Connections

What men choose to forget

Book Review
The Poems of T.S. Eliot: Volume 1: Collected & Uncollected Poems
Christopher Ricks & Jim McCue, eds.
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, $44.95
ISBN-13: 978-1421420172

We don’t think that T.S. Eliot’s poetry needs to be sold very hard. Over the past century (“Prufrock” turned 100 last June, if you can believe it), Eliot’s work has assumed a central place in the modern English canon. More than that, his poetry is practically part of the patrimony—to borrow John Hunwicke’s language—of Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. To some extent, then, discussing a new volume of Eliot’s work will be a discussion not of the poems, about which everyone long ago formed opinions, but a discussion of the various apparatuses and commentaries in the volume. Though the discussion about individual volumes seems less and less important after one considers Ricks and McCue’s two-volume edition of Eliot’s poems.

One thing about Eliot’s poetry—to immediately undermine our statement about reviewing volumes instead of poems—is that there are multiple ways into his work. On one hand, one can gain access through the modernism of his early work, up to and including The Waste Land and The Hollow Men. On the other hand, one can very easily develop a great fondness for Eliot through his later works such as Four Quartets, Choruses from The Rock, Ash Wednesday, and the Ariel Poems. Christians—those who haven’t simply absorbed Eliot by osmosis—will likely be recommended his later works. But the thing about Ricks and McCue’s annotations is that no matter how one got into Eliot’s poetry, one can find one’s way around very easily with their help.

Every poem is given a serious, thorough commentary, addressing content and context alike. And criticism. And cross-references. And, well, just everything. Eliot’s letters, comments by editors and friends, and historical sources all appear copiously. Ricks and McCue leave no stone unturned, and, in some instances, they point out there a stone was and what one would have found if one had turned it over. For example, in early editions of The Dry Salvages, the text read “hermit crab” where Eliot meant “horseshoe crab” (cf. The Dry Salvages I.19). Eliot acknowledged that he had written the former when he meant the latter, he asked his publishers to make the correction, and he agonized over the error at length; however, it was corrected in subsequent printings. The reader running through the text (including in this edition) would see simply “The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale’s backbone,” as would have everyone else who read the poem in a corrected edition. Just everything, like we said.

We note that Ricks and McCue’s edition follows several other similarly all-encompassing editions of poets carefully described as “modern.” For example, Archie Burnett’s recent edition of Philip Larkin is full of interesting biographical and literary information about a poet who was very forthright. Jon Stallworthy’s edition of Wilfred Owen is perhaps less heavy on commentary and explication, but very, very heavy on textual issues, drafts, and manuscripts. (In many respects, it supersedes C. Day Lewis’s venerable old New Directions edition.) Plainly, publishers think that they’ll recoup their costs (and a little profit) from annotated editions of some 20th century poets. However, Eliot’s poetry—a product of tremendous erudition—seems to encourage the sort of careful, voluminous commentary that Ricks and McCue provide. One does not really feel the need (we don’t, at any rate) to track down the allusions in, say, “Spring Offensive” or “The Whitsun Weddings” the way we want to track down the allusions in Little Gidding.

It goes without saying that, for a longtime reader of Eliot (or, for that matter, an enthusiastic first-time reader of Eliot), the annotations are a joy. A conversation, really. One is tempted to respond to the notes: “Ah, I knew that,” or “I suspected that’s what he meant,” or, all too often for our self-image, “I had no idea.” And perhaps that’s the right judgment on this edition: Ricks and McCue’s annotations are like having a conversation with someone who knows everything about the poem. For this reason, we recommend dipping in and out of the commentary, lest a treat become tedious—though for poems we are fond of, it is unlikely that the commentary would become tedious. Even the bit about the “hermit crab” mistake in The Dry Salvages was interesting, particularly the extent to which Eliot agonized about a relatively minor mistake.

It seems strange, though, to see these massive, massively annotated editions of modern poets. Larkin, particularly, was working and publishing in recent memory. One’s parents may have been avid readers of Larkin’s High Windows when it first became widely available in 1979. But one’s grandparents may well have been avid readers of Eliot’s work when it was first published. We recall meeting once, briefly, a man who had corresponded with Ezra Pound. Of course, Pound was quite elderly at the time and this man was a young man; but (!) he corresponded with Pound all the same. This is a long way of saying that even Eliot is a poet of living memory. Yet, here we are: considering a monumental annotated edition of his poetry.

Perhaps it is necessary, for, to the extent that the world Eliot inhabited has become remote or that the culture he inhabited has become remote intellectually, Ricks and McCue do the reader a great service with their annotations. It is probably hard to dispute that, in the last fifty or seventy-five years, the West has run headlong away from the idea of Christendom and even the idea that there was something of that culture worth preserving. Certainly, there are aspects of this flight that are reasonable to a point, though they are premised upon a misidentification of a vile, murderous perversion of a cohesive Western, Christian culture with a cohesive, Western Christian culture itself. But, regardless of of the motivation, it must be said that, except to those with great interest, many of the sources upon which Eliot drew are becoming pretty remote. So, even if with only a narrow focus, Ricks and McCue do fine work making some of these sources behind the allusions available.

True, there may be great joy in running down Eliot’s allusions yourself; however, where do you begin? If you didn’t know that Eliot was alluding to St. John of the Cross in East Coker III and if you weren’t familiar with St. John of the Cross or mystical theology more generally, then you would probably have a hard time knowing where to begin running down the allusion. There is Google, we suppose, but sifting the signal from the noise on Google can be a daunting task. One does not have the feeling that one has to sift Ricks and McCue’s work that way.

But, at the same time, we have a slight reservation. The sheer amount of information, the obviously indefatigable research, and the clear erudition of Ricks and McCue give their annotations a strong sense of authoritativeness. (They plainly have authority, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it?) And an editor imbued with authoritativeness can present a problem to the reader without the reader knowing it; editors, like everyone else, have opinions, maybe even agendas, about their subject. Most of the time, the reader can suss out the opinions and agendas, and push back. But when an editor has authoritativeness, it becomes harder and harder to resist those opinions and agendas. After all, they’ve marshaled so much information that they have to be right. We do not mean, of course, to suggest that Ricks and McCue have an agenda: we haven’t read the book so thoroughly that we can form an opinion. But, if they did, it would be awfully hard to resist it given the sheer quantity and, honestly, quality of their annotations. But all of that may be overthinking the problem a little bit.

While the list price is a little steep—and the Amazon price was not much below list when we bought the book there—this edition is very much worth considering, even if you, as many people do, have one or two (or several) other volumes of Eliot’s poetry. Obviously, if it is available at a local library or it could be procured by a local library on a permanent basis, it is an easy choice to borrow. And borrow and borrow.

Quid proficit tantum nefas?

We had it in mind to write a piece on the feast of the Holy Innocents, but then we checked New Liturgical Movement and found that Peter Kwasniewski had written a very fine essay on the feast. He notes,

Thoughts like this often occur to me on the strangely melancholy post-Christmas feast of the Holy Innocents. I say melancholy because, right after Christmas, we have a feast of unspeakable slaughter, bloodthirsty egotism, the ugly shadow of corrupt politics looming over the cradle of Bethlehem, the chill breath of the world against the cheek of humility. I cannot be the only one who winces when the Gospel passage is read out, and thinks of all the ways in which our world has still not let itself be redeemed, is still waging war against the Christ-child, is still scheming to suppress the King of kings.

But then I remind myself why it is a feast and not a day of penance like January 22nd. The Holy Innocents are true martyrs who stood in for Christ: they anticipate in their flesh the scourging, the nails, and the spear by which our salvation was wrought, and by which theirs was completed. What a triumphant victory, to have won without fighting, to have rushed ahead into the mystery of the Cross, without waiting for leave!

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there.

Once upon a time, the feast of the Holy Innocents was a feast with a penitential, mournful character. Guéranger tells us:

In the midst of the joy, which, at this holy time, fills both heaven and earth, the Holy Church of Rome forgets not the lamentations of the Mothers, who beheld their Children cruelly butchered by Herod’s soldiers. She hears the wailing of Rachel, and condoles with her; and, unless it be a Sunday, she suspends on this Feast some of the manifestations of the joy, which inundates her soul during the Octave of her Jesus’ Birth. The Red Vestments of a Martyr’s Day would be too expressive of that stream of infant blood which forbids the Mothers to be comforted, and joyous White would ill suit their poignant grief; she, therefore, vests in Purple, the symbol of mournfulness. [Unless it be a Sunday; in which case, the colour used is Red.] The Gloria in excelsis, the Hymn she loves so passionately during these days, when Angels come down from heaven to sing it – even that must be hushed today: and, in the Holy Sacrifice, she sings no Alleluia. In this, as in everything she does, the Church acts with an exquisite delicacy of feeling. Her Liturgy is a school of refined Christian considerateness.

(Emphasis supplied, but italics in original.) Somewhere along the line, the feast became, well, more festal.

We note also that other aspects of the liturgy have changed significantly. In the books of 1960, the responsories at matins and the little chapters at lauds, vespers, and the little hours were taken from Revelation, primarily chapter 14 regarding the 144,000. Guéranger notes,

The Church shows us, by her choice of this mysterious passage of the Apocalypse, how great a value she sets on Innocence, and what our own esteem of it ought to be. The Holy Innocents follow the Lamb, because they are pure. Personal merits on earth they could not have; but they went rapidly through this world, and its defilements never reached them. Their Purity was not tried, as was St. John’s; but, it is beautified by the blood they shed for the Divine Lamb, and He is pleased with it, and makes them his companions.

(Emphasis supplied.) We wonder if the choice goes beyond that, though. Obviously the office wants us to associate the Holy Innocents with the 144,000 in Revelation 14. The office also alludes to the souls of the martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6. Plainly, the Church takes the occasion of the Holy Innocents’ feast to point to some very obscure passages in Revelation. In the Liturgia Horarum, however, many of the mysterious selections from Revelation have been replaced with selections from Lamentations. Perhaps a little more easily comprehensible, but awfully rough on the mysterious aspects of the feast.

Come all without, come all within

Today, the Holy Father gave his Christmas address to the Curia. Last year, his address was a catalogue of the various spiritual diseases that he diagnosed in the Curia. This year, the Holy Father gave a lengthy discussion of “Curial antibiotics,” using an acrostic analysis of Misericordia. He also quoted with high praise a prayer, which he attributed to John Cardinal Dearden, long-time archbishop of Detroit and prime mover behind the 1976 Call to Action conference that is so fondly remembered by so many elderly men and women as the high-water mark of a certain tendency of American Catholicism.

Neoplatonism and the rose/pink question

Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., takes on the rose/pink distinction that pops up in the Catholic blogosphere, especially the priestly blogosphere, oh, about twice a year. Some bloggers insist that the rose vestments worn on Gaudete Sunday and Laetare Sunday are not pink. But Pater Waldstein ventures through etymology— Antonio Telesio’s short treatise De coloribus, in fact—and historical examples to counter this notion that rose is not now and never has been pink. That’s simply not the case. And he comes to the point: some folks may prefer rose because pink has, well, effeminate connotations that rose doesn’t have. Don’t ask us why, though. If we’re judging things by American notions of masculinity, neither rose nor pink are especially masculine.

We write simply to note a (James) Burkean connection here. Pater Waldstein says this,

Indeed, as soon as one begins to think about the naming of colors, one’s native Platonism begins to give way, and one begins to suspect that there is something to the structuralist argument for the division of reality by naming as being a bit arbitrary. One doesn’t have to swallow de Saussure’s theories whole to see that the imposition of color names involves a certain amount of arbitrary choice. To Homer, after all, the sea was the color of wine.

However, Pater Waldstein strikes an apparent blow for “one’s native Platonism.” As we noted above, he cites the Renaissance poet Antonio Telesio’s De coloribus in support of the argument that rose is simply the mixture of red and white, just like pink. One may note, furthermore, that Telesio’s De coloribus cites, on the cover page no less, Marsilio Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, which, of course, includes a theory of colors. Now, Ficino was a Florentine priest and a driving force behind the resurgence of Neoplatonism during the Renaissance. Ficino prepared, in addition to his enormous Platonic Theology and commentaries on Platonic dialogues, an interesting translation and commentary (in elegant Latin) on Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology and Divine Names. (The I Tatti Renaissance Library, an imprint of Harvard University Press, has, one suspects out of a spirit of altruism that ignores one’s bottom line, brought out a bunch of Ficino works, in handsome bilingual editions. They’re available on Amazon.) Thus, while the shock of the rose/pink debate may shake one’s Platonism, Pater Waldstein’s road back passes through some very heavy hitters, so to speak, in Neoplatonic circles.

Just one of those connections.

Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm

Following up on our earlier post, which was devoted to an old hymn in honor of St. Andrew, we note that Vultus Christi has a wonderful piece about St. Andrew and the Cross. We read,

In the Antiphon that will be sung in today’s Office, Saint Andrew sings to the Cross, something that, apart from a special grace of God, we are incapable of doing.

O bona crux! O precious cross, of a long time have I desired thee and now that thou art made ready for me, my soul is drawn to thee, and I come to thee in peace and gladness.

“I come to thee in peace and gladness.” More often than not we come to our crosses in fear and heaviness of heart. Far from singing to them we approach them murmuring, or in the sullen silence of our unspoken resistances and inability to trust. Saint Andrew was able to sing a greeting to his cross; he was able to come to it in peace and gladness, because he recognized that by means of it he would pass over to God.

(Emphasis in original and quotation reformatted.)

It’s also late fall (or early winter or whatever you want to call it), in the United States at any rate, and it happens that travel and home are on everyone’s minds. Everyone is doing a lot of travel, going to and from various places for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, and for the rounds of Christmas parties with coworkers, with friends, and with family. And, of course, much of this travel involves home. Going home for Thanksgiving. Returning home after another dull party at the boss’s house. Splitting Christmas Eve and Christmas Day between in-laws homes, or, as is so often the (sad) case, between parents’ homes. But, more than that, home is on everyone’s mind, regardless of travel. We talk about going “home for the holidays,” whether it’s a happy prospect or not, and we talk about the importance of having “someplace to go” for Thanksgiving and Christmas, which seems to be home under another name. But we get the sense that home was very much on St. Andrew’s mind as he walked toward the Cross, too. But not quite the home of bright copper kettles, football, turkey, and Uncle Lewis’s latest political theories. Something better than that.

Consider some of the responsories from matins, which depict St. Andrew’s conversation with the Cross on his way to be martyred. For example, this one from the third reading:

R.Doctor bonus et amicus Dei Andreas ducitur ad crucem, quam a longe aspiciens dixit: Salve, crux * Suscipe discipulum eius, qui pependit in te magister meus Christus. 

V.Salve, crux, quae in corpore Christi dedicata es, et ex membris eius tamquam margaritis ornata.

Suscipe discipulum eius, qui pependit in te magister meus Christus.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.

Suscipe discipulum eius, qui pependit in te magister meus Christus.

Or this one, from the fifth reading:

R.O bona crux, quæ decorem et pulchritudinem de membris Domini suscepisti; accipe me ab hominibus, et redde me magistro meo: * Ut per te me recipiat, qui per te me redimit.

V.Beatus Andreas expansis manibus ad cælum orabat, dicens: Salva me, bona crux:

Ut per te me recipiat, qui per te me redimit.

Finally, this one from the eighth reading:

R.Videns crucem Andreas exclamavit, dicens: O crux admirabilis, o crux desiderabilis, o crux, quæ per totum mundum rutilas: * Suscipe discipulum Christi, ac per te me recipiat, qui per te moriens me redimit. 

V.O bona crux, quæ decorum et pulchritudinem de membris Domini suscepisti.

Suscipe discipulum Christi, ac per te me recipiat, qui per te moriens me redimit. 

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.

Suscipe discipulum Christi, ac per te me recipiat, qui per te moriens me redimit.

Indeed, it does seem strange to praise the Cross as beautiful as one is marching toward it to be martyred. It does seem like exactly the sort of thing for which one would require special grace. But the logic of St. Andrew’s praise is plain to see. The Cross was beautiful to him not only because it was where Christ suffered and died to save men, though that was in no small part its glory, but also because it was for him the way home—not to his birthplace or his house, but to Christ and to heaven, to the true home of all souls. (As Paul reminds us repeatedly.)

At any rate, St. Andrew, who never had to be talked into following Christ or, indeed, even told that it would be to his benefit to follow Christ, understood this point. And understanding it, he praised the Cross even as he walked forward to be martyred on it. It is, we think, well worth taking the Church’s hint and meditating on St. Andrew and his praise of the Cross as we go forward. As we prepare for Christmas—to remember the first coming of Christ and to prefigure his coming in glory at the end of the world—we ought to think about the Cross, too. It is, after all, the way home for us, too.

It may seem a little out of place, of course, to spend time meditating on the Cross during the cheery, fire-lit season of Advent, so full of cozy sights and smells, to say nothing of all the Christmas cheer in the air, and maybe it is. However, the road to Calvary begins in earnest in Bethlehem, and the nativity scene doesn’t mean much without the very different scene on Calvary. But, as St. Andrew tells us today, both are equally glorious.

 

Crux quem beata diligit

St. Andrew’s feast falls on November 30, which means it is either right before or right after the first Sunday of Advent. Dom Prosper Guéranger reminds us that Andrew is the apostle of the Cross; therefore, Dom Guéranger notes, the Christian year begins and ends in a sense with the Cross. Of course, Andrew was martyred by crucifixion at Patras in Greece

Dom Guéranger also notes that Andrew has inspired devotion throughout the Church. He quotes two sequences, including one by Adam of St. Victor, one of the great medieval poets, and prefaces from the Ambrosian and Gallican rites. He also quotes a hymn he attributes to Pope St. Damasus. It may interest you to know that St. Damasus, who succeeded Pope Liberius in 366 in a hotly contested election that produced an antipope (the matter was not resolved until a synod in 378), employed a clever young priest, Jerome by name, as his secretary. St. Damasus also encouraged Jerome in his project of revising the Vetus Latina bible in light of the Greek texts then available.

However, we note that A.S. Walpole, in his Early Latin Hymns, informs us that the attribution to Pope St. Damasus first appeared in Baronius’s 1603 edition of Martyrologium Romanum. Moreover, Walpole asserts that, at the time of his writing, the attribution had determined, for the most part, to be spurious. The last author to support the attribution, “and he doubtfully,” made an interesting biographical point. Before his accession to the papacy, Damasus’s fortunes were linked to Pope Liberius’s. So, when Constantius II, ever taken in by all manner of Arians, sent Liberius into exile in Beroea, in Thrace, for the “crime” of defending Athanasius and rejecting Arianism, Damasus went too. When Andrew’s relics were translated from Patras, where he was martyred, to Constantinople, around 357, they may well have passed through Beroea. Or so the author asserts. And, as far as it goes, it would make sense—to us, anyway—for a priest with time on his hands to compose a hymn for the occasion. But the timing is all important for the theory, it seems. The Catholic Encyclopedia informs us that Liberius’s exile was not very long, only a couple of years, and that he was recalled to Rome sometime in 357. (It turned out, to Constantius’s dismay, that Archdeacon Felix, his preferred Arian pope, never quite captured the hearts of the Romans.) So, whether Damasus was in Beroea when Andrew’s relics passed through—if they were taken by road—depends on when, exactly, Liberius was recalled to Rome. An amusing detective story, to be sure, but one best left to the historians.

At any rate, the key to this interesting hymn is to know that Andreas includes among its meanings beauty.

Decus sacrati nominis,
Vitamque nomen exprimens,
Hoc te Decorum praedicat
Crucis beatae gloria.

Andrea, Christi Apostole,
Hoc ipso iam vocabulo
Signaris isto nomine,
Decorem idem mystice.

Quem Crux ad alta provehit,
Crux quem beata diligit,
Cui Crux amara praeparat
Lucis futurae gaudia.

In te Crucis mysterium
Cluit gemello stigmate,
Dum probra vincis per Crucem,
Crucisque pandis sanguinem.

Iam nos foveto languidos,
Curamque nostri suscipe,
Quo per Crucis victoriam
Coeli petamus patriam.

Amen. 

It is a shame that this fine hymn, which is apparently ancient, and which points up the identity of Andrew’s cross with the Cross, was left out of the Breviary of 1960 and the Liturgia Horarum, which so often restored ancient hymns.

Preces meae non sunt dignae

While, on the whole, we prefer the Breviary of 1960, we think that some aspects of the Liturgia Horarum are clear improvements upon the preceding schemes for the Divine Office. One such aspect is the use (optional, unfortunately, like almost everything else) of the Dies Irae during the thirty-fourth week of Tempus Per Annum—the last week of the Church’s year, which is followed (of course) by the first Sunday of Advent. The wonderful old hymn, attributed to the Franciscan Thomas of Celano, is divided into three parts and sung at the office of readings, lauds, and vespers. This, of course, serves very neatly to emphasize the eschatological aspects both of the end of the Church’s year and of Advent.

Imagine stepping out of the holiday bustle into a church for lauds of Saturday in the thirty-fourth week of Tempus Per Annum, where you hear, after the usual beginning of the hour, the Dies Irae chanted in an austere plainchant. Puts rather a different spin on things, no? Bit of a shock to the system, even. But it is certainly something you’d remember when the deacon chants the Gospel for the first Sunday of Advent in Year C. (Especially if, after a day of shopping, you went back to the same church for the vigil Mass that same Saturday.) One might even get a whole new appreciation for Advent, wholly separate from Advent calendars, wrapping paper, and hot chocolate.

The Avignon Papacy and Liberalism

The Josias has an excerpt from Ludwig von Pastor’s history of the papacy about the Avignon popes, their cupidity, and the consequences of the same. Well worth a read. This passage, in particular, stuck out to us:

Still more radical, if possible, are the views regarding the doctrine and government of the Church put forth in this work. The sole foundation of faith and of the Church is Holy Scripture, which does not derive its authority from, her, but, on the contrary, confers on her that which she possesses. The only true interpretation of Scripture is not that of the Church, but that of the most intelligent people, so that the University of Paris may very well be superior to the Court of Rome. Questions concerning faith are to be decided, not by the Pope, but by a General Council.

This General Council is supreme over the whole Church, and is to be summoned by the State. It is to be composed not only of the clergy, but also of laymen elected by the people. As regards their office, all priests are equal; according to Divine right, no one of them is higher than another. The whole question of Church government is one of expediency, not of the faith necessary to salvation. The Primacy of the Pope is not founded on Scripture, nor on Divine right. His authority therefore can only, according to Marsiglio, be derived from a General Council and from the legislature of the State; and for the election of a Pope the authority of the Council requires confirmation from the State.

The office of the Pope is, with the College appointed for him by the Council or by the State, to signify to the State authority the necessity of summoning a Council, to preside at the Council, to draw up its decisions, to impart them to the different Churches, and to provide for their execution. The Pope represents the executive power, while the legislative power in its widest extent appertains to the Council. But a far higher and more influential position belongs to the Emperor in Marsiglio’s Church; the convocation and direction of the Council is his affair; he can punish priests and bishops, and even the Pope.

Vexilla Christus inclita

October 25 was, according to the pre-Conciliar rubrics, the first-class feast of Christ the King. (Christ the King is now celebrated on the last Sunday in tempus per annum, apparently to emphasize the eschatological aspect of Christ’s kingship, which was not at all what Quas primas was about, but we digress.) We were particularly struck by the hymns for the office, especially the hymn for Lauds, Vexilla Christus inclita, which includes this passage:

O ter beata civitas,
cui rite Christus imperat,
quae iussa pergit exsequi
edicta mundo caelitus!

Non arma flagrant impia,
pax usque firmat foedera,
arridet et concordia,
tutus stat civicus.

Servat fides connubia,
iuventa pudet integra,
pudica floret limina
domesticis virtutibus.

In Father Joseph Husslein’s translation, these stanzas are rendered:

Thrice happy city, basking fair
Beneath His royal sway,
Where at the mandates from His throne
All hearts with joy obey!

No godless conflicts there shall rage,
But Peace outstretch her hand,
With smiling Concord at her side—
Firm shall that city stand!

Where wedded love shall keep its troth,
And youth can blossom fair,
And all the household virtues pure
Shall grace the household there.

We were struck by the imagery in Vexilla Christus inclita, so we looked it up in Dom Matthew Britt’s indispensable The Hymns of the Roman Breviary and Missal (3d ed. 1934). According to him, the hymns were composed specifically for the office of Christ the King, which was approved by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on December 12, 1925. (The day after Quas primas was formally promulgated.) However, Britt does not identify the author of these bespoke hymns. But we recalled that Fr. John Hunwicke had a series earlier this year about the Social Kingship of Christ, and we thought that Hunwicke might have a little more information about the author of Vexilla Christus inclita. And he did: he names Fr. Vittorio Genovesi as the author.

Genovesi (1887-1967) was an Italian Jesuit. He was best known during his life, perhaps, as a very talented—indeed, prize-winning—Latin poet and cultivator of Latinitas. (The blog Missa in Latina has a very detailed biography of Genovesi in the context of his Christ the King hymns.) He achieved Curial prominence under Pius XII, who appointed him hymnographer to the Sacred Congregation of Rites—this would have been some years after composing the Christ the King hymns—and then to other positions in the Congregation. Fr. Gabriel Díaz Patri, in “Poetry in the Latin Liturgy,” his contribution to a 2010 volume called The Genius of the Roman Rite, notes that Genovesi also wrote hymns for the feast of St. John Chrysostom and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The latter distinction is especially noteworthy, given the importance of the office of the Assumption after Munificentissimus Deus. Later, he was on one of John XXIII’s preparatory committees for the Council.

In sum, Genovesi appears to be one of those priests—Cardinal Ottaviani was another—who understood that the Church carried forward the best of classical culture and who acted like it, treating Latin as one of their own languages, not something belonging to history. There is a sense, fairly sad, especially at a time when Synod fathers complained that they did not have sufficient Italian to be able to read the Synod’s drafts, that the Church lost something intangible and invaluable when Latin was graciously set aside as the Church’s language.

But equally fascinating is Genovesi’s Jesuit confrere, Joseph Husslein, who translated Vexilla Christus inclita (his translation is provided in Britt’s book). We confess that we had not heard of Husslein prior to today. In a review of a biography of Husslein by Steven A. Werner, Arthur Hippler notes,

Most American Catholics nowadays who devote themselves to “social concerns” have shrunk the magisterial social teaching to a few choice texts from Rerum Novarum, Mater et Magistra, and the writings of Pope John Paul II that happen to serve their favorite cause. The attention, for example, that John Paul II gives to the natural law, the problem of secularism, and the defense of the traditional family, just to name a few, are largely filtered out of contemporary discourse. The American “social concerns” crowd feels much more comfortable when the pope talks about global warming or capital punishment.

The example of Jesuit social thinker Father Joseph Husslein (1873–1952) offers a refreshing contrast to this contemporary intellectual fashion. Steven Werner shows him as a scholar who formed his thought by the teachings of Leo XIII, especially Rerum Novarum. Indeed, Husslein had done this so completely that his writings anticipated many developments that later appeared in Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. From 1909 to 1931, Father Husslein published numerous books and articles, applying Catholic social teachings to the problems of the day. His crowning work, The Christian Social Manifesto: An Interpretive Study of Encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI, published in 1931, received the praise of Pius XI in a letter written by Cardinal Pacelli, who would later become Pope Pius XII.

Hippler’s review of Werner’s book is as not favorable as Pius XI’s review of Husslein’s commentary on Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno, though. After criticizing Werner’s “caricature of Catholic history,” Hippler makes this point about Husslein’s career,

On this point, it is worth remarking that after the publication of The Christian Social Manifesto in 1931 until his death in 1951, “The bulk of Husslein’s writings was devotional”. Among the topics of his ten books and fifty articles were the Eucharist, the Holy Family, and the social reign of Christ the King. After presenting some possibilities for this change, Werner speculates that “Husslein went deep to the core assumptions underlying his social writing: that social change would only come about with a change in the hearts of human beings and only true religion could accomplish such change”. If this is true, Husslein fully merits the status that Werner gives him in the book’s title, namely that of prophet. A prophet sees that what appear to be social or political problems are truly spiritual problems.

(Emphasis supplied.) Some light Googling turns up more information about Husslein. He sounds like an important figure in the early understanding of Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno, at least in the United States. However, given the divergent trends in the American Church’s understanding of the Church’s social teaching, it seems like Husslein has fallen by the wayside. We will, however, make an effort to find out more about him, and, perhaps, share the information here.

But—in keeping with our running admiration of James Burke’s Connections—we note that there are some interesting connections here. Pius XI establishes the feast of Christ the King in 1925. The feast needs an office and an office—especially for a first-class feast—needs hymns, so Jesuit Father Vittorio Genovesi, a first-rate Latin poet, is commissioned to write some hymns for the office, including Vexilla Christus inclita. This hymn is translated into English by one of Genovesi’s confreres, Joseph Husslein. Husslein was himself a major thinker regarding Catholic social teaching, and a commentator on Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno. The latter encyclical was, of course, by Pius XI.

Someone really ought to do something for Papa Ratti. Everything seems to come back to him sooner or later.

A question of trust

We have never liked Depeche Mode as much as New Order. That said, we were put in mind of a certain 1986 single by Depeche Mode (out at about the same time as New Order’s “Shellshock,” which also seems somehow appropriate to our circumstances) by Father Ray Blake’s post “The Synod of Mistrust.” Blake argues,

What seems to have been at the heart of the Synod and its point of crisis is nothing to do with the issues on the table, nothing to do with family or homosexuals or communion, it is trust. Trust has broken down, no-one trusts the people who report the Synod’s discussions. Fr Lombardi and his crew seem more about obfuscation than clarity. Fr Rosica, his English speaking side-kick, has become a twitter by-word for bullying and is seen as presenting of his own pro-gay agenda. Both are seen as presenting the ‘spirit’ of the Synod, not the Synod itself. In the same way most, if not all of  those who are entrusted with responsibility by the Pope, like Cardinal Baldissieri and Archbishop Forte and other papal appointees, are regarded either as being corrupt or part of the ‘gay-lobby’. They are simply not trusted.

The great divide between the Germans and most of the rest of the Synod again underlines a break-down in trust, it is unfortunate that the Pope has allowed himself to be seen as allied to the German cause.

To an observer, mistrust seems to be at the heart of the Synod. There is a great contrast between those of a ‘liberal’ perspective and those who oppose them. The trouble is that the ‘liberals’ are incredibly inarticulate, rather like poor old Cardinal Dew or Cardinal Wuerl or even our own Bishop Doyle, who has never struck me as being in the avant guard of revolutionary, or even contemporary, thought. What are they saying? The truth is no-one knows, which means they inspire and capture no-one’s imagination, no-one will die for what they have to say, no-one will commit themselves to what they have to say, because ultimately they have nothing to say. It is merely vacuous prattle, which breeds confusion and becomes like the Holy Father’s, which tend to be nagging rather than edifying.

(Emphasis supplied and links removed.) Father Blake is a little gloomy, to be sure. However, we think he understates, if anything, the problem. The basic problem is that the Holy Father and most of his appointees are running a major deficit of trust with many Catholics.

Look at Mitis iudex. The basic standard of review for a nullity case is the same as always: the judge has to be morally certain that the marriage was void ab initio, and this is true whether the case proceeds on the ordinary contentious process or on the processus brevior. Yet, it is clear that many Catholics—including many intelligent, sensible Catholics, including some prelates—are convinced that Mitis iudex will result in Catholic divorce. Why? Well, they simply do not trust diocesan bishops to uphold the law regarding nullity cases. And they apparently do not trust that the Holy Father, through his Roman tribunals, to keep the dioceses in line.

Likewise, the debate over Laudato si’ has come down to a question of trust. Some Catholics think the Pope has sold out to the U.N.-backed leftist bloc on climate change. At the very least, these Catholics think that the Holy Father has given in to a bien-pensant consensus that pits, well, everyone against the developed, wealthy West. Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., has pointed out, convincingly, the ways in which Laudato si’ brilliantly criticizes the technocratic-anthropocentric outlook of modernity and the ways which that outlook opposes God and his creation. Likewise, we have yet to be convinced that Laudato si’ is out of line with Rerum novarum, Quadragesimo anno, or Populorum progressio—all of which, notwithstanding the Actonistas’ wishes otherwise, are solidly magisterial at this point. All that said, it is plain that many serious Catholics simply do not trust the Holy Father to agree with climate-change advocates where agreement is possible and to disagree on the (many) points where agreement is not possible. They think he’s going to give away the farm. There is no other conclusion to be drawn—except, of course, in the cases of those who have consistently resisted the Church’s economic teaching since Mater et Magistra.

And, of course, the paroxysms regarding the Synod, its leadership, and its procedures are well known. Certainly, John Paul and Benedict appointed their fair share of liberalizers and Modernists; there are not many cardinals named by Paul VI remaining (one, maybe?). Thus, almost everyone with a red hat got it from John Paul or Benedict. Likewise, there are not many bishops remaining who were not appointed by John Paul or Benedict. That said, the faithful plainly trusted John Paul and Benedict notwithstanding their mixed record of episcopal and cardinalatial appointments to hold the line in a way that they do not trust Francis.

Does the Holy Father deserve this atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion? Certainly not! Much of it is the result of the media, taking the Holy Father’s often broad, broadly encouraging statements and turning them into the veritable constitution of a new church that bears little resemblance to the one Christ founded. We doubt very much if the Holy Father intends this. But we think that the Holy Father likes to present a welcoming, compassionate face of the Church. (We have often said that were Father Bergoglio our confessor, we’d rave about him to all and sundry.) But the fact remains, the atmosphere is what it is.

Perhaps everything does come down to a question of trust.