Reconciliation After Reconquista, Pt. 1

Mr Grigorieff looks at what may happen when Tradition triumphs in the Church which it inevitably will, of course. What will the heretics do?

From One Peter Five

By Maxim Grigorieff

Confusing Traditionalism with some sort of irreflective cultural Conservatism, people are inclined to think that it is all about the past. On these pages, though, I want to speculate on what is truly proper to Tradition – the future. The present crisis of the Church will come to an end, as any other crisis before, and there will be a reconquest – a new ‘reconquista’ – where territory that has been lost will be regained. When this occurs, the pro-Tradition bandwagon of survivors will have to face those whom they otherwise wouldn’t have been prepared to meet – not straight-forward enemies and persecutors, but a motley crowd of other Catholics staring at them: some with joy and wonder, others with concern.

Heretics U-turning to ‘Tradition’

Unfortunately, among this crowd there will be some trying to jump on the pro-Tradition bandwagon while hiding the same heresies in their bosom. I am sure that priests like Fr. James Martin, who now dares to challenge the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual acts on a fully Modernist basis[1], will start to use the image and pathos of Tradition for their heretical cause. Although this may sound contradictory, we only need to look at the Modernist forefathers of the 19th century who used the image of the ‘Primitive Church’ that was rather made up than discovered.

I do not have to dream up an example. John Eastburn Boswell was an American historian and a full professor at Yale University who wrote many treaties on religion and homosexuality, including the notorious ‘Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe’[2]  – a book finished before he died on the eve of Christmas in 1994. On its pages Boswell practically claimed that the blessing of same-sex unions was an abandoned tradition of the Catholic Church, both East and West!

Did he have any grounds for such a claim? That is where we have to be very cautious.

According to some Byzantine manuscripts of the 9th-15th centuries[3], there existed a para-liturgical ritual that proclaimed two men as ‘spiritual brothers’ who had to be considered real brothers from the legal perspective ever since. This is called, in the Greek, Ἀδελφοποίησις [adelphopoiesis], which is literally ‘brother-making.’ The practice is based on the example of some most revered saints of the East –  Sergius and Bacchus. The two men were officers in the Roman army under Caesar Galerius Maximian, where they held very important positions, were praised and honoured… until they were reported to be secret Christians.  For their faith the two friends were subjected to severe torture, which resulted in Bacchus’ immediate death. Sergius survived initially, however he was beheaded afterwards.

Were they homosexuals? Not anymore than the Great Prince Vasily II of Moscow and Grand Duke Casimir IV of Lithuania, who sealed together their spiritual brotherhood using this same Byzantine ritual already popular with the Russian people of the 15th century. One, being a Latin Catholic, fought the Catholic religious order of Teutonic crusaders. The other is believed to have been a devout Orthodox who rejected the Union with Rome, although in reality he came up as an ‘ultra-ecumenist’ by sealing a ‘cross-confessional’ spiritual union with a Papist as if with a brother in faith[4] – so, yes: in many ways these gentlemen were queer. Nevertheless, both of the princes had their own families, lived many miles away from each other and were not caught in sodomy.

Nor was the celebrant of that strange sacramental a fore-Father James Martin of the 15th century Russia: unlawfully taking the see of Moscow from Metropolitan Isidore who signed the Union with the pope, Bishop Jonah found himself in a double schism with both ‘secondary’ Romes[5] known to Christianitas at the time, but homo-heresy was definitely not his schtick. He blessed that fraternal union specifically to make the two princes true brothers in the eyes of God and society in order to ensure peace and alliance between the two feudal countries. Because that is how it used to and is supposed to work.

Then, why did the rite of sealing mutual brotherly love that is even literally translated from Greek as “brother-making” began to be perceived in the 20th century as a blessing of homosexual unions? Because we live in a culture of sexual revolution, where all love is by definition eroticised. A culture that abandoned brotherhood and concocted its own story of Ganymede to resemble the ancient Cretans, who were so enslaved by pleasure, as Plato says[6], as to abandon the very laws of nature and vanquish their own religion, tormenting it for their own delectation by faking history.

We know from Almighty God and can see in the light of our human reason that a civilisation that has left no room for purity and chastity will share the pain of the Cretans. It will soon cease to exist and become extinct. The clergymen and laity who feast on things sacrificed unto idols and commit fornication (Revelation 2:14) will suffer the same fate.

Will we be able to save our own souls and those of our loved ones from this corruption and due calamity, especially when local sacrificers come to the flock disguised as ‘traditional’ shepherds, using similar corrupted reasoning as Boswell? And be sure, come they will, and many sheep will follow them: for the image of tradition recrafted by books is too easy to counterfeit for the undiscerning.

Red Tape Catholics

Another danger that may rear its ugly head during the reconquista is more ancient and deeply rooted than any modern heresy under the guise of tradition. There exists a festering underworld in the womb of Ecclesiastical bureaucracy which is punitive, educational and executive. The rot oozing from it can contaminate all areas of Church life. What is wrong with this womb?

As a beastly thing, is not particularly choosy, willing to carry and give birth to many offspring from different fathers. Too often it is the devil in various guises who comes to have his way with those who wish to betray the Church.

Nowadays, many theses and papers are being written on the topic of ‘synodality’ as it is sketched out by the collective Vatican Pythia. These professors are burning the midnight oil on the ‘Synodal’ questions on their campuses while inhaling, by doing so, the smoke of Liberal axioms artfully mixed into their premises. If tomorrow a new pope comes and talks about the dangers of neo-Modernism, the very logic of institutional education suggests that many of these learning and teaching people will ‘go conservative’ with the same enthusiasm. The problem is, any science and education should be about following the truth, not fashion. Especially those in divinity.

Now it is the ‘legal’ Trads who will get persecuted by the Church authorities, but the day will come when the whole machine will stop, awaiting for the slightest signal to reverse and start grinding down the former elites together with other groups that are ‘unlike.’ It will not be the first switch of that kind, for practically all these institutions did it before, changing sides, playing the harlot.

I personally know one life-long chancery volunteer from Russia, who is a very decent lady, indeed. She was even one of the ‘Synodal Mothers’ during the last Synod of Bishops in Rome and also participated in World Youth Meeting in Lisbon, where, as reported to me by a witness, she would get sincerely indignant, because the working groups and think tanks under her see would rather talk about Jesus Christ and His Gospel being spread among all the nations as effectively as possible, but not ‘integral ecology’ (the topic chosen from the list provided by the Habermasian architects of the Synod). An outstandingly decent woman and a pious Catholic, technically, she had a right to retort: a topic chosen, one must follow the procedure. But the procedure itself can become one’s god, especially in a society influenced by the Liberal democratic pathos that has been dominating the world for some time lately. This temptation is so strong because procedure is the only remaining stronghold of unquestionable concreteness in a civilisation of ideological pluralism that does not care much about the Truth anymore.

The very word ‘procedure’ has a common root with the ‘procession’ of the Holy Ghost from God the Father[7] to all creation through the Son and His Holy Catholic Church – the source of all values and meaning, as well as the fuel to bring them about. However, procedure in its secularised form – detached from God – can devolve to where the outer structure is robbed of any content substantial and correspondent to it, turning the process into an activity without an intrinsic goal. Then, all meanings lose their power, and power becomes the only meaning. Indeed, the whole thing mutates into an absolute activity where the only gain is power, to manipulate and submit others to one’s arbitrary will, both individual and collective. Such is the process that runs godless and self-centred bureaucracy in the world just as much as within the Church. An ultimately selfish process able to kill, yet claiming to selflessly serve and protect. The process. Der Process[8].

Many blame the late Pope Benedict for having made so many cardinals from Liberal prelates, but we must be mindful of a bureaucratic duplicity that is artful. The red tape can equally sell itself as an elegant clothing accessory to a Trent-y robe and to the Communist flag and colours, if only the robe is on a high pillow, or the flag is high in the sky. So, it is not hard to imagine that with some conservative forces taking Rome for good (at least seemingly), the same clerks and clerics who are now all pro-Left will switch, and I shall see that volunteering friend of mine scold the same grown-up youth subjected to her for their non-denouncement of Pacha Mama and other old stuff that is bad, ‘cuz it’s old. She, who literally complained about too many flights with too much carbon emission spoiling the whole World Youth Day, a meeting that gathered millions 1.5 million young people with the Pope in 2023, will eagerly fall into the strawman persona of a rigid nun with a large rod in her hands – the type one can see in modern mockumentaries that are as biased against Catholics as practically unchallenged. In a decade, another World meeting will be organised with no ‘integral ecology’ within the agenda – be sure about it, it will rather be ‘applied demonology’; and there she will walk through the rows of younglings ordered to copy the Oath of St. Pius X with ink and pen ten times in a row, ready to teach them a lesson, should they dare to put down their pens even for a second, giving an unearned rest to their slothful hands, or even worth – to preach them her own concocting views on the matter – the views she will see as the most PC[9]for the moment, inflating the whole thing in the eyes of the living youth thereby. Ironically, she will also believe in what she will say, just as sincerely as superficially as she does now believe in ‘integral ecology,’ whatever this silly term might actually mean.

If this switch happens, how exactly can we address this problem? Will there be a genuine change in the Church, not a bureaucratic twist? Will there be more people helped, than harmed, after all? Can, indeed, the good intention to follow what the Church teaches and to implement the lawful decisions of her shepherds in the spirit of trust and obedience be rescued from this parasitic inversion of godless bureaucracy?

Catholics Liberated and Alienated

The Tradi-coalition on its victory in the ‘reconquista’ will meet a crowd of new supporters who will be quite honest and open-minded, although guiltlessly ignorant. One may argue that I should have started from that very group: for it may be the most numerous, although involving the least to say about. Indeed, millions of people would have been supporting the Tradition for their whole Catholic life if only they had been properly informed about the real state of affairs. With the strong Catholic identity fully restored, these brethren will genuinely feel better, although many times unaware of the reasons why. Should we provide them with these reasons? Will these reasons be true?

I shall give an example. Our Seminary is associated with one of the largest and oldest Latin Novus Ordo parishes in St. Petersburg, Russia, even sharing the same historical building complex with this Church that was built as the Latin Cathedral for the whole Russian Empire in the late 19th century. During Latin Lent, on Fridays we the seminarians would be given the task of writing our own reflections for each station of the Cross. When it was my turn, I tried to build on the rock of the Eastern liturgy and various commentaries of ancient saints instead of using my own shallow well, because I was not used to this sort of spirituality. What happened is that some parishioners and nuns would get very delighted each time my piece was read, although they did not know who the author might be and what the sources were. They would admit afterwards that the pieces they had found so contrasting with most of the rest were strong, beautiful and God-oriented, having all the qualities opposite of platitude, self-centred sentimentalism and lack of clarity that they usually hear. Of course, this didn’t happen because Mr. Maxim Grigorieff was some kind of New Chrysostom. It is rather the Catholic tradition itself, including the Eastern one, that is always powerful. People can feel it and see the difference when they are given a chance.

But I did not put this large group in the beginning of my story on purpose: for these people have brothers and sisters from the same parishes and dioceses without whom the Liberated Catholics should not be made perfect (Hebrews 11:40) – the Alienated Catholics. Who are they?

If we are to be realistic, in front of the Traditional bandwagon there will also stand a large crowd of people not so quick to decide. These are the so-called ‘Liberal’ Catholics of today who will formally turn ‘Conservative’ tomorrow – those used to the earthly matters, progressive agenda, and lack of preaching hard truths and dogmas in their Novus Ordo parishes. How will the Trads in power react to this new situation? Will the new Church elites formed by today’s young conservative priests[10] treat the ‘others’ like they will have been treated by their Liberal mentors for the remaining decades of their rule in the waning days of the current crisis?

Also, since the Second Vatican Council, many forms of mission and spiritual life appeared in the Roman Catholic Church that would have been either unimaginable or impossible to found and run before the Council. Among these new apostolates there are a couple of new congregations, lay and cleric enterprises like the Neocatechumenal Way or the Catholic Charismatic movement, brand new personal prelates like Opus Dei, etc.

I can understand the complexity of emotions evoked among the Latin Trads when they encounter some phenomena associated with the movements mentioned above – theological, liturgical, spiritual and structural. The historical background and roots of them are not to be ignored either. It is indeed very complicated and all the questions are legitimate to be asked by anyone from the outside, including the new elite that will be oriented towards Tradition. Naturally, being positively connected with Tradition may be a litmus test in these future times. But the results may be not so obvious or even totally misleading, and I shall provide an example.

Some movements such as Opus Dei may seem very traditional despite the utter novelty of their canonical organisation and inner structure sealed by two post-conciliar saints and one venerable bishop with St. John Paul II among them[11]. Meanwhile, some others are met by Trads with more suspicion that often borders detestation: it is the Neocatechumenals and Charismatics. Do the reasons lie in their history, identity and liturgical practices? Yes. But they are also stylistical, depending on the role rendered to Tradition by lips in these movements. Which will not be very high. It does not mean, though, that the two movements have nothing to do with it or are incompatible with it in action and by definition.

Will the Trads be able to recognise the good that dwells in these post-conciliar movements, so as not to cause any additional split and offend their brothers in vain – something the Novus Ordo lords do with the Traditional Latin Mass supporters? Or maybe a more radical Trent-like homogenisation will be seen as needed by the new elites? Would it be justified? To what extent? In other words, how can we save the Faith, not causing harm to fellow strangers?

The Lord said, ‘Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Exodus 22:21). Strangers indeed the Latin Trads would have been and felt like for quite a while before their own Exodus that we all expect. Yet even now we ought to realise how strange and new any old Bellarmine would have found even this particular apostolate – OnePeterFive – in his times. It is a mostly lay apostolate who dares to publicly criticise the Pope and his Cardinals. Ordinary people, neither Ordinaries nor even Ordained. People who have learnt the lesson of the Second Vatican Council to be aware of their mutual Christian responsibility for the whole Church. Shall we have the courage to recognise the blood kinship with that motley brood of the new evangelisation before passing judgement?

Old Allies: Shall we split on their defeat?

There is another vital question that touches upon the very integrity of the future ‘ruling class of the Church.’ Will that ‘ad orientem’ alliance between Western Traditionalists and those who belong to Eastern Traditions split, if the great revision of Vatican II should start and the Church go back to the cult of Latin superiority?

Indeed, it is only the severity of the modern ruling-class of the Church and Divine providence that sealed this miraculous union between those who are rather nostalgic for the good-old times of strict neo-Thomism and traditional Latin piety with those whose entire life, ecclesiastical structure, theology and even identity suffered terrible damage under that same ‘old regime’ before the Second Vatican Council, that is, the Eastern Catholics. Despite there being some brilliant exceptions like Popes Leo XIII and St. Pius X – pontiffs who respected the East and defended its heritage – all too often fellow Latin bishops believed in ‘praestantia ritum latinorum’ [the superiority of the rite of the Latins], to the detriment of the East.

Since Vatican II, many faithful Latins have found refuge under the arches of Eastern Catholic Сhurches, fleeing from their contaminated Roman Catholic parishes. Their Eastern hosts who have been given much justice by Vatican II that proclaimed the equality of all rites, should realise that the whole Church is in danger and it’s our common duty to confront the apostasy and comfort the brothers in need, never gloating over their misery. Many do, like myself, by trying to actively enter the Traditionalist discourse with their own perspective. But indeed, when the reconquista arrives and the present crisis ceases to be a danger, shall we see the old rivalry flare up again, after the refugee Latin Trads come home with triumph? As the political West and East did find themselves in such deplorable conditions after the victory over Nazi Germany, will the sons of light be wiser, or will a new Cold War await the Catholic resistance in the days to come?

To answer these and other not so hypothetical questions, ensuring stable peace within the Church I suggest we should consult with some of the most prominent Eastern Fathers of the Catholic Church: for we are now facing something they handled well in the past. To this subject will we will turn in our next part.

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[1] ‘Interesting: “Where the Bible mentions [same-sex sexual] behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well and nowhere attacked it as unjust…https://t.co/52jL6NDgRu’

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) October 23, 2019; URL: https://twitter.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1187090285332967424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw ; cited from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/dm6kts/james_martin_sj_on_twitter_interesting_where_the/

[2] See: Boswell J., (1994) Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. New York: Villard Books. The UK title: The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe

[3] Fr. Viscuso P., ‘Failed Attempt to Rewrite History,’ New Oxford Review 1994, Volume LXI, Number 10. URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20140527215143/http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?print=1&did=1294-viscuso

[4] Никольский К. Т., прот. О службах Русской Церкви, бывших в прежних печатных богослужебных книгах.. — С-Пб., 1885. — С. 371—388. — 411 с. URL: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Konstantin_Nikolskij/o-sluzhbah-russkoj-tserkvi-byvshih-v-prezhnih-pechatnyh-bogosluzhebnyh-knigah/2_46

[5] These being Constantinople and Moscow, “New Rome” and “Third Rome” respectively.

[6]‘[636c] that especially encourage the use of gymnasia. And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature, but contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female, and that those first guilty of such enormities were impelled by their slavery to pleasure. And we all accuse the Cretans of concocting the story about Ganymede.’ See in Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968. Sited from Perseus Digital Library, URL: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plat.%20Laws%20636c&lang=original 

[7] …“and the Son” and “through the Son” – all the Catholic traditions are true and do not contradict the dogma. This was the achievement of Florence (but not without its own defects).

[8]German for ‘The Trial’. It refers to a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915, that tells a story of a man who got arrested and prosecuted by some remote, inaccessible authority on the accusation of a crime the nature of which is never revealed to the protagonist or the reader.

[9] Regardless of whether it stands for ‘Perfectly Catholic’ or ‘Politically Correct.’

[10] Christian G. ‘Younger US Catholic priests increasingly identify as conservative, says new report’ at National Catholic Reporter, URL: https://www.ncronline.org/news/younger-us-catholic-priests-increasingly-identify-conservative-says-new-report

[11] Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás and St. John Paul II together with Venerable Alvaro del Portillo y Diez de Sollano