By ALICE von HILDEBRAND
One of the most frequently quoted lines in Dante’s Divine Comedy is Francesca da Rimini’s utterance: “Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella misera” (Inferno, canto V).
There is no worse suffering than to recall happy times while living in misery.
These words come to my mind when I compare the present religious and moral “climate” of my home country, Belgium, with the one I was privileged to be born in and lived in as a teenager. How is one to explain that a country so deeply rooted in Catholic culture and tradition has now uprooted these sacred plants, and endorsed laws that trample upon the most elementary dictates of the natural moral law?
Not only can Belgium now compete with its “Protestant” neighboring country, Holland — well known for its secularism — but even trumps it by passing a law allowing terminally ill children to request euthanasia.
The wake of Vatican II — a council that was promptly hijacked by the news media and presented to somnolent believers as a “new spring” — saw many going from faith to apostasy. This costs neither effort nor struggle; all that is needed is to yield to the spiritual law of gravity of our fallen nature.
Deeply concerned about the “changes” that were taking place in rapid succession, a friend said to my husband, the late Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand: “I am afraid we are going back to paganism.” His speedy answer was: “No, we cannot go back to paganism; we have opted for apostasy.” He was right.
There is an abyss of difference between people struggling to leave the dark den of ignorance and prejudice, and those who having received the light of Revelation freely choose to extinguish it. We should wake up, and humbly acknowledge that we desperately need divine help, and then, through prayer and suffering, struggle back toward the light of Truth.
No one can “ascend the holy mount” without divine help, and, moreover, the willingness of not only carrying one’s cross, but even kissing it. This is unpalatable to a generation raised in a “brave new world,” where the words “sacrifice,” “penance,” and “suffering” have been not only eliminated but even been ostracized from the “religious” vocabulary.
A couple of remarks about paganism might be useful. When claiming that we have fallen back into paganism, my husband’s friend clearly referred to a world of immorality, brutality, cruelty . . . a world which “God regretted He has created” (Gen. 6:5).
But we must beware of hasty statements: True as it is that — deprived of the light of Revelation — pagans were groping in shadows, true as it is that original sin has darkened man’s vision of moral good and evil, acquaintance with the works of Plato warns us not to conclude that there were no flickers of light in the pagan world.
For this passionate lover of wisdom left us some admirable words such as “I want nothing but the truth” (Euthyphro — an insight which Plato inherited from Socrates), and the claim that anyone who frees us from error “should be called our benefactor” (Gorgias). Plato explicitly condemned sexual perversions as being contra naturam (The Laws, book VIII); he urges us to aim at pleasing God (or the gods).
I have reason to fear that this noble pagan would not be welcome in our “advanced universities” where many “famous” professors reject the very foundation of the natural moral law as redolent of the “Dark Ages,” failing to make a distinction between “blindness” caused because there is no light, and “blindness” because we are blinded by the sun. In both cases one “does not see” but for opposite reasons. Contemporary universities are faithful disciples of Hegel, Feuerbach, Darwin, Nietzsche, Dewey, Sartre, and purposely ignore or even reject the rich heritage that Greek wisdom has left us.
How has this happened? How could this happen?
I was blessed with a truly Catholic education. That is, from the time when at age five I entered grammar school until I received my doctorate 21 years later, I was privileged to go to the best Catholic schools — the Canonesses of St. Augustine in Brussels, then the Madames of the Sacred Heart in New York. And I completed my studies at Fordham University at a time when the Jesuits were still faithful disciples of their great founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola.
From the first grade until I graduated from high school, the curriculum required that every single day our schooling should begin with one hour of religious teaching: the catechism and biblical studies. Moreover, we attended school every single day of the week, including Saturday until 4 p.m., and our summer vacation was much shorter than it is in the USA, not starting before July 15.
That meant that a European child, graduating from high school, had a religious and intellectual formation matching or even upping the one of an American student in his junior year in college. I still have my high school religious textbook — small print, 448 pages long, and I knew it. My very pious father did not show any special interest in my grades, except the one in catechism.
He taught me that it was not one topic among many others, but the only one related to what matters most: to serve God in this life and glorify Him forever in the next. To be taught to strive for holiness, with God’s help, is not just one branch of knowledge; it is one that transcends all others in importance and value.
The Lives Of The Saints
As soon as I could read, I satisfied my passion for books: In grammar school, I started reading the lives of saints, often the one of saintly children such as Guy de Fontgalland, who, shortly before his death, said to his mother: “Maman, I have never said No to Jesus.” Anne de Guigne matched him.
Then I read the life of St. Francis of Assisi. When I graduated from high school, I was well acquainted with the lives of some of the most popular saints: St. Clare; St. Teresa of Avila; St. Francis de Sales; St. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal; le Curé of Ars; Dom Bosco, and St. Therese of Lisieux.
They were the role models offered to us children. How often today are they replaced by movie actors and actresses — a sad substitute indeed!
I “knew” my faith, while realizing that intellectual information — while crucial — was only a first step. Faith was not only to be known; it was to be lived. I was made aware of “holy tools,” that is, indispensable helps to reach a goal unattainable to sinful man without them.
Today very many Catholic children graduating from so-called Catholic schools are abysmally ignorant of their faith. Maybe it can be explained by the treason, not of the clergy, but of the nuns — who for centuries could pride themselves on being superb traditional educators of Catholic youth, both boys and girls.
Art And Culture
Not only was I blessed with a truly Catholic education, but lived in a blossoming of a Catholic culture.
One of my most radiant memories of my youth in Belgium was the Corpus Christi processions which took place in most cities on this glorious feast day. Not only were all windows decorated with flowers, but the Divine Host was carried under a baldachin of rich silk. The streets were strewn with flowers and little children with radiant faces were throwing petals of rose in the direction of the Blessed Sacrament.
Particularly moving was the fact that when the Holy Sacrament passed, men, women, and children knelt on the ground in silent adoration.
I did not and could not realize as a child, what a blessing it was to live in country so powerfully marked by its tradition and beauty — a culture that is the fruit of God’s authentic Revelation. Brussels, where I was born and raised, was blessed with an abundance of beautiful churches where, at any time of the day, people were to be found kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament. These sacred places were enriched with magnificent paintings all of which “taught” me my faith.
How can I be grateful enough that from a very young age, I became acquainted with very many masterpieces of art picturing great biblical scenes! How I wish I could convince educators of the key importance of visual education: Beauty communicates a message of crucial value for human beings made up of body and soul.
Educators should make a point, while teaching the faith, of showing children reproductions of beautiful paintings. We could thus wage an “image war” and counter the smut of pornography by exposing the child to authentic artistic beauty. For, as Plato said: “At the sight of beauty wings grow on the human soul” (Phaedrus). One acquainted with true beauty will then instinctively reject “works of art” painted by “friends” of the Devil.
A Great Psychologist
I recall my husband’s grief when, in the wake of Vatican II, many “up-to-date” catechisms invaded Catholic schools, with illustrations that were so ugly that it made it impossible for a child to accept someone so unattractive as the Son of the Living God, not to mention the monstrous cartoons shown on television to teach these little ones their faith. The Devil is a great psychologist, and is an expert at knowing how to trick people into accepting whatever undermines or weakens divine teaching.
Equally important is Church music. Once again, how right Plato was when, in book IV of the Republic, he warned us that moral decadence begins with music. Great music is a gift of God, reminding us that the divine message is communicated through our ears. It is my firm, unshakable conviction that the Gregorian Chant — in its sublimity, in its rhythm — was and remains a powerful call to adoration and recollection. This chant, which seems to be inspired by angels, was — to my mind — purposely rejected as Church music and replaced by “modern music” which, in the best of cases, is dull and soulless.
Our archenemy knows that our fallen nature hates effort. One easy tool that he uses is to make us fall asleep. It is striking that in the Rule of St. Benedict, the monks receive a “wake-up call” seven times a day: When the bell rings, they are commanded to leave immediately whatever they are doing, “dropping the work they were engaged on and leaving it unfinished” (Holy Rule, chapter V), to go to the chapel and sing God’s praises.
This wake-up call is addressed to monks who entered a monastery with the firm intention of dedicating their lives to praising God and aiming at holiness. If they need seven calls a day to “wake up,” what should be said of us?
How heartrending it is to read that in Gethsemane when that Christ was agonizing, His three favored disciples were sound asleep!
Once again, it was a tradition in many Catholic countries that various wakeup calls were given throughout the day: crucifixes in every classroom (where are they today?), little chapels in the woods and along country roads, chimes calling us to pray the angelus — with always the same aim: Wake up from your sleep.
No trace of such holy practices is left today. We live in a society steeped in noise (a great obstacle to recollection) and constant distractions (let us think of the rapid succession of images on television, preventing any kind of recollection), inviting us to spend our money on things which are totally unnecessary and will soon be discarded.
Are we aware that we find ourselves in a battlefield where a single moment of drowsiness can cost us our “life”? Alas, the enemy never sleeps, as Sancho Panza wisely said, but we do. Sleepiness, like a subtle poison, prevents us from being aware of the dangers constantly threatening us. Noise makes us deaf to God’s gentle voice calling us to follow Him.
The “Nice Guy”
One fairly safe index of the moral state of any society is whether or not it is reverent toward things that are sacred. If this standard is applied to our contemporary society, it is bound to get failing grades.
Let us just mention the way people dress when going to church on Sundays: During the summer, very many of the parishioners come in beach attire, and throughout the year, “come are you are” is the norm. Do they realize that Christ is physically present in the Blessed Sacrament? Would they come in sloppy clothing if they were invited to the White House? Something which I personally would not consider a great honor!
In my youth, no one was permitted to enter this holy place when not properly dressed. Today, it enters the minds of very few homilists to mention this fact to their parishioners. It would “make them unpopular.” The attitude seems to be: “Should not God’s children feel ‘comfortable’ in their father’s house?”
Just as distressing is the shocking lack of reverence shown by some preachers in their homilies. To my grief and sorrow, I once heard a priest refer to God as “the nice guy upstairs.” That this is possible should make the angels cry — they who are prostrated in front of the divine throne uttering the words: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.
Had I remonstrated with that priest, he no doubt would have told me that he knew from experience that youth are alienated by the traditional images of God and that they want to hear something more informal and familiar.
Modern youth is fed on lying slogans coined by one of Screwtape’s disciples, such as “freedom of choice.”
We live in “dark ages.” But there is no reason to despair. We have the blessed words of our Savior telling us that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church.”
But one thing is certain: Let us wake up from our lethargy, and with God’s help and the loving support of His Mother, we will achieve victory.
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