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A couple of months ago, the public learned that Michael Warren Davis left the Catholic Church for Eastern Orthodoxy—which of their churches it is not known. The decision came as a surprise to many, since Davis was by all accounts a well-contented and well-credentialed traditional Catholic, the author of two Catholic books and a former editor for Crisis Magazine, the Catholic Herald, and Sophia Institute Press.
Happily, defections like this are relatively rare, but when they do occur, it is natural to wonder about their causes. Such speculation is fine so long as it leads more to self-examination than to finger-pointing. When Rod Dreher left the Church over the clerical abuse scandals almost two decades ago, it was tempting to blame the “Lavender Mafia” in the hierarchy and leave it at that. But a healthier approach would have been to note a fact—that Dreher’s ecclesiology (his understanding of the Church) did not survive the shock of a scandal— and then to raise a larger question. What is the proper ecclesiology whereby one can deplore nefarious clerical misdeeds and even persons of high ecclesiastical rank and nonetheless remain a loyal and I daresay happy son of the Church? And do I have that ecclesiology or not?
Davis’ recent departure from the Barque of St. Peter invites similar reflection. Once again it is easy to blame the hierarchy, but such an explanation remains unsatisfying. If the hierarchy is wholly at fault, then why doesn’t every traditional Catholic saddled with the same hierarchy apostatize? Why do some believers crumble and leave while others stick it out? The answer is not to be found in the external circumstances under which the faithful operate, but in their internal conditions.
I cannot speak of Michael Warren Davis’ internal conditions, but I can speak more generally about certain occasional but nevertheless discernible patterns of behavior that I have noticed in my thirty years as a so-called traditionalist Catholic.
It has been my experience that when someone chooses the traditional Latin Mass for the wrong reasons, no matter how sincere and supportive they are at the beginning, if they do not grow out of those faulty reasons, they will wither, break off the vine, and become island hoppers (if they weren’t island hoppers already). And by the “wrong reason,” I mean any reason that is more horizontal than vertical, that is to say, one that is decisively shaped by a personal or ideological horizon, rather than by a keen attentiveness to the transcendent realities vertically ascending beyond those horizons.
Incidentally, this phenomenon occurs, mutatis mutandis, in other areas of life as well. Commenting on the Easter Rebellion of 1916, Yeats wrote that “too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?” The cause for Irish independence was a noble one, and yet it petrified its zealots.
Horizontal Reasons are Wrong Reasons
Regarding the TLM (traditional Latin Mass), the horizontal reasons can be categorized in any number of ways.
First, if you attend the TLM primarily because of what you don’t like, then you are attending the TLM for the wrong reason. Being drawn to the Latin Mass because of its intrinsic sacrality is one thing; being drawn to it simply because it does not have felt banners, altar girls, or guitars, or simply because it was the rite historically in use before “all the troubles began,” is another. There is a danger in defining oneself by what one opposes, and there is a danger in forging a love of A from a hatred of not-A.
Such dangers go beyond ritual preferences to the very heart of the Faith. “I thought the Church and I wanted the same thing,” the great Welsh artist David Jones lamented during the aftermath of Vatican II, but by “the same thing” he largely had in mind not a positive good but a shared opposition to modernity. Accordingly, Jones (who, by the way, wrote brilliant critiques of the Liturgical Revolution) suffered a terrible crisis of faith when it appeared that the Church had changed her mind about modernity in the 1960s. And I suspect that something similar can be said of Graham Greene, who is believed to have died an apostate. Judging from his novels, I wonder if Greene liked Catholicism mainly because so many others hated it; the vitriol it aroused was, for him, a proof of its veracity. But when the Catholic Church put on a more “open and accommodating” face to the world and the world responded approvingly, it was probably a turn-off for Greene.
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David Jones
Second, if you attend the TLM on account of a lesser good such as music or language, then you are attending the TLM for the wrong reason. I hesitate to call our marvelous and divinely inspired treasury of sacred music and sacred language “lesser goods,” but great as they are, they are lower on the ontological totem pole than becoming a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing unto God. For no work of art, no matter how beautiful, can compare to the radiant beauty of a holy soul. If the only reason that you prefer the TLM is that you are an aesthete who loves sublime music but is indifferent to the undertow towards sanctification, then nothing is stopping you from becoming a High Church Anglican or a secular symphony goer. And if the only reason that you prefer the TLM is that you are a classicist who loves Latin and little more, then nothing is stopping you from switching to a Latin Novus Ordo (should you ever find one).
Third, if you attend the TLM because you view it as a flagship of your favorite brand of extremism, or at least you think that it is compatible with your favorite brand of extremism, then you are attending the TLM for the wrong reason. The brand may not be extremist per se; the key is whether you have turned it into a fanatical cause célèbre. There is nothing extremist, for example, about being prolife; it is the sensible position of any rational human being. But prolife convictions can be weaponized to justify the murder of doctors and the bombing of abortion clinics.
Especially prior to the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum in 2007 (which did much to ameliorate extremist impulses within the traditionalist community), it was not unheard of to encounter TLM congregants who were chomping at the bit to discuss their favorite ideology or conspiracy theory, but could not remember the Propers of the Mass they had just attended. The ideology at hand can be religious, e.g., a complete rejection of the Second Vatican Council, a condemnation of natural family planning as “Catholic birth control,” a paranoia about a Masonic infiltration of the Church, etc. Or it can be political: monarchism, neo-Confederacy, Trumpism, integralism and, of all things, anarcho-capitalism.
Really?
The irony, of course, is that the classical Roman Rite is a magnificent model of moderation that eschews extremes: its prayers frequently ask for self-control and sound judgment, and its ceremonies, though rich and resplendent, are simple and restrained in comparison with those of the Eastern apostolic rites. And rather than endorse this or that regime or political-economic system, the TLM begins with a prayer for deliverance from the earthly city (Psalm 42). Extremists do not see this because they do not really see the Mass; they only see a reflection of themselves.
And fourth, if you attend the TLM because it aligns with your socio-cultural self-perception, then you are attending the TLM for the wrong reason. The first time that my wife Alexandra assisted at a TLM, she sat behind a well-dressed young man and woman. When Alexandra knelt down to pray, she noticed on the pew bench near them two cigars and a copy of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. As she later quipped, “My first thought was, ‘I’m home.’”
She was right, of course: she was home, and there was nothing wrong with her desire to find a place where she felt like she belonged; it is one of humanity’s most primal needs. But what if those feelings of belonging were her only feelings when it came to the TLM? What if her primary reason for attending the TLM was not that it fostered her friendship with God but that she liked hanging out with old souls and young fogeys, with twenty-somethings who smoked pipes, wore bow ties, sported fedoras, and danced divinely to the Squirrel Nut Zippers? (this was the ’90s, remember). Her taste alone, though impeccable, would not have been enough on which to build a lasting relationship with the TLM, let alone with almighty God.
Consequences
When you choose the TLM for the wrong reason, one of two things will happen. First, the marinade of the sacred liturgy will gradually seep into your soul as the sacraments take their effect, and you will start loving the TLM for the right reasons. In other words, you will become spiritually mature, and in good Pauline fashion, put away your childish things.
Or second, you will grow restless and seek other options ever more off the beaten path. (In my experience, the more extreme or imbalanced or scrupulous the person, the more this is likely to be the result.) Depending on your current situation, that option may be the SSPX, an Eastern Orthodox church, a sedevacantist cult or, in some sad cases with which I am familiar, a complete loss of religion. Sometimes, to justify your wanderlust, you will employ as your modus operandi a theological game of musical chairs, where you begin to take perverse delight in scratching people or parishes off the list of acceptable company on the grounds that they are less pure or less committed or less orthodox. The goal of such a game is to be the last man proudly standing—or rather, sitting—but the byproduct is a lengthening scorched path of former friends and communities.
Your wanderings, therefore, will most likely not end with your first step away from your present position. I have two friends who, after concluding that our diocesan TLM was not sufficiently rigorous or pristine, began attending a SSPX chapel. One drove two hours to do so while the other moved his entire family from Texas to be near the SSPX headquarters in Kansas. After two years with the Lefebvrites, the first man burned out and then disappeared; I pray he still goes to Mass, but I do not know. The second also grew disillusioned with the SSPX and became Eastern Orthodox for several years. Thanks be to God, he is now back in the Catholic fold and attending an ad orientem Novus Ordo in a different state, and I pray that he’ll play the wild rover no more.
And so, the news concerning Michael Warren Davis saddened but did not surprise me. Because I again disavow any claim to know the heart of the man, let me frame my final remarks as a series of conditional clauses.
Michael Warren Davis
If Michael was attracted to the TLM because it was a contradiction of the current age rather than a window into Heaven; if he liked his hand-held Missal not because it contained priceless wisdom but because it looked good on his chest of drawers next to his other retro paraphernalia; if he sees himself more as a reactionary mind and a contrarian gadfly than an adopted son of God loved and redeemed by a merciful Lord; and if he is prone to island hopping, then Michael’s fall is in accord with the laws of probability.
And for the rest of us, let news of this kind serve as a cautionary tale and a sober opportunity to examine our own motives for loving the things that we do, including the Mass of the Ages. How much better it is to be one of the Sower’s seeds that takes root and bears fruit than a tumbleweed blown into evermore desolate places.
And let us not forget to pray for the tumbleweeds.
