory of “progressive” forces at Vatican II. We could feel the fine spray of the fountains in the light air. Our mood was exultant, there in the embrace of Bernini’s moonlit colonnades. We felt that the entire Catholic Church was turning upon an axial point in its history. That was October 30, 1963.

I feared, though, that our exultation might be based upon illusion. For many generations have come and gone, passing through the piazza of St. Peter. The jesters of the fountains smile ironically.

Twenty-five years later, as one of those who was among the most hopeful of the progressives, I feel a profound sadness about what we “progressives” have wrought. Surely, practically everyone who then had such high hopes for “the new liturgy,” for the new “opening to the world,” and for new horizons of “social action” can scarcely look around at the state of the American Catholic church with much other than dismay.

The decay in’ the morale of many of the clergy and many religious is tangible. Daniel Callahan argued in those days that underneath the furor for reform there lurked a profound crisis of belief. I thought then that he was exaggerating and was myself more hopeful. Events have shown how wrong I was. Clearly, many “progressives” do not believe in the way that they once did. Some define themselves as “cultural Catholics” in such a way as to allow them to jettison whole sets of beliefs and attitudes that they once shared. When they give public account of what they now believe, their faith does not sound very much at all like the faith of their fathers.

Indeed, some now make profession to “the spirit of Vatican II” as if most of what went before was steeped in error. They profess faith in a “new church” that is hardly a quarter of a century old. Some seem to make up some of their beliefs as they go along, and these tend in most matters to be those of secular humanists who have an inexplicable fondness for biblical metaphor.

As for “Rome,” “the Vatican,” and “the Polish pope,” some speak with undisguised disdain. They chafe under authority. Nay, rather, some do not accept authority, not even in principle. They think of Rome as a “partner in dialogue” and praise her as “enlightened” only when Rome expresses statements with which on other grounds they happen to agree.

Is chastity violated by homosexual acts between consenting and “loving” adults? Is celibacy one of the most attractive and inspiring charisms of religious and priestly life? Is the distinctive cultic role of the Catholic priesthood properly reserved to males only, despite their unworthiness? Before Vatican II, none of us doubted such realities. In 1988, virtually no one is brave enough to set forth such beliefs with sound and clear argument on their behalf.

Moreover, when Rome insists upon the validity of such traditional beliefs and disciplines—beliefs that justified the disciplines, disciplines that dramatized the beliefs—few are the voices raised in Rome’s intellectual defense. Authority is abandoned defenseless among its enemies. Has any other age exhibited such cowardice?

In this issue, Monsignor X recalls the moral values of the Catholic tradition and applies them to the increasingly widespread problem of homosexuality among Catholic priests. What has changed since 1963 is not human weakness. What has changed is the canopy of beliefs about reality under which weak human beings used to seek strength in resisting sin. What in 1963 was regarded as an offense against basic morality and a betrayal of solemn vows is today, alas, too often regarded as a legitimate “sexual preference,” a “human right,” and a “progressive cause.”

In 1963, sinners knew they were sinning when they “gave in to homosexual tendencies. In 1988 a moral reversal has taken place. Those who still think that homosexual acts are sinful are accused of being “homophobic,” while active homosexuals boldly proclaim their own moral superiority.

Sinners we all are, in 1988 as in 1963. The battle today is to establish again the elemental beliefs of our faith, even concerning what is sin and what isn’t. Who would have thought that “progressivism” would entail such a deep moral decline, beyond moral weakness to moral denial? The tree of “progressivism” has borne evil fruit as well as good.

Perhaps Pope Paul VI was right in Humanae Vitae when he argued that when sexual acts come to be widely regarded as good in themselves, apart from their ordering to the generation of life, then for countless millions good would become evil, and evil good. Logically, this need not happen. Culturally, it certainly seems to have occurred. In any case, our present moral situation revolts the mind. Priests, nuns, and lay persons who sin are not new; but that so many should call sin virtue—should put a new morality in the place of the faith and morals of the Catholic church—obliges us to resist false teachers. Either we reject the new claims forthrightly, or we capitulate in silence.

Nor will it do to laugh away the profundity of the new challenge, by saying that the Catholic Church is “preoccupied with pelvic issues.” Humans are not angels. Every person is sexed. Our sex is connected to everything we think and do. How we order our sexual lives is central both to our personal human development and to the survival of the human race. The heresies of the present age, as of every gnostic age, are in their deepest passion sexual heresies. Were humans angels, gnostics would have no “pelvic issues” to rebel against. But humans are not angels.

Still, not everything is bleak in the Catholic Church today. Not every part of it is infected by “progressivism.” Above all, a new generation is coming along, not least among young persons of inquiring minds and self-disciplining wills. The seminaries, Crisis is told, are bringing forth a “new breed,” bright, inquiring, and most definitely anti-“progressive.” Inquisitive young converts are also helping us to reappropriate the faith of our fathers, as our next issue will show.

Out of the ashes, Christ as ever arises.

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