Fr. Aaron Pidel, SJ discusses with Larry Chapp his article: "Is Our Church Analogically Balanced?"

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:02]Hi everyone and welcome again to another episode of gaudy mitzv22.com podbean podcast and YouTube video. I am your intrepid uh podcaster Dr. Larry Chap for those who don't know and I am joined today by a very special guest uh father Aaron Pidell who is a Jesuit who teaches at the Pontipical Gregorian University in Rome and uh I'm very happy to have him on the show today. So welcome to the show.

[00:00:33]>> Yeah, thanks so much for having me Larry. Pleasure.

[00:00:36]>> Yeah, absolutely. And Father Pidell is also one of the main editors of a journal that I uh love put out by Word on Fire called the New Ray Source Mont right here. There's what it looks like.

[00:00:49]Uh he is the one of the main editors with Jonathan Soralo I do believe. Is Jonathan Sarallo now at Catholic University? Is that where he is?

[00:00:58]>> He is at Catholic University. Yep.

[00:01:00]>> Yeah. I knew him when he he was out at St. Minrads and uh gave a talk out at St. mine rads a couple years ago and he was still there. Great guy, wonderful guy. But anyway, yes, the new resource mont put out by Ward on fire. I highly encourage everyone to subscribe to it even though I am on the editorial board of Kimunio International Catholic Review. I I I wholeheartedly endorse getting both subscriptions, one to Kimunio and one to the new resource month. And actually I say that a bit tongue and cheek but uh the the journals are very complimentary with one another.

[00:01:36]The they do different things with regard to uh whatever you want to call this theology race source mont communio theology whatever you want to call it.

[00:01:46]But we're here today to discuss a very interesting article that came out in the winter 2024 issue of the new resource month by Father Pidell called Isur Analogically Balanced.

[00:02:01]And uh the article leans heavily on the ecclesiology philosophical analysis of ecclesiologies from the Polish philosopher Eric Shiovara uh whose pronunciation I hope we're getting right. Uh and it leans heavily too on a book a great book if I could ever get him on a podcast. John Bats wrote a great book on on you know the logos and creation and Christologology.

[00:02:31]The what was the exact name of the book?

[00:02:32]It's been couple years since I read it now. Um but I >> the logos of creation or >> yes Christ the logos of creation. If you have any influence on John Bett's father to go on podcast I I have twisted his arm. He's such a sweet guy, brilliant guy, but he swears that he's terrible at podcasts and somehow I doubt that. At any rate, I'd love to get him on the show, but you mentioned his book in your article as well. So, what are we what are we talking about here when we say is our church analogically uh analogically balanced? Let's just sort of get into it right from the head.

[00:03:09]>> Okay. Get down to the bottom. Yeah.

[00:03:10]Yeah. Well, I should say that the um the article actually appeared in uh in some ways as a response to that very book um because it was a symposium and so this was but for a lot of our symposia we try to do something a little bit complimentary. So it's not a book review. It's sort of taking >> uh points of departure stimulating aspects of a book and then developing them maybe in a a somewhat different direction. And so I'd actually written my dissertation on Eric Shavara under John Betts. And uh and so I know of course his thoughts about Shiovara very well and was very happy to to read his book. But this was the this was kind of a way of taking a few points from his book and then weaving it into my interest which is more his his ecclesiology because this other book is more obviously focused on his trinitarian theology and his christologology. Um but to get back you know this idea of um uh that or with which shavara is most readily associated is this idea of analogy the analogy of being and it often goes under the under the Latin tag the analogia entice and if I could uh put it you know sort of in a nutshell um the the analogentis is a kind of it's a theory of the proportional ality between creation and the creator.

[00:04:31]And uh so in other words uh the fact that God is infinite doesn't make everything finite insignificant but in point fact um the created world um has a kind of ultimate meaningfulness and the the efforts that we make as humans count for something even if they don't count for everything and uh and so forth. And then as a as a maybe a further aspect of that uh the analogentis is also for that reason a theory of kind of polarity. So so only god is perfectly simple. Only god exists beyond tensions where his whole being and every aspect of it is is kind of exists in this boundless way.

[00:05:14]You know his uh his intellect is not different from his will. You know his essence is not different from his ex existence. These sort of things. Whereas in the creaturely realm, the thing that uh both makes us similar and dissimilar uh to God is that we exist in these kind of tensions, these polarities. And so whereas God is the identity of essence and existence, we're kind of the uh the unity of essence and existence where these two things exist together. We're kind of a whatness and also a thatness and and so forth. And so uh and so for him this is the thing that um the basic structure if you want to say of analogy so that we're both like and unlike God in this vertical dimension because um because we have these kind of real distinctions in the horizontal dimension um and that that makes us uh preacher I suppose.

[00:06:07]>> Yeah. Um and for the listeners uh who like to tune in to my podcast to get a little bit of theological background such as it might be. I mean Shiovara was writing you know in his heyday in the sort of middle part of the 20th century and what some of the listeners might not be aware of is that the concept of the analogy of being had become somewhat controversial in late night you sort of it sort of begins with with Hegel uh and and then moves through H highagger uh and of course then in its Christian iteration if one presumes Hegel is not a Christian and I presume that sorry I don't know what Serlo Regan might make of that but uh but Carl Bart of course famously said you know the analogy of being is like the invention of the antichrist or words to that effect and a lot of Catholic theologians like Hansor von Baltazar very influenced by Shivara uh you know he was a friend of Carl Barts and uh dialogued with him and so forth uh and so there was a concerted effort to in a sense redraw, relitigate, revisit, repristenate, whatever you want to call it, the the doctrine of the analogy of being that that there is both similarity and dissimilarity between creature and God.

[00:07:32]Uh the creatures and God and so that that's kind of the background that Shavara is writing in. And of course, it has implications for some of the other great theological debates that were raging at that time. the exact relationship between nature and grace for example which then the relationship between the the civil political sphere and the sacral ecclesial sphere integralism all that kind of thing so there there's a lot of in other words if people are listening going why do I care about the analogy of being and this obscure Polish dude Eric Shiovara this is why because it cuts right to the very heart of of so much of of what Catholic theology wants. So, sorry for that little mini discurses. Uh but then you you you in your article you start talking about how this concept then applies ecclesiologically.

[00:08:27]You know what does this mean in terms of specifically the the the Catholic understanding of doctrine, doctrinal development, its relationship with other other truths known by reason and so and and various polarities in the church. So maybe we could you talk about primal words and language and all was there's so there's so much backed like 20 pages I hardly even know. I'm rarely at a loss to try and figure out how to approach something. So, I'm going to let you do it.

[00:09:00]>> Okay. Well, I mean, maybe to pick up on this idea of polarity, you know, for um for Shabbara, you know, in many ways, you could to borrow a phrase from Augustine who was a great influence on Shabara. um you know the church is uh creation reconciled and u and so for him you know this what seems to be this philosophical structure of of creaturliness underneath God and that um ends up becoming if you want to say kind of like the substructure for the church and so and so when God comes to reconcile creation through the church through Christ's headship and so forth it's not going to reverse or obliterate these polar structures is going to preserve, elevate, perfect them and so forth. And so, and so what he really does in a so Eric Schwar was also a Jesuit. And so part of what he does is he tries to use these polarities as they get elevated and and reconciled in the church um as a way of as a kind of ecclesial discernment. How do we tell whether or not the church is um is balanced, you know, is is kind of giving the right emphasis to each of these polarities and so forth. Um and you know, and he kind of distinguishes a couple aspects of that. Of course, he thinks that like every good Catholic, you know, the um the Catholic Church is indeible. So, it's never at its ultimate level going to lose this balance. But he thinks that even if objectively it maintains it, there's this kind of other existential level in which maybe it can give too much emphasis to one side of things versus another side of things and in that sense can become less effective, less um um yeah less fit for mission if you want to put it that way. And so this is his concern. So he kind of uses this basic structure of ecclesial analogy of of this balance between things to try to to look to sort of read the signs of the times if you want to put it that way.

[00:10:58]all the different currents that are going on in the church before the second Vatican council between the two world wars and try to identify the extent to which these different movements competing for attention you know the lurggical movement the biblical movement you know the movements of mystical theology the race source mont all this uh stuff neotomism to what extent are these movements um balanced and to what extent are they likely to improve the balance of the church if they um if they point of fact succeed in estab establishing themselves um as a kind of dominant voice um and so forth. And so that's that's kind of what he's up to.

[00:11:35]Um he has he has one article um is an interesting figure because he's he's usually seen as being kind of an anti- neoscolastic figure in some ways.

[00:11:48]But um and and I would say that's true to this extent that he was not favorable to what he he called a kind of exclusive toism. So he didn't want a toistic monoculture in the church. But unlike a lot of other people who you know are often grouped in among the race horse figures, he was not opposed to scholasticism per se. But he just thought that if we're going to have scholasticism, we ought to have a lot of schools of scholasticism. We ought to have scotism. We ought to have squeanism. We ought to have neo Austinianism. We ought to have because uh he just felt like the the majesty of God was such that no particular school was ever going to be able to capture everything needful to say about him. And so therefore only in a kind of mutually correcting interplay of schools were we ever likely to have um a 360 view of the mystery of God.

[00:12:38]>> And um so anyway, that was his uh that was sort of his his view of things. Um and uh but but interesting enough when he when we get to the period right before the council so you know when John the 23rd has already called the council uh I think he did that in 1959 but the but the council has not yet met they're still in the preparatory sessions he gives a series of radio addresses in which he talks about the perennial tensions of the church that have to be um addressed and that have to be maintained and he doesn't present these just as tensions in the sense that you kind of give equal weight to both. But he thinks that at least in certain tensions um there's a kind of objective accent on one side or the other. And so within these there's a kind of uh yeah a relative above, if you want to put it that way, that foreshadows the absolute above that God is.

[00:13:34]>> Yes.

[00:13:35]>> Yeah. And so so that's it's this idea of what I call pitched polarity like a somewhat tilted or kind of cocked polarity is kind of his idea of what of what creaturely uh being looks like.

[00:13:47]Yeah. A lot of it has you go back to to his foundational doctrine of analogy of being as it as it applies creature to creator. And one of the goals of of any proper doctrine of the analogy of being is to so cast uh the relationship between God and us in a non-competitive way that there are going to be tensions primarily grounded in our epistemological limitations and due to sinfulness. Uh there's going to be tensions in the God world relation. But ultimately the analogy of being wants to ground the nature of the infinite the nature of the transcendent is that which grounds the finite makes the finite even possible and therefore is non-competitive. So as I was reading your article and you were laying out the various analogical polarities within the church what kept striking me was that Shiovara was trying to show how these things exist in tension with one another but not competitively.

[00:14:51]uh competitive competition would come in, ego, epistemological limitations, careers clashing. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of conflict, but not as such, not per se. There should be no real conflict, competitive conflict embedded in those things. And so you're right, his his his his goal is to in a sense nuance it in such a way that he can draw out how doctrines can in fact evolve over time as the church becomes aware that maybe it has placed the accent slightly wrong as it's negotiating these polarities. Maybe it places the accent slightly wrong. So you bring up and I'll shut up and let you talk. you are the guest. But you bring up for example in the Petristic era, one of the accents of course was the admirum, the you know put out by the council of Ephesus, the communication of idioms.

[00:15:50]What you can say of divinity of Christ, you can say of his humanity and vice versa and so forth. And that became the kind of the bellcow of Petristic Petristic theology that that then then gets kind of replaced in the medieval era by a concept of order.

[00:16:05]>> Uh the ordering of the cosmos which then adds a level of precision. Now those two things are going to exist in tension with one another >> and they lead to and that's just one example that I bring up from your article but maybe you could unpack that a little bit more and then talk about some others.

[00:16:22]>> Yeah, sure. you know that that part comes up um with another pair of concepts that Shiovar likes to use where he talks about how there are certain primordial words in revelation.

[00:16:32]>> Yeah.

[00:16:33]>> And he's in and these what he means by these are kind of like organizing words or organizing images you know that um >> um that can be used in a certain sense to to kind of think through the whole mystery. Um but he makes a distinction even within that idea. He says there are certain kind of materially primal words and he says there are formally primal words and the materially primal words have most to do with the level of abstraction you know. So for instance um um something like the admiritium the image is taken from the world of of economy trade you know it's this idea there's this wonderful exchange and so forth you know which is in some ways a kind of a concrete image it's also a kind of order the economy is a kind of order and and so is the so is uh the way in which we establish the price of exchange for something but a little more accessible whereas um when you kind of move to uh what he calls the the order of the universe when you start to get the tomistic worldview and you start thinking not so much in terms of like monetary economies but this more abstract idea of orders and and so forth and this this in this this causal interplay between um I don't know different uh the typical aristian causes you know formal and final and effect uh efficient he thinks that that you can gain some precision that way because you can get you can now bring a whole bunch of different causes to play which allows you to have more nuanced ways of relating stuff, but you also lose in that process some of the immediacy, some of the accessibility, some of the concretness of something like a commercial. Um, and so so he thinks so he thinks you can move from these more concrete to more abstract images um without doing a lot of harm.

[00:18:17]And I think he thinks that's just kind of a pastoral call, you know, to what how much abstraction can we handle and what kind of what kind of concreteness do we need in order to effectively proclaim the gospel. Um but then there's this other kind of of uh difference like change of images which he calls these formally primordial terms and he thinks these kind of terms are more like terms that they kind of set accents like depending which one you choose. Uh they they tend to put certain values in the foreground and other values in the background. So it's not just a matter of of concrete abstract but it's more a matter of uh of of different valuations you know. Yeah. And um and so he thinks that there when you start changing those then then you can at least risk the possibility of of kind of existentially changing the accents within the church in such a way that maybe it won't be helpful or maybe they won't match with what he thinks are the objective accents. He thinks he thinks there are certain things that always ought to be emphasized more than their counterpart and so forth. And so uh but he gives a few examples of these you know he gives u let me think if I can remember some of them uh but for instance for the for the um the protestants um I think he says oh maybe again like for the uh the orthodox um which one does he use for that trying to remember now uh >> m something with mysterion or >> oh that's right it was mysterion yeah so this idea of the immediate presence of Christ and the mystery Um yeah and for the uh oh and for the it was it was the charurrima this idea of >> oh the charurrima that's right the charisma such the focus on the word and the proclamation of the word and then the orthodox are mysterion images and then I think you >> and then the Catholics are the honom the the economy >> right yeah for Catholics he thinks that's this idea of the uh yeah of the economy the kind the domestic ordering of the house of God, you know, where you have the kind of an authoritative rule coming from the the master of the house as it were, but then also a sense that uh that within that uh under that domestic rule, there's also a place for the the laborious activity of all the people find themselves in the household.

[00:20:39]And so there's a way in which our efforts are validated and and count for something according to this analogical schema. And so there's a sense of authority, this sense of order, but also a sense of agency. Um, and I think he thinks that's the the kind a key word, but that puts certain things in the foreground. It puts maybe action in the foreground and and u and things of this nature. Uh, puts maybe um a descending authority from above, descending from the master of the house as opposed to let's say a kind of a popular authority surging from below. Um so these are the kind of accents that he thinks a word like that sets. Um and he thinks that more or less these are the right accents and these are the Catholic accents. But he thinks that you start moving to other images then you might somehow invert those accents and the u and the the existential accents won't will no longer match the objective accents.

[00:21:33]>> Yeah. Yeah. And and it's in the interplay of those two things that the church kind of moves forward, lurches forward, jerks forward, goes sideways, goes backwards, goes forward. It does remind me and you make mention of uh Pope Benedict's I think it was his Christmas address to the Kira uh I can't remember the year uh where he he he laid out his hermeneutic with regard to Vatican 2 as essentially everyone says that Benedict was you know oh he was a hermeneutic of continuity and yet he called it a hermeneutic of reform in the sense that there were discontinuities >> that Vatican 2 introduced which were kind of minor course corrections I think of the kind that Shiovara is hinting at here on that existential level right >> yeah he calls it a combination of continuity and and sort of reform at different levels >> and so obviously he's going to hold this idea that at the level of doctrinal substance there's continuity but that maybe at these other levels of which which of these kind of perennial values that the church has to balance which one stands in the foreground which one stands the background which you know those perhaps those accents have changed and there's a a discontinuity or at least a reform at that level. And so I think this is one of the interesting features of Shivar is that he gives us um a different level to reflect on um in terms of continuity and discontinuity.

[00:23:01]So it's not just the the continuity of doctrine. It's not just discipline, you know, as we might say it that way, but but it's this other this kind of in between level which has to do with u with what are the what are the values?

[00:23:16]What are the um um yeah, I suppose the uh um yeah, let's say the poles of the church's existence >> um that that you know have uh that capture the imagination I would say of the church in a given era. So yeah, your claim in your article here in dealing with all of these you know primal primal words uh you know formal uh formal words, material words, all kinds of different words uh and and their interplay with one another uh difference between Protestants, Orthodox, Catholic, and so forth. At the end of the day, what what comes out really loud and clear in this article, which is just what really gripped me were like the last 10 pages in particular seemed like the first 10 pages or so were really setting up the fast pitch over the plate which was the last 10 pages which had to do with Vatican 2 and and your claim that Shivara was actually kind of preient uh with regard to certain things that he predicted might happen with regard to the council. And there's resonances too as you point out with Charles Taylor's uh analysis of language and the importance of language and changing language uh that it's I mean they're they're crept in in the minds and a very simplistic level of a lot of people at the time and I wonder sometimes if even John the 23rd thought this way that you could make this sharp distinction between the truth of a doctrine and the words that express it and yeah the words are just adornments and window dressing We can change the words to match the needs of modern man without touching the substance of the doctrine. But of course that's kind of hermeneutically linguistically naive because meanings are embedded in words. Words are what carry forward the tradition of the various meanings. You alter the words in order perhaps on an existential level to move the church in a pastoral this. you're running the risk of really perhaps kind of destroying a linguistic world embedded in various meanings that destabilizes things.

[00:25:35]>> Yeah. The to pick up that phrase from Charles Taylor, he talks about how language establishes footings, you know, by footings he means, you know, different uh different ways of relating to authority, different kind of social, you know, connection. So of course I'm very aware of this where I live now in Rome because you know they have you know formal and informal forms of address all these different things and and all these these usages which are even more differentiated here than in in the US they kind of establish you know relationships of respect and deference you know subordination and and superordination and things along these lines and when you begin to change those that then in effect you're sort of challenging a social order you by by changing those languages. This is he gives the example of uh of ancient Greece, you know, where where when the Athenians were trying to establish democracy um they did it through contesting words and uh and so uh for instance, they invented some new words that introducing them into vocabulary.

[00:26:35]So he talks about the isonomia, the the equality of right becomes this new word that's invented to express a certain ideal. But even old words that had been um perfectly neutral or acceptable like like the word uh tyrant for a leader, the tyrannos um was up until a certain point simply the word for the the guy in charge. But then when these democratic ideals swept Athens, all of a sudden it became a slur. It became a symbol for everything that was illegitimate about authority and so forth. And so by shifting words and and by introducing new words you actually introduce new footings into a society and and a new ideal for how people are to relate to each other. Um and I think Shiovara in his own way thinks that with these uh formally primordial terms in other words the way these terms set accents this is what he means is that the terms that you use also create footings um footings in our relationship you know within within the church between ourselves and God um all these different things and so therefore a change of a change of certain let's say organizing images can also be a way of reorganizing our footing in a way that's u maybe less helpful was his was his concern that if a certain way reorganized images can prevail then maybe we would have a weakened church.

[00:27:58]So >> yeah uh you you reference in the article uh John Ali's famous analysis of the second Vatican council. I I like John Ali's book uh on the council. I have some sharp disagreements with elements of it. And I don't I suspect that our theological leanings might be slightly different. Uh I kind of have a similar relationship with with Joe Kamanchek. He and I don't see eye to eye in a lot of things, but Joe's a very very smart guy who had his finger on so many aspects of the council. But anyway, uh John Ali, as you point out, uh refers to the Second Vatican Council as a language event.

[00:28:41]And that then opens up that whole hermeneutic of well do we pay attention to the actual documents so that you point out those are the substantialists or something we we believe that the council has theological substance and that's what we're going to pay attention to. Others say no, what's really important is the changed tone of the council, the changed words, >> uh that it creates an event that starts a process, a change in tonality. So maybe you and and and Shiovara probably had a foot in sort of both of those camps, but anyway, go ahead.

[00:29:23]>> Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right.

[00:29:25]I think um so you know at least for a lot of my you know when I was a little bit more um I don't know fervently interest in some of these issues I remember it seemed like those were the only two camps out there you either had kind of the substant of this you know those who just kind of said what's the kind of propositional content of the council let's let's compare the propositional content that came before look it all matches up nothing contradicts nothing to see here >> and then um and then you kind of had the the what I called the uh yeah the the more stylistic uh or I think I called them the adventists in the article the ones who who focus on the idea of the event as a language event but folks in this idea that that you know it's not just u what you know the propositions that can be affirmed but it's actually these these larger issues of how they're getting affirmed what kind of language is being used to affirm what kind of language is not being used anymore and how these are are I Mal even uses the word of a of an existential transition.

[00:30:28]They they mark an existential transition coded in language to say that you know maybe at some point um I don't know the um the value of of proclamation was the undoubted you know king of the values in terms of the the church's uh rhetoric odd extra but now that's going to take a somewhat backseat and now dialogue is going to stay in the foreground so that the church is not a proclaiming institution. We're probably we do that.

[00:30:54]We do that still. We don't deny that we do that. But in the foreground is we're a dialoguing institution, you know, and we're and now it's a two-way. So by by changing this kind of languages, you sort of change your footings towards the world as it were. Um and that and that this can be ushered in in this way. And so so the only two options that really out there were kind of Ali where it was style is the only thing that's important and then the other people you know substance is the only thing that's important. I think Shavar would say both.

[00:31:22]But I think what he would um where he would diff he would agree with Omali that the style is important. But I think his difference would be this that Ali thought that the change in style was an unmixed blessing. Like there was you know everything about the change of style was good all benefits no costs.

[00:31:39]Whereas I think Shiovara would say that there were costs and benefits and that maybe even the costs outweigh the benefits. Um and so and so he he's has a somewhat different uh take on these things. They both agree that the language event is a key aspect of the council, but they agree on the evaluation of of how and this is of course Shiovar's perspective evaluation because he's writing the scene before the council happens. But he sees he sees that there's a different set of images for the church and a different set of accents for the church that are being proposed by these renewal movements, the lurgical movement, you know, resource mo movement even and so forth. And he he says that these are contesting the old accents which he kind of sums up in the in the term uh culture comp Catholicism.

[00:32:26]This kind of militant uh much more embattled you know we uh we we're kind of on guard against the world and and our intent is to conquer it. um you know that sort of mentality >> very dialectical relationship >> very yeah much more >> certainly much more cautious um and much more whereas yeah the dialogical is obviously much more open you know we can learn from each other uh this sort of thing and so but he but his >> uh worry in all this was that um was that that new set of accents was going to uh leave the church less effective for mission so >> yeah and you you have some mild criticisms actually of the Rayource Mont theologians uh in this article uh Dubach and others who uh espoused an approach to the modern world that was sort of not so many anthmas not so much confrontation not so much of fortress Catholicism >> going out to tilt at the windmill of modern secularity but more of of of an you know so you you you come across in the case of Dubach say modern secular humanism. The answer isn't to condemn it. The answer is to simply produce a better and deeper humanism of our own that you then toss out there for dialogue with that with those secular humanists.

[00:33:50]>> Exactly.

[00:33:51]>> And and you're saying that's probably a bit naive.

[00:33:56]>> Yeah. I think at least I'm presenting that was Shiovara's view. I think and I think when one looks at the aftermath and I think there's a lot of u a lot of evidence to suggest that Shiovar was was kind of pressing about this that um there there's one particular image you know that I think of you know Shivar uses this image of culture culture comp Catholicis kind of the German Jesuit attitude towards the world before the council lived in a very embattled uh Germany >> but uh but but he mentioned just as or he doesn't mention this but I mentioned just as one example of the kind of linguistic deb debates that happened at the council um was the was the debate over the term the church militant >> you know which of course had been I mean you can obviously find traces of it in scripture and even in Augustine and so forth but the um but it it didn't become let's say the standard term for the church in via you know the the church on earth >> pilgrim church >> yeah until you know the middle ages early middle ages it starts to appear and then it becomes standard for a millennium really until um but Then but then you know they wanted to uh let's say have an image that seemed less embattled uh and and so not only did they add other terms which is you know fine but they in a certain sense suppressed the term. So it went from being a term in use for a thousand years to a term that couldn't even be spoken um at the council and uh and there were even and there were especially bishops from embattled countries like behind the iron curtain uh these communist countries who were saying we need the term militant church because um because this is the reality we live for one thing and then number two um I fear that if we just kind of suppress this term overnight that one of the bishops even uses the term I fear that a psychological disarmament might follow.

[00:35:46]In other words, the the sort of vigilance, the idea that uh maybe the world could be a false prophet and maybe that its values could be seductive and could corrupt a Catholic view of the world. These sort of things that general cautious vigilant sense of the church towards the world could disappear quickly. And if that happens, then maybe we will be unable to actually make our worldview prevail. Maybe the maybe the world need better evangelizing us than we will the world. Um, and he uh and they listened to him and they said, "Yeah, we understand where you're coming from, but you know, that's that's not in keeping with the pastoral goals of the council that good Pope John the 23rd has set out." And so they just suppress the term. Um but these kind of these kind of shifts and you know I was pointing out that a lot of the uh you know Kongar dubac others were certainly in favor of at least these kind of shifts. They wanted um something that seemed to to savor less of the atmosphere of combat.

[00:36:48]a church that seemed mystical and and like you said had this this deeper more religious humanism that maybe would be attractive enough um but that didn't um didn't focus in certain traditional motivations like fear uh combat uh you know sin you know these sort of things you know to kind of present the positive and Shabbar thought you kind of have to have a battle on both fronts you certainly need to have the positive and he was always trying to find the positive even in even in atheist thinkers, even in Hegel, even in Kant, even in Nietz.

[00:37:24]>> But he also thought that um uh yeah that that fear and love always had to go together. You know, as Newman would say, always love, always fear.

[00:37:33]>> And that to to lose one of them in front of the other was going to leave the church.

[00:37:38]>> Um yeah, less u less less fit less fit for mission.

[00:37:43]This is not in your article and Javar does not bring it up, but as I was reading this, I I couldn't help but think of a lot of modern young men in the church today who are drawn to, I guess, what we would call traditionalism, Cathol, and they're drawn to those kinds of images of the church, militant, the chivalous church, the that and it it has long been my I was in seminary for many many years, late 70s through the 80s, diosis in seminary and one of the things that did strike me about the postvatican 2 church was that it was oh what's the word it was a feminized church it had lost its masculine verility its masculine edge now that's a generalization but there is a sense here in which classically gosh I could get into big trouble for this now but I'm going to essentialize it classically female characteristics of nurturing and dialogue and mutuality and all these sorts of things replace that more confrontational chivalous church militant. We're fighting against demons.

[00:38:52]We're fighting against Satan. We're fighting against the world. It might be fear-based and it might have serious theological deficiencies, but there was an appeal, especially I think to to men in the church of those images. What do you do do you agree with that?

[00:39:12]>> Um, I guess I do. You know, I mean, the the Jesuits, you know, are a male order and uh but you know, it's uh it's its imagery, its core imagery is is thoroughly I mean, it's obviously not a direct analogy to the to military service, but but the imagery of the church militant is very strong. all the way from the bull that confirmed our existence as a papal order rejimny militantis ecclesia you know the the militant church uh to you know to Ignatius's opening call in the constitutions you know whoever whosoever desires to serve under this banner you know this kind of military banner to the classic images of the exercises uh of the you know the kingdom meditation where the king goes looking for recruits to uh to reestablish his reign uh where the um uh the two standards, the two battle flags where people are gathered to either side. Um and I think there is something, you know, if I could refer to a book by another Jesuit, Walter Long, who was a nice called uh >> um the fighting for life.

[00:40:19]>> Yeah.

[00:40:20]>> Where he just talks about the role of contest in human development. Uh but he but he just notes that for men, contest has a different developmental role than it does for women. Um he roots us in all sorts of you know sociobiological facts but but the basic fact is that everybody starts from the woman because it's from her womb that all life issues but but men um have to establish themselves in differentiation from that origin whereas women uh they sort of live in a continuity from that origin.

[00:40:51]They become what they started as whereas men um have to become something different from that. And so that that kind of creates the self- definitionf through contest and through differentiation from your environment >> as a as a real value in life. And I think those kind of those kind of images are um are important for men.

[00:41:10]>> Yeah. And to bring it back to Shiovara, I mean, his his concern was that old Catholicism, the cultur Catholicism had its deficiencies. But if you if you're going to have this language event called the council, and you're going to change the tone and tenor of the church's approach to everything, anathema's gone, dialectical confrontation gone, militancy gone. Now it's just the warm embrace of a vin diagram with a massive overlapping middle with the world. Uh that that you've changed something very substantive.

[00:41:50]So this this distinction which creeps in after the council from the continuitists if you want to call that that oh the council was fine. It was the parah council that came after that ruined everything. So if we could just scrape the barnacles of the par counsel off of the real council, we can retrieve the real council. But the point you make in the article, it was sort of shavar's precience is to see that when you change the tone, you change the tenor, you change the language, you run the risk of the bottom falling out, and that's in fact what happened, right?

[00:42:22]Yeah. I try to bring in some statistics at the end, but yeah, it's quite a big um but that's his I think that's his point is that this uh or at least maybe my I don't know if it's his point because he did all this in in prospect instead of retrospect but my point is that his his analysis suggests that you can't so cleanly separate the council from its aftermath.

[00:42:42]Certainly in its substance the council's sound doctrinally I agree with all those things but but but the council was not called to define substance. the council was, you know, it was presumed that the substance would say the same. It was called to change tonality. And so, and and so in that sense, what it was, let's say, what its express purpose was was to do these these sort of things according to John the 23rd. And um and so in that sense if change tonalities can affect our ability to live the faith and can kind of disarm us psychologically or do different things like that then you can't quite say that everything maybe that uh the bottom falling out of the council is simply a matter of something outside the council some par council but that there's actually has some root in the council itself um even if just in its tonal aspects not necessarily in it substantive aspects and uh and so I think that would be the u the the difficulty of both the positions both the let's say the uh the Adventist position and the substantivist position.

[00:43:44]Um yeah >> you mentioned I think you quote Carl Roer to this effect might have been somebody else that the council was a triggering event. I think you used the word trigger.

[00:43:54]>> Yeah. And that struck me because I've written some blog posts several years ago now in which I referred to the council as a catalytic >> event that the council did not directly cause the demise that followed uh in a linear unifal way. The causes, as you point out in your article, sociologically, culturally, are multif focal. Uh and obviously if the church caught fire after the council, it's because the council catalytically set fire unwittingly to a set of combustibles that were already there >> ready to be combusted in the in other words the preconceers come and consume everything because the catalytic fuel fuel was there uh a and and that fuel was a purely forensic church of rules and regulations and laws and fear and you do this or you're going to go to hell. That kind of Catholicism and say what you will about that combustible that the that the council ignited to burn off. I think Shivar's point and I'll shut up and let you talk is that there that there was value in that Catholicism, right? For an average sort of bluecollar Catholic, that's the Catholicism that spoke. And I don't mean to sound elitist here. Oh, I'm an intellectual, therefore that Catholicism won for me. I mean, the fact is the church was a church of millions of workingclass average people, and that's how they approached things.

[00:45:38]>> Yeah.

[00:45:39]Yeah, I think that was uh I mean this one of the things I noticed is that um the the language of the trigger event uh actually comes from not from Roner but from this sociologist this French sociologist >> that's right >> uh nicknamed Cushe but he um but one of the things he points out is that you know in in the very few countries where we have very granular sociological data about church attendance and participation so forth France being one of them u because they had really been keeping statistics in France since like the French Revolution, you know, to like a long time. So, he had he had a long history plus, you know, a very prominent Catholic sociologist for the council, but to in some limited areas of the English speaking world, too. Um, you you find this inflection point is what he talks about. So like you have um um you don't find u you find like a a gentle kind of dip in vocations in France right before the council like in the ' 50s and so forth. Um you find maybe a gentle kind of lull in some of the in some of the mass attendance. But if you look at that over a couple hundred years span you kind of find there are gentle undulations that characterize the whole 200 years span before that too. And so these are not these not differences of order of magnitude. they were kind of within the normal parameters.

[00:46:59]Um but then when you hit 19 the year where you find the inflection point is according to him 1965. So it's the year of the council's promulgation and from that point you enter a decline that simply doesn't doesn't stop. It never it doesn't have the undulating pattern of kind of dipping and recovering. It just dips. Um yeah and so that's for him this idea of the trigger event. And and he says you notice that begins already before 1968.

[00:47:24]So it isn't the it isn't so much the the student riots that you know trigger it.

[00:47:31]It begins before Human Vite. It isn't the disappointed expectations of Human V. It's already these things are underway. Um you know he he kind of says that that basically it was the removal of that culture of fear obligation and so forth. This the general sense that religion is a serious thing and violating its basic precepts uh lead you to hell. um that basic view of the church, you know, sort of um is what kind of led to the decline of mass attendance and everything that follows.

[00:48:02]That strikes me as psychologically plausible. You know, these uh maybe that was not always the you know the noblest motive for going. Uh but the thing is is that um um how would I say the uh um by by the fact that you removed the lower motives for going it doesn't mean that you actually increased the noble motives but you know and so instead the lower part just stopped going alltogether.

[00:48:26]>> Uh >> yeah and to me that's what I mean when I talk about preconciliar combustibles.

[00:48:34]>> Yeah.

[00:48:34]>> That uh I you know Yes. 1965 is there's no denying the fact that that's the cliff. That's when we all sort of walked off the cliff. And it'd be hard not to draw the conclusion that the council was a triggering event, a catalytic event that that led to those sorts of things.

[00:48:53]But I do wonder there is a control in this experiment and the control are non-atholic forms of Christianity and non-Christian forms of religion which is which have also suffered greatly uh in the North Atlantic countries over the past h 100red years as secularization has increased. I mean the Methodist church in America didn't have Vatican 2 and yet they've demographically imploded.

[00:49:21]Likewise with the Lutheran in Germany and and you get my point, you know, three generations of Muslims into American culture and bend it like Beckham, you're not they're not they're not practicing anymore.

[00:49:35]>> Okay? And and so there is something inherently corrosive >> of traditional religion in in western style culture. Uh so I don't know. I I'm I'm left still with this big open mind as to >> how much how much blame can we lay at the feet of the second Vatican council for what came after >> yeah I think that's that is the big question um the yeah I think that's why I prefer to use it as kind of the trigger events I do think there were pressures obviously in culture you know when you have >> a culture of authenticity that is um running up against a culture of obligation and duty. You know, you have a culture of of inner efficiency which is running up against a culture of sacramental mediation. All these sort of thing, you know, that then people people who feel different and maybe sometimes long to belong to the mainstream and so forth that there ends up being this pressure that builds and people wanting to be more like the culture around them or or so forth.

[00:50:39]>> Yeah. And so you know it can happen that I could easily see that you know people might want that but they might not want enough to risk uh predition if they feel that uh you know that these are the consequences of doing it. And then also when you kind of remove the threat of uh of severe spiritual consequences for doing it then all of a sudden you know it just kind of releases all the escape valves and people are like well you know.

[00:51:05]>> Yeah.

[00:51:06]>> So I think I think that's one part of it. I think the other part is that um um you know is that honestly like the abrupt change I think also just tended to um it tend to create a kind of resentment against the church you know so it's it's always one thing um you can kind of think of like an analogy to like uh you know a lot of people's reactions to pandemic regulations you know it's one thing to put drastic regulations that limit your freedom on a population.

[00:51:40]Um, a lot of people won't like it anyway. At least in Europe, they they tended to accept it a lot more uh, you know, tranquily than in the US. But it's another thing after they've lived through that those severe restrictions that were said to be for a greater good.

[00:51:55]If all of a sudden they released studies showing that actually none of these restrictions mattered anyway and mass didn't matter, six feet disting didn't matter, this didn't matter, then all of a sudden you get resentment about the old uh the old order.

[00:52:08]>> And I think there was that also that effect too is that Catholics were used to living under uh you know to go to go back to an earlier term >> oops militancy they were used to living under wartime conditions.

[00:52:24]Yes, >> they were.

[00:52:26]>> Am I still okay? So, you return to the image of militancy.

[00:52:30]>> Uh, Catholics were used to living under wartime conditions.

[00:52:33]>> Just like in the war, you know, you might have to, you know, live under rations, do this kind of stuff, but you knew you were you were part of a big effort. Well, same kind of that image functioned that way in the church.

[00:52:43]>> But then all of a sudden, when you say, "Oh, by the way, we were never at war in the first place. By the way, these conditions were never necessary anyway."

[00:52:50]Then all of a sudden you end up with a strong resentment and distrust of that authority and I think that also accelerated the whole process.

[00:52:59]>> Yeah, I think it did. I asked my my father's 93 years old and I Polish Polish guy uh grew up in Toledo, Ohio.

[00:53:08]Toledo, Ohio. And and I asked my father once what was the biggest thing after the second Vatican council that you noticed that kind of bothered you? And he's he replied to me it wasn't the change in the mass anything it was oh it's that I could eat meat on Fridays now you know and and he goes because I was told growing up man if I ate a piece of bacon on a Friday I was going to hell all right if I had done it deliberately like oh the heck with the church I'm going to have this bacon on a Friday if I were to get into a car crash I'd go straight to hell that's what the church taught me back then and and now I can eat bacon on Fridays he goes I I just kind of figured you know, maybe the church is just a bunch of silly men investments who just make stuff up and he didn't use the word stuff, you know, and I and I think you can generalize that sentiment as >> as wise as some of the pastoral prescriptions of the council were, they were really implemented like like a nurse ripping a band-aid off a scab in so many ways without a great deal of preparation or cases.

[00:54:21]>> Yeah, I agree. So, I think you So, yeah, I don't I'm not I try not to idealize late before the council, but um but I think but I think maybe Shabaro's point was just that in light of these mounting pressures, in light of the growing differential, let's say, between the internal culture of the church.

[00:54:41]>> Yeah. and the culture of authenticity that was you know developing outside the church that um that point of fact maybe some of these um sociological markers but maybe also the general tenor of militancy was actually an important uh part of the church's life and maybe this was actually containing some of those pressures in a way that was helpful and then when you got rid of it at at a time and there was a huge let's say cultural differential between the values inside and outside the church, then the natural result was a kind of a centripal, you know, draining hemorrhaging from the church. And so I think that would be, you know, part of his part of his analysis. But I think he would probably even say that even apart from those particular social circumstances that that uh yeah, that it's just part of the gospel. It's just part of what it is to uh to worship the ever greater God. that both love and fear are always gonna um have a place and that and that a version of Catholicism that can't have both that can't keep both in play is imbalanced, you know, regardless of what time or place you're in.

[00:55:53]>> Hence the title of the article, whether or not the church is in analogical balance between between joy and and love and and fear. Uh fear and not a surviile fear. uh although some might feel that but one should approach the almighty with a certain trembling right I you know you're approaching the almighty there should be a certain holy fear uh of of judgment of of whether or not I' I've lived a proper life and so on before we get out of here though there there's still a couple things with regard to the sociological factors surrounding the second Vatican council that your article sort of raised in my head >> something I've brought up before another podcast is the something we have to constantly keep in mind is that every single bishop at the council of either North American or European lineage had had lived through the ravages of World War II and and I mean they were closer in time to the end of World War II than we are now to the to 911 in 2001. All right. So it it it's it's an event that was I and like you said many of them had suffered through the rigors of of of wartime of rationing. Some of them maybe even had served in various militaries uh and so on. So there had to be that had to have an impact on the consiliar decision to go positive rather than negative. Do you think >> I think that um I think that sounds pretty pretty plausible.

[00:57:30]There have been there have been books, you know, uh he he's not somebody who likes the race very much, but uh John Cerwin, you know, has written more about more more about World War I in point of fact as a as a as something that already began to turn a generation of people against ideas of of militancy and towards an idea of of, you know, stressing only the positive and so forth. So, World War II would only have reinforced that general tendency.

[00:57:56]>> Um, no, I think that's true. and >> and the rise of a general affluence, post-war affluence, >> people tend not to focus as much on the spiritual when all of their material needs are met and they're fat and happy and uh pursuing the good life of material well-being as Austo Delocci referred to modernity as the cult of material well-being, the bourgeoa cult of material well-being. I think that played a big role too in the sense of of economics is a great melting pot where the globalist impulse was kicking. I mean remember it seems to me Catholicism often thrives as many religions do when they when it becomes an identity marker as well like uh uh to be Polish means to be Catholic means to resist Stalin and as soon as Stalin's gone or the Soviet Union's gone and now Poland is living in the economic lares of a globalist economy Catholic practices diminished ditto with the Irish and their use of Catholicism as a battering ram against against the UK, American Catholics, immigrants, you know, Lithuanians, Polish, Irish, Italians, and those were identity markers. Then after the war, just this cosmopolitanism kicks in, this breaking down of all of those ethnic and national barriers in favor of a kind of economic espiranto of of wealth and well-being. I think that had a role to play in in the demise of religion in the west as well.

[00:59:36]>> Yeah, I think I would count all those certainly among the pressures that were exerted upon the church, you know, these kind of solvents that were uh that were at work there. So, uh yeah. So, I think I try not to make it mono, you know, factorial or unfactorial here. And >> no, you make that clear in the article and I don't want to make it sound like you are. Your article is very nuanced.

[00:59:59]Um but yeah, but I do think that these are um how would I say? Uh yeah, but I I think you see the only thing I would kind of point out is just that when it comes to the ability to resist those kind of solvents that there's a there's a kind of precipitous decline one uh you know from one day to the next you know and I think that's the that's the only thing that I would I would kind of point out. Um and to your other point about the sociological data even too for other areas. Now I haven't drilled down too deep into this but uh you know for somebody like uh Steven Bolivan will will compare at least with at least Protestant American data and he'll say that you know before the council church attendance among Protestants was lower than among Catholics but that you know and of course it's decreased over time but it hasn't decreased as precipitly as Catholics have and it it's sort of held closer to its preconceive to Catholics.

[01:00:56]Really? That's interesting.

[01:00:59]>> Now, he might be counting not just the main lines, but all the evangelicals and so forth.

[01:01:02]>> That damn Bolivant is always tossing data into these things.

[01:01:07]He's always screwing up my arguments with hard data. Bolivant, if you're listening, I have to do a podcast with him soon. So, he and Sean Blanchard and I are hopefully going to discuss uh Bolivant's newest book uh on traditionalism. Uh but that's the kind of data we need, right? That's absolutely the kind of data that we need.

[01:01:27]And Bolivant is is very very good on that. So you're saying that Boulevard claims that Protestant church attendance let's say today is relative say the United States is relatively similar to what it was say in 1955.

[01:01:43]>> Yeah. The percentually the I guess the fall off is not as drastic as it was for the Catholics over the over the same time period.

[01:01:51]>> Very interesting. All right. That gives me food for thought. Uh, absolutely.

[01:01:56]There was one other thing I was going to say before we we sign off to bring it back to Shiovara. Oh, it has to do with my little rant about Catholicism as an identity marker. I think to put it in Shiovara's terms, you know, Catholicism as the embodied, the sacramental embodiment of a certain language, a certain way of viewing things. And to tie it into with what I was talking with my father, I think what my father was trying to say in so many words was meatless Fridays was what made us different from our neighbors.

[01:02:31]Meatless Fridays meant Knights of Columbus fish fries, parish hall fish fries. Fish is what Catholics eat on Fridays. Uh and and so you lose those identity markers. It's kind of like losing a language, a way of embodying through a set of practices uh the faith as as different from the prevailing culture.

[01:02:57]>> Yeah. No, I agree. And I'm sure if your if your readers have never looked at Mary Douglas's book, Natural Symbols, they owe it to themselves to read that because she has one of the most incisive kind of sociological analyses of of some of these effects after the council, but precisely in the Spain.

[01:03:14]>> Yeah. Yeah. Mary Douglas is is really good on on this stuff as well as a bunch of other people that I've read. But anyway, uh I don't want to tax your time. We've been at this a full hour now and I think we've we've gotten through uh what Shivara has to say uh about the council about other things. So I thank you for Is there anything that that we that I left out with regard to your article that you wanted to add in?

[01:03:40]>> Let me just say the one final thing is that the place that I thought that Shiovar would point to like what would be Shavara's style it it would be Newman. Um I think that might be the >> Yeah, you mentioned that at the end of the article. So talk about that a little bit.

[01:03:54]>> Well, I just so to go back to these categories of uh of the materially primordial words which have to do with abstractness and concretness.

[01:04:06]Um and then these formally ones. I'm losing my voice here. Sorry.

[01:04:11]>> Yeah. Like me the other day.

[01:04:17]>> All right. Well, as as father's regaining his voice, we're going to be talking.

[01:04:21]>> Sorry about that. That's okay.

[01:04:24]The viewers should know that uh I had to cancel this podcast the other day due to a sore throat of mine. So go ahead, >> take your time.

[01:04:31]>> Thank you. Anyway, but yeah, just to do these the formally ones which set the accents.

[01:04:36]Um he tended to like Newman but but Newman was an example of somebody who like a lot of the race horse figures had a petristic idiom you know biblical language concrete images preaching style so forth that the fathers um but but his accents tended to u tended to be very much uh I would say focused on aestheticism uh reverence for God you know that that deep elemental fear of God that you felt in conscience and so forth. Um and also a sense of the of the church, you know, um as being um somebody whose lot was to uh to resist, you know, that there was a a more agonistic view of what the spiritual life looked like and what what belonging to the church of Christ looked like. And so I think for him you know he thought you could have the concrete idiom that you know the retoolent of scripture and the fathers that the race horse wanted but I think he thought you could have it without the this let's say the the sort of dialogical less guarded view of the world that uh that a lot of the race people brought in and for him I think that was something like um like what what the future of the church should look like. But that was uh just leave that last thought.

[01:05:57]>> Yeah, Newman definitely believed that the church needed to adopt a very strong posture against the rise of modern secular liberalism uh which he saw as such a corrosive feature. I I don't think he would have been a big fan of let's sit down and dialogue with with those folks quite and quite the tonality that we do it these days. But yeah, thanks for bringing up Newman at the end because you bring him up at the end of your article and I and I neglected to to mention that. I think he's an important voice here. But anyway, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating I hope I didn't talk too much, but uh what what you had to say really got my juices flowing and the article is a great article and I highly recommend everybody subscribe to the new resource month so they can get articles like like this one.

[01:06:45]>> Well, great talking to you, Larry.

[01:06:46]Thanks so much for noticing the article and for asking me to uh to talk about it. It was a pleasure.

[01:06:51]>> My pleasure. All right. Thanks everyone for listening and thank you father for being on the show today. Bye now. God bless you.