Last Christmas, my generous and book-loving husband gave me a reprint of a now-classic book.
The book, The End of the Modern World: A Search for Orientation, by the eminent Italo-German priest and theologian Fr Romano Guardini (1885-1968), has been reprinted by the Brooklyn-based publishers, Angelico Press.
The cover art designed by Angelico Press is evocative. It depicts a statue of a 19th-century gentleman in a frock coat, but beheaded. It’s a subdued image, but what was once unthinkable is now commonplace in our cancel culture. It reminds us that the enormous cultural and philosophical loss of faith, which Guardini witnessed in the 1930s, is back in our own times.
Guardini was a remarkable priest, born in Verona and died in Munich. He has been declared by the Church as a Servant of God.
He became a German citizen and wrote significant works on the liturgy, history, philosophy and theology. He became an intellectual hero, firstly to a generation of German Catholic thinkers including Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) and the philosopher Josef Pieper, and in more recent decades to non-Germans such as Bishop Robert Barron.
What particularly stands out in Guardini’s thought were his observations about the extent of the existential impact in Europe and in the West of the post-World War I era. He wrote: “We live in a devastated age. The things of the spirit and the things of salvation no longer have their own seat. Everything is thrown on the road.”
Guardini argued that even many 20th-century Catholics and church institutions had not really identified the shift in the tectonic plates of “modernity” and the root causes of the radical secularism, which had infected their own thought, morality and cultural expressions.
He wrote controversially that with the coming of the “purely secular set of values”, the Church became very awkward and often clumsy, forced either to be submerged in the “spirit of the age” or to be placed always on the defensive.
Guardini basically identified “the New Age” and post-modernism, which rejected the old certainties of nature, personality and culture.
He warns ominously but prophetically, “As the benefits of Revelation disappear even more from the coming world, man will truly learn what it means to be cut off from Revelation.”
More about Fr Guardini next week, because February 17 will mark the 130th anniversary of his birth.
The present edition of The End of the Modern World retains the original typeface of the 1956 English edition of the book published by Sheed and Ward. (Something to delight the font-nerds out there.) It also reminds us of how much the Australian lay theologian Frank Sheed and his wife Maisie Ward contributed to bringing the best of Continental Catholic thought into the English-speaking world.
Just as importantly, this edition retains the original editor’s Introduction, written by the American philosopher Frederick Wilhelmsen (1923-1996).
In this edition of the TMC newsletter, I want to remember the man behind the editing title who was an extraordinary Catholic thinker, political observer and teacher.
For some time his many books remained out of print, but with the revival of studies in culture and in St Thomas Aquinas, his work is being republished. See his important work, Man’s Knowledge of Reality.
He would have been a superb and helpful contributor to the Thomas More Centre and our work in our challenging times. He was a raconteur as well as a scholar. He admired Hilaire Belloc on whom he wrote and sometimes seemed to channel him by wearing a cape, his love of sailing and his taste for good wine.
He was known by his many American friends and students as “Fritz” and by his adoring Spanish students as “Don Federico”.
He was born in Detroit and worked as a medical officer during World War II. After the war he obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and then a PhD from the University of Madrid.
Fritz was by all accounts a life-changing, magnetic and mind-expanding lecturer. He taught for a time at Christendom College in Virginia, and his colleagues and students have paid tribute to his lively personality and his originality as a teacher and a mentor.
He worked hard to become fluent in Spanish and held university posts at the University of Dallas, Santa Clara University, University of Navarra in Spain and Al-Hikma University in Baghdad.
Unlike Guardini, Wilhelmsen was a Thomist and traditional in his liturgical sensibilities. He was a contributing editor to a bold publishing venture, the American journal Triumph, which along with other Catholic writers such as Warren Carroll, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Thomas Molnar and Russell Kirk, attempted to balanced fidelity to the Church while navigating the shock waves of the cultural change around the Second Vatican Council.
Wilhelmsen had great friendship and correspondence with the Canadian philosopher of media Marshall McLuhan, and he contemplated the effects of new media on the thinking and mind of human beings.
At odds with many of the American Catholics of his time, Wilhelmsen was a monarchist, he was opposed to liberal consumerist culture, and he rejected the brutalism of modern art and architecture favouring the Baroque. He was far-seeing and astute despite battling total blindness in one eye.
One colleague wrote of Fritz: “God gave him great charisms and he used them all in His service. He had a special appeal to the young, who are usually more open to glory and romance than the often disillusioned old. To the very end of his life, Fritz was always reaching out to them.”
Farewell to Philip Brady
The model of Christian personality that is so central to the mission of the Thomas More Centre is not limited to academics or writers. Melbourne readers will be familiar with another Catholic gentleman and pioneer of radio and television in Australia: Philip Brady.
While he was definitely a showman, perfecting the art of radio voice-over and “fall guy” with his fellow personalities, his devotion to his listeners and his many friends was utterly deep and genuine. Here is a very touching tribute on his death this week by his co-host Simon Owens.
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
