The Catholic Divide: Understanding the Church’s Role in the Samuels Library Debate

In 2024, there was an effort to remove books from the Samuels Public Library that were objectionable to some members of the Warren County community.  It was a highly divisive debate.  The debate and division continue today.

I have heard throughout the debate that the main source of the book-banning effort was driven by the Catholic Church and Christendom College. I have found myself urging my fellow library supporters to be careful not to equate the Catholic Church here with the Church writ large. The local examples of the Catholic Church differ significantly from the experience of the Roman Catholic Church elsewhere in Virginia and in the country.

My family lived in Arlington, Virginia for twenty-six years during which time we had to decide where my daughter would go to grammar school.  We decided to send her to Catholic school partly because I had a Catholic education.  The bishop of Arlington had decreed that little girls could not be altar servers.  Only altar boys were allowed.  Saint Ann’s Church and school were within walking distance of our house.  Because of the prohibition on altar girls, I drove over the Key Bridge every school day so my daughter could get a fine education and also be an altar girl which she did.

Are Georgetown University and Holy Trinity Church in Washington DC Catholic institutions?  I think so, but the John Newman Society disagrees.  To the Society, Christendom College is a Catholic college, Georgetown is not.  As a Catholic, I found it odd to be told that Notre Dame is not considered to be a Catholic school according to the John Newman Society.

At the December 10 public hearing, if that is what it could be called, there was some interesting testimony.  One speaker prefaced his remarks by urging that Pope Francis be replaced by Cardinal Vagano. The Pope is not held in high regard by traditionalist Catholics while Cardinal Vagano is highly esteemed.

Another man said that the attack on the library should succeed because to the victor goes the spoils and Donald Trump won the election last November.  Book banning is okay if your guy wins.

No doubt that President Trump’s electoral victory was heartening to the conservative Republicans who run Warren County.

If we really want to understand the Catholic role in the library battle, we need to focus on an election in 1958 when Cardinal Angelo Roncalli defeated Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani by a vote of 38-9 to become Pope John XXIII.  The good Pope John, as he was known in my neighborhood, called a council of the whole Church to update the church and open the windows of the Church to the modern world.

Cardinal Ottaviani might have lost the election but he didn’t lose his power within the tradition laden Roman Curia.  After the election of Pope John XXIII, each cardinal came forward to pledge their allegiance to the new pontiff.  The last one to do so was Cardinal Ottaviani.

One of the first actions of the Second Vatican Council was to decree that all masses in the Church no longer needed to be said in Latin, but rather in the language of the people.  No longer would the priest say the mass with his back toward the congregation.

The changes brought on by the Council took time to take hold in some places and in some dioceses the opposition to change was complete.  Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, who succeeded Pope John, won the battle in Rome but, with the leeway given local bishops around the world, their success was mixed at best.

Currently, Pope Francis is discouraging the use of the mass in Latin because its use has fostered division in the Church.  Pope Francis sees the use of the Latin mass as a way to continue opposition to the actions that flowed from the Second Vatican Council.

It can be said that the Jesuits (Pope Francis is a Jesuit) at Holy Trinity, who fully embrace the teaching and reforms of Vatican II, are the children of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI.  In turn, the John Newman Society and Christendom College are the children of Cardinal Ottaviani.

The movie, .Conclave, provides an excellent example of the politics and intridge of a papal election.  The book,

The Mole of Vatican Council II, is a wonderful historic novel that captures the political battles within Vatican II.

There are those who felt that the Second Vatican Council went too far and others who felt it did not go far enough.  That is a tension that the Church lives with.

Tom Howarth
Front Royal, VA

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