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R e v i e w
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This Rock
Volume 15, Number 10
 December 2004 
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A Challenging Read
The contemporary Church is divided between two camps with little in common beyond the label Catholic. The depth of the division can be measured in each side’s use of language. Modernists talk of "progressives" and "conservatives" within the Church, as if Truth were something that progressed, or perhaps evolved, from one era to the next. Traditionalists, in contrast, write of "orthodox" and "heterodox," reflecting their belief that Truth is something that cannot change and must be adhered to.
It is not easy to imagine meaningful agreement between persons holding such radically different world views. Unless, perhaps, someone finds a way to explain each side to the other in terms each side can understand and perhaps accept.
Enter Eamon Duffy, Irish-born Catholic and professor of the history of Christianity at Cambridge University in England. His book Faith of Our Fathers is largely narrative and autobiographical. Its strength lies in Duffy’s ability to articulate the views and aspirations of each side of the Church, in terms both sides can understand, and propose ways forward that perhaps both sides can accept.
He begins on neutral ground with discussion of unbelief and a brief account of his own departure from and return to the faith. Having gained the trust of the reader, Duffy follows with a cool assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the much-maligned pre-conciliar practice of the faith in Ireland and England.
He accepts that there was a good deal of ritualism, superstition, and clericalism back then and perhaps more than a little magical thinking—all bad things that needed to be upgraded. But there was a texture, a strength, a consistent Catholic worldview that was communicated to the average person far more effectively than has happened over the past forty years with all the attempted renovations.
Faith of Our Fathers covers the gamut of post-conciliar change: the role of the Blessed Virgin, the saints, the Eucharist, the role of the pope, the meaning of the priesthood, the new liturgy (especially the new funeral liturgy), purgatory, hell, and recent clerical scandals.
Perhaps his approach to the Eucharist captures best the flavor of his approach to each of these topics.
Both sides agree, at least in theory, that the Eucharist is the central element of the faith and the source of Christian unity. But where is the unity of belief in the modern Church? Polls suggest that two-thirds of Catholics do not believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist.
Duffy suggests that the reader watch the Communion line in any local parish and observe the casual approach of many—especially teenagers and children "who will approach the altar, hands by their sides or even in pockets, who will take the Host often between thumb and finger from the priest’s thumb and finger, like a [cookie], and on returning to their places will slump in their seats or gaze about them as if they have just come back from the bathroom."
They have learned to disbelieve because modern sacramental behavior encourages disbelief—not because its architects did not believe but rather because they were seeking to stress community and personal transformation by grace in the place of an overemphasis on the otherness of the Blessed Sacrament best expressed by Spike Milligan, who "never went to Communion, because it was too good and he was too filthy."
The changes in posture were intended to further a sense of community and open parishioners to personal transformation through reception of our Lord; instead they undermined the fear and awe appropriate to receiving the Lord of the universe.
At each point through Faith of Our Fathers, Duffy outlines the usually valid reasons for change but also speaks honestly about their negative repercussions. He ends by proposing the recovery of the solid and true aspects of traditional practice.
But Duffy is not infallible. His chapter on the Inquisition seems based more on English Protestant sources than on the current scholarly consensus (which tends to debunk many of the traditional stereotypes), but that quibble aside, Faith of Our Fathers is a worthy and challenging read.
—Robin Bernhoft
Faith of Our Fathers: Reflections on Catholic Tradition
By Eamon Duffy
Continuum
187 pages
$16.95
ISBN: 0826474799
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