Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith

Christian Century, Nov 19, 1997 by D.G. Hart

By William F. Buckley Jr. Doubleday, 208 pp., $24.95.

It will come as little surprise that William F. Buckley Jr. is a religious conservative. But as anyone familiar with Buckley's writings or his television show Firing Line knows, his style and manner differ significantly from that of such evangelical politicos as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed or Jerry Falwell. This is just one reason for reading Buckley's latest book, a seemingly random assortment of writings about the author's faith. The spiritual pilgrimage revealed in Nearer, My God presents a different perspective on the connections between religious and political conservatism in the latter half of the 20th century.

Buckley's devotion clearly bears the marks of pre-Vatican II Catholicism (though his marriage to a Protestant does not). For instance, he devotes one chapter to the agonies of the crucifixion, referring to his own translation of Maria Valtorta's vision of Christ's agony on the cross, originally published in The Poem of the Man God (1961). Buckley admits that Valtorta's account is "painful" and "crude." But it remains for him an "artful portrayal of the great historical event that preceded, and led to, the Resurrection. "

Buckley also has a chapter on his 1994 visit to Lourdes in France, where St. Bernadette said she saw apparitions of the Madonna and was instructed to build a chapel and dig for the spring that now fills a pool where the sick and afflicted bathe for health. The trip left him convinced that healings do occur at Lourdes that cannot be explained scientifically. But he also acknowledges that most pilgrims leave without experiencing physical relief. For them Lourdes provides the nourishment of divine love. In Buckley's own case, he left the site "profoundly affected."

The book also shows Buckley's disdain for Vatican II, which, he believes, introduced "daffy innovations." He rues the end of the church's prohibition of meat on Fridays, remembers priests who furtively continued to use the Latin mass, and concludes that the emphasis on lay participation in the mass "simply hasn't worked." The resulting liturgical change, together with the loss of universal Latin, he argues, has only diminished the size of the laity and clergy. For evidence Buckley cites numerous statistics such as enrollments at Roman Catholic seminaries in the U.S.--down from 48,992 students in 1965 to 5,083 in 1995.

Buckley warns that his style tends toward the argumentative. But aside from his criticisms of Vatican II, the overall tone of Nearer, My God is endearing. Some of the book's appeal comes from Buckley's own account of his religious upbringing and his family's piety.

In one of the most autobiographical chapters, Buckley describes his experience as a student for a brief time at a Catholic school in England just prior to World War II. "The liturgy took hold of me," he writes, so much so that he knew absolutely that he had had a deep and permanent involvement in Catholic Christianity."

Even more touching are Buckley's reflections on the last days of his mother, Aloise Steiner Buckley, to whose memory he dedicates the book, and whose anxiety "to do the will of God was more than ritual."

Also engaging is Buckley's device of asking his "Forum of Converts" questions about issues of Catholic faith and practice, including the historicity of Christ, the ordination of women, divorce, birth control and marriage. The answers, supplied by Richard John Neuhaus, Russell Kirk, Jeffrey Hart, Ernest van den Haag and Wick Allison, are by no means unanimous. But Buckley weaves them together into a plausibly coherent tapestry. (The model for such a forum may have been the debate between Arnold Lunn and Ronald Knox published in 1934, excerpts of which Buckley includes.)

Buckley's comments on the religious implications of American politics are almost as muted as his theological polemics. He makes a few observations in passing about the Supreme Court's "assault on self-government in the matter of religion and the schools." Unlike the Religious Right, Buckley's instincts are libertarian; rather than using government to implement certain "values," he desires protection for the freedoms of communities, schools and private associations.

If faith is a matter of conversion and change (the evangelical model), the politics it produces will move inevitably in the direction of reform--that is, using legislation to change individuals' actions and character. But if faith is inherited, if it flows from family upbringing and tradition (the Roman Catholic and confessional Protestant model), the politics it yields may focus on protecting the private sphere from the reach of the legislature. The greatest value of Buckley's book, aside from the authors own charms, lies in offering an alternative expression of the religion of the right. In an age where conservative religion is synonymous with the conversion experience, Buckley demonstrates that the old model of Isaac, who grew up never having known otherwise, survives.