One Of My Heroes
Christopher Dawson. I grew up in a house full of books. That was thanks to my father, to whom I give thanks for that—also, and above all, for having fixed me up with the love of my life.
On related matters …
Cardinal McElroy Accidentally Tells the Truth about “St. John Paul II Catholics”
The great truth in this article is that it’s not just your conclusion that matters. How you get there is, if anything, even more important. We’re all familiar with the prog idea of a “living constitution.” Consider now the far worse idea of “living tradition”—meaning, WE are tradition:
… any perceived division between John Paul II Catholics and Francis Catholics that goes beyond superficial differences is entirely false. The pope who gave us the first Prayer Meeting at Assisi and elevated Bergoglio to the rank of Cardinal might disagree with Francis on a few technical points, but they share the same religious convictions.
One of the clearest indications of this comes from John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic letter regarding his excommunication of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Ecclesia Dei. In that letter he of course condemns the archbishop’s consecration of bishops, but he also identifies the root of the “schism”:
“The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, ‘comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. …
But then, who will tell us whether it’s the Spirit whispering in our ear, or … a demon. A demon of our own creation. Ourselves. Our own will to power. Whereas if we hold fast to the Apostles Creed, the liturgy and sacraments, the Apostolic writings …
And, just as Francis and McElroy point to Vatican II to justify their taking the Church down new paths, John Paul II cited the Council for his idea of the “living character of tradition.” Tellingly though, John Paul’s quotation (above) of the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, excluded the same document’s essential qualification on the limits of development in tradition:
…
… those who see how wrong Francis is will yearn for the better days of John Paul II, or even Benedict XVI, failing to see that we can only make headway against these heretics by returning to unadulterated Catholic tradition. Going back to John Paul II or Benedict XVI is like the driver who realizes he has been driving down the wrong road for hundreds of miles and decides to fix the problem by driving backwards a few miles to a point that seemed more like the right road.
There really is no point in criticizing McElroy or Francis if we refuse to actually go back to the point before we left the right path, and that means we have to go back to what the Church clearly taught before the Council. Like him or (more likely) not, at least McElroy is being true to his anti-Catholic beliefs. What we need now is for his counterparts who are actually Catholic to start being true to their beliefs.
The key is to hold fast to what has been handed down, as Paul says. Over and over.
Great quotes and thoughts by Dawson. I would have liked to have had him as an instructor, which in effect you have had, Mark. I especially like:
"The victory that overcomes the world is not success but faith and it is only the eye of faith that understands the true value of history."
This is a good description of how the Christian views and deals with the world. He could have elaborated, of course, that faith has as its object the historical atoning work (death and resurrection) of Christ. Furthermore, faith is only conferred through the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace. In short, faith is entirely a gift of God and our exercise of it is the mechanism through which He works in the world.
I only subscribe to this and one other Substack but, here, I’m thinking I must’ve landed in the right place, because I nearly fell out of my chair at seeing mention of Christopher Dawson. For many years I’ve had his “The Judgment of the Nations” on my bookshelf and I had thought he was utterly forgotten. Thank you for retrieving this treasure. I wonder if perhaps you may have gotten the idea for the title, Meaning in History, from Dawson? He says, after quoting the dry bones verses in Ezekiel 37, “The Spirit blows through the world like wind and fire, driving the kingdoms before it, burning up the works of man like dry grass, but the meaning of history is found not in the wind or in the fire, but in ‘the small voice’ of the Word which is never silent, but which cannot bear fruit unless man co-operates by an act of faith and spiritual obedience.”