Faith in Crisis

A profound crisis of faith has gripped many in the Church today, leaving the faithful, as this book's introduction puts it, "like passengers in a storm-tossed boat—disoriented, unmoored, and struggling to trust in the Church's teaching, her mission, and the very foundations of a faith that once felt immovable." Hans Urs von Balthasar diagnosed the underlying problem decades ago: "The most worrisome thing in the situation of the Church today may be that the left wing, which is quite chaotic but strong in the media, is confronted on the right by a large number of diligent but more or less introverted sect-like formations, all of which claim to be in the center but that hinder the formation of a superior center that embodies living tradition in a living way… The ecclesia apostolica and sancta is stressed, but the protesting splinter group wants to be at the same time the una, which is impossible, and the catholica, which a mere opposition, of its essence, cannot be." That superior center—one that embodies living tradition in a living way—is what I wanted Faith in Crisis to occupy.

The project began in August 2023. On the 25th, I sent the first email to a handful of scholars I knew through my grandfather's network and my own, proposing a volume on magisterial authority, radical traditionalism, and fundamentalism. I had no publisher, no budget, and no institutional backing. What I had was a table of contents taking shape in my head, a certainty that the questions deserved more rigorous answers than they were getting, and a willingness to cold-email professors, writers, theologians, and church officials across three continents to ask if they agreed.

Within days, what I had imagined as a modest ten-chapter volume began to expand. Dr. Robert Fastiggi at Sacred Heart Major Seminary signed on for three chapters on the ordinary Magisterium, the death penalty, and religious liberty. Mike Aquilina offered a chapter on the patristic precedents. Gavin D'Costa at the University of Bristol agreed to address Catholic-Jewish relations after Vatican II. Jimmy Akin took on heresy and doctrinal development. Pedro Gabriel, a physician in Portugal, contributed three chapters on Amoris Laetitia, the diagnosis of modernism within traditionalism, and faithfulness versus rigidity. Suan Sonna, then at Harvard (now Yale Divinity School), wrote on papal primacy. Fr. Francis Tiso, a former officer of the USCCB's Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, contributed on interreligious dialogue. Rafael Luciani, a Venezuelan theologian advising the Vatican's Synod on Synodality, wrote on the theological foundations of synodality, addressing the confusion and resistance the concept had generated among Catholics who had reduced it to a procedural novelty rather than a recovery of the Church's ancient collegial character. Timothy O'Malley at Notre Dame's Center for Liturgy contributed a reader's guide to Pope Francis' vision of liturgical formation. My grandfather himself contributed what would be his final essay, a retrospective on the liturgical reform. Contributors came from across the political spectrum, and from three continents, united by the conviction that the questions deserved better answers than the ones circulating online.

As I explained to prospective contributors, the book would serve simultaneously as a cultural analysis of the phenomenon of traditionalism and as a response to the questions that kept arising—above all about magisterial authority and reform. It would be non-polemic in tone and would not engage in point-by-point refutation of traditionalist writers, but would take their questions seriously enough to answer them on their own theological merits. That commitment, to engage the concerns without mirroring the polemics, became the book's signature. As Fr. Carter Griffin, the rector of St. John Paul II Seminary in Washington, would later write in his endorsement: "I don't agree with everything in this anthology. And I think that's the point."

The intellectual seeds of the project were planted earlier that summer, when I wrote a review of my grandfather's book The Pope, the Council, and the Mass for my Patheos column, calling it "a beacon of Christ's providential light in the post-conciliar Church." The book, co-authored with Kenneth Whitehead, had been endorsed by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who called it "excellent and… of the greatest utility… clear, moderate, and well documented," by the Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., who wrote that "the entire argument over 'traditionalism' has finally been placed on an intellectual and factual plane," and by L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, which declared it "sorely needed for well over a decade." Michael Lofton's comprehensive review at Where Peter Is later helped introduce the book to a new generation of readers. My grandfather had spent decades answering the same questions I was encountering online with a new intensity: questions about Vatican II, the reformed liturgy, and whether the pope could be trusted. He had addressed them with scholarly rigor and fidelity to the Magisterium. But the internet had given these arguments a reach and a velocity that no single voice, however comprehensive, could match. Writing the review was an attempt to bring his work to a wider audience. It also crystallized the conviction that what was needed was not another lone voice but a chorus.

My grandfather had written The Pope, the Council, and the Mass into the moment of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The book appeared in 1981, as the founder of the Society of St. Pius X was heading toward the illicit episcopal consecrations of 1988 that would bring about his excommunication and the formalization of the SSPX schism. It addressed the SSPX's arguments directly: that Vatican II broke with tradition, that the reformed liturgy was illegitimate, that the pope had exceeded his authority. But its real genius was that it simultaneously served to address those same arguments when they recurred among Catholics who remained in communion with Rome yet repeated the identical objections against the pope, the Council, and the Mass. That dual purpose is what made the book indispensable in 1981, and it is what makes it indispensable now. On Ash Wednesday 2026, the SSPX's Superior General, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, rejected Cardinal Fernández's offer to resume dialogue and announced plans to proceed with episcopal consecrations on July 1, repeating Lefebvre's error almost forty years to the day. The arguments have not changed. The need for a serious, multi-voiced response has only deepened.

Andrew Mioni's opening chapter argues that the post-conciliar disruptions are not the disease but the Church's response to a far older problem: a crisis of functionality, in which faith had been reduced to external practices, moral theology to obligations and anathemas, and the sacramental life to a kind of spiritual transaction. The Council did not cause this erosion; it attempted to address it by recovering a Christ-centered, sacramental vision capable of engaging the modern world.

The volume is organized in three parts. Part One examines the phenomenon of traditionalism itself: its historical roots in rigorism and fundamentalism, the patristic precedents for the Church's current struggles, the diagnosis of modernist patterns within traditionalist thought, the role of private revelation and spiritual abuse within traditionalist communities, and the line between authentic fidelity and the rigidity that Pope Francis repeatedly warned against. Part Two takes up the question of Church authority: papal primacy from the Acts of the Apostles forward, collegiality as a traditional doctrine, doctrinal development, the ordinary Magisterium and the question of dissent, the corrosive effect of Catholic clickbait and digital outrage culture on ecclesial communion, and the spirit of obedience that Fr. Bernard Mulcahy, O.P. grounds in Dominican theological tradition. Part Three addresses the work of reform: Vatican II's theological paradigms, synodality, Amoris Laetitia read in light of Veritatis Splendor, doctrinal development on the death penalty, religious liberty, interreligious dialogue, inculturation and the "Pachamama" controversy, the liturgical reform in retrospect, and a closing chapter by Robert Cardinal Sarah calling for true ecclesial unity.

Cardinal Sarah's contribution is, in many ways, the book's pastoral capstone. He was among the last contributors I approached. Writing as Prefect Emeritus of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, he addresses directly those faithful who have found a home in communities offering the pre-conciliar Mass and who now feel the Church has abandoned them in the wake of Traditionis Custodes. His response is both tender and uncompromising. He acknowledges their pain: "Some of God's children feel the Church has abandoned them." But he insists that the continuity of the Church is not threatened by changes in liturgical discipline; rather, it is threatened when the faithful mistake external forms for the substance of the faith itself. "The Holy Spirit is the authoritative guide of the Church," he writes, "and acts upon history with total sovereignty through Popes, bishops, priests, laity, and even the unbelieving. We must listen to the Spirit, whether the Spirit leads us to participate in the Mass according to the 1962 Missal or according to the third typical edition of the Roman Missal." He calls the faithful to silence, to poverty of spirit, and to the recognition that "the Lord wishes us to receive Him"—not merely to receive signs and symbols. Gregory Downs's open letter to confused young Catholics, the chapter that follows, serves as a companion piece, an appeal from a younger voice: "Please stay on the ship, and do not leave the Church, even to save it."

The road to publication was not straightforward. Wipf & Stock accepted the manuscript in October 2023, and months of contract coordination followed: chasing twenty-three DocuSign agreements, managing deadline extensions across time zones, and editing contributions that ranged from concise essays to substantial scholarly treatments. But negotiations ultimately broke down over pricing. For a volume exceeding six hundred pages, Wipf & Stock's model would have priced the book upward of sixty dollars a copy, reasonable by academic standards but at odds with my conviction that the book needed to reach the people who most needed it: ordinary Catholics in the pews, not just professors with library budgets. En Route Books and Media agreed to publish it at thirty dollars, and the project found its home.

Not every contribution followed a plan. David Bentley Hart at Notre Dame endorsed the book because his cousin happened to attend Holy Rosary in Baltimore, the Archdiocesan Shrine of Divine Mercy, a church I frequently visit. The cousin recommended I reach out, though he seemed to have little sense of Hart's stature in the theological world; he mentioned offhandedly that his cousin "likes theology and has some YouTube shows." Hart's endorsement called the book "a splendid collection… a call to remember that the deepest and most essential resource of Catholic tradition is the law of love, given by him who laid down his life for his brothers and sisters." Rocco Buttiglione, philosopher, statesman, and one of the leading interpreters of Pope St. John Paul II, wrote the foreword. Tim Staples, the senior apologist at Catholic Answers, provided an endorsement calling the book "a godsend for our times" and observing that the refrain "That's not infallible, so I don't have to believe it" now comes not from the so-called liberals but from those calling themselves traditionalists. Rodrigo Guerra, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, wrote that the book "allows us to appreciate, through different voices, how much we need to overcome pharisaical attitudes and rediscover the most elementary thing: Christianity is not a set of values, but a living Person encountered in the Church." Fr. Brendan Fitzgerald, rector of the Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore, wrote that the book gives readers "the gifts of clarity and hope… a better understanding of how to think about the life of the Church today… and a deeper conviction that together, and by the grace of God, the future is filled with possibility."

The imprimatur from Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore was the final confirmation that the volume had achieved what I set out to do: not a polemic, but a work the Church herself could endorse.

The book's timing proved providential. Faith in Crisis arrived at the transition between two pontificates, bridging the pastoral programs of Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV. The questions it addresses, about tradition and reform, about the authority of councils and popes, about what fidelity to the Magisterium actually requires, are not the questions of one pontificate but of the post-conciliar Church as such. The book's preface observes that Pope Francis recognized the Church was living through "not simply an epoch of changes, but an epochal change," and called for an "anthropological conversion," a pastoral and theological reorientation centered on the human person's concrete experience. Pope Leo XIV has continued this trajectory, affirming in his first address to the College of Cardinals his commitment to the path charted by his predecessors and the Second Vatican Council. As the preface notes: "the themes explored herein take on renewed urgency and relevance for the Church's ongoing mission." The SSPX crisis unfolding this Lent only underscores the point: the arguments that drove Lefebvre into schism in 1988 have not disappeared; they have migrated inward, circulating among Catholics who remain in communion with Rome but who have adopted, often without realizing it, the same posture of suspicion toward the pope, the Council, and the reformed liturgy. But as the book's postscript argues, the deepest crisis facing the Church is not internal liturgical debate; it is a Church too often turned in on itself while the world bleeds. The longer work ahead is evangelization: forming the faithful to understand what they have received, and then looking outward again. The world is waiting. That is the conversation this book attempts to begin.

Faith in Crisis is, in the end, a forty-chapter argument for the possibility of honest conversation within the household of faith. Rigorous and charitable, rooted in primary sources, faithful to the living Magisterium, and addressed to anyone willing to sit with the questions long enough to discover that the tradition and the Magisterium have answers, and that they are trustworthy. If it succeeds, it is because so many voices agreed that the conversation was worth having, and because my grandfather, who spent his life making the same case, showed me what fidelity to both truth and communion looks like.

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