Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic. Page 1
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Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic. page 1 THE SAINTS A CATHOLIC FUTURE Apostle to the Germans - Boniface, the Success in the City - FSSP’s Growing English Monk Congregation in Cologne In This Issue A Story from the Dark Ages: The English Benedicamus Domino Princess Who Converted The Germans - California Dreamin - The Spiritual St. Walburga Exercises of an Expatriate German Hildegard the Polymath: Catholic Saint An Atheist in Germany GERMANY’S BEST In the Footsteps of Saint Edith Stein A Young German Reclaims His Catholic Zita, Catholic Empress in Excile Heritage KEPT CATHOLIC Queen Kunigunde BEAUTIFUL, CATHOLIC, GERMANY SECRETS Bavaria: On Wandering in a Catholic THE LITURGY Landscape Practicing In the Timeless Presence of The Second Rome - Christian Trier in God Germany Bringing the Latin Mass to a German If the Vines Could Talk Village 26 Fantastic Flammkuchen! How the Latin Mass Returned to Roman The Modernists’ Nightmare - A New Trier CATHOLIC Renaissance in High Sacred Art Midsummer on the Moselle for a Latin KNIGHTS Mass Wedding 34 A CATHOLIC PAST True Grit - An Update on the Germany’s Grand Catholic Knights Latin Mass in Germany German Catholic Church, Inc. A Funny Thing Happened on The Great German King Who Sleeps until the Way to the Council Christendeom’s Hour of Need The Young Germans who Spoke Truth to Power The Protagonist A LATIN MASS 72 WEDDING SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER THE RHINE 44 ALLIANCE 78 REGINA From the Editor Editor: Beverly De Soto The Secret Catholic Insider Guide to Contributors: Translators: Germany Beverly De Soto Gordon Broxton-Price Ed Masters Teresa Schilling oday, Germany is a world-beater. Beautiful cars, sculpted Mariella Hunt Fr. Daniel Bartels landscapes, sparkling clean cities, a social welfare system Teresa Limjoco, MD Franz Schönberger that provides for all -- Germany, the pariah of the world Meghan Ferrara after World War II, was in 2013 voted the most admired Christoph Pitsch nationT on the planet. Michael Durnan Donna Sue Berry Layout/Graphic Designer: Such amazing success is heady stuff indeed for the three generations since Alexander Niessen Phil Roussin Hitler who have rebuilt this war-torn land with a traumatized population and Christoph Pitsch a Marshall plan. Tamara Isabell Photography: Paul Dahnen Harry Stevens German Language and Ideology Harry Stevens Migdalia Mass Germans and their culture are often misunderstood, perhaps due to their Susanne Michels Tamara Isabell difficult language and idiosyncratic culture. Linguists have long noted that the Stefan Schilling, MD Paul Dahnen German language allows for precision in a way almost impossible to imagine Karen Scheuer in English or the Romance languages. For this reason, in the 18th and 19th Roger Dekeyser centuries, German was considered to be the ‘best’ scientific language. (Full Associate Editor disclosure: Although I am a New Yorker, I speak German fluently, having Rosa Kaspar Webmaster: been raised with it as my first language.) Jim Bryant The German language is also key to understanding the Germans’ love of ideas -- good, bad or indifferent. From Luther to Marx to Freud, from Heidegger to Nietzsche to Hitler, Germany’s history is full of men of ideas Interested in Advertising? who have vastly influenced the world. Ideas of course often quickly lead to For details on advertising your business in Regina Magazine ideologies -- the Nazis amply demonstrated the destructive power of an contact Mr. Phil Roussin at [email protected] for more ideology fervently embraced. information. This leads us to the question of the German’s idiosyncratic culture. Many have asked how such a modern, forward-thinking nation as 19th century Germany could turn into the war machine of the early 20th century -- and the purveyor of death and destruction of the Shoah. This is a troubling question, particularly for the generations who have come afterwards. REGINA Magazine is a quarterly Catholic review Modernizing the Germans published electronically on www.reginamag.com. Since the last War, German social engineers have endeavored to instill REGINA draws together extraordinary Catholic writers anti-conformism in a culture with a several-thousand year history of strict conformity to authority. They have succeeded mainly in making Germany’s with a vibrant faith, and wide-ranging interests. We’re young people conform in their enthusiasm for consumerism, internet-fueled interested in everything under the Catholic sun — from trends and exotic vacationing. work and family to religious and eternal life. One thing that most young Germans are not doing is getting married and A LATIN MASS having children. Despite government subsidies for each child, under the We seek the Good, the Beautiful and the True – in our burden of mass derision for the traditional ‘hausfrau’ role, families are simply WEDDING Tradition and with our God-given Reason. We really do failing to form. Anecdotal evidence from a few German young families believe in one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. We reveals strangers lecturing parents with more than two children about their are joyfully loyal to the Magisterium. We proudly celebrate ‘anti-social’ tendencies; having a family in Germany is decidedly not ‘cool.’ our literary and artistic heritage and seek to live and teach Today, we see these cultural forces -- ideology, conformism and materialism the authentic Faith. -- at play once again in Germany’s Catholics. According to the German bishops’ own statistics, the Catholic Church is Germany is in imminent Today we place REGINA under the patronage of Our danger -- Catholics are leaving in droves and the vast majority of those who Lady, Mary Most Holy. We pray that she lays our humble remain in the Church do not attend Mass. (For more about why people are leaving, see here.) work at the feet of her Son, and that His Will be done. Mass-goers are inevitably over age seventy; they sit passively while gray- There is no charge for REGINA. Inquiries should be haired priests harangue them about politics. (Afterwards, when asked about directed to “Regina Magazine” on Facebook or the Editor the content of the homily, most will shrug merrily and admit they were not 78 at [email protected]. paying attention. At all.) Younger people will only darken the door of a The German Post-War Catholic Avant-Garde Church for the rare family wedding, first Holy Communion or baptism. There is a German word that has found its way into English -- ‘ersatz’ Funerals in this aging country are so common, however, that priests in meaning something used as a substitute for the real thing. Here, in the some dioceses can’t be spared for them. Catholics are often cremated and homeland of ideology, there is a kind of ‘ersatz’ Arian catholicism which interred -- or their ashes spread over forest floors -- without benefit of is firmly in control of the Catholic Church’s multi-billion euro revenues. clergy. In many parishes, a once-a-month Requiem Mass is celebrated for anyone in the parish who has died; these are sparsely attended. In the 20th century, Germany has been ground zero for the ideology of Modernism. Post-World War II, an avant-garde of German theologians were pretty much responsible for pushing ill-defined liturgical and sartorial Fabulously Rich & Famously Liberal changes through the Second Vatican Council. Josef Ratzinger was among this group, though his later about-face earned him the everlasting enmity What’s going on? The Church in Germany is fabulously rich -- the of former friends in German church circles such as Karl Lehmann, beneficiary of a financial system which routes 9% of the income tax paid powerful Cardinal of Mainz and ‘free-thinking’ theologian Hans Kung. by Catholics into the Church’s coffers. (To be clear, if Catholics do not pay (In a presumably unrelated development, Dr Kung has just announced his this, they will not receive the Sacraments.) The German bishops live and intention to commit suicide to the world’s press.) act like CEOs, which of course they are -- as the Church employs 650,000 Germans, making it the second largest employer after the German state, more than six times the size of Mercedes Benz. Modernist innovations have been zealously applied over the past few decades, not least in art and architecture. Tourists accustomed to the beauty The German Church is also famously liberal -- with bishops and theologians of English and French stained glass windows are often disappointed in regularly issuing public demands that Rome abandon its ‘out-dated’ ideas Germany. Ancient church windows bomb-blasted out were dutifully replaced and ‘get with by stained glass the program’ of of two varieties: modern times. To the dull and cheap outsiders, such or the ugly and arrogance may be expensive. As breathtaking, but for the medieval it is important to and baroque understand the saints, they were context for this. stripped out of German churches and placed in The bishops’ diocesan museums, broadsides aimed where they can at Rome are be appreciated an attempt to by culturati -- as pander to the opposed to Mass- sensibilities of goers. the German elites and media. The German bishops Churches stripped do a tremendous bare of piety are amount of talking de facto evidence about helping those of iconoclasm less fortunate, (in German because that is the ‘bildersturm’ or ‘storm about single role that Altarpiece, Beuron Abbey, Germany most Germans will pictures’) which willingly accord fits nicely with the Church. On the ersatz matters of morals, they are expected to tow the secular line -- which they “catholicism’ propounded by today’s well-paid German theologians. It’s a do. kind of Arianism by another name -- they have pretty much decided that any intelligent person should be able to see that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a particularly effective social reformer.