Michael Davies was-and is- one of my heroes. A great Catholic thinker, writer, and activist- all in the package of a humble Welsh schoolteacher. He was full of jokes, good-natured sarcasm and a love of Holy Mother Church and Our Lord.
I have the distinctly odd but happy memory of my husband and I having Mr. Davies with us on our honeymoon- along with many other fine Catholics at the Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute in Italy. Unfortunately, many people have not heard of Mr. Davies, nor read his books on the Faith and the crisis in the Church.
He was a master, and his books are honest, interesting, and humble explanations of both the glories and the modern failures of the institutional Church. He had obviously drunk deeply of the magical British waters, nectar which has produced such great writers; yet he was a real person, he was alive, not like the loads of wax-like figures who are interested primarily in the Church and Her traditions as aesthetic museum pieces. He was a teacher of little children who loved young people; like Our Lord, he surrounded himself with the young and the questioning. He was full of hope and optimism-in God's providence for the Church-not in churchmen. Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, knew Mr. Davies and respected his thought and work in service of the Church.
Yet, again, not many have heard of Michael Davies outside the rather small group included in the larger Catholic world, a group whose focus is the great traditions of the Church with the Latin Mass as a centerpiece. I would like to introduce the landscape of traditional Catholics, but not through my eyes. I hope to do it through the better eyes of Michael Davies- from such sources as my own experiences listening to him, his books, and some of the people who knew him.
The story of traditionalism is fraught with misconceptions, bitterness, and joy.
I hope I can shed light on it in honor of one of my heroes, Mr. Davies.
