Foot Soldiers of Orthodoxy

There were no folk-style ballads strummed on guitars at the Pontifical High Mass celebrated last week at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. The hymns were all in Latin, as was the rest of the Mass. The offertory anthem was the 8th-century refrain, "Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat [Christ triumphs, Christ rules, Christ commands]." Nonetheless, the 350 delegates to the Fourth National Wanderer Forum sang out with a fervor rivaling that of any mod congregation. "That really felt like going to church, didn't it?" asked one rosary-fingering worshiper at the end of Mass. "Just like in the good old days, when we were Catholics all the way."

Fish on Fridays. A common yearning for the good old days of Latin liturgy, fish on Fridays, and unchallenged papal authority was what united delegates to the three-day meeting. An annual event sponsored by The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic weekly published in St. Paul, the forum drew a predominantly middleclass, middle-aged audience from 24 states and Canada. Its theme was "The Crisis of Belief--What Must Be Done."

The overriding concern of the delegates was the strong trend toward change in the Roman Catholic Church. Some participants warned that "liber alism" prepares the way for Communist infiltration of the U.S. and the Church. On hand were representatives of militantly anti-Communist groups ranging from the Young Americans for Freedom to the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation. Lola Belle Holmes, a Negro who identified herself as a former undercover agent for the FBI within the Communist Party, declared that it is out "to capture the Catholic Church." The nation's only hope for leadership, she added, is George Wallace.

Other speakers expressed their concern that rebel elements within the church are corroding faith, and contended that even the U.S. hierarchy is not exempt from the liberal disease. Keynote Speaker Frederick Wilhelm-sen, professor of philosophy and politics at the University of Dallas, declared that "the bishops of this nation labor mightily like elephants and then bring forth as solutions the mice of secular liberalism." The problem with liberalism, explained L. Brent Bozell, editor of the Catholic monthly Triumph (and brother-in-law of William Buckley), is its view of a world in which man is self-sufficient. "It is a question of a man-oriented order v. a God-oriented order," said Bozell. "Adam was the first liberal and the symbol of the liberal"--meaning that from the moment he touched the apple, Adam, like many a modern-day renewalist, was trying to take the world into his own hands.

On the Run. To a man, delegates to the forum deplore the translation of the Mass into English. They also feel that religious education has lost its moorings; some charged that new catechisms recently introduced into parochial schools are heretical. For all their zeal, the Wanderers concede that they are fighting a lonely battle to preserve the true faith. "Orthodoxy is now on the run," said one speaker, "its foot soldiers in disarray."

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