Honoring Alice Von Hildebrand . . . A Review Of Remnant Of Paradise

• 1 year ago

By JAMES MONTI

Remnant of Paradise: Essays by Alice von Hildebrand, with Remembrances by Her Friends. Edited by John Henry Crosby. Steubenville, OH: Hildebrand Project, 2023.

• + + Whenever death claims one of the great minds and great hearts of the Church, we feel a bit more alone in this Vale of Tears, made so by the painful absence of a great hero or heroine of our faith who for many years inspired us by his or her words and actions to hope in Christ. But when such a soul has left behind a tangible legacy in the form of writings, we are given at least the solace of hearing their voice anew in turning to the pages of wisdom they have left us. What likewise brings solace are the precious memories of their words and actions lovingly preserved and recorded by those who had the privilege of having personally known them.
  
  For the very many of us who have felt keenly the loss of Dr. Alice von Hildebrand, who closed her eyes upon this world in January of 2022, the March 2023 publication of an entirely new compilation of her essays entitled Remnant of Paradise, which pairs with her written words the recollections and tributes of so many of her friends, brings precisely this twofold solace of hearing and seeing her again through the medium of the printed page, timed to celebrate the centenary year of her birth.
  
  The range of subject matter presented in this collection has so much to offer. It opens with the subject that held so high a place in the hearts of both Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand — the nobility of marriage. Of particular note in this opening essay is Alice’s beautiful observation regarding the unique marriage of Our Lady and St. Joseph:
  
  “Let me end by daring to contemplate the holiness of the bond uniting them. Wisely, the New Testament says nothing about the tenderness, the ardor, the purity of their love. These are things that only in eternity shall we be worthy to contemplate” (p. 14).
  
  In two essays on womanhood, the first written as a rebuttal to “feminists” and the second as a tribute to the humble womanhood of Mother Angelica, Alice, in discussing the relationship between man and woman, speaks of how when Adam first saw Eve after God had created her, “his response was enchantment” (pp. 16, 48). Married men can recognize in what she is saying here their own personal experience of that moment when they first realized the woman they had been dating was the one they would aspire to marry, feeling very much as Adam did when he first saw the “helper fit for him,” Eve: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:20, 23).
  
  It is the moment which Alice in an interview (also reprinted in this volume) calls “the Tabor vision” in a courtship: “One falls in love with someone when one is granted the privilege of seeing the beauty that God placed in them at the moment of their creation. I call it the ‘Tabor vision’” (p. 102).
  
  Alice’s words about what she thought of her illustrious husband Dietrich eloquently express her passionate admiration for the man she ultimately married. Prior to meeting Dietrich, she explains, “I had never met one who out of love for God, and love for truth and justice, gave up everything in order to fight evil. For the first time in my life, I met a hero” (p. 101). She continues, “. . . a seed was planted in my heart that played a profound role in awakening my love for him. When I first met him, my overwhelming feeling was awe” (p. 102).
  
  Alice’s special vocation throughout her long life was the defense of truth, to fight the satanic lie of moral relativism by affirming the reality of absolute truths. In a 1967 Wanderer essay entitled “Truth: Our Daily Bread,” she observes, “Truth is the bread of the soul . . . ” (p. 42). In this essay, she prophetically addresses the growing threat to truth posed by the secular media. What she said then of the print media is all the more true now with regard to the Internet and social media:
  
  “Slogans concocted by a small minority of intellectuals and disseminated through the press are subsequently accepted and swallowed by the overwhelming majority of men . . . the masses are being indoctrinated and rendered incapable of authentic thought through the scientific slavery exercised by the press” (p. 43).

Loving Reverence

As a philosophy professor who in the classroom had to deal daily with those whose minds had been alienated from the truth, Alice amassed a lifetime of experience in knowing what to say and what not to say in striving to lead souls to the truth. The many conversions to the Catholic faith among her pupils attest to her wisdom in this regard — one of the essays in this collection describes just such a conversion. So, her advice in her 2007 essay “Truth or Charity?” is vital for anyone seeking to do the same:

“He who wishes to help another to see a truth should approach him with loving reverence. . . . There must be a reverent listening into another person’s soul to know the moment when truth should be communicated” (pp. 65-66).

Like her husband Dietrich, Alice von Hildebrand possessed a deep insight in matters of the heart. One of her essays in the collection is devoted entirely to the topic of tears, in which she explains how and why the Church and spiritual authors have spoken of tears arising from holy and proper sentiments as a gift, what she calls “baptized tears,” “tears of grief, of love, of gratitude that, far from removing us from God, bring us closer to Him…tears that water the dry soil of our souls and make it blossom into flowers of tenderness and charity” (pp. 77-78).

In her tribute to Mother Angelica, Alice sums up in just one sentence a fruitful spiritual life: “. . . humility . . . and a heart burning with love can conquer the world” (p. 48).

In May 2005, writing just a month after the passing of Pope St. John Paul II, Alice paid her own personal tribute to the late Pontiff, “a holy knight” as she called him, recounting in detail her private audience with him in 1980. It was during this audience that she asked for a lifting of the prohibition of celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, a request to which Pope John Paul subsequently acceded with the 1984 indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos. Her description of what she experienced as she was speaking to him is particularly moving: “The thing that struck me most was his presence…He was fully there, as if my modest message mattered to him” (p. 87).

In Part II of Remnant of Paradise (pp. 107-169), those who knew and loved Alice von Hildebrand share their cherished memories of this remarkable soul. His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke begins the personal tributes by recalling how Alice “lived daily an intense relationship with Our Lord in the Church” (p. 109). His Eminence also captures the other pervading dimension of her later years — how as a widow she was “always in spiritual communion with her beloved husband” (ibid.).

Everyone who knew Alice experienced firsthand her profound wisdom and stellar intelligence, but what distinguished her brilliance from that of many an academe was that hers was an intelligence “purified by love, the love of God,” as the Italian philosopher Rocco Buttiglione so aptly observes in his tribute to her (p. 110). Buttiglione likewise notes how like her husband “she felt profoundly the mystery of liturgy” (ibid.).

One key aspect of Alice’s beautiful personality that emerges time and again from the personal reminiscences of her is her intense interest in and love for the people who came into her life, the people whom God “placed on her path” as she would put it.

In this regard the observation of the acclaimed author and professor Ronda Chervin that Alice “would always study with love the souls of all her friends” (p. 112) is very much on the mark. As Fr. Paul Scalia puts it so well in his tribute to Alice, when it came to talking with her one-on-one, “It was never a conversation just about things but with people” (p. 131). Alice Ann Grayson, founder of the “Veil of Innocence” apostolate for the promotion of the virtue of purity, offers a particularly insightful observation on how in her final years Alice continued to find happiness through the gift of friendship: “Her joy was being close to her friends and sharing in their lives. She lived through us” (p. 121).

Several of the tributes note Alice’s keen sense of humor and how she would deftly employ it in the service of truth. Ronda Chervin recounts that in answer to students in her classroom who ventured to excuse abortion by saying the unborn child is “just a cell” Alice would respond, “Oh, so if your mother is pregnant, she thinks it might be a dog or cat coming in the future!” (p. 112). This same crucial point is made by Alice in her earlier-cited essay on marriage: “Those who claim that a baby at the very beginning of its existence is just a clump of tissue that only later turns into a human person are talking metaphysical nonsense” (p. 5).

Recounting how very much she learned from being in the company of Alice, Vivian Warren of the Bruderhof community, one of those who provided home health care to Alice in her years of declining health, likewise testifies to her genuine humanity:

“. . . she was at the same time one of the most humble, unassuming persons I have ever met. She struggled with the same fear of death and of standing before the throne of God that all mortals do” (p. 135).

One of the finest tributes to Alice in this collection is from Rabbi Mark Gottlieb, whose reminiscences evince a deep understanding of her convictions and her rich personality. In recounting a talk Alice delivered on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday, Rabbi Gottlieb quotes one of her classic one-liners on the need for gratitude: “Any day that is without ‘thank you’ is lost” (p. 150).

The greatest tribute of all is provided by Fr. Gerald Murray in the text of his homily for the Requiem Mass of Alice, printed in its entirety (pp. 137-144).

The published books and recorded television appearances of Dr. Alice von Hildebrand will continue to convey her teachings and wisdom to future generations of Catholics. But as for that second great dimension of her gift to the Church, the witness of her life, this new volume that sets her words in the context of intimate memories of her goes a long way toward ensuring that her gift of herself to all who knew her will likewise be imparted to future generations.