One of the darkest elements of this dark time is the resurgence of paganism in Western, formerly Christian, civilization. Although the paganism of classical arts and illuminative reason has been ascendent for centuries, this twenty-first-century resurgence is of an older variety. It is the irrational, magical paganism of Moloch, Baal, Dionysius, satanists, witches, transhumanists, perverters of man’s nature and enactors of ritualized torture, sacrifice, and killing. Expressions of this magical, irrational and immoral paganism are surfacing everywhere. In government schools, one might encounter an After School Satan Club, and some school boards might need to examine the legal rights of pagan and Wiccan students. The statue of the demonic Baphomet with two children was unveiled in Midwest cites, pentagrams and other satanic symbols are ubiquitous and Christ-hating pagans vandalize Christian churches with increasing regularity. In the millennia-long Christian struggle against paganism, Christianity seems to have lost most of the ground it once had won. (1)

The relevance and importance of the late Father John J. Hugo (1911-1985) emerges from this reality. When Father Hugo spoke and wrote about Christianity, he invariably named paganism as its primary enemy. He wrote before the ancient, satanic paganism that issues forth from the spirit of the anti-Christ once again appeared publicly. Father Hugo, however, knew that the paganism that reigned in his day—the refined paganism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the paganism of usury, materialism and worldliness—also worked to destroy Christianity. Catholics generally have been either ignorant about or apathetic toward the dangers of this type of paganism and its power to dominate all human lives through its seductive maxims. Fr. Hugo taught that because Christians are not exempt from the threat of that dominance, they must daily fight it. He gave them the knowledge needed to do so.

When, therefore, starting from the fact that creatures are good and created by God, we [Catholics] go on to conclude that they are here for us to be enjoyed in a purely natural way as the pagans enjoy them, then we have jumped from an unassailable Christian doctrine to a frankly pagan principle of conduct. We are making the maxims of paganism the rule of the Christian life; while professing Christianity, we practice paganism.

Father Hugo recognizes that the major cause of this “practical paganism” is worldliness: “In one word, the cause of lack of fervor, and the reason, accordingly, why Catholic organizations are ineffective in their fight against paganism, is worldliness. This it is which inwardly and secretly destroys the life of Christians and nullifies the spiritual effect of their work.”

Father Hugo wrote the book’s chapters in the early 1940s as a series of essays for the Catholic Worker newspaper in New York when Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin led the apostolate of the Catholic Worker. The terms apostolate and Catholic Action, used often in the essays, were terms with which all well-informed Catholics would have been familiar. In the early twentieth century the Church, especially in modern, secular societies, began to focus on the laity’s contribution to spreading the Gospel. The term apostolate “was generally applied to the pious works and participation of the laity in the ministerial, social, cultural, diocesan, parochial, evangelistic, and educational programs of the Church.” The laity was seeking “to carry out the mission of Christ and His Church in the world.” (2)

According to Pope Pius XI, Catholic Action is “the participation of the Catholic laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy.” Catholics are to cooperate “with the bishop in the enterprises he sets forth.” (3)

In his foreword Father Hugo says that the book’s purpose is “to point out some basic principles that must be known and observed by those who wish to make their apostolate spiritually fruitful.”  Writes Father Hugo: “The primary and deliberate aim of any organization devoted to the work of Catholic Action…must be the spiritual perfection of its members; and its first work is to designate and dispose the means necessary to achieve that end.”  (Italics in the original.) Perfection in this sense means perfection in love, love of God and love of neighbor. In this book, Father Hugo presents these means.

He had preached the means for spiritual perfection since 1938, the year that he made Father Onesimus Lacouture’s silent retreat. Spiritual perfection was the subject of the retreat that Father Lacouture, a French-Canadian Jesuit, first preached to priests in Canada, starting in 1931, and Father Hugo then preached to the laity in the United States. Based on the first week of St. Ignatius’s thirty-day retreat, Father Lacouture’s retreat was credited by several trustworthy and eminent persons as being a phenomenal cause of renewal in the spiritual lives of thousands of priests. The most famous promoter of the retreats was Dorothy Day, co-founder with Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker. She made the retreat many times when Fr. Hugo and other confreres of Fr. Lacouture preached it. 

During his 48 years as a secular priest, Father Hugo gave the retreat whenever he could. He served as college teacher, chaplain, assistant pastor and pastor, chaired diocesan commissions on the liturgy and theology, and published books, pamphlets and homily keys. He collaborated in the preparation of a post-Vatican II catechism for adults, The Teaching of Christ,published by Our Sunday Visitor in 1976. He wrote two histories of the retreat that included the account of the sad controversy that sprang from the retreat’s opposition to worldliness and for a time cast a shadow on it. He also wrote three books detailing all of the retreat’s conferences and several books on particular aspects of its teachings.

The retreat’s prophetic battle cry against paganism echoes powerfully down through the decades to the Church today. Having let “respectable” paganism flourish within the gates for centuries, the Church is now dangerously close to being overwhelmed (though never overcome) by the evil variety. A mighty, flooding torrent of evil pagan images, vices, perversions and terror rolls through Western civilization. This book is an inspiring summary of the instruction given in the Lacouture-Hugo retreat for training Catholic combatants to win the war against all forms of paganism.

ROSEMARY HUGO FIELDING (niece of Fr. Hugo)
FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE JANUARY 25, 2023