The Torn Tunic

Copies of this little book by the Tuscan writer Tito Casini (1897-1987) first appeared in the bookshops of

Rome in 1967. It was described in the Italian press as a literary atomic bomb, or pyrobolus atomicus-a

term found in the Italian-Latin dictionary of Cardinal Bacci, who had served four popes in the drawing up

of major documents, and who contributed a daring foreword to Casini's cri de cur against the

vulgarization of Catholic liturgy in the name of "reform." Representing both the common man and the

educated of his day, Casini spares nothing and no one in his defense of cherished traditions and his

critique of utopian innovations. Although the process of relentless aggiornamento churned on

inexorably in spite of such protests, Casini's work stands today as both a powerfully moving record of the

struggles of the early traditionalist movement, caught by surprise in the maelstrom of Montini's

pontificate, and an exemplary exercise of the parrhesia or boldness that belongs to the baptized in Christ.

The Torn Tunic was in its day a testimonial of profound love for tradition in the face of callous contempt;

for readers over half a century later, it reads like a prophecy of better days to come, when the same

tradition, surviving against all odds, would be rediscovered by new generations.