Aragorn, son of Arathorn

«When an organic culture is destroyed, there may be a brief period of euphoric liberation, but something always fills the void, and in the Church’s case, as much as in American culture more broadly, a centralized bureaucracy was the real long-term result of the Council. The average parish, after the Council, shifted from an organic community under a pastor to “a sprawling network of councils and staff.”... Liberalism, while promising liberation to everyone against a tyrannical hierarchical past, in the end, empowered the bureaucracy over a now atomized laity in a way more authoritarian and micromanaging than the old pastors or Church hierarchy ever could have imagined. This is not necessarily a conspiracy, but a mere fact of entropy. If something that was formerly held up by culture has to get done, the most effective way is to hire someone to do it. And the way that sounds best in the abstract, of course, is to hire an expert, to replace organic practice of the faith with an artificial institutional simulacrum as grassroots confraternities are replaced by involvement ministry coordinators, religious sisters with R.E. coordinators, the authority of a pastor with that of a parish and finance councils, local charity work with national 501(c)(3)s, etc.... In a way, bureaucratization and centralization are the end state of every revolution, as all idealism must eventually make accommodations with reality that often entail going back to certain parts of the status quo. But it’s particularly ironic in this case, as the Church has wound up in a state, in the end, that was the opposite in many ways of what the Council Fathers, utopian as they were, had wanted—[now] more centralized, more bureaucratic, more red tape, more authoritarian, less flexible, more imbued by the practices of the world, but less ready or capable to go out and sanctify the world.... The turbulence and chaos within the Church came from an abnegation of authority, a revolution of selfishness, and the institutional bureaucratization that has—rather poorly—filled the gap.» James Green, of the Grain of Wheat Substack, with excellent observations on Hanael Bianchi's new book 𝐴 𝐿𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑉𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝐼𝐼 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑐ℎ𝑑𝑖𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐵𝑎𝑙𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒. grainofwheat.substack.com/p/…

Between 2022 and 2025, I wrote a trilogy in defense of the Roman Rite as it has been handed down to us by our forefathers. These books thoroughly cover the essential traditionalist arguments, ranging over the entire field of Catholic liturgy and the theological issues pertinent to it. In times of confusion, when superficial slogans dominate the internet, I try to offer something different: a careful, well-researched approach that respects history, defends tradition, and vindicates common sense. osjustipress.com/products/kw…