A Flawed Portrait of Dissent
The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary
American Catholicism
by Michael W. Cuneo
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997
(214 pages; $27.50, cloth)
reviewed by Leon J. Podles
Vatican II and the changes in Roman Catholicism that followed it have not pleased all Catholics. Michael W. Cuneo, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Fordham University, gives representative sketches of what he sees are the three main types of those displeased with the current condition of the Roman Catholic Church in America. The first is the conservatives, the second the separatists-traditionalists, the third the Marianists-apocalypticists.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in Old English and Old Icelandic from the University of Virginia and is a senior editor of Touchstone. His latest book is Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine's Press, 2020). He and his wife Mary (author of the Touchstone column "A Thousand Words") are the parents of six children. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor