Present at the Demolition
An interview with Dr. Alice
von Hildebrand - Summer 2001
The following conversation with Dr. Alice
von Hildebrand opens our discussion of this issue’s focus:
The Crisis in the Church: Scenarios for a Solution. Dr. von
Hildebrand, professor of philosophy emeritus of Hunter
College (City University of New York), has just completed
The Soul of a Lion, a biography of her husband, Dietrich.
TLM: Dr.
von Hildebrand, at the time that Pope John XXIII summoned
the Second Vatican Council, did you perceive a need for a
reform within the Church?
AVH:: Most of the insights about this
come from my husband. He always said that the members of the
Church, due to the effects of original sin and actual sin,
are always in need of reform. The Church’s teaching,
however, is from God. Not one iota is to be changed or
considered in need of reform.
TLM: In terms of the present crisis, when did you
first perceive something was terribly wrong?
AVH:: It was in February 1965. I was
taking a sabbatical year in Florence. My husband was reading
a theological journal, and suddenly I heard him burst into
tears. I ran to him, fearful that his heart condition had
suddenly caused him pain. I asked him if he was all right.
He told me that the article that he had been reading had
provided him with the certain insight that the devil had
entered the Church. Remember, my husband was the first
prominent German to speak out publicly against Hitler and
the Nazis. His insights were always prescient.
TLM: Had your
husband ever talked about his fear for the Church before
this incident?
AVH:: I relate in my biography of my
husband, The Soul of a Lion, that a few years after his
conversion to Catholicism in the 1920s, he began teaching at
the University of Munich. Munich was a Catholic city. Most
Catholics at the time went to Mass, but he always said that
it was there that he became aware of the loss of a sense of
the supernatural among Catholics. One incident especially
offered him sufficient proof, and it greatly saddened him.
When passing through a door, my husband
would always give precedence to those of his students who
were priests. One day, one of his colleagues (a Catholic)
expressed his astonishment and disapproval: “Why do you let
your students step ahead of you?” “Because they are
priests,” replied my husband. “But they do not have a Ph.D.”
My husband was grieved. To value a Ph.D. is a natural
response; to feel awe for the sublimity of the priesthood is
a supernatural response. The professor’s attitude proved
that his sense for the supernatural had been eroded. That
was long before Vatican II. But until the Council, the
beauty and the sacredness of the Tridentine liturgy masked
this phenomenon.
TLM: Did your
husband think that the decline in a sense of the
supernatural began around that time, and if so, how did he
explain it?
AVH:: No, he believed that after Pius
X’s condemnation of the heresy of Modernism, its proponents
merely went underground. He would say that they then took a
much more subtle and practical approach. They spread doubt
simply by raising questions about the great supernatural
interventions throughout salvation history, such as the
Virgin Birth and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity, as well as
the Resurrection, and the Holy Eucharist. They knew that
once faith – the foundation – totters, the liturgy and the
moral teachings of the Church would follow suit. My husband
entitled one of his books The Devastated Vineyard. After
Vatican II, a tornado seemed to have hit the Church.
Modernism itself was the fruit of the
calamity of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, and
it took a long historical process to unfold. If you were to
ask a typical Catholic in the Middle Ages to name a hero or
heroine, he would answer with the name of a saint. The
Renaissance began to change that. Instead of a saint, people
would think of geniuses as persons to emulate, and with the
oncoming of the industrial age, they would answer with the
name of a great scientist. Today, they would answer with a
sports figure or cinema personality. In other words, the
loss of the sense of the supernatural has brought an
inversion of the hierarchy of values.
Even the pagan Plato was open to a sense of
the supernatural. He spoke of the weakness, frailty and
cowardice often evidenced in human nature. He was asked by a
critic to explain why he had such a low opinion of humanity.
He replied that he was not denigrating man, only comparing
him to God.
With the loss of a sense of the
supernatural, there is a loss of the sense of a need for
sacrifice today. The closer one comes to God, the greater
should be one’s sense of sinfulness. The further one gets
from God, as today, the more we hear the philosophy of the
new age: “I’m OK, You’re OK.” This loss of the inclination
to sacrifice has led to the obscuring of the Church’s
redemptive mission. Where the Cross is downplayed, our need
for redemption is given hardly a thought.
The aversion to sacrifice and redemption has
assisted the secularization of the Church from within. We
have been hearing for many years from priests and bishops
about the need for the Church to adapt herself to the world.
Great popes like St. Pius X said just the opposite: the
world must adapt itself to the Church.
TLM: From our
conversation throughout this afternoon, I must conclude that
you don’t believe that the accelerating loss of the sense of
the supernatural is an accident of history.
AVH:: No, I do not. There have been
two books published in Italy in recent years that confirm
what my husband had been suspecting for some time; namely,
that there has been a systematic infiltration of the Church
by diabolical enemies for much of this century. My husband
was a very sanguine man and optimistic by nature. During the
last ten years of his life, however, I witnessed him many
times in moments of great sorrow, and frequently repeating,
“They have desecrated the Holy Bride of Christ.” He was
referring to the “abomination of desolation” of which the
prophet Daniel speaks.
TLM: This is a
critical admission, Dr. von Hildebrand. Your husband had
been called a twentieth-century Doctor of the Church by Pope
Pius XII. If he felt so strongly, didn’t he have access to
the Vatican to tell Pope Paul VI of his fears?
AVH:: But he did! I shall never
forget the private audience we had with Paul VI just before
the end of the Council. It was on June 21, 1965. As soon as
my husband started pleading with him to condemn the heresies
that were rampant, the Pope interrupted him with the words,
“Lo scriva, lo scriva.” (“Write it down.”) A few moments
later, for the second time, my husband drew the gravity of
the situation to the Pope’s attention. Same answer. His
Holiness received us standing. It was clear that the Pope
was feeling very uncomfortable. The audience lasted only a
few minutes. Paul VI immediately gave a sign to his
secretary, Fr. Capovilla, to bring us rosaries and medals.
We then went back to Florence where my husband wrote a long
document (unpublished today) that was delivered to Paul VI
just the day before the last session of the Council. It was
September of 1965. After reading my husband’s document, he
said to my husband’s nephew, Dieter Sattler, who had become
the German ambassador to the Holy See, that he had read the
document carefully, but that “it was a bit harsh.” The
reason was obvious: my husband had humbly requested a clear
condemnation of heretical statements.
TLM: You realize,
of course, Doctor, that as soon as you mention this idea of
infiltration, there will be those who roll their eyes in
exasperation and remark, “Not another conspiracy theory!”
AVH:: I can only tell you what I
know. It is a matter of public record, for instance, that
Bella Dodd, the ex-Communist who reconverted to the Church,
openly spoke of the Communist Party’s deliberate
infiltration of agents into the seminaries. She told my
husband and me that when she was an active party member, she
had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the
Vatican “who were working for us.”
Many a time I have heard Americans say that
Europeans “smell conspiracy wherever they go.” But from the
beginning, the Evil One has “conspired” against the Church –
and has always aimed in particular at destroying the Mass
and sapping belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. That some people are tempted to blow this
undeniable fact out of proportion is no reason for denying
its reality. On the other hand, I, European born, am tempted
to say that many Americans are naïve; living in a country
that has been blessed by peace, and knowing little about
history, they are more likely than Europeans (whose history
is a tumultuous one) to fall prey to illusions. Rousseau has
had an enormous influence in the United States. When Christ
said to His apostles at the Last Supper that “one of you
will betray Me,” the apostles were stunned. Judas had played
his hand so artfully that no one suspected him, for a
cunning conspirator knows how to cover his tracks with a
show of orthodoxy.
TLM: Do the two
books by the Italian priest you mentioned before the
interview contain documentation that would provide evidence
of this infiltration?
AVH:: The two books I mentioned were
published in 1998 and 2000 by an Italian priest, Don Luigi
Villa of the diocese of Brescia, who at the request of Padre
Pio has devoted many years of his life to the investigation
of the possible infiltration of both Freemasons and
Communists into the Church. My husband and I met Don Villa
in the sixties. He claims that he does not make any
statement that he cannot substantiate. When Paulo Sesto
Beato? (1998) was published the book was sent to every
single Italian bishop. None of them acknowledged receipt;
none challenged any of Don Villa’s claims.
In this book, he relates something that no
ecclesiastical authority has refuted or asked to be
retracted – even though he names particular personalities in
regard to the incident. It pertains to the rift between Pope
Pius XII and the then Bishop Montini (the future Paul VI)
who was his Undersecretary of State. Pius XII, conscious of
the threat of Communism, which in the aftermath of World War
II was dominating nearly half of Europe, had prohibited the
Vatican staff from dealing with Moscow. To his dismay, he
was informed one day through the Bishop of Upsala (Sweden)
that his strict order had been contravened. The Pope
resisted giving credence to this rumor until he was given
incontrovertible evidence that Montini had been
corresponding with various Soviet agencies. Meanwhile, Pope
Pius XII (as had Pius XI) had been sending priests
clandestinely into Russia to give comfort to Catholics
behind the Iron Curtain. Every one of them had been
systematically arrested, tortured, and either executed or
sent to the gulag. Eventually a Vatican mole was discovered:
Alighiero Tondi, S.J., who was a close advisor to Montini.
Tondi was an agent working for Stalin whose mission was to
keep Moscow informed about initiatives such as the sending
of priests into the Soviet Union.
Add to this Pope Paul’s treatment of
Cardinal Mindszenty. Against his will, Mindszenty was
ordered by the Vatican to leave Budapest. As most everyone
knows, he had escaped the Communists and sought refuge in
the American embassy compound. The Pope had given him his
solemn promise that he would remain primate of Hungary as
long as he lived. When the Cardinal (who had been tortured
by the Communists) arrived in Rome, Paul VI embraced him
warmly, but then sent him into exile in Vienna. Shortly
afterwards, this holy prelate was informed that he had been
demoted, and had been replaced by someone more acceptable to
the Hungarian Communist government. More puzzling, and
tragically sad, is the fact that when Mindszenty died, no
Church representative was present at his burial.
Another of Don Villa’s illustrations of
infiltration is one related to him by Cardinal Gagnon. Paul
VI had asked Gagnon to head an investigation concerning the
infiltration of the Church by powerful enemies. Cardinal
Gagnon (at that time an Archbishop) accepted this unpleasant
task, and compiled a long dossier, rich in worrisome facts.
When the work was completed, he requested an audience with
Pope Paul in order to deliver personally the manuscript to
the Pontiff. This request for a meeting was denied. The Pope
sent word that the document should be placed in the offices
of the Congregation for the Clergy, specifically in a safe
with a double lock. This was done, but the very next day the
safe deposit box was broken and the manuscript mysteriously
disappeared. The usual policy of the Vatican is to make sure
that news of such incidents never sees the light of day.
Nevertheless, this theft was reported even in L’Osservatore
Romano (perhaps under pressure because it had been reported
in the secular press). Cardinal Gagnon, of course, had a
copy, and once again asked the Pope for a private audience.
Once again his request was denied. He then decided to leave
Rome and return to his homeland in Canada. Later, he was
called back to Rome by Pope John Paul II and made a
cardinal.
TLM: Why did Don
Villa write these works singling out Paul VI for criticism?
AVH:: Don Villa reluctantly decided
to publish the books to which I have alluded. But when
several bishops pushed for the beatification of Paul VI,
this priest perceived it as a clarion call to print the
information he had gathered through the years. In so doing,
he was following the guidelines of a Roman Congregation,
informing the faithful that it was their duty as members of
the Church to relay to the Congregation any information that
might militate against the candidate’s qualifications for
beatification.
Considering the tumultuous pontificate of
Paul VI, and the confusing signals he was giving, e.g.:
speaking about the “smoke of Satan that had entered the
Church,” yet refusing to condemn heresies officially; his
promulgation of Humanae Vitae (the glory of his
pontificate), yet his careful avoidance of proclaiming it ex
cathedra; delivering his Credo of the People of God in
Piazza San Pietro in 1968, and once again failing to declare
it binding on all Catholics; disobeying the strict orders of
Pius XII to have no contact with Moscow, and appeasing the
Hungarian Communist government by reneging on the solemn
promise he had made to Cardinal Mindszenty; his treatment of
holy Cardinal Slipyj, who had spent seventeen years in a
Gulag, only to be made a virtual prisoner in the Vatican by
Paul VI; and finally asking Archbishop Gagnon to investigate
possible infiltration in the Vatican, only to refuse him an
audience when his work was completed – all these speak
strongly against the beatification of Paolo VI, dubbed in
Rome, “Paolo Sesto, Mesto” (Paul VI, the sad one).
That the duty to publish this depressing
information was onerous and cost Don Villa great sorrow
cannot be doubted. Any Catholic rejoices when he can look up
to a Pope with boundless veneration. But Catholics also know
that even though Christ never promised He would give us
perfect leaders, He did promise that the gates of hell shall
not prevail. Let us not forget that even though the Church
has had some very bad popes, and some mediocre ones, she has
been blessed with many great popes. Eighty of them have been
canonized and several have been beatified. This is a success
story that does not bear parallel in the secular world.
God alone is the judge of Paul VI. But it
cannot be denied that his pontificate was a very complex and
tragic one. It was under him that, in the course of fifteen
years, more changes were introduced in the Church than in
all preceding centuries combined. What is worrisome is that
when we read the testimony of ex-Communists like Bella Dodd,
and study Freemasonic documents (dating from the nineteenth
century, and usually penned by fallen-away priests like Paul
Roca), we can see that, to a large extent, their agenda has
been carried out: the exodus of priests and nuns after
Vatican II, dissenting theologians not censured, feminism,
the pressure put on Rome to abolish priestly celibacy,
immorality in the clergy, blasphemous liturgies (see the
article by David Hart in First Things, April 2001, “The
Future of the Papacy”), the radical changes that have been
introduced into the sacred liturgy (see Cardinal Ratzinger’s
book Milestones, pp. 126 and 148, Ignatius Press), and a
misleading ecumenism. Only a blind person could deny that
many of the Enemy’s plans have been perfectly carried out.
One should not forget that the world was
shocked at what Hitler did. People like my husband, however,
actually read what he had said in Mein Kampf. The plan was
there. The world simply chose not to believe it.
But grave as the situation is, no committed
Catholic can forget that Christ has promised that He will
remain with His Church to the very end of the world. We
should meditate on the scene related in the Gospel when the
apostles’ boat was battered by a fierce storm. Christ was
sleeping! His terrified followers woke Him up: He said one
word, and there was a great calm. “O ye of little faith!”
TLM: I take it by
your remarks about ecumenism that you don’t agree with the
current policy of “convergence” rather than “conversion”?
AVH:: Let me relate an incident that
caused my husband grief. It was 1946, just after the war. My
husband was teaching at Fordham, and there appeared in one
of his classes a Jewish student who had been a naval officer
during the war. He would eventually tell my husband about a
particularly stunning sunset in the Pacific and how it had
led him to the quest for the truth about God. He first went
to Columbia to study philosophy, and he knew that this was
not what he was looking for. A friend suggested he try
philosophy at Fordham and mentioned the name Dietrich von
Hildebrand. After just one class with my husband, he knew he
had found what he was looking for. One day after class my
husband and this student went for a walk. He told my husband
during this time that he was surprised at the fact that
several professors, after discovering he was Jewish, assured
him that they would not try to convert him to Catholicism.
My husband, stunned, stopped, turned to him and said, “They
said what?!” He repeated the story and my husband told him,
“I would walk to the ends of the earth to make you a
Catholic.” To make a long story short, the young man became
a Catholic, was ordained a Carthusian priest, and went on to
enter the only Charter House in the United States (in
Vermont)!
TLM: You spent
many years teaching at Hunter College.
AVH:: Yes, and several of my students
became Catholics. Oh, the beautiful conversion stories I
could relate if I had time – young people who were swept up
by truth!
I want to make one point very clear,
however. I did not convert my students. The most we can do
is to pray to be God’s instruments. To be an instrument we
must strive to live the Gospel every day and in every
circumstance. Only God’s grace can give us the desire and
ability to do that.
It is one of the fears I have about
traditional Catholics. Some flirt with fanaticism. A fanatic
is one who considers truth to be his personal possession
instead of God’s gift. We are servants of the truth, and it
is as servants that we seek to share it.
I am very concerned that there are
“fanatical” Catholics who use the Faith and the truth it
proclaims as an intellectual toy. An authentic appropriation
of the truth always leads to a striving for holiness. The
Faith, in this present crisis, is not an intellectual chess
game. For anyone not striving for holiness, that’s all it
will ever be. Such people do more harm to the Faith,
particularly if they are proponents of the traditional Mass.
TLM: So you see
the only scenario for a solution to the present crisis as
the renewal of a striving for sanctity?
AVH:: We should not forget that we
are fighting not only against flesh and blood, but against
“powers and principalities.” This should elicit sufficient
dread in us to make us strive more than ever for holiness,
and to pray fervently that the Holy Bride of Christ, who is
right now at Calvary, comes out of this fearful crisis more
radiant than ever.
The Catholic answer is always the same:
absolute fidelity to the holy teaching of the Church,
faithfulness to the Holy See, frequent reception of the
sacraments, the Rosary, daily spiritual reading, and
gratitude that we have been given the fullness of God’s
revelation: “Gaudete, iterum dico vobis, Gaudete.”
TLM: I cannot end
the interview without asking your reaction to a well-worn
canard. There are those critics of the ancient Latin Mass
who point out that the crisis in the Church developed at a
time when the Mass was offered throughout the world. Why
should we then think its revival is intrinsic to the
solution?
AVH:: The devil hates the ancient
Mass. He hates it because it is the most perfect
reformulation of all the teachings of the Church. It was my
husband who gave me this insight about the Mass. The problem
that ushered in the present crisis was not the traditional
Mass. The problem was that priests who offered it had
already lost the sense of the supernatural and the
transcendent. They rushed through the prayers, they mumbled
and didn’t enunciate them. That is a sign that they had
brought to the Mass their growing secularism. The ancient
Mass does not abide irreverence, and that was why so many
priests were just as happy to see it go.
TLM: Thank you,
Dr. von Hildebrand, for this time and the opportunity to
speak with you.