Although he was neither a theologian nor a saint, Evelyn Waugh certainly understood the logical appeal of Catholicism. As he wrote in his essay about his conversion, in The Road to Damascus, either the Catholic Church is right and all heresies are wrong, or else the entire Christian religion is an imposture:
"It was self-evident to me that no heresy or schism could be right and the Church wrong. It was possible that all were wrong, that the whole Christian revelation was an imposture or a misconception. But if the Christian revelation was true, then the Church was the society founded by Christ and all other bodies were only good so far as they had salvaged something from the wrecks of the Great Schism and the Reformation.”
Because he believed that Christian revelation is true, he knew that Christ founded the Church (Matthew 16:18) and tasked it with safeguarding and teaching the truths He had entrusted to it. Moreover, Waugh doubtlessly understood the significance of St. Paul’s words to the Galatians:
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: if any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema.” (Galatians 1:8-9)
This is the promise that the true Faith cannot change, which is precisely what we would expect and desire in the religion given to us by Jesus. Without this promise, how could we ever be certain that we were following the actual religion Our Lord wants us to follow? This simple reflection tells us that Truth and authority should always align; but if they ever diverge we must follow Truth.
Yes, the crisis flowing from the Council was “Satan’s masterstroke” — the apparent authorities of the Church tried to compel faithful Catholics to abandon the immutable Catholic Truth.
We also know that Satan hates God and wants to lead souls astray by corrupting their religious beliefs. Thus, the attempted corruption of the true Catholic religion is always an offense against God and triumph for Satan. Accordingly, for well over one hundred years prior to Vatican II, the popes consistently warned Catholics about various attacks on the Faith from the Church’s enemies (including the Freemasons, Liberals, and Modernists). The popes unwaveringly confirmed that the true Faith cannot change, and denounced all novelties opposed to the true Faith.
If pre-Vatican II popes had been certain that these errors could never harm the Church, why would they have dedicated so much attention to countering them? We can ask a similar question about St. Paul’s admonition: why would he have warned against the perils of apparent authority figures teaching a new gospel if it could never happen? Evidently, they knew that God would not prevent Catholics from falling into error if they carelessly abandoned the Faith of their fathers.
And so, the writing was already on the wall when John XXIII contemptuously cast all caution to the wind during his opening speech of Vatican II. Whereas his predecessor, Pius XII, had condemned errors, censured dangerous theologians, and warned against the perils of reformulating Catholic truths to fit modern needs, John XXIII refused to condemn errors and appointed the hitherto censured theologians to be Council experts, all for the purpose of reformulating Catholic truths to fit modern needs. Would Satan pass up the opportunity to attack the Church?
By abandoning key protections of the Holy Ghost, John XXIII set in motion a natural experiment: if the pre-Vatican II popes had been correct, everything would fall apart; if John XXIII was correct, then there would be no harm. What did we see?
The human mind is of course an unfathomably great gift from God but it cannot indefinitely accept insanity without succumbing.
In his biography of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais described the resulting crisis:
“In fact ‘the masterstroke of Satan has been to trick the Church through obedience into disobeying her Tradition.’ The Church was going to destroy herself by obeying revolutionary principles brought inside the Church by the authorities of the Church. From 1968 onwards, did not Paul VI himself speak publicly of the ‘auto-demolition of the Church’? On June 29, 1972, he admitted: ‘Through some crack, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God . . . Satan . . . has come to spoil and wither the fruits of the Council.’ Paul did not want to see where the crack was. Marcel saw it and denounced it: it lay in the break with Tradition. Already, however, the Archbishop felt that his foresight would get him condemned: ‘Satan has played a masterstroke: those who keep the Faith are condemned by those who should defend and propagate it!’” (p. 468)
Yes, the crisis flowing from the Council was “Satan’s masterstroke” — the apparent authorities of the Church tried to compel faithful Catholics to abandon the immutable Catholic Truth. Those who followed the admonition of St. Paul found themselves condemned.
But what happened to those who went along with authority? The human mind is of course an unfathomably great gift from God but it cannot indefinitely accept insanity without succumbing. There are so many realities of the Catholic Faith that remind us that we cannot abandon the “Faith of our fathers” — if we abandon the Faith while pretending that we have kept it, we will eventually lose our ability to know truth from falsehood. How can we, for example, celebrate the feasts of the great saints who defended the Faith knowing that we have blithely accepted errors they would have died to avoid?
And so it is today that most Catholics — at least those who identify as such — no longer believe the truths of the Faith. If statistics and casual observation are reliable, we know that most Catholics question the Church’s teaching on everything ranging from contraception to the Real Presence.
And so it is today that most Catholics — at least those who identify as such — no longer believe the truths of the Faith. If statistics and casual observation are reliable, we know that most Catholics question the Church’s teaching on everything ranging from contraception to the Real Presence. How many would find it problematic if they knew that the Synod on Synodality emphasizes that all baptized people — most of whom are not Catholic — have a voice in deciding how the Church’s teachings “evolve”? How many would find fault with the ordination of women?
Returning to Evelyn Waugh, one of the most amusing passages in his Brideshead Revisited — which can tell us much about our current crisis — features Rex Mottram trying to become Catholic so that he can marry Julia Flyte. Father Mowbray related the state of catechesis:
“The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what’s been taught and what’s been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn’t know existed. Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He’d learned large bits of the catechism by heart and the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, ‘Look, Father, I don’t think you’re being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I’m going to join your Church, but you’re holding too much back.’”
Before recounting what nonsense Rex proceeded to tell Father Mowbray, we can pause to consider all the inanities that so many modern Catholics believe today: there is no problem with priests who promote LGBTQ+ ideologies; all religions are willed by God and lead to heaven; hell is empty; it is fine for Francis to have his Pachamama in the Vatican; the religion held by all the saints (i.e., Traditional Catholicism) is now too rigid to believe; and we must get rid of the Traditional Latin Mass to promote unity. Returning to Father Mowbray’s conversation with Rex:
“I asked what he meant, and he said: ‘I’ve had a long talk with a Catholic — a very pious, well-educated one, and I’ve learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that’s the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I’ll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d’you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone’s name on it, they get sent to hell. I don’t say there mayn’t be a good reason for all this,’ he said, ‘but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.’”
As it turns out, Julia’s little sister, Cordelia, was the “very pious, well educated” Catholic filling Rex’s head with such nonsense. When confronted by her mother, Cordelia confesses her “crime”:
“Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he’d swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican — all kinds of things.”
What Cordelia did in jest to Rex, the putative authorities of the Church have done through a combination of ignorance, indifference, and malice to faithful Catholics for over six decades. Generations of Catholics are now worse off than Rex, half-heartedly believing a hodgepodge of Catholic truth and preposterous error. They believe whatever they are told until they have had too much and either apostatize or return to the unadulterated Catholic tradition.
God will not let this state of affairs last indefinitely, and it seems that we fast approach a decisive change. He permits it all for the good of souls who will follow Him by choosing immutable Catholic truth; and Satan welcomes all the time he can get to lead souls astray. May God grant our faithful shepherds the grace to follow St. Paul and Archbishop Lefebvre in teaching that one cannot accept any gospel other than the one Our Lord entrusted to His Church. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
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