A Traditionalism for the People: The Changing Landscape

Whether something must change is always a different question for how that change could take place.  The former relies on necessity, the latter conditions.  If, as I previously suggested, the John Paul II era of Catholicism (from his pontificate up until 2017) was ultimately a failed proposition, that does not mean it did not have a substantial impact on the layout of the Church, as well as substantial ramifications for what a traditionalism for the people should be.

1.)  The Halo of Authority is GONE

Since arguably the time of Pius IX (and maybe before that in certain embryonic forms), the clerical authorities in the Latin Church have taken on a seeming impeccability, not just infallibility in limited cases.  No longer did was it simply accepted the Holy Spirit prevented Popes (and councils) from doctrinal error in certain circumstances.  Now, whatever those Popes, bishops and priests did was the will of God itself.  The choosing of the Pope was an act actively guided by the Holy Spirit.  "Religious submission of mind and will" (a general deference to the understanding those in authority have a wide berth normally when it is exercised) became a requirement to agree not only that what they were doing was right, but that there was no other possible way to look at the issue.  From this, a certain quasi-divine cult of personality arose around the hierarchal Church, especially the papacy.  Far from discouraging this, the John Paul II era used it as an integral tool in attempting to solve the crisis.

It was under the charisma (and constant visibility thanks to technology) of John Paul II that Catholics began to view the Bishop of Rome as the model for Christian activity.  This was a reminder that far from being someone who betrayed the revolution at Vatican II, John Paul II viewed himself its implementer, using a very post-concilliar understanding of the papacy to dramatically increase his power and perceptibility.

The biggest problem with this approach is, even under the best of circumstances, it was never sustainable.  John Paul could have been succeeded by the two greatest popes in history, and this perception of authority would never be sustainable.  We could be free from scandals, and eventually that personality cult would fade, and the papacies ability to personally mold and shape the faith of a billion souls would wane.  Instead, we got two popes who were at best average (and that's being very generous with the present), and we got a lot of scandals, having a visibility in the Church they just didn't have, even during the time of John Paul II.

As a result of this, that previous understanding of authority is gone.  The moral legitimacy of Church authorities rises below the sewer.  They have the hardest of difficulties even asking for basic funds to keep the Church operating, so convinced many are it will be spent either to settle abuse lawsuits, or used for wasteful (if not criminal) ends.  Far from being a source of unity, Church authorities are a source of deep division.  If you are hoping for some white knight to ascend the papal throne and fix everything, or for everyone to rally around this or that courageous bishop/cardinal, I've got news for you: its not happening.

2.)  The Rise of the Ecclesial Warlord

When I took an extended break in 2014, I warned of a rising trend in the blogosphere, that of the Catholic Warlord:

This tendency towards warlordism is especially tempting for the blogosphere. Most Catholics don't read blogs. The ones who read blogs are normally hyper-educated individuals with a lot of free time. The people who write blogs are normally hyper-educated individuals with a lot of free time. When hyper educated individual is praised by hyper educated individuals as someone being used by God to shine light into darkness, there's a real chance a feedback loop will occur. That feedback loop is really hard to kick. If there's one thing warlordism enforces, it's that you don't go outside unless you are being kicked out of the enclave.

Seven years later, the blogosphere is mostly dead.  Yet this tendency has rapidly accelerated, especially as the central authority of the Church has collapsed under the pontificate of Francis.  To the extent people "follow" Pope Francis, they actually don't follow him.  You follow your favorite interpreter of Pope Francis, whether that be the guys at Where Peter Is, Massimo Faggioli or Austen Ivereigh.  Or maybe you understand the Pope through the prism of Taylor Marshall, One Peter Five, Michael Voris, or someone else.  You trust the likes of bishops such as Cardinal Cupich, Cardinal Burke, Athanasius Schneider, or your favorite internet priest to look at Pope Francis and get through the misunderstanding and present things as they are, for good or ill.  Yet to be blunt:  nobody cares what the Pope actually thinks or says, unless they can use him as a weapon against those they don't like.  (Weapons can be used defensively as well)

These bishops aren't your bishop of old either.  They have global footprints in social media, and often not only have top notch communications teams, their communications teams are far savvier than those in Rome.  Even those who are friendly (or at least neutral) to the Pope have been able to carve out (intentionally or not) a very devoted presence.  None of them have an ability to command as much theoretical respect or authority as a John Paul II, but thanks to today's factionalized landscape, they don't need to be.  It's a lot easier to have an army of 500 facing multiple armies of 1,000 (whose loyalty to each other is quite dubious) than it is to be that 500 facing one single army of 50,000.

Until we have a central authority who can exercise effective control or governance among a large swath of the Church, this situation is not likely to change.  This is the landscape we find ourselves in, even if it is one we do not want.  We have to be able to speak to these smaller forces, form coalitions, work to achieve small goals, etc.  

3.)  This Landscape Favors Traditionalists

With the collapse of central authority (and a central identity) during the pontificate of Francis, everyone in the Roman Rite is trying to figure out how to adjust to this new reality.  Everyone but traditionalists.  Even with our divisions and nuances, we've been playing this game since the mid 1980's, and we've gotten increasingly better at it. Traditionalists have been able to build coalitions with as diverse of groups as Eastern Catholics and the Charismatic Renewal.  Stuebenville, Ohio and Ann Arbor, Michigan, both historically charismatic hotbeds, also have (or are near to) large and highly organized traditionalists communities, and there is a ton of overlap between them.  (We would jokingly refer to "the charismatic delegation" from Christ the King in Ann Arbor coming to visit the Latin Mass in downtown Detroit during feast days.)

As time went on, those connections and coalitions began to form, and ultimately paid big dividends.  For better or worse, a lot of Catholics no longer felt the Pope was a common source of unity and shared identity.  Even if they had generally fond feelings of him, they found they could no longer use his example the way they could in the days of John Paul, and to a lesser extent, Benedict.  That gave traditionalists a pretty good opportunity to use those previous connections and relationships as a way to either win converts, or (just as important), allies who would rally with us in common cause.  We speak to an audience that is often not one that sees eye to eye with us on everything.

To be blunt, who is Where Peter Is and their clerical allies speaking to?  They are speaking mostly to those who are already in total agreement with them.  If you get them unguarded, they'll even admit that, in lamenting how successful traditionalists have been in having a large influence beyond their small numbers.  They have their small enclave, and they've left us a wide playing field, and that reality was why so many Bishops felt fine mostly ignoring a directive from Rome to crush the Latin Mass.

This is the landscape of 2021.  It is pointless to spend time debating over if this is what Christ would have wanted.  It obviously is not, but it is the reality that exists.  Everyone, from the Pope to the pewsitter, helped create this environment.  If we want out of it, we must use this landscape to our advantage:  to show as many people as possible (most who will not become traditionalists) that God wants us to play a part in what is to come, and this part can be very appealing to everyone, not just the Latin Mass attendee.

Traditionalism Must Adapt

When I started pitching ideas for A Traditionalism for the People, I did so because I felt there is a unique opening in the Church today, an opening that traditionalists could exploit for their own benefit, and as a dose of sanity to an increasingly insane Church.  However, in order to do that, we need to change the way we approach a lot of things.  I do not think this requires a change of belief (though in some areas, it would do us well as I hope to show), but I do think it requires us to start framing issues and asking questions in a new way.

To the extent traditionalism has factored into debates about the Church, it has been through the prism of staving off a massive crisis.  While we talk of the "Crisis in the Church" since the Second Vatican Council, I actually think we are talking about two crises.  If one has read the previous narrative I outlined on Traditionis Custodes, you know where this is going, yet I'd like to offer a small recap.

The first crisis came about in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, particularly the troubled pontificate of Paul VI.  Pope Paul began his pontificate looking to eagerly implement the Second Vatican Council, and ended his pontificate unable to hold together a rapidly collapsing Church.  The Church was held together by his successor John Paul II, and the Church collectively breathed a sigh of relief amid all the talk of the "New Springtime."  The dark days of revolution were over, the chaos of Paul's pontificate no more.  Most importantly, there would be no counter-revolution.

There was a lot to this vision, and a lot of people subscribed to it, if just for the hope it offered.  I'd submit it was out of this pontificate the lines of discourse were drawn.  The pontificate of Paul VI was a battle between revolutionary factions (be they "liberal" or "conservative") for who would define the Church's future.  The battle during John Paul II's pontificate was over two points:  whether the revolution was truly over, and what to do next.  

When traditionalists entered the discussions, it was normally on these points.  We argued against the need for further revolution, but offered a stark dissent from our more conservative brethren on the question of "what to do next?"    Behind the cult of personality around John Paul II and his force of nature charisma, serious problems were brewing in the Church.    The cracks that were blown open during the Revolution after the Council weren't going away, no matter how much John Paul and his devotees wished otherwise.  While conservatives were basking in the New Springtime and calls for a "New Evangelization", traditionalists played the role of bitter scold, pointing out any New Evangelization would be mostly fruitless without tackling the corruption in the Church, whether in the practical denial of her doctrine by individuals (lay and cleric alike), or the widespread moral corruption.

While we had this debate, the abuse scandals exploded in the United States and Europe  I submit it was this point, more than anything else, that "ended" the First Crisis after the Council.    Debates about the liturgical reform didn't matter as much when there existed a vast criminal network, overseen by bishops (both liberal and conservatives) who had protected abusers for decades.  After the Dallas meeting, Catholics of all stripes wanted to believe these debates were over, each for their own reasons.  So we put the abuse issue to bed, and returned to our usual debates.

Perhaps, more than anything else, the pontificate of Benedict XVI could be viewed as a return to those usual debates, our "holiday from history", to borrow an old saying about America during the Clinton years.  Yet the abuse crisis was the first sign of a crisis that couldn't be answered by any faction, liberal, conservative, or traditionalist.  These crises accelerated throughout Benedict's pontificate (if under the radar), and exploded during the Pontificate of Francis.  I am going to sidestep the endless debates about how much Francis caused these problems, and settle on the fact he proved himself utterly unable to manage them.

I believe that the failure of Francis to manage these successive crises/scandals has led to the second division of the crisis since the Council.  The day traditionalists long feared has arrived:  The New Springtime is dead, and we are now heading into the cold winter.  Episcopal fraternity is dead, as bishops now openly feud in the public square, and factionalism envelops the Church among the bishops and laity.  The sunny optimism of John Paul II has given way to the bitter scolding of Francis, whose homilies and statements are full of jeremiads against various groups in the Church.  What is common in all of them is barely anyone listens to them, much less their intended audiences.

While we traditionalists may wish to say that we can tie everything back to debates about Dignitatis Humanae or whether the Church of Christ "is" or "subsists in" the Catholic Church, this crisis is different.  This crisis revolves around discussions about the limits of papal and episcopal authority, the role of the laity as participants in the governance of the Church, not just "participate in the life of the Church."  Gone is that weird moment in time where we can debate whether the Church needs to look "outward" or "inward."  The latter is now a necessity, not a mere option.  We may have gotten some things wrong along the way, but overall, traditionalists won the debate.  The seeming strength of the Church under John Paul II was a house of cards that has now collapsed.  When it is rebuilt (by whoever does the rebuilding), the debates surrounding subsitit and various other controversies surrounding Vatican II are not likely to factor into their vision.    We must adapt ourselves to this changing reality, lest we join the Pope and his increasingly aged revolutionaries in the waters of irrelevance.

A Traditionalism for the People

In the wake of the Popes (initially unsuccessful) attempt at suppressing the Latin Mass, I've seen a lot of talk about how traditionalism needs to rethink itself, sometimes even reinvent itself.  Some of this is useful and helpful.  While we like to think of a Church that moves "in centuries, not years', the reality is that the landscape we inherit in 2021 is radially different than the Church of 1962.  I would even say the landscape is dramatically different than when I began writing back in 2001 as a newly minted Catholic.  If we cannot address that landscape effectively, we are no better than Pope Francis, who has completely and utterly failed to confront these new realities, bitter at a world and Church that does not behave like he thinks it should.

Yet I think a lot of these attempts are doomed to failure.  Before exploring better options, lets look at what I think will not work.

Signaling too Hard

The first impulse tries too hard.  It looks at a lot of online elements of traditionalism, is embarassed, and overcompensates.  Its not enough to conclude that the Council doesn't teach heresy. Indeed, we have to think it is an "essential guidance for Catholics in the modern world".  This is something very few non-trads actually believe, much less trads.  Nobody goes "how should I live my life as a Catholic" and starts a deep dive into the Second Vatican Council's decrees.  That's just not how real people work.  No Catholic would seriously dive into the decrees of Trent or various other pastoral councils to figure out how to live their lives.  The majority of Catholics throughout history have never read a word from an ecumenical council, or a word from a papal document.  There's nothing wrong with that.  If we want to reimagine traditionalism, we need to stop lying to our audience.  Nobody is looking at how to renew their lives in 2021 by doing a deep dive on Vatican II.  We can say that while still holding the documents don't teach error or depart from Catholic teaching, and in some cases might even offer something useful.

Yet we do this because we feel we have to fit in.  A lot of online theologians try to act like the ideal Catholic life is centered around a the Summa, the Ecumenical Councils, and papal encyclicals.  They then gather with other online theologians and talk about what the ideal Catholicism would be.  Speculative theology is fun, but its not something you build a movement around.  Its not something you build renewal around.  Its a fun book of the month club for eggheads.

Restoring..... What Exactly?

There is another bad impulse that needs to be countered, though I sincerely think this impulse has been on the wane.  Traditionalism has always had a certain restorationist and counter-revolutionary current to it.  We will end the "crisis in the Church" when we abandon what came after the Council, or 1969, or whatever.  We will then "return to tradition" and go back to renewal.

Like the first approach, there is little attachment to reality here.  One can appreciate a lot of the good that came in the pre-concilliar era, and think that the modern approach that everything before 1962 doesn't matter to Catholics today is silly, and cuts off the Church from an awful lot of her intellectual and spiritual heritage. We could revert back to 1962 and have the flourishing external Church of that era, yet we would pretty quickly wind up in more or less the same situation.  We could move back to the era of St. Pius X, and within 60 years we would probably still be at the Second Vatican Council.  We should not look at traditionalism as an attempt at recreating a particular ideal time.  Like the first example, this is a book of the month club for eggheads.  True restoration comes in not only applying the wisdom of previous eras to today, but in understanding what didn't work from those previous eras, and how many of the problems today find their embryonic form in earlier eras.  

So What Then?

If we've examined what's wrong with other attempts to reimagine traditionalism, what should we focus on instead.  I think both failed approaches have the same root:  they attempt to transform renewal into a mere intellectual exercise and discussion club.  These have their uses.  In a certain sense, this writing is the product of those discussions.  I will even be going to dinner with some local trads this weekend, where I will likely be pitching them on this very topic.

If we want true renewal, we have to understand how limited this stuff is, and we need to be able to offer the Church something more.  We have to offer to traditionalists a way to deepen their faith and their commitment to renewal, and we need to offer the Church at large an authenticity and uniqueness that is sorely lacking, in both the lay and clerical state, from the smallest to the throne of St. Peter itself.  If I were to offer a few foundational ideas, they would be:

- The Primacy of an individual AND communal relationship with Jesus Christ

- The Centrality of the Sacred Scriptures

- A spirituality focused on Interior Renewal

- The Right Ordering of the temporal in our lives, and in society, towards the Gospel (without it necessarily being a political program)

- The Sacred Liturgy is the Primary Means of Mediating this experience in your life, especially in the Traditional Roman Rite of Mass, though not exclusively so.

What don't you see in this list?  You don't see:

- What to think about Pope Francis or any Church leader, lay or clerical

- What to think about this or that Ecumenical Council

- Who you should vote for in the upcoming election

The Catholic Church exists, as a divine institution founded by Our Lord, for the purpose of guiding us along the path to heaven.  She guides in a sense of fixing the boundaries, and major points along the way.  Outside of that, there isn't a lot of direct control.  Indeed, the Church has put herself in a bad position many times when she overthinks her Divine Mission, and attempts to supplement that Divine Mission with human programs or ideological goals often lead not just to ruin, but to irrelevance.

I don't propose scrapping a lot of the other ways to reimagine traditionalism.  They have their uses, even the ones that try too hard.  But I do think that first and foremost, we should have a Traditionalism for the People of God, offering something to Catholics that they have often felt lacking from the Church:  a reason to care.

To the few hundred people who read this, and to the 50 or 60 fans, I hope that last sentence gets your attention.  We will explore this theme in future writings:  the biggest threat to the Church is not that she can preach a false message, but that she preaches something nobody cares about.  I'd say that's exactly what is happening right now, and that is what we need to reverse course on.

Traditionis Custodes: Now What?

We're at the end of our series on building a narrative to understand Traditionis Custodes, and more importantly, the muted reaction of Bishops so far to the document.  Outside of a Bishop in Puerto Rico, there really aren't a lot of cases of bishops enthusiastically using the document as it was clearly intended by the Pope:  to suppress the Latin Mass.   Even left leaning prelates like Cardinal Nichols have dispensed congregations from the restrictions on barring the Latin Mass from parish Churches.  While only anecdotal, its not uncommon to hear of attendance at the Latin Mass increasing since the Motu Proprio, and (as was entirely predictable) the SSPX parishes being the chief beneficiary.  This is all encouraging, and should cause some individuals to try to understand a lot of what has happened before in light of these realities.  This narrative was an imperfect attempt to do it, and I hope it has brought understanding.

What comes next is a bit tougher.  Nobody can read the future.  The Pope could die tomorrow, and this would all become basically a dead letter.  (Controversially, I think there are quite a few bishops on all sides of the ideological spectrum who, while not wishing that scenario, wouldn't view it the end of the world either.)  Yet I think some things are pretty clear.

1.)  The Pope knows time is not on his side.

If anyone can agree on anything here, it is that this document was clearly rushed out the door.  Few if anyone outside of bishops in Italy were consulted about the move.  Even senior members of the Curia closely allied with Francis were left in the dark.  Key bishops in the countries where the Latin Mass flourished were unaware of what was coming.  As more and more bishops are basically setting aside the document stating that life continues more or less as before, Rome has been muted.  I don't take this as a sign of "failure" so much as lack of planning.  They had no clue what was going to happen next, because their clearest priority was getting it out the door.  Something clearly spooked the Pope and his advisors that the chaos was necessary to getting the document out as fast as possible.  The likeliest and easiest explanation is the fact that Francis spent a lengthy stint in the hospital, far longer than anyone anticipated.  He's in his 80's, has one working lung, and had a death scare.  He had to act now because time is not on the side of the Revolution he is trying to now become the avatar of.

2.)  The Papacy itself is now at a crossroads

As our narrative detailed, since John Paul II the office of the papacy has increasingly become the avatar of Catholicism, and the person of the pope synonymous with not just Catholic doctrine, but Catholic practice.  There were reasons John Paul did this (which we covered), but the simple reality is that this model of Catholicism was never sustainable.  Modern communication not only increases someone's visibility, it increases the visibility of opposition.  In the age of Twitter and the 24/7 news cycle (something in its infancy when he died), John Paul II's papacy would have been impossible. Francis used a lot of the initial favorable media coverage to build a brand as the great leveler, the visionary who was going to point the Church on a bold new (even if grounded officially in Catholic doctrine) path.  Those who did not want that path understood they were not alone in ways that just weren't possible in previous eras.

Another way the old model is dead is that it is very tough, in a polarized age, to punish a dissident.  Whether its Fr. James Altman or German clerics, Church authority coming down in a heavy handed matter, while it might thrill partisans, probably won't accomplish much on the ground.  Local German clerics have a lot more influence over their flocks than Rome does, and Fr. Altman responded to being removed from his parish by raising a quarter of a million dollars in a weekend.  Even suspending him probably won't do much good at this point  You need legitimacy among the crowd these individuals are targeting in this environment, and Francis, functionally, has none.  He is the Pope who reigns in Rome, but he does not rule there.

The Pope could respond to the motu proprio mostly being ignored by attempting to compel bishops to crack down harder on the Latin Mass.  He might prevail on a few voices, but the general result is he will just increasingly make it worse.  He would have to change canon law in a blatantly pretextual fashion, or start removing Bishops from their sees because they won't crack down on their flock hard enough.

3.)  The Imperial Papacy is Dead.... and Good Riddance

I had a discussion with an old trad blogger, one of the first.  He reacted "Imagine if we had a pope who was willing to use the kind of power Francis did.... but for good?  For Tradition?"  The majority of Catholics today had their formative years during the John Paul II era.  Their view of the papacy is colored by his pontificate, for good or ill.    It is natural to see a Pope like Francis, and wonder what a Pope "on our side" would be able to accomplish if he acted in a similar fashion.

The reality is that a Pope who acted in a similar fashion, but for our side, would likely find the exact same frustration as Francis has, but for our side.    Even if you take out all the negative scandals of this pontificate, you still have a pontificate that finds it hard to corral bishops in line.  He hasn't met with the College of Cardinals, as a college, in years.  In the age of social media, the Pope really is one voice among many, and he probably isn't the most influential voice for hundreds of millions of Catholics.  A "good" pope might change this at the margins, but its not going to change drastically, because the issues at play are far bigger than this pontificate.

I submit we should look at that reality and say one word:  Good.  Arguing over whether or not a decentralized Church is a good or bad thing is besides the point:  that decentralization is a reality.  Further attempts by Francis to centralize everything have either led to further decentralizing, or paralysis of authority.  This is something my ultramontane friend failed to understand, and something I think all ultramontanes fail to understand.  Authority becoming more and more centralized just means that it becomes more and more paralyzed.  When you centralize everything in a network, you centralize a single point of failure.  When the papacy is bad, the entire Church is thrown into crisis.  When the papacy is helmed by an ineffective leader, the entire Church is thrown into crisis.  When a pope is diminished in his capacity by age or health, the entire Church is thrown into crisis.  (The health issues of Pius XII and John Paul II led to constant infighting and factionalism in Rome, factionalism that profoundly impacted later both the Council and many of the crises of the Church after JPII died.)

How far one wishes to take this discussion is a legitimate point of inquiry, and we should absolutely resist any attempt to turn the Church into a democratic institution, or go the route of national Churches.  Yet traditionalists can no longer sit on the sidelines.  In the post-francis world, and especially in a world where the revolutionary generation finally dies off, we will have to rebuild.  Let's not waste our time rebuilding something that should stay dead.

4.)  The Divisions of the John Paul II Era are Dead.... and Good Riddance

I legitimately think that when Francis enacted the motu proprio, he and his advisors figured that we could just return to the world that existed from 1988-2007 with the Latin Mass:  something tightly regulated on its way to extinction, and using "conservatives' to fight traditionalists.  This was the world of Fabian Bruskewitz, First Things, The Wanderer, as well as priests and clerics who viewed the Latin Mass as a threat to the established order, so therefore it had to be contained, if not outright eliminated.

That world no longer exists.  As detailed elsewhere, to the extent the civil war between traditionalists and conservatives was waged, it was a war traditionalists won, mostly without firing a shot.  Those who will be fighting traditionalists are those who not only can't appeal to traditionalists, they can't appeal to anyone else either.  The person who views the 1970's as the glory days of the Church is a rare breed, even among more liberal Catholics.  Conservative Catholics were just as horrified by that age as trads were.  John Paul II offered a way out of the chaos of the 70's, but also appealed to those who held strongly conservative views on morality and anti-communism.  What does Francis have that can possibly appeal to these individuals?  What would a successor steeped in the revolution have?

None of this is to say that the revolution is truly over, or that the Pope is out of options in his crusade to make traditionalists suffer.  It is just that those options will put the Church through considerable pain, without much long-term reward for him and his ilk.  At this point, the goal is to make everyone realize that considerable pain is unnecessary and counterproductive.  Our first step is negotiating a peace for the Church to hold to.  Whoever can accomplish that will dictate much of the post-Francis world, and likely the post Traditionis Custodes world.