Hugo Klapproth, Letters to a Protestant Friend[i]
From the first reading of the work of Michael J. Matt’s great-grandfather, I became an admirer of his ancestor, Hugo Klapproth. A convert from Protestantism, he illustrates in the letters published in this volume both the enthusiasm of his own conversion and the assumption of a missionary and apologetic spirit which animated him in his effort to bring the stray Protestant sheep back into the fold of the Church of Christ the Savior.
Following the example of Saint Robert Bellarmine, the elderly Hugo appears first and foremost as a true gentleman. Without insulting or harshly criticizing his interlocutors, he combats with both passion and delicacy all the errors specific to the Lutheran-Calvinist schism. None of the key subjects are missing: ecclesiastical hierarchy and authority, the monarchical function of the Pope, the value and limits of reason, meritorious works, the importance of Tradition, coherent thinking applied to theological subjects, the moral principles of Christian life, the mediating role of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the saints in heaven. In short, everything is discussed, presented, laid out—without warlike pathos but with the firmness of Roman clarity—by this true lay apostle.
The Matt “clan” unquestionably has such a calling: to preserve and transmit the faith of the apostles.
When you read Letters to a Protestant Friend, you acquire an awareness of something I have sensed since being welcomed as a columnist for The Remnant into the extended family of this remarkable publication: the irreplaceable value of heritage. If every human being is endowed by the supreme Creator with unique gifts that make him inimitable, so too the genealogical lines of a “clan” are determined by charisms, by divine gifts granted to certain families chosen by God for specific missions in this fallen world. The Matt “clan” unquestionably has such a calling: to preserve and transmit the faith of the apostles. A faith which, through its universality, stands beyond the borders of nations, yet which needs families such as these in order to be defended and passed on.
If, inspired by Michael, I use this word—“clan”—with Scottish overtones, I intend only to underline the irreplaceable value of the foundation of every extended clan: the family. Not the state, which—alas!—has often transformed itself into a tyrannical Leviathan, nor the individual, who in the modern world has become a capricious, self-centered despot both to himself and to those around him. Therefore, the family: that essential entity, the vital cell of society, which is both the most fitting environment for the transmission of faith and the instrument of remarkable works like the publications bearing The Remnant name. Publications owed to that German convert—Hugo Klapproth—who crossed the ocean to settle in the New World under the providential influence of God’s discreet guiding hand.
In conclusion, a book which must not be absent from your library.
The Remnants: The Final Essays of John Senior[ii]
Michael Davies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Malachi Martin, Romano Amerio, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Father Roger-Thomas Calmel O.P., Dietrich von Hildebrand. These are only a handful of Catholic thinkers who truly loved Christian Tradition. The list could be expanded with many other names. But one who cannot be omitted is the distinguished John Senior (1923–1999). A graduate of Columbia University, he later became professor of the humanities at Cornell University and the University of Kansas.
A close collaborator of The Remnant, friend of both Walter and Michael J. Matt, he stands—alongside Dietrich von Hildebrand and John C. Rao—as one of the most illustrious representatives of those Catholics who have not forgotten the perennial values of Holy Tradition.
Although I had heard or read his name many times, I believe the best testimony in his favor was offered by a distinguished medievalist, Robert Keim, on his Substack channel Via Mediaevalis. There, in an article entitled “Fifty Years Later: John Senior’s Thousand Good Books,”[iii] he provides a testimony that highlights the exceptional influence of a brilliant mind:
“My intellectual and professional life is modeled principally on that of a man who also is not, strictly speaking, a medieval saint. Actually, he’s not a canonized saint at all. His name was John Senior, and he’s the only twentieth-century individual who in my household is known officially as a prophet. And by that I don’t mean he could see into the future. I mean that he spoke the truth of God, and did so with a clarity, sensibility, and intensity that separated him in a remarkable way from his contemporaries. His two most important works, The Death of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture, are short, meditative, compelling books that I recommend to everyone reading this essay.”
In addition to the two seminal titles mentioned by Mr. Keim, I hasten to add The Remnants: The Final Essays of John Senior. Here you will find texts and speeches containing remarkable insights, all infused with a genuine passion for Christian Tradition. At first glance, one of his most well-known statements may seem to place him among pessimists:
“The crisis is over; we have lost. This is no longer just a prediction, it is a simple observation: Rome has been desecrated. We are in the age of darkness. Triumphalist reactions are in vain. The modern world and the Church deserve the punishment that God is raining down on us.”
This vision, which I would call not pessimistic but realistic, is only a pretext for offering part of the solution he foresaw—one grounded in the recovery and preservation of the ancient sources of Universal wisdom. As Robert Keim shows, unexpectedly, at the end of his book The Death of Christian Culture, he proposes a list of good literary books as remedies for the ills of the modern age. Not a defeated man, then, but a fighter who understood the new conditions in which the remnant of Christendom must transmit the faith.
A close collaborator of The Remnant, friend of both Walter and Michael J. Matt, he stands—alongside Dietrich von Hildebrand and John C. Rao—as one of the most illustrious representatives of those Catholics who have not forgotten the perennial values of Holy Tradition.
Sherry Foster, The Catholic Home School: A Practical Guide[iv]
For all Catholic parents—especially young ones—who wish to educate their children at home, the guide written by Sherry Foster can be of great help. In addition to the didactic and pedagogical materials she recommends, it contains countless practical pieces of advice drawn from real homeschooling experience. Before briefly describing its contents, however, I must highlight the excellent foreword written by Michael J. Matt.
Acknowledging that the last thing he would have imagined doing was educating his own children at home, he recounts—as a true home school dad—how he rediscovered that natural way in which families raised their children for millennia:
“In truth, we have come to love and cherish homeschooling and we thank God for the opportunity to let the modern world go its way while our family does what all families did for a millenium or two, before the world went mad.”
Yet without letting us believe that his choice was merely pragmatic or circumstantial, Michael shows how important homeschooling has been throughout religious and cultural history, listing many well-known figures, old and new, who were educated in this way. Moreover, revealing the deeper reasons for this choice, he does not hesitate to denounce the fierce struggle against the family so evident today.
Sherry Foster’s text discusses every significant aspect—practical and theoretical—of homeschooling. Everything is rigorously guided by a Christian vision in which civic virtue derives from the recognition of our Lord Jesus Christ as King. Naturally, in such a vision, celebrations are not absent, becoming occasions of learning for young students. Christian doctrine, the morality of the Ten Commandments, as well as the demands and joys of Christmas and Easter are all present. The fundamental disciplines—Latin, English Language and Literature, History, Mathematics, Biology, and Natural Sciences—are presented with concrete suggestions and solutions. There is room for Shakespeare, and sacred symbols are not forgotten. Moreover, cooking, weaving and sewing, drawing, and music are well supported.
Without giving in to false idealism or easy enthusiasm, the author acknowledges from the start the virtue most necessary for parents undertaking this path: patience. It is precisely this deeply Christian virtue that clearly shows us that this type of education is, before anything else, a school of virtues—first of the parents, then of the children.
