Paperback/E-Book: This book is the sequel to Turmoil and Truth (2003).
In his earlier volume, Philip Trower provided an acute analysis of what happened within the Church both during and following the Second Vatican Council of 1962-5. Here he explores the root and the branches of the intellectual and spiritual malaise in the West today and how they have affected the Church. After surveying the unrest in the Church from within, he now looks at it from without, as it offers a supernatural alternative to an aggressive secularism.
The main thrust of his argument is that the 18th-century Enlightenment has been the root cause of modern man's problems. The Enlightenment, unlike the Romantic period that followed it, was not a passing literary or artistic fashion. In dethroning God and putting man in his place, it was akin to a new world religion. Its core tenets are still with us today: a trusting belief in perpetual progress; a conviction that reason alone can solve all human problems; a tenacious adherence to the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity. As such it is the parent of liberalism, socialism and Communism; although their means differ they share the same goal: the attempt to realise a paradise in this world.
For so entrenched are the assumptions of the Enlightenment at every level that they seem almost the 'normal' position; to criticise them appears reactionary and to dislodge them folly. Even Catholics are not immune, often thinking that progress, rather than the struggle between good and evil, is the motor driving history. Perhaps this is why a 'sub-creation' such as JRR Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, is so popular; it provides an imaginative truth for those hungering for it that is not available elsewhere.
It is also what it makes it so hard to enter the mindset of pre-Enlightenment man, who believed that was answerable to God first; who wrestled against sin; whose behaviour sought to accord with divine as well as human laws; and who looked towards a life after death that would resolve all the sorrowful enigmas of earthly existence. Even the word 'Enlightenment' seems to imply a previous intellectual darkness which has now happily been dispelled by the light of reason and common-sense. Of course, as Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out in his writings, there is no conflict between faith and the right use of reason; it is when reason jettisons faith that a fatal unbalance occurs.
Trower shows that what makes the Enlightenment - and its fruits - so hard to combat from the Church's point of view is that it is a Christian heresy, indeed a "secularised Christianity", with its own "confusing blend of benign and toxic elements." He carefully unpacks the ideas of "liberty, equality, fraternity" - the intoxicating slogan of the French Revolution - in the light of Christian faith and demonstrates how easily they can be perverted when cut adrift from God.
The book's (2006, 2011, 2018) great strength is the author's ability to express complex ideas with brevity and clarity and always to examine them in the light of eternal truth. He writes, as it were, sub specie veritatis, so that the common reader - at whom the book is pitched - is truly enlightened, able to pick his way through the siren songs of all the different intellectual movements of the last 200 years and the personalities behind them.
Trower is as conversant with Kierkegaard as with liberation theology, with Nietzsche as with Darwin. Trower, like the historian Paul Johnson, is an erudite general man of letters. In an age of over-specialisation it can appear an amateur position; in fact Trower is a civilised man par excellence - shaped by his faith and the "civilisation of love" (to quote Pope Paul VI's fine phrase) - and thus discerning about all other ersatz civilisations.
In his self-deprecating way he describes his genre of writing as haute vulgarisation. What this means is that for those of us who have neither the leisure nor the ability to make wise judgements about the movements that follow one another on the world's stage, Trower makes an admirable guide, pointing out the pitfalls and always helping us to higher ground.
This fine book, at 300 pages a superb summary of the bad fruits of the Enlightenment, is essentially a clarion call to Catholics to educate themselves so that they can give reasons for their faith in the face of the sophisticated rationalism surrounding them. "Atheism is an act of unreason", declares Trower.
Philip Trower's final challenge is "Can the Church save the West from the results of the Enlightenment?" He believes that the liberal democracies under which we are currently governed are destined to decline. For too long they have been living off the patrimony of Christianity while inhabiting a post-Christian milieu. "How do you govern a nation where the majority of the citizens are at least practical atheists?" he asks. It remains a haunting question.
About the author: Philip Trower's (1923-2019) books on theology and history attracted considerable interest from a younger generation of Catholics, shaped by Pope John Paul II. A warm admirer of John Paul, he saw the years that immediately followed the Second Vatican Council as a time of turmoil that emerged into greater confidence and unity through the efforts of the Polish Pope.
Born on 16 May 1923 to Sir William Gosselin Trower and Joan Olivia Tomlin, John Philip Trower was educated at a preparatory school in Dorset and then privately with a family in France, followed by four years at Eton. He belonged to an Anglican family but took an early interest in Catholicism partly through the influence of his French governess.
Trower joined the Army in 1942, was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1943, saw service in the Italian campaign and sustained a shrapnel wound in his arm in Rome during the Battle of Anzio. He later enjoyed recalling that he had acquired skills in basket-weaving and embroidery as part of compulsory occupational therapy while recovering. On returning to active duty he served in Egypt with an intelligence unit based in Cairo.
His writing career began after demobilisation the 1950s, when he became a regular contributor to The Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. His first novel, Tillotson, was published in 1951 by Collins and received a Book Society commendation at the instigation of the historian Veronica Wedgewood and novelist Rose Macaulay.
Another novel written at this time did not see the light of day until the 1990s when its existence was revealed in a casual conversation with a Catholic journalist and it was unearthed and sent to Ignatius Press in the USA. Published as A Danger to the State, it is centred on the suppression of the Jesuits and the tragedy following the destruction of their work in South America, and received favourable reviews and considerable popularity.
Trower became a Catholic in 1953 partly under the influence of his friend the poet Dunstan Thompson, whose literary executor he became after the latter’s death. Thompson had for some years abandoned his childhood Catholicism, but returned during a procession at the Catholic shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk which the two had gone to watch simply because they lived nearby. Trower had, as he would later write, long been fascinated by the Catholic faith and regarded it as intellectually more coherent and convincing than Anglicanism, as well as spiritually compelling in its Eucharistic doctrine.
He went on to become a noted contributor to Catholic newspapers and magazine in Britain, the USA, and Canada, frequently focussing on the tensions and controversies following the Second Vatican Council. He took a positive view of the Council, which he regarded as a necessary continuation of the First Vatican Council ( which took place in the 19th century) involving the developing understanding of the Church’s teaching. But he believed that in the postconciliar years, its message had been hijacked and that there had been a loss of intellectual coherence. His books Turmoil and Truth and The Catholic Church and the Counterfaith reflected his concern – and that of others, including leading figures of the Council such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) - about the ways in which the Council’s message was distorted.
Trower enjoyed a moment of fame in 2018 by finally attending his Oxford degree ceremony sixty years after graduating. Following a shortened wartime course at Oxford he gained a BA but by the time he received his exam results he was already in the Army. In the summer of 2018, his nephews decided that he should finally graduate and arranged for him to do so. The event received considerable media coverage, with Trower, arriving in a wheelchair, characteristically saying that his failure to graduate earlier was due to “sheer inefficiency on my part”.
Philip Trower was a strong supporter of FAITH magazine and contributed a number of features over the years. His funeral Mass, concelebrated by several priest friends, was held at Nazareth House, Cheltenham. Unmarried, he was close to his wider family and spent his last years living with or near them in Hertfordshire and Cheltenham.
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