Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Latin Mass

Von Hildebrand stood against Nazism when to do so put one in mortal danger which makes the accusations of the modernists that his support for what they call the "fascist" TLM laughable.

From Crisis

By Jerry D. Salyer, MA

Enemies of the Latin Mass condemn it as fascist and oppressive, yet the same man who took a stand against Nazism when it was actually dangerous to do so would later take his stand against the freewheeling liturgical “reforms.

What I deplore is that the new Mass is replacing the Latin Mass, that the old liturgy is being recklessly scrapped, and denied to most of the People of God.
—Dietrich von Hildebrand

However we greet his writings and thought, there is no denying Dietrich von Hildebrand’s historical status as a long-standing hero among Catholic opponents of Nazism. A philosopher who once speculated that each nation has its own unique guardian angel, Hildebrand nonetheless detested nationalism as a diabolical parody of patriotism; as the reader is no doubt aware, this parody had manifested itself with special virulence in Germany in the wake of World War I. Especially loathsome to Hildebrand was the collectivist tendency to steamroll individuality and personality for the sake of a grand, abstract, and artificial German nationhood.   

On the more affirmative side, Hildebrand’s ideas may be related to his life. Biographers agree that it is no mere coincidence that Hildebrand’s father was a famous and successful sculptor, as the beauty and wonder of art were motivating values in Dietrich’s thought. Working out of the milieu of phenomenology, Hildebrand developed his own theory of Christian personalism, which promotes a revived appreciation for the heart and lived experience in the world.   

While the perspective of Christian personalism often concurs with the judgments of what is called traditionalism, the two movements are hardly synonymous. For instance, Hildebrand would become one of the first prominent thinkers to highlight the joy and intimacy implicit in sexuality. It is not only prudish but ungrateful and shallow to treat the conjugal act as if it were solely oriented toward the duty to reproduce, he argued—a position which would today draw some pushback in certain traditionalist circles.

In any event, back in the 1920s and ’30s Hildebrand’s repeated condemnations of National Socialism landed him on the Nazi blacklist; during the frantic hours of the brief Beer Hall Putsch, he had to dodge his way through Berlin to avoid falling into hostile hands. After Hitler’s rise to power, Hildebrand then had to flee Germany altogether, seeking refuge in his native Austria. When Hitler’s government absorbed Austria into the Third Reich, Hildebrand left Europe for the United States, where he established himself as one of Catholic America’s leading thinkers. He married one of his former students, Alice von Hildebrand, who would go on to become a renowned Catholic scholar in her own right.

So, there can be little doubt regarding Hildebrand’s principled devotion to human dignity and freedom, or that he sought to adapt his thought to modernity, to the concerns of real individuals coping with the complexities of contemporary life. Not every Catholic luminary agrees with every point of Hildebrand’s work, to be sure, but not even his unfriendliest critics could accuse him of being “rigid” or “authoritarian.” Whatever we may say of the theory of personalism, its focus obviously lies in the welfare and aspirations of…persons.  
All this brings us to Hildebrand’s attitude toward the Latin Mass, and a stark irony. Today enemies of the Latin Mass condemn it as narrow-minded and reactionary, if not downright fascist and oppressive toward the individual. Yet, it just so happens that the same man who took a stand against Nazism—back when it was actually dangerous to do so—would later take his stand against the freewheeling liturgical “reforms” which followed Vatican II.  

For, according to Hildebrand, most of the so-called “reforms” were really desecrations carried out by subversives acting in bad faith who had twisted the directives of the Council:

[T]he Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy goes no further than to permit the vernacular Mass in cases where the local bishop believes it desirable; the Constitution plainly insists on the retention of the Latin Mass, and emphatically approves the Gregorian chant. But the liturgical “progressives” are not impressed by the difference between permitting and commanding. Nor do they hesitate to authorize changes, such as standing to receive Holy Communion, which the Constitution does not mention at all. The progressives argue that these liberties may be taken because the Constitution is, after all, only the first step in an evolutionary process. And they seem to be having their way.  

Here another irony becomes clear. As many readers are aware, proponents of Latin liturgy are often accused of rejecting Vatican II. Yet Hildebrand was, if anything, one of Vatican II’s foremost defenders. One clear point of disagreement between Hildebrand and many traditionalists of his day (and ours) lies in Hildebrand’s obvious deference to the Council’s authority and his belief that ancient Catholic praxis had to be adapted in light of a new era.
For Hildebrand, the problem was not Vatican II per se but the unscrupulous, irrational elevation of it into a talisman which trumped everything else, and which compelled submission to measures it had in no way authorized. (As an aside, it is worth observing that it is precisely the blasé abuse of the Council by liberals which has led an increasing number of Catholics to question it outright; at times, we get the impression we can be accused of “Vatican II denial” whenever we insist that anything said or done before Vatican II still matters.)

Moreover, Hildebrand’s concerns were not confined to legal interpretations of conciliar documents. To the contrary, his reasons for rejecting the liturgical revolution were not so far from his reasons for rejecting Nazism. In both cases, shiny utopian promises were set forth as the reward for radical innovations. Just as Nazis tended to narrow-mindedly and stupidly overlook the worth of non-German peoples, so too do those Hildebrand dubbed “temporal nationalists” dismiss the worth of everything which is not “cutting-edge” or “up-to-date” (i.e., fashionable, or “in”). 

Decades before the invention of the satirical slogan “I’m for the Current Thing!” Hildebrand patiently explained what was wrong with the mentality the slogan mocks:

Those who idolize our epoch, who thrill at what is modern simply because it is modern, who believe that in our day man has finally “come of age,” lack pietas. The pride of these “temporal nationalists” is not only irreverent, it is incompatible with real faith. A Catholic should regard his liturgy with pietas. He should revere, and therefore fear to abandon the prayers and postures and music that have been approved by so many saints throughout the Christian era and delivered to us as a precious heritage. To go no further: the illusion that we can replace the Gregorian chant, with its inspired hymns and rhythms, by equally fine, if not better, music betrays a ridiculous self-assurance and lack of self-knowledge.

Nor was Hildebrand impressed by claims that innovations would make Christ more “accessible,” for simple-minded ideologues have a way of trampling upon the very things they pretend to cherish. In his younger years, Hildebrand had warned, presciently, that the Nazis would bring ruin to Germany; likewise, he predicted, “the new liturgy actually threatens to frustrate the confrontation with Christ, for it discourages reverence in the face of mystery, precludes awe, and all but extinguishes a sense of sacredness.” At the risk of belaboring the obvious, we may ask: Have the years since proven him wrong?

In his own lifetime, Hildebrand was vindicated in his opposition to Hitler. The outcome of his struggle to defend Latin remains to be seen.