Turmoil and Truth

Turmoil and Truth: The Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church by Philip Trower, 199 pages

"Ecclesia semper reformanda est," St Augustine declared in the 4th century, "The Church is always in need of reform."  This was as true in the middle of the twentieth century as in Augustine's time, and historically the most powerful impetus to reform has been the ecumenical councils.  With the Second Vatican Council, however, the worst abuses seemed to follow rather than precede the Council, so that it seemed to many to be the cause rather than the cure.  The mission of aggiornamento entrusted to the Council by St John XXIII necessarily involved the sifting of the fruits of the modern world, keeping the wheat and disposing of the chaff.  According to Philip Trower, it was precisely this task that Church authorities and theologians proved unable - or unwilling - to perform in the wake of the Council.  

In Trower's view, the Church not only had the opportunity but also the moral responsibility to assimilate the goods of modernity, but not at the cost of the goods already entrusted to her.  The faith does not evolve, with the present replacing the past, rather it develops, with yesterday being refined and expanded upon today.  As such, modernity needs to be evaluated critically, but as Trower demonstrates, many of the reformers' reforms were outdated before they were even implemented - the idea of an immanentist Church which downplayed irrational elements of mystery and the supernatural was advanced even as the youth of the West embraced exotic mysticism and inchoate spirituality.  The modernists triumphed just as post-modernity began.

There are some problems with the book, the first being that it is really half a book - the sequel, The Catholic Church and the Counter-Faith, being the second half.  Trower concentrates on the ideas themselves rather than how they were propagated - he particularly seems to underestimate the extent to which dissenting Catholic intellectuals were bolstered by Western cultural elites, allowing them to make their case directly to the public instead of the bishops.  Still, it is precisely Trower's faith in the power of ideas that makes his history of the sowing of the wheat and tares reaped in the wake of the Council so worthwhile.