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Interviewing the Abbot:
In Hope

Abbot Christopher M. Zielinksi OSB oliv
Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey

In a recent Chapter talk, you spoke about a return to orthodoxy; and that this resurgence shows itself in a very vibrant way among the young.  You affectionately referred to them as “young fogies”.  Would you elaborate upon this present phenomenon?

Abbot:  Orthodoxy has a very distinguished history in that it is not one of those ideas that Christianity borrowed from the pagan environment.  In fact the concept emerged as believers sought to understand more clearly, without ambivalence and with greater precision their new faith in Jesus Christ. 

In this sense, orthodoxy is a social process dedicated to the careful transmission of Tradition.  It makes truth-claims without apology and tries to guard and sustain these truth-claims through the hazards of time.

 As modern secular political and religious ideologies continue to wane, communities of traditional faith are flourishing now more than ever.  This emerging and vibrant orthodoxy is evident among the youth.   I have, adopted the expression “young fogies” from Thomas C Oden’s book The Rebirth of Orthodoxy.  I have found among the youth the desire to reclaim the classic spiritual practices:  lectio divina, daily prayer, regular participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, the study of Church Doctrine and the desire for moral accountability.  Their “crusades” and “spiritual warfare” may at times sound belligerent, but I can assure you that they are truly living out the liturgical teaching of Sacrosanctum Concilium regarding “active participation”:  These youth are acting out of a deep spiritual and theological contemplative participation of the Catholic faith. 

You sound very enthusiastic about the youth in that they are reclaiming the Tradition in the Church. 
 
Abbot:   I have traveled in 4 major cities in the past few months:  Rome, London, Paris, and spent 4 hours in the Dallas Airport because of bad weather.  In each city, I observed the youth and have spoken with many of them (the monastic habit is not only a conversational piece, but is capable of drawing Catholics, non-Catholics, believers and unbelievers into conversation and also, as I have experienced into the Sacrament of Confession.)   Yes, there is in these young people a deep desire to know God.  They also want to know the truth about the faith; they want to discuss these truths and be able to embody them in their daily life.  These young men and women have outlived the collapse of the foundations of secular society, trying to fight the culture of death, and have not lost the desire to know and understand the meaning of life.  They will not accept anything less than the truth.  And they want that the Church to play a critical role in telling the truth and sustaining truthful interpretations while it promotes the true culture of life.

What about the growing participation of young Catholics at Traditional Masses.  Do you see that as part of “the re-birth of orthodoxy?”

Abbot:  This is part of their radical desire to know, love and serve God.  And if I may, it is very much at the heart of the Pauline and Augustinian tradition.  In fact, many of our youth today are reading The Confessions of St. Augustine, and leaving the works of many dissenting theologians on book shelves where they are collecting inches of dust as they quickly fall into oblivion.  Many of these youth have been called “papists”, because much of their spiritual reading is dedicated to the works of Pope John Paul II and our present Pope Benedict XVI.  Doen’t that reveal something very important about the young people of God? 

I might quote a few lines taken from the preface of Abbot Cuthbert Brogan OSB in Lambert Beauduin’s book Liturgy-the Life of the Church.  “…the young often find contemporary liturgical celebrations lacking.  They do not find the life the Liturgy offers.  Their yearning for that sense of mystery, of beauty, of transcendence, their need for silence and for an experience of the numinous, which is their right by virtue of their baptism, is so often frustrated.”

But are their still dangers of secularism for the Church and these “young fogies?”

The danger of secularism is that it attempts to rationalize men’s inherent spiritual drives out of existence rather than acknowledging and providing for them.  The secular world makes war inevitable for religion by either squeezing it into a very small corner of “life” or, as is the case in the United States, it tries to absorb it completely into its social, cultural and political agenda.  Our youth can be saved from this only if the Church, as interpreter, continues to teach the truth without ambivalence or compromise.  The youth must be certain that the Church is naming its Doctrine accurately and appropriately.

Father Abbot, you say that the youth can be saved from secularism only if the Church continues to teach the truth without ambivalence.  And yet, in many recent debates about the Second Vatican Council and its Documents, questions remain as to what the Documents really say.

Abbot:  The post-conciliar period was actually unable to move towards an implementation of the Documents precisely because an authentic interpretation was lacking.  This resulted in what many traditionalists call the “ambiguous nature of the Conciliar Texts.”  It certainly created a whole new hermeneutical enterprise where we discover walls and walls of books written in the hope of interpreting the Conciliar Documents.   And even if an article of the Constitution on the Liturgy such as article 36 is very clear about the use of the Latin language in the Roman Rite, in effect it has been greatly ignored.  And when the questions were even more complex and often not quite clearly explained, theologians exploited the imprecision of the Conciliar Documents in what they call “the spirit of the Council.”  For example, Gaudium et Spes will remain one of their privileged victims!  In fact, the interpretations of this Document are truly “legion.”

I hear from your voice a tone of anxiety.  Do you want to add something here?

Abbot:  The anguish that some of us have observed for some time now has been caused not by the fact that the Church is more and more “alienated” from the rest of the world, but by the fact that it is not alienated enough; that every day we are getting more and more like the rest of the world, and we call this “pastoral care”.  But this is the true chimera of relevance by which our presence in the world becomes more and more irrelevant.

And what about our youth?

Abbot:  Our Catholic youth have taken on the challenge of living the faith amid the tensions and tragedies of our turn of the century society.  Their growing number and enthusiasm signify the recovery of the life affirming essence of what it means to have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.  Certainly they are hungering for true doctrine and if they cannot receive it in the local Church, they seek it out by means of the Internet.  It is their gut-born imperative of faith that is moving them towards greater love of the Word of God, the Tradition, and the Magisterium.

Our youth are open, spontaneous, generous, but very frank in letting us “professionals of the faith” know about our failures in living up to the stature of Christ.  And not infrequently, we of the Catholic Clergy present a spectacle no more appealing than when it once traded in indulgences and silently ignored the crimes of Monarchs in exchange for fat benefices.  In fact, one need not join the enemies of the Second Vatican Council to be outraged by the actions of many theologians and Church Diplomats or to insist that the Church hierarchy harmed legions of our brothers and sisters in Christ when it dispossessed us of Latin which was native to the Tradition of the Roman Rite and instituted the vernacular which was “foreign”.  In virtue of “active participation” we suddenly discovered that we had adopted the Protestants’ greatest undoing:  the nationalizing of Religion. 

And yet, we must move forward together and “in hope.”  And, God forbid, may it never happen that the people of God rise up and condemn us saying, “you gave us everything, except what interests us, Jesus Christ.”