The following guest Op-Ed was penned for us by a newly ordained diocesan priest, writing under the name Monsieur l'Abbé:
A Conversion
In
2008 I was in my last year of college. My spring break happened to coincide
with Holy Week that year providing me with the perfect opportunity to spend my
vacation in Rome. At that point, I had been seriously considering and
discerning a vocation to the priesthood for three years, and it was my hope
that this visit to Rome would serve to deepen my conviction that God was
calling me to serve Him as a priest.
I
had the good fortune that week to attend all of the liturgies of the Sacred
Triduum and I was in Saint Peter’s Basilica on the evening of the Easter Vigil
when Pope Benedict XVI baptized Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian
journalist. Allam was raised a Muslim but from an early age was educated in
Catholic schools. At the age of twenty he moved to Italy and became
increasingly critical of Islam.
The
baptism of Allam was a reminder of the expectations that Europe should have for
those who are privileged to call Europe their home. Living in Europe means an
acceptance and respect for her Christian origins and history. Living in Europe
means throwing off the backward cultural thinking of a religious sect forged in
a seventh-century desert. To be European is to accept that which is ever
ancient and ever new. All of these considerations were implicit that Easter
when Allam publically rejected his former beliefs and recognized Christ and His
Church as the true and only vehicle for salvation.
The New Mandatum
Contrast
the Triduum in 2008 with the one that took place just last week. This year, the
Holy Thursday foot washing ceremony (known also as the Mandatum) consisted of
Pope Francis washing the feet of a group of Catholic and non-Catholic refugees.
In fact, with impeccable timing, the pope washed the feet of three Muslim refugees
only two days after more than thirty people were killed and three hundred were
injured in suicide bombings in Brussels, a municipal region whose most popular
name for newborn boys is Mohammed.[1]
Before
Lent this year, the pope issued a decree changing the Holy Thursday practice
which had previously only admitted men for the Mandatum. Now, the decree explained
that pastors may “choose a small group of persons who are representative of the
entire people of God.”[2]
Since ascending to the Chair of Peter in 2013 the pope each year has washed the
feet of men and women, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. This is a direct
contradiction of the practice at the Last Supper. The Mandatum is a reminder of
Christ’s washing the feet of those twelve men who were closet to Our Lord and
who followed and believed in Him. Even Judas, his betrayer, had his feet washed
since he was still at this time nominally counted as one of the Twelve.
While
this new decree concerning the Mandatum allows the pope, in good conscience, to
continue washing the feet of women, he still manages to disobey his own decree
by washing the feet of those who do not even believe in Christ. In fact, while
using the most liberal of terms (“People of God”) to describe those who are
eligible for the Mandatum, even the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 9) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly
explain that Muslims cannot claim this appellation: “One becomes a member of this people not by a physical
birth, but by being ‘born anew,’ a birth ‘of water and the Spirit,’ that is, by
faith in Christ, and Baptism.”[3]
For
Francis however, these considerations are no more than semantics. “All of us
together: Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Copts, Evangelical. But [we are] brothers,
children of the same God” he said on Holy Thursday.[4] There
were reports that “[a] number of the migrants whose feet were washed by the
pope had tears streaming down their faces.”[5]
One wonders if such an emotional moment has led any of the non-Catholics who
have had their feet washed in the past three years to convert. Probably not.
Even if it had, based on past statements by the pope, one wonders if this is
something that he would even have approved of.[6]
A Radical Juxtaposition
At
the heart of the juxtaposition of the Easter Vigil of 2008 and this year’s Holy
Thursday is the radical difference between the two possible approaches to the
problem of Islam in Europe. In 2008, Benedict XVI personified a Church that was
confident in her identity. For him, the Church is the only force that can offer
transcendence to a secular Europe: “[The Church] must first do decisively what
is her very own, she must fulfill the task in which her identity is based: to
make God known and to proclaim his Kingdom.”[7] She
is also the only force strong and confident enough to enlighten the
irrationality of Islam: “Islam needs to clarify two questions in regard to
public dialogue, that is, the questions concerning its relation to violence and
its relation to reason.”[8] Unfortunately,
it seems that Francis does not possess the same intellectual acumen or
perspicacity when it comes to understanding the challenges facing the Church’s
relationship with Europe and Islam.
Even
before his election to the Papacy, Joseph Ratzinger had an exceptional
understanding of Europe and its relationship to Islam. Experiencing the
extremism of National Socialism and Communism in Europe during his lifetime,
Ratzinger knew what was at stake in the fight for Europe’s heart. The invasion
of Islamism is the next battle that Europe is fighting, and Ratzinger has
offered a unique perspective as to how the battle could be won.
In
order for her to survive, Ratzinger has argued, Europe must acknowledge
and appreciate her Christian origins. It is only in Christ and His Church that
Europe can find her identity, and if this identity is lost, Europe remains
vulnerable to the onslaught of any number of extremist ideologies. Europe can
only be Europe when she embraces the history of her art, history, music, and
culture: “The banishment of Christian roots does not reveal itself as the
expression of a higher tolerance . . . but rather as the absolutizing of a
pattern of thought and of life that are radically opposed, among other things,
to the other historical cultures of humanity.”[9]
Europe can only be herself when she returns to the traditional worship and
religion that raised her from the ruins of the Roman Empire and nurtured her
throughout the centuries. This is one of the reasons why, as pope, he did so
much to foster and promote the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass: “It
behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s
faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.”[10]
In
contrast to Ratzinger’s immersion in European culture, Jorge Borgoglio grew up
in Peronist Argentina in a milieu that saw itself as independent of European
interests and more civilized than the rest of Latin America. Since his election
in 2013, the pope’s preference for ministry to the “peripheries” and the
marginalized has left Europe as an undefended afterthought. If we were to
examine the first three years of their respective papacies we would even notice
a difference in the tone of their pastoral visits. In his first three years as
pope, Benedict XVI made five visits to European countries outside of Italy (two
visits to Germany and one visit each to Poland, Spain, and Austria). In the
same amount of time, Francis has visited Strasbourg (for four hours) and made
separate day trips to Albania and Bosnia (neither of which are members of the
European Union).
Each
time that Francis ventures out to the peripheries he leaves the door to the
Western world open and vulnerable to attack. While this makes him no different
from the other leaders and ruling classes of the European Union, the pope
should know better and should call Europe’s apparatchiks to task for leading
their people like lambs to the slaughter in the name of political correctness
and multiculturalism. Even in 2016, the pope’s words and actions have great
symbolic and actual value throughout the world. A well-strung series of
platitudes released each time the Eiffel Tower is illuminated in a different
tricolor will not temper the enthusiasm with which Francis has echoed Europe’s policy
of placation, accommodation, and capitulation toward Muslim migrants.
Less
than a week after the Inauguration of Pope Francis on March 19, 2013, Magdi
Allam announced that he was leaving the Church in order “to protest its soft
stance against Islam.”[11]
It was not by chance that this act coincided with the election of Francis. “The
‘papolatry’ that has inflamed the euphoria for Francis I and has quickly
archived Benedict XVI was the last straw in an overall framework of uncertainty
and doubts about the Church,” he wrote.[12] It
is always sad to see someone, especially a convert, abandon the Church, but the
fragility of his newly-found faith is understandable, especially with the
shocking election of a pope who has sown nothing but chaos, confusion, and
disorder in his three years as pope.
Walking Home
By
the time the Easter Vigil had ended on that Holy Saturday in 2008, the Roman
metro had closed. This didn’t bother me, and I was happy to walk along the Via
Aurelia back to my hotel on that cool March evening. It gave me plenty of time
to reflect on all that I had experienced during that Holy Week, culminating
with the Easter Vigil and the conversion of a Muslim-born journalist to the
faith of Christ. Six months later I would be in the seminary, enthusiastic and
encouraged by the Papacy of Benedict XVI, confident that it was still possible
for the Church to revivify a weary and insipid Western world.
Eight
years after that Holy Week and, now, three years after my ordination, I wonder
if it would have been as easy for me to recognize my vocation to the priesthood
had Francis been pope during the salad days of my discernment. Fortunately,
this is never something that I need to dwell on for too long. I am convinced
that God gave us Pope Benedict XVI for this reason and for so many more: he not
only shed a light of truth, clarity, and certainty for many young men,
including myself, to follow during our time of discernment, but he also shed
this light on a society which has become anemic and stagnant.
In
His goodness, God gave us seven years of abundance so that we could fortify and
strengthen ourselves in preparation for the years of famine that have followed.
We do not know how long these years of famine will last, but we have been given
strength for the journey. That strength exists in the patrimony that Europe and
the Church have bequeathed to us throughout the centuries. That strength exists
in the Masses that Mozart wrote and Dante’s poetry. It exists in Shakespeare’s
plays and Bruegel’s paintings. It is found from Santiago de Compostela in the
west to the Basilica of San Marco in the east. But most of all, it is found everywhere,
each time the Traditional Mass is offered. It is this Mass that unites us with
all those who have faced many of the same challenges and obstacles that we face
today. It is this Mass that will save and sanctify a dying world; and each time
the Words of Institution are whispered and the Sacred Host is elevated, as the
sanctuary bells are rung and we gaze upon it with the wonder of countless
generations, let us pray and make these ancient words our very own: In hoc signo vinces (In this sign you
will conquer).
[1]
http://www.yenisafak.com/en/life/mohammad-most-popular-name-for-babies-in-london-for-fourth-time-2229871
[2]http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20160106_commento-decreto-lavanda-piedi_en.html
[3] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p2.htm
[4]
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/03/24/world/europe/ap-eu-rel-vatican-holy-thursday.html?_r=0
[5]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/25/children-of-the-same-god-pope-francis-washes-the-feet-of-muslim-migrants/
[6]
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pope-francis-asks-renowned-italian-atheist-eugenio-scalfari-not-convert-catholicism-155453/
; http://time.com/4145056/vactican-catholics-jews-convert/
[7] Ratzinger, Joseph. A Turning Point for Europe?: The
Church in the Modern World: Assessment and Forecast. (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 2010), 178.
[8] Benedict XVI. Light of the World: The Pope, the
Church, and the Signs of the times. Comp. Peter Seewald. Trans. Michael J.
Miller and Adrian J. Walker. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), 98.
[9]
http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/cardinal-ratzinger-on-europe-s-crisis-of-culture.html
[10]
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20070707_lettera-vescovi.html
[11]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/magdi-allam-muslim-convert-leaves-catholic-church_n_2950937.html
[12] Ibid.
