Jeffrey Rubin, editor of the Conservative Book Club, interviews H.W. Crocker III, author of the LRC bestseller, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church: A 2,000-Year History (Prima/Forum, 2002, $29.95)
Q. Why the title? I don’t know many Catholics who are feeling triumphant right now – except, perhaps, liberals who think that recent scandals will force more of the changes they’ve been advocating.
A: History tells us that the liberals will be disappointed; just as they have been disappointed by the failure of the Reformation, Revolution, Statism, and Secularism to eradicate the Church. For 2,000 years the gates of Hell have not prevailed – and they will not. The Church militant will become the Church triumphant. And that's true with this latest round of sex scandals, too.
Q. How so?
A: Because the Vatican knows that if this scandal were reported accurately the headlines would read: u201CChurch Experience with Homosexual Priests Confirms Boy Scout Fears.u201D That's why the Vatican has already directed the American Church to purge itself of homosexuals. And that's why next on the chopping block will be the morally lax liberalism that allowed this happen. So the inevitable long-term result will be a rejuvenated, more conservative Church full of orthodox celibate priests – exactly the reverse of what the media is predicting. But the media is too blinkered by liberal prejudice and superficiality to understand this.
Q. Near the end of the book you quote Cardinal Newman’s remark that "to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant." That’s a key theme in the book, which constitutes a kind of "argument from history" for the Faith. Can you expand on that?
A: Newman goes even farther, saying that Protestantism understands this, which is why it created a religion based solely on the Bible. I think Newman is absolutely right. The argument from history is virtually irrefutable – it is in fact what brought Newman into the Church. In the book, I rely heavily on secular and even liberal sources to make the case – not only to Catholic readers, but to Protestants and secularists as well – that objective history is Catholic history. Indeed, we now know for a fact – from secular historians – that the u201Cblack legendsu201D of the Church, are just that: myths. Triumph does a lot of myth-busting: about the Spanish Inquisition, about the Renaissance popes….
Q. Let's stop there for a minute. Many Catholic historians have seen the Renaissance as the tipping point into secularization. Yet you're a fan of the Renaissance, and even of the Renaissance popes.
A: Yes. When it comes to the debate between Alexander VI and Savonarola or between Pope Leo X and Luther, I happily take the ultramontane position. I see the Renaissance as the culmination of the Church's arduous rebuilding effort after the fall of Rome. Catholicism is naturally the religion of high civilization, of art, learning, and beauty, and of understanding that everything's not in the Bible and that the classical world had virtues worth preserving and building on. St. Augustine recognized that pagan Rome had great virtues. Dante's guide in the Divine Comedy is the pagan poet Virgil. Aquinas built on Aristotle. The Church incorporates everything. It truly is universal, and that is one of its great glories.
Q. You also show affection for some of the barbarians.
A. Well, yes, I do think that the Christianized-barbarian West had many redeeming qualities. I do like the Heliand, the Saxon New Testament – it's a sort of The Bible Meets Beowulf. I admire the vigor, the loyalty, and the rough-hewn honor of these tribes. It was the Church's genius to marry their virtues with the virtues of high Roman civilization and incorporate both within the Church, consecrating formerly barbarian swords for Christian ends, reconciling barbarian concepts of honor and loyalty with Catholic concepts of faith and fidelity. In the book, I refer to the Dark Age newly Catholic tribes as u201CBikers for the Bishop of Rome.u201D I find them much better company than the perfervid, oft-schismatic Eastern church
Q. Indeed, your book is very western, very Roman – u201CEurocentric,u201D the multiculturalists might say.
A. Yes, Triumph has been compared to the works of Hilaire Belloc – the Belloc who said that Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe. No institution has had a great shaping influence on the Western world than has the Catholic Church. And I happen to think that the West is a great thing. In fact, the end of the book is a call for the Catholic West to rise again. I've also come to realize that – though I didn't see the movie Gladiator until after I'd finished writing Triumph – that Triumph really is the history of the Catholic Church as seen through the eyes of that movie's hero, Maximus. Like Maximus, Triumph upholds Rome as u201Cthe light.u201D And like Maximus, the book is very martially minded. Triumph is probably the only Catholic history you'll find with five or so books in the bibliography devoted to the French Foreign Legion – a great Catholic institution.
Q. You have no qualms about being a Crusader.
A. No. Pat Buchanan has talked about the u201Cmilquetoast Christianityu201D we have on offer today. Well Triumph is the pure, unadulterated fighting faith. In hoc signo vinces is the spirit of the book. Constantine, the Crusades, the Monastic Military Orders, the Conquistadors – when Christendom was Christendom it rightly turned swords on the faith's behalf, just as Peter had leapt for his scabbard to defend his Lord. It was the Church that gave us chivalry, turning barbarian high spirits to useful ends. It was one of the great historic tragedies of Reformation Protestantism that it broke this Church check and guide on the martial spirit by saying that the power of the state was scriptural and that the power of the Church was not.
That was a terrible regression. It sanctified the idea that might makes right, and the idea that the Church was of marginal importance to society, civilization, and politics. It undid the work of centuries. Where once the Roman emperor, commander of all Rome's legions, could be forced to do penance by the Bishop of Milan, as the Emperor Theodosius was compelled to do by St. Ambrose, after the Reformation the Church's check on state power was abolished. If any institution was not surprised by the twentieth century being a century of genocide and two world wars, it was the Church. The Church predicted that this was the path that was being laid by the Reformation, Revolution, Liberalism, Secularism, and Statism, all of which inevitably followed one after the other, as the Church saw they would.
Q. There's not a lot of apologizing in your book for the u201Csins of the Church.u201D
A. I think there's plenty of criticism where criticism is called for. I think the popes have not always been as politically astute as would have been good for the faith. Indeed, I charge the papacy with wrongly fearing the power of the Holy Roman Empire more than the Protestants whom the empire was at the brink of bringing to heel. But the fact is that this flood of books with titles like Papal Sin, Hitler's Pope, and worse to come, all alleging institutional anti-Semitism and a variety of other crimes against the Church are just more u201Cblack legendu201D mythologizing that needs to be called to task.
The Church rarely responds to its critics. Triumph is meant to be that response – because the truth is on our side. And these myths take pernicious root. How many people have any idea that the Spanish Inquisition was responsible for executing fewer people per year, on an average year, than the state of Texas – and that it was among the most lenient and fair-minded courts of its time? That's established secular history now. But I'm sure to most everyone, the words Spanish Inquisition still dredge up images of horror beyond compare. Just as now the word u201Cpriestu201D is immediately linked to u201Cpedophileu201D when we know, as far as we have factual data, that Catholic priests are no more likely – in fact, they are probably less likely – to be pedophiles than anyone else.
And then there's the smear campaign against Pope Pius XII, which would be absurd if it weren't so evil – trying to erase the testimony of the Jews who survived the Holocaust and praised Pope Pius XII. And it's all done for partisan political ends. The Communists did that of course; they began this big lie about Pius XII. Now it's liberals who have picked up Voltaire's battle standard of ecrasez l'infame and made Pius one of their targets. But as I point out in the book, no institution – save the Allied Armies – rescued more Jews during the Second World War than did the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII had a long history of battling the Nazis, going back at least to 1921. But by the twentieth century of course, the Church didn't have armies of its own to command any more, unless one counts the Swiss Guards – who were rather weak on heavy weapons, tanks, and air support.
The really extraordinary thing is that if you talk to most people about Catholic history, this is what you get – a lot of unexamined, scandal buzzwords: Hitler's Pope, deal-cutters with Mussolini; sexual depravity in monasteries and nunneries; decadent Renaissance popes; the Spanish Inquisition; the sacking of Constantinople; and so on. The Church, to its credit, has never tried to deny bloody history – it doesn't opt out of history the way Protestantism does; and it doesn't nurture historical grudges like the Eastern Orthodox. The Church accepts that it operates in a sinful world with fallible human beings. But what is always missing among the buzzword droppers is any sense of historical context or understanding that would lead a fair-minded observer to see that in many cases the charges leveled against various aspects of Church history are sheer propaganda or even the very reverse of the truth.
It might be too much to hope for, given u201Cthe closing of the American mind,u201D but I do hope that Triumph will remind Catholics just how great the Church's gifts to the world have been. And I do sincerely hope that it will bring fallen away Catholics back to the fold and bring many others now outside into full communion with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of the Creed. A tall order, I know. But if I have succeeded – as I hope I have – in giving Catholics the first affirmative, accessible, one volume history of their Church in at least fifty years…. Well, I like to think that a drought has been ended, and that Triumph might bring refreshing water to those thirsting after righteousness. Or at least give them an entertaining read, with a bit of humor between the battles. I'll settle for either.
(Excerpted from an interview that appeared in the April 18, 2002, issue of The Wanderer.)
