A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Robert Royal, founder and president of the Faith & Reason Institute. For the uninitiated, Dr. Royal, in my humble opinion, is one of the most interesting, important, and intelligent Catholic voices in the United States today. For example, almost ten years ago, I read a fantastic article of his in First Things on Albert Camus that inspired me to read several of Camus’s works for the first time. Since then, I’ve been hooked, and have regularly written for his own publication, The Catholic Thing.
Before his lecture, I approached Dr. Royal, and we got to talking about his work, past, present, and future. He told me that his 2015 book A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century—an Ignatius Press work about the Catholic intellectual traditions of the twentieth century—represented some of the best scholarship and writing he would ever do. I was stunned: I had not only not read the book, I had been embarrassingly ignorant about its content and thesis. So I ordered it, read it, and found it to be much as Dr. Royal described it to me.
The book deserves a much wider audience than it elicited when published almost a decade ago, especially because Dr. Royal’s analysis so effectively addresses many of the questions Catholics face in the twentieth-century.
This interview aims to help interested readers understand the deep relevancy of a book written by one of the most important Catholic thinkers in America today.
CWR: Why did you feel the need to write A Deeper Vision?
Robert Royal: It may seem hard to believe, but I wrote those 600-plus pages because I wanted to try to arrive, in my own mind at least—after decades of reading around in Catholic philosophy, theology, Scripture Studies, culture, the arts, literature, etc.—at an overall vision of Catholic thought and culture in the twentieth century. And I wanted as much as possible to do so without being dragged into the polarizing polemics that occupy so much of our attention online and in Catholic publications.
When I looked for general works describing each of these fields, there were a few (critics have sometimes accused me of being unaware of such general treatments, even when I cite them in my text). But they’re usually focused on one line of thought or another without situating them in the larger context of the 20th century. I would ask friends who were philosophers, theologians, literary scholars, and they were as surprised by this general absence of synoptic views of their Catholic disciplines as I was. In part, that’s owing to academic specialization—scholars rightly focused on their own areas of expertise, with little time for looking into other disciplines or even approaches within their own fields.
But I can’t emphasize enough how much our current polarization has also led to fragmentation and divisions in modern Catholic thought. It’s exhausting to have to deal with those while trying to get a calm, balanced view of a subject. I gave a copy of my book to a prominent Roman Cardinal when it came out and explained that it was not a polemical, but a descriptive book. He said to me, “Not polemical? That’s rare these days.”
CWR: Of all the important individuals discussed in your book, who do you think was the most influential Catholic thinker of the twentieth of the century, and why?
Robert Royal: There are—simplifying slightly—two main currents in the 2000 years of Catholic thought. One current comes down to us largely via the influence of Plato: Augustine, Bonaventure, Newman, Guardini, Simone Weil, DeLubac, Ratzinger, and others can classified broadly be in that way. And they feed into the more personalist and communitarian and pastoral side of Catholicism in modern times.
By contrast, we have the more Aristotelean side of Catholic thought in Boethius, Aquinas, Cajetan, Leo XIII, Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, Gilson, Edith Stein, and others. Aquinas really belongs in both camps, as does Joseph Pieper; and most Catholic thinkers draw some from both currents. Rather than one single figure, I’d say that the Thomist neo-Scholastics, though they had their limitations, were important in the first half of the century because they offered real firepower at a time when Catholic thought needed a boost. That’s why people like Maritain, Gilson, Christopher Dawson, and others taught at prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, and Toronto.
Since the mid-twentieth century, the Augustinians have enriched the picture, but the two sides need one another. Speaking personally, when I was a young man, the Aristotlean/Thomist rigor saved me from the chaos of the 1970s; now that I’m an elder statesman, I find myself turning more frequently to the Augustinians. But this is all a very rich legacy and I know that my book has helped some people realize how varied and useful all of it is.
CWR: Can you explain the influence of Jacques Maritain, both inside and outside the Church?
Robert Royal: Well, if I had to choose one Catholic figure who had an outsized influence in the twentieth century—perhaps with the exception of Karol Wojtyla—it would have to be Maritain. He’s come in for some criticism in recent years, undeserved in my judgment. But if you look for who among the many philosophers, theologians, scholars of all types most carried out Leo XIII’s hopes for a renewal of modern society by a recovery of Thomism (which was not universally valued in the Church prior to Leo), it’s Maritain.
Not only did he write landmark books on philosophy, morals, art, and politics, he was one of the key architects of the Christian Democrat movement around the world. That movement has mostly petered out, alas, by now, but in its day, it was important for keeping Communism out of Italy and Latin America. Maritain’s books Man and the State and Reflections on America (both originally lectures at the University of Chicago) are still very much worth reading.
And despite the sad spectacle of the United Nations these days, Maritain’s work in helping craft the U. N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights laid down a theoretical decency, however much it’s been ignored in practice. Who else among Catholic thinkers (again Wojtyla perhaps excepted) had so great an influence on the Church’s thought and world history in the twentieth century?
CWR: What do you think is the greatest piece of Catholic literature published in the twentieth century?
Robert Royal: I can’t choose because we had a Catholic literary renaissance in the previous century that deserves to be explored in its entirely: Hopkins, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Péguy, Claudel, Chesterton and Belloc, Graham Greene, Waugh, Muriel Spark, Bernanos, Mauriac, Undset, and that’s just for starters. I’m working on a sequel of A Deeper Vision now that will deal with the American Catholic intellectual tradition—something I mostly kept out of the first book.
And when you consider, just in literature, Thomas Merton, Edwin O’Connor, J. F. Powers, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, even more recent poets like Dana Gioia and James Matthew Wilson, it’s like trying to prefer one or another among your children and grandchildren. You just shouldn’t do it.
CWR: Which encyclical of John Paul II is the most important for Catholics to know today and why?
Robert Royal: They’re all important in their various ways. There’s a lot of emphasis on Veritatis Splendor at the moment because it’s a powerful refutation of the kind of situation ethics that seems dominant in Rome these days. Pope Francis recently invoked Bernard Haring, at one time a huge figure in the post-Vatican II efforts to re-orient Catholic morals. When I was writing A Deeper Vision, I dealt with many similar figures—Karl Rahner, for instance—but Haring and that whole mistaken moral method seemed so dead and buried to me that I only referred to it in passing. I expect it will pass away again, and soon, because it’s not only wrong but easily, demonstrably so—and has disastrous consequences in private and public life.
But I’d also put in a plug for John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, which early on raises the need for a reason “of true metaphysical reach.” Without that kind of anchoring reason, many things quickly become unmoored, and in a time like ours many then get carried out to sea.
CWR: What is phenomenology? And why is it important for the Church?
Robert Royal: Ah, you ask about the word that public Catholics are often counseled never to mention in public. For a fuller answer, you need to go to the work of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski of the Catholic University of America who gave me some good tips when I was writing. He not only knows the field well, but can explain it in terms human beings can understand. Very briefly—and to deal with only one important part of phenomenology—as the name implies, it’s a philosophy that respects the phenomena, how the world appears to us. Ever since Descartes, a central modern problem for philosophy is how does the world inside our head—knowledge being immaterial—reflect or even get in touch with the world outside of us.
A key insight in the movement, which can be traced in Edmund Husserl, a favorite of Wojytla’s, and Edith Stein—Husserl’s assistant. What if it’s the nature of things to “disclose themselves,” and it’s the nature of our minds to be receivers of that disclosure? There are still many things to sort out as to what “seems” to be the case and what “is,” but at least we don’t have the insoluble problem of how the material world outside us gets inside our minds. We’re back in a cosmos where the two are from the first related and we can seek truth.
CWR: How would you respond to those younger, traditionalist Catholics who are increasingly outspoken in their desire to “move beyond” Vatican II?
Robert Royal: Well, we all feel that way now, even we elder statesmen. The day will come—it has to—when we won’t be embroiled in this fruitless effort to distinguish the Church after the Council from the Church before. The Church is the One Body, the Mystical Body, of Christ, and maybe it will take another generation or two to die out before we can think about this unity through time without resorting to sterile polemics. So stay at the task—be faithful and relentless, rooted in a living tradition that, like the many paradoxes of the faith, preserves a beauty that is ever ancient ever new (Augustine’s tam antiqua tam nova).
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Both Chalk and Royal are gifts to the Church. When one reads what they write, they come through as fundamentally Christocentric in all things. Refreshing in today’s Catholic Church which trips over itself trying to accommodate itself to a secular, atheistic, and homocentric culture.
Addendum to the above: I used the word “homocentric” rather than “anthropocentric” for a reason.
As more of a dabbler in these things, yours truly would like to add a tidbit on Maritain, Gilson and Augustine…
Maritain’s wife, Raissa, recalls their years at the Sorbonne a century ago where they encountered the minds of the day and, in actually finding Truth, relinquished their alternative suicide pact (the personal analogue to our cancel culture and woke). In 1910, Jacques wrote: “One can easily see that modern thinkers prefer first and foremost and without hesitation, ten errors coming from man to one truth coming from God” (Raissa, “Adventures in Grace,” 1944).
About the “mistaken moral method” of Rahner, Haring et al–of which and whom Royal “expect[s] it will pass away again, and soon”–Gilson summarizes: “Philosophy always buries its undertakers” (“The Unity of Philosophical Experience,” 1937).
And about favoring Augustine, the Augustinian Dietrich von Hildebrand certainly agrees…in a private conversation with de Chardin, he mentioned St. Augustine and Teilhard responded: “Don’t mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural” (Appendix, “Trojan Horse in the City of God,” 1967).
So, as for “the situation ethics that seems dominant in Rome these days,” might we summarize that in Rome and beyond, mediocrity and worse have been cross-dressed as a new “cardinal virtue”?
Theological astigmatism, instead of the stigmata? A sad day, too, when simply turning the lights on can be confused with “polemics.”
Yo, Peter. I’m glad you mentioned Dietrich von Hildebrand, because in Robert Royal’s book (I haven’t read it, but checked it out to see the list of scholars he features.), which is probably quite good, there is, according to the index, one reference to von Hildebrand on page 80 of the text. Perhaps on that page there is an explanation as to why von Hildebrand is not featured as much as some of the other notables in the book, but he was indeed a most influential Catholic intellectual of the 20th Century, and also a most worthy member of the pantheon of those featured more prominently in Royal’s book. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI once said of Dietrich von Hildebrand: “I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.”
Interesting how super scholar Pope Benedict believed that Dietrich von Hildebrand would not only be recognized as a leading 20th century Catholic intellectual; he would also be recognized as among the most prominent among them. Yet, he appears to be almost ignored in a book that should at least feature him as much as the others that Royal writes about.
Again, unless the lone reference mentioned above provides a reasonable explanation for excluding von Hildebrand from greater treatment, perhaps if a second or updated edition is published, Mr. Royal will correct the oversight and provide a good section on the substantial Catholic intellectual contributions of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Unless and until that happens, the current edition of the book has a monstrous hole in it.
Yo, Peter. I’m glad you mentioned Dietrich von Hildebrand, because in Robert Royal’s book (I haven’t read it, but checked it out to see the list of scholars he features.), which is probably quite good, there is, according to the index, one reference to von Hildebrand on page 80 of the text. Perhaps on that page there is an explanation as to why von Hildebrand is not featured as much as some of the other notables in the book, but he was indeed a most influential Catholic intellectual of the 20th Century, and also a most worthy member of the pantheon of those featured more prominently in Royal’s book. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI once said of Dietrich von Hildebrand: “I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.”
Interesting how super scholar Pope Benedict believed that Dietrich von Hildebrand would not only be recognized as a leading 20th century Catholic intellectual; he would also be recognized as among the most prominent among them. Yet, he appears to be almost ignored in a book that should at least feature him as much as the others that Royal writes about.
Again, unless the lone reference mentioned above provides a reasonable explanation for excluding von Hildebrand from greater treatment, perhaps if a second or updated edition is published, Mr. Royal will correct the oversight and provide a good section on the substantial Catholic intellectual contributions of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Unless and until that happens, the current edition of the book has a monstrous hole in it.
I too noticed the short mention of von Hildebrand. I was a devoted student of Dr. William Marra who was probably the most devoted and articulate follower of von Hildebrand in the United States. He introduced von Hildebrand to the American student for which I will be eternally grateful. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on C.S. Lewis and von Hildebrand – a fascinating combination.
JUDGE THEM BY THEIR FRUIT
1. I’ve read about a million articles by Catholic intellectuals heralding the greatness of the encyclicals of the pope of the 20th century who was hailed “the Great.”
2. But if these texts were and are so great, why then is the Church still in the middle of the most destructive crisis in its history?
3. The John Paul II and Benedict XVI papacies together span 35 years–and yet all their writings did not end or even mitigate the present existential crisis.
4. Can’t a Catholic be forgiven for judging their papacies as failures, if someone like Bergoglio can be elected by their cardinals as their successor?
5. Isn’t it time to stop judging papal encyclicals by their “intellectual” craftsmanship and originality, and instead start judging them by whether they in fact save and protect the souls of ordinary Catholic lay people, or leave those souls vulnerable to the wolves that for 60 years now have been allowed to run loose in the Church?
A big part of the answer, Gus, can be found by doing a couple of simple things: watch the news and/or interact with a range of people.
People (and I’m on the list!) are fallen, sinful, fearful, selfish, etc. If just writing brilliant encyclicals could fix it, it would be fixed.
Let me be play devil’s advocate with your list:
1. I’ve read countless articles by Catholics about the greatness of Jesus Christ, who they describe as Lord, Savior, and even God. I’ve even read the four Gospels and other writings of the New Testament.
2. But if those documents are so great, then why has the world been such mess for centuries. Why are so many Christians so unlike Jesus?
Etc, etc.
Re: #5: You seem to think that popes have magical powers by which they can lovingly coerce people into becoming saints. It don’t [sic] work like that. Using your approach, we can judge the Apostles, Saint Paul, etc., as failures in many ways.
Yes, by all means, make reasonable, learned observations about, say, how John Paul II or Benedict XVI could have done this or that better, more often. They weren’t perfect. But I’d be a bit wary of making hard and fast judgments that involve a lot of “woulda, coulda, shoulda,” because you weren’t there and God along can judge certain things. Personally, the writings and lives of those two men have had a profound and positive effect on me over the past 30 years. I credit both in key ways for my decision to become Catholic. And, as bad as this current pontificate is, it has at least revealed many of the wolves.
Okay.
About Maritain’s conversion to the faith when he and Raïssa were prepared for suicide if they couldn’t find truth. They finally attended Henri Bergson’s lectures, I believe at the Collège de France Paris on change and creativity in contrast to the positivism that stifled the intellect in the pursuit of higher truths. Maritain and Raïssa [she in We Were Friends Together] attribute their intellectual awakening to Bergson.
Bergson, considered the world’s greatest intellectual, and a Jew, was an admirer of Catholicism evident in his Two Sources of Religion and Morality. When France fell to Nazi Germany the Fuehrer and others refused to violate Bergson’s freedom. He wasn’t required to wear the Yellow Star patch to identify himself as a Jew, nevertheless he wore it. He died of natural causes in Paris. It was alleged that he asked that a Catholic priest be present to offer prayers of commendation upon his death. Bergson deserves this mention.
ONE TRADITION, OR TWO?
1. To be fair to the history, there really seems to be TWO intellectual traditions in the Church in the 20th century.
2. First Intellectual Tradition: The papacy of Pope Leo XIII through the papacy of Pope Pius XII.
3. Second Intellectual Tradition: The papacy of Pope John XXIII through the papacy of Pope Francis.
4. I think just sitting down and reading the papal encylicals from the Two Periods makes it quite clear that there are two very different periods, intellectually speaking.
5. It seems noteworthy that the papal encylicals of the First Period are almostly totally ignored in the theological education of priests, theologians, deacons, catechists, university students, etc. For example, practically no one reads the 1928 papal encyclical that condemns the sort of Ecumenism that Vatican II approved and made a necessary, central component of all aspects of Church life (theology; liturgy; marriage; childrearing; catechesis; priestly formation; etc.)
6. It seems noteworthy that some of the theologians who had their teachings condemned or otherwise disapproved by the Vatican or the pope in the First Period had, in the Second Period, those judgments reversed, with their teachings now embraced and promoted by the Vatican or the pope. (John Courtney Murray being one example.)
7. An authority can declare and demand that all the differences between the Two Periods must be viewed through an imposed “hermeneutic of continuity.”
8. But such a demand is not the same as producing a convincing, point-by-point, theological proof of actual continunity, is it?
9. In sum, isn’t really fair and reasonable (perhaps necessary) to say that there are/were two intellectual traditions in the Church in the 20th century?
10. If this commment is an example of barking up the wrong tree, or just plain barking, then call it foolishness. Fools are to be pitied, and prayed for.
11. But if this comment is making a fair point, then could the smart and good people of Catholic World Report adddress this, please?
12. The Catholic people are suffering, floundering, confused, lost, often misled, and are waiting and hoping for things to go back to the normal, traditional order in the Church. Help us, Lord.
Not being an intellectual, merely a seasoned Catholic, who has endured the schizophrenic character of the zeitgeist and the Church’s equally unbalanced response to it over the past seventy years I share your frustration with the inadequacies of the clerical and Catholic academic response to a world gone berserk. Your queries are rich. Twentieth century Catholicism was floundering in its response to the situation, but in the twenty-first century it is flat on the matt.
I’ve been somewhat dumbstruck by a topic which has immerged and is being obsessed upon by cable news channels over just the past few weeks – artificial intelligence. Elon Musk last evening said that this technology could/would easily become a high-tech omniscient idol. Isn’t that crystal clear? Given the dearth of faith and intellectual acumen manifest in the present pontificate – which I perceive as flat on its face, at best — I fear your queries are soon to be greatly magnified. Despite, or perhaps more accurately because of its Jesuit pedigree, the Bergoglian sandbox is in no position to engage with what presently befalling us.
How did we get here?
As a young college theology student, it was always emphasized “faith and reason.” I’ve long wondered, though not articulated, if contemporary theological engagement with the modern world is only a game of reason played on the terms of the opposing team. Little faith is exhibited or articulated in the contemporary theological academy.
John Paul was an authentic exception.
“Veritatis Splendor” and “Fides et Ratio” brought me back to an earnest engagement with Catholic practice. His intellectual acumen was bonded to a sincere piety and devotion which rather than contradict, supported and magnified his intellectual dialogue with the contemporary dysphoria.
In the present moment, I prescribe less jabbering and far more kneeling. Von Balthazar said theology is an occupation of the knees. This moment might require less arguing with our secular pharisees, sadducees and scribes. Lots more prayer and devotion.
Might even the stones shout?
Brilliantly said, James.
If intellect is not tempered with godliness, it lacks. The branches of science, math and physics point a mind of such awesome brilliance, and yet, we have only skimmed the surface. To suggest these fields of study just happened and we merely stumbled upon them, would be questionable.
Where there is a building there is a builder; a watch has a maker; an invention, an inventor; a creation, a creator.
God shares knowledge with us, we should honour Him accordingly!
Proverbs 2:6 For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
Psalm 119:98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.
Job 32:8 But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
I quote, summarizing a recent article by an illustrious contemporary Italian Dominican, Father G. Cavalcoli.
The Holy Father’s address on St. Thomas at the recent international Thomistic conference at the Angelicum in Rome is an extremely important reminder to the whole Church, but with particular reference to the Dominican Order to resume its leading role in the field of the progress of theology …
Maritain is a theologian who, although not a Dominican, was an eminent disciple of Thomistic wisdom, even before the Council for decades he gave proof of having found the intellectual balance desired by the Council, for which the certainty of dogmatic truth was perfectly combined with a merciful openness towards modernity.
Even today the Dominicans can find in Maritain the criteria and the example of that intellectual renewal which the Council asked of us, marked by that charity which knows how to combine wisely and fruitfully, according to circumstances, the moment of mercy with that of severity. Thus the Dominicans fully rediscoverthe peculiarity of their charism.
The Holy Father, as a true and faithful Jesuit, with his authority as Successor of Peter, shows the way to put things right: not Rahner, but St. Thomas is the Doctor communis Ecclesiae.
It is therefore urgent that Dominicans and Jesuits come together, in the reciprocal complementarity of their charisms, in a solid and fraternal pact of energetic action for the good of the Church torn between laxity and rigorism, between Lefevrism and modernism.
Afew defects and some oscillations in Maritain’s thought.
In the ’20s he showed himself too conservative and too opposed to modernism, while from the ’30s until the end of his life, in an attempt to recover the positive sides of modernity, on the one hand he elaborated a theology and a pastoral that would have been a stimulus to the doctrines of the Council, but on the other unfortunately yielded to some extent to modern subjectivism.
However, these defects should not be magnified, because the thought of Maritain was brought as a model by both St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, for the fact that Maritain, more than any other Thomist of the ‘900, managed to elaborate a new theology and a new Christian praxis derived from a Thomistic critical scrutiny of contemporary thought.
Therefore, if we want to seek in today’s situation a teacher of wisdom, who will help us to carry out the conciliar reform, we must look precisely to Maritain, without naturally excluding the presence of other teachers as well.
I recognize that today Maritain is followed by few. But what does this depend on? That it is very difficult to achieve that synthesis between progressivism and tradition that is part of the project of the Second Vatican Council, a synthesis that Maritain achieved in an exemplary way.
Conversely, the very sad and painful thing about the Church today is the well-known sixty-year polemic between pastists and modernists, who in the opposition of their ideas have the same partisan attitude, which brings great damage and discomfort to the Church.
Of course, their number is great, but what contribution does it make to spreading the truth and to peace in the Church and in society? Apart from some values, which they accept, on the whole the struggle between these two parties produces scandal, divisions, grudges, confusion, heresies, rebellions against the Pope and crises of faith.
To resolve this dramatic situation and help Pope Francis in creating harmony between these two factions, I see no other way than to put into practice the indications that come to us from Maritain, naturally with the necessary corrections, with particular reference to that Thomistic inspiration to which the Popes have urged us for eight centuries, an inspiration that must guide us for the building of a new Christianity, according to the line indicated by the Second Vatican Council. “
I would not have thought of the 20th century as possessing an “intellectual tradition.”
What happens when humans seek the answer to the question, “Is God present?” John Paul II noted that the men of the Enlightenment could only accept the existence of a God who dwelt outside the world. He taught that we should meet with God face-to-face in our conscience (in private prayer). So then, what if we were to seek to know if God is present? God’s presence is revealed through signs. I have seen this quite often, and I think that this is a good direction for our evangelization to take. We need to ask that question that Jeremiah complained that the priests did not ask: “Where is God?”