Francis Beckwith Interview

Tim Drake interviews Francis Beckwith in a very interesting interview.

...Looking back, and knowing what I know now, I believe that the Church’s weakness was presenting the renewal movements as something new and not part of the Church’s theological traditions.

For someone like me, who was interested in both the spiritual and intellectual grounding of the Christian faith, I didn’t need the “folk Mass” with cute nuns and hip priests playing “Kumbaya” with guitars, tambourines and harmonicas. And it was all badly done.

After all, we listened to the Byrds, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and we knew the Church just couldn’t compete with them.

But that’s what the Church offered to the young people of my day: lousy pop music and a gutted Mass. If they were trying to make Catholicism unattractive to young and inquisitive Catholics, they were succeeding.

What I needed, and what many of us desired, were intelligent and winsome ambassadors for Christ who knew the intellectual basis for the Catholic faith, respected and understood the solemnity and theological truths behind the liturgy, and could explain the renewal movements in light of these.

It even made the Mass unattractive to young atheists. Going to Mass with my mother in the seventies I would never had guessed what the Mass represented or that the Church had any serious intellectual basis. I liked the music, but I could just as well sing along with the radio.

...What led you back to the Church?

There isn’t just one reason. One reason alone isn’t enough. That’s like someone asking, “Why do you love your wife?” There are 15 different reasons. It’s the whole package.

The whole interview is very interesting and it is no surprise that the Fathers of the Church were an important element and even reading the Council of Trent which was recommended to him in a negative way helped him to see how the Church was misrepresented.