Vigano, Traditionalism, and the Quest for Identity

When I did blogging regularly, I took pride in the fact that the blog stood out from others in that I normally avoided two things.  I avoided a running commentary on Catholic news, and I avoided a running commentary on various Catholic personalities.  If you read between the lines, it was clear these things inspired me to write about issues, but I tried to avoid being stuck in a time-specific piece.

I'm going to violate that rule here, and I think its important to give an outline as to why, and make clear this will be a norm I do my best to follow.  I think the case of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is a fascinating study in itself, and what his popularity in traditionalist circles says is pretty instructive of traditionalism, though not for the reason most of your bloviating idiot pundits think.

As mentioned elsewhere, after his scathing J'Accuse of Pope Francis for complicity and coverup in the scandal of Theodore McCarrick, Vigano soon became a minor and then not so minor Catholic celebrity.  He opined on various issues, and he wrote in ways that were clearly trying to grab certain audiences.  This style became a hit among traditionalists, especially as he began to be influenced  by your traditional standard boilerplate about Vatican II.

The standard criticism about Vigano is that it shows how far off the deep end he's gone, and allegedly this is proof of what happens when you are in "rebellion against the Holy Father", whatever that means.  Yet it is also clear that he is going beyond even the standard criticisms of Vatican II.  Its not just that Vatican II is a failed council: its that the council itself was a conspiracy a century in the making, and that it was actually a wildly successful council: it was a successful redefinition of the Catholic Church.

I want to mostly avoid those debates.  I point them out to simply make mention of the fact that there is a bit of a point when some worry about a radicalizing effect Vigano could have.  He's not just thrown his lot in with conservatives and traditionalists:  he's thrown his lot in with the most conspiratorial of the bunch.  So, what are we to make of him?

First, whatever his positions now, it says nothing about the overall truth of his testimony against Francis regarding McCarrick.  This entry takes for granted the truth of his claim because REALLY MAN?  We really have to do this?  Okay then.  His first argument was that, unknown to everyone save a few, Benedict XVI suspended McCarrick from ministry, essentially permanently, for the crime of sexual sins regarding the confessional and sexual abuse of a seminarian.  (at the time his serial child predations do not seem to have been known.)  At the time it seemed like an utterly insane accusation.  For many of us, its sheer absurdity was why it was likely true:  nobody would make that up.

That turned out to be 100% correct: confirmed by McCarrick's own pen.  He admitted to his secretary Benedict had forcibly imposed restrictions on him.  We also learned that from at least the late 90's/early 2000's Rome was made aware of allegations regarding McCarrick that were pretty substantial. We also learned that Rome had secretly punished a few other bishops for similar crimes.  Suddenly secret sentences weren't that crazy.  So on that claim Vigano was absolutely right.

The second claim was the more explosive one:  that Pope Francis knew about it.  While we'll never get a confession, I think its pretty clear he knew about it.  His refusal to originally deny it, along with the overwhelming evidence that the pope would of course know about a good friend, advisor and senior cardinal being punished.  If he didn't, his staff would've made it clear the second his name popped up in the news.  To this day Rome has never answered how Francis couldn't have known, leaving us with only one possibility:  he knew.  He knew, and for whatever reason (it need not even be conspiratorial or sinful) he let those restrictions lapse around McCarrick.

So yes, Vigano was correct on both accounts.  This does not necessarily make him reliable on everything else.  It just means that he was in a unique and fundamental position to know that Francis wasn't being honest.  That doesn't suddenly make him qualified to speak on anything else.  Nor does it make him a figure worthy of belief on everything else.  Still, the man is enjoying his time in the spotlight, and doing what he can to stay in it.  If that means fighting with otherwise natural allies over perceived slights personally and professionally, so be it.

What does this say about traditionalism as a whole?  That's where I think its more interesting.  Traditionalism has always had a bit of a populist strain to it.  They are suspicious of the hierarchy (who, despite their ordained role as shepherds are viewed as rotten for a variety of reasons), and view conformity to a dominant way of life with skepticism.  This strain was evident in its popular thinking.  While today Benedict XVI is viewed as a natural ally of traditionalists who (in the eyes of his critics) did more than anyone to mainstream the movement, as Cardinal Ratzinger traditionalists looked upon him with skepticism, if not outright contempt.  That he mostly agreed with them on the liturgy was viewed as a trojan horse for a variety of other ideas.  Any bishop who did likewise was often treated with the same skepticism, outside of elder princes like Cardinal Stickler.

That is not the traditionalism of today.  Today traditionalists count among their allies or heroes bishops such as Schneider and yes Vigano.  They also count among them Cardinal Sarah, Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong, and a host of other leaders.  Far from an adversarial relationship with bishops in the US, it is pointed out that relations have improved pretty remarkably outside of a few bad dioceses.  That traditionalists are so hungry to quickly point to anytime someone remotely agrees with them, this in itself is instructive.  Its a sign of a movement looking to become more accommodating to the mainstream.  

It is for this reason that a lot of the calls for traditionalists to denounce those individuals tends to fall on deaf ears.  They suspect, often correctly, that the Dawn Eden's and Where Peter Is gang are operating in bad faith.  Traditionalists are rebels against the hierarchy, but when they find episcopal support, those individuals are cranks or rebels.  They are in a perpetual state of rebellion against the Holy Father, but they are also preventing the Holy Father from wielding his Petrine authority when they appeal to him to use that Petrine authority to not allow married priests in the Latin Rite.  

For far too long traditionalists have been told they need to mainstream themselves, and that it wouldn't do to have just high school religion teachers or lay columnists advocate for them.  So they went and persuaded priests and bishops, and are now accused of radicalizing them.  We can't win gang.  We have these kind of debates about what to think of these individuals all the time.  We just refuse to do so on the schedule of hostile outsiders.

If you want to ignore all this and have a quick summary, its this:  we should always be careful about who we elevate, but the choices in who is being elevated should be instructive.  We're playing the game people have long asked us to win, are playing that game pretty well, and now they want us to stop playing.

World Youth Day: Theory and Practice

Leonard: I love cheesecake

Sheldon:  No you don't, you're lactose intolerant.

Leonard:  I think its a good idea!

Like so many of my generation, we find a bit of wisdom behind the laughs (and not all of them appropriate) of CBS' The Big Bang Theory.  A few weeks ago someone asked me in the comboxes here what I thought about World Youth Day.  This scene came to my mind when reading that question.  I'm really not a fan of World Youth Day, but I still to this day think its a good idea.  Another way of saying it is that World Youth Day is a terrible idea, and the only thing worse than World Youth Day is no World Youth Day.  This came into my mind when I read the following article at Catholic World Report.

The Triumph of Division

I certainly hope Catholic Answers is happy.  They wasted a lot of money on a pointless two hour radio program that didn't help their audience understand traditionalists, "radical" or otherwise.  What they did do was create an incredible amount of ill will from traditionalists, and even those who aren't.  When these kind of circumstances happen, certain traditionalists will go out of their way spoiling for a fight.

I'm not really one to comment too much on the article in The Remnant.  When one gets past Mr. Ferrara's verbal flourishes, one finds there actually aren't a lot of things to disagree about.  I think everyone would agree that nobody is obligated to attend Mass in the Ordinary or Extraordinary Form.  Everyone would also agree (or at least they should) that the Church has been under attack from both the world and from within, and that weapon has many names:  the dictatorship of relativism, modernism, secularism, etc.  I think it is also beyond dispute that everyone agrees the Second Vatican Council wasn't implemented pretty good, if at all.  Those who disagree are free to find beef with Pope Benedict (who spoke of a false council of the media that has mistaken for Vatican II) and Pope Francis.

These truths aren't denied by anyone, yet both sides have to act like they do.  Why?  To put it bluntly, people are pretty angry when they are treated as second class Catholics, and they are likely to fire back in kind.  When people aren't around screaming "rad-trad", you don't see too much talking about "Neo-Catholic."  Neither term is actually descriptive of anything.  It simply means "other people do crap I don't like, and I need to condemn it in the flashiest way possible."  They are polemical terms that belong to a previous age.  They are also words that are only meant for the choir.

So now we've got another pointless conflict that the good folks at Catholic Answers don't actually disagree with, or at least wouldn't dare to disagree with it in public, as they really are settled matters.  What's sad is that others are actually starting to become a bit more honest in their assessment of matters.  The only problem with this kind of approach is you aren't going to drive up ratings for your radio show or print magazine.  Instead you will do the far more mundane task of slowly but surely laying a proper foundation for true Catholic unity.  Perhaps Catholic Answers would be far better suited instructing its audience how to do that.

Why We Speak Past Each Other

As I've been mulling over a bigger work on so called "radical traditionalism" (more on this over the next week!), there have been a few other things that have happened which I want to talk about.  In trying to reach out to traditionalist audiences, two different voices gave two different critiques, but both seemed to fall pretty flat.  While some partisans will say this is just proof that trads are obstinate and impossible to have a discussion with, I think a more honest reading gives a far more simpler answer.

Closing the Door (Finally) on Vatican II

With the canonization of Sts. John XXIII and John Paul II, many are interpreting these actions as the triumph of the Second Vatican Council, and how now the council will continue to dominate Catholic discourse for the next several generations.  For many of my traditionalist brethren (even those who have no problem accepting it as a valid ecumenical council without error), this gives us distress.  For some of our friends across the way, this gives them another chance to concern-troll the crap out of us.   I would like to offer an alternative idea.

Gaming and the New Evangelization

I have always said four things drove me in my life:  My faith, my job, baseball, and video games.  On June 1st, I added a wife to that list.  (Moved her to just behind faith of course!)  When you work off-shift jobs like I do (I have worked midnights or afternoons 12 out of the last 13 years), you've got a lot of free time at night, especially when I was a single bachelor.  So in addition to reading, prayer and other activities, gaming was one of my favorite past times.  What follows will be some disjointed thoughts about gaming and my faith.

Applying Jeremiah to the Modern Jeremiad

Have you heard about how America is an evil nation, opposed to God, and destined to be judged?  Or how about how rotten the majority of the Catholic Church is for its lack of fidelity to the Gospel, and how God will judge them for that?  Or maybe you've read and took comfort in the fact that there's nothing we can do to stop these judgments.  Thankfully, we shouldn't worry if you follow the words of today's jeremiads, since when Christ returns, most of the world will be apostate anyway.

They will explain their rationale for speaking boldly by referencing the prophet Jeremiah, frequently viewed as a "prophet of doom" or a prophet of lamentation over the sins of Israel.  I really don't have a problem with this approach per se. I certainly sympathize with it. Evil has to be condemned, sometimes with maximum rhetorical force.  The Gospel is just as much about the dignity and justice of God (and how He ultimately used that dignity to satisfy that justice) as it is about the dignity of the human person.  So when you read this, don't take me as someone who is a liberal squish who is downplaying the need to condemn sin.  Yet I think we need to tell the whole story with our jeremiads, and the best place to look for that story would be the Prophet Jeremiah.  The best place to start is when God formally makes Jeremiah his chosen voice:

Were Things Really That Bad Before Vatican II?

Sometimes while bored, I like to sit back and reflect upon what used to pass for discourse on matters surrounding traditionalism.  Heck, it's something Pete Vere and myself do on at least a weekly basis.  As a behind the scenes voice in a lot of matters on the blogosphere for now 11 years, I've seen a lot.  Some of it I remember fondly, even if I didn't agree with it.  Other things I remember with nothing but disdain.

One particular argument that makes me want to deliver the Cubito Aequet occurs whenever traditionalists like to point out that, all things being equal, the Church of the Early 20th century was kind of in a golden age, whereas the Church after Vatican II most certainly has not, even by the admissions of every Bishop of Rome since the closing of the Council.  This really isn't rocket science, the data speaks for itself.    By just about every objective criteria, the Church was in healthier shape.  That isn't to say the aftermath of the Council is solely to blame, but when even Pope Francis talks about how a bunch of selfish bishops resisted the Holy Spirit and in their arrogance implemented their own ideas rather than Catholic truth, why on earth are we even arguing this still?

One sees this kind of argument in a recent post by Steve Kellmeyer.  There are things that I like about this post.  He is correct in pointing out a lot of the bad narratives that crop up in some circles about the Second Vatican Council (the "infiltrate narrative") which usually results from a bad reading of objective facts.  (Vatican II had this going for it, no Bishops were physically assaulted and injured during its proceedings, which cannot be said for Trent!)  I also agree with him that a lot of the trouble (as is often the case) comes down to individual Catholics.  We get the Church we build, and a lot of us have been far too busy building our own works alongside those of Christ's.

All this being said, is it still right to say what Mr. Kellmeyer says:

The bishops and priests who wanted to reform what is now the Extraordinary Form of the Mass wanted to do so for a very good reason: the EF sucked wind. It stank. It was at least sub-optimal. In fact, it was so substantially flawed that it required reform.

Even allowing for his typical verbal pomposity, is there something to what he says here?  Do we traditionalists really bury our heads in the sand and act like everything was perfect, when in reality it was quite the opposite?  While you might find a few traditionalists who think this way, the majority of right thinking (and even wrong thinking) trads don't seriously advocate this.  When traditionalists celebrate things like the Anti-Modernist Oath and the various framework around it that for the most part was obliterated following the Council (and after which heresy became rampant amongst the clergy in public), they are recognizing (even on an implicit level) the following:  that the average individual priest was prone to act badly either out of malice or human weakness, so good governance required structures in place to keep him on the proper path.  When we attack the constant innovations and liturgical abuses rampant within the Ordinary Form, we celebrate the liturgical rubrics and discipline that made 95% of those abuses impossible within the Extraordinary Form.

In the end I think it was things like this that truly helped bring about the golden age.  During the pontificates of Blessed Pius IX up to Paul VI, we had a church that internally was thriving, intellectually and spiritually.  The mere fact that you had 6 (or 7 depending on your count) very good popes in a row makes it somewhat of an anomaly in church history.

That doesn't mean everything was perfect.  Of course it wasn't.  Even during a golden age you can see the seeds of a fall sometimes centuries in advance.  At the height of the Kingdom of Israels power (Solomon), you can easily see the seeds of collapse centuries later.  From a secular standpoint, the Principate which worked so good in Ancient Rome during the time of the Five Good Emperors contained the seeds for Rome's eventual fall.  (Indeed, once Marcus Aurelius died, the empire went to hell for the next century.)

The last example is particularly instructive.  Nobody denies that the Rome of those 96 years wasn't a golden age, and one of the most peaceful times of world history.  Likewise, even during the time right before Vatican II there were the seeds of crisis.  Sometimes this crisis even came about because of good policy.  For example, under the framework of the Anti-Modernist Oath, a lot of heretical influences really couldn't gain a wide following.  Yet unfortunately, some good voices also suffered under this regime, thought of as heretical and persecuted even though they were later vindicated.  The attempt to correct this balance after the Council clearly failed, yet that doesn't mean that on the whole, the system in place worked.  The same with the liturgy.  In some places the Latin Mass wasn't being done as devoutly as before, or people weren't able to draw upon the richness the way they should have because of various difficulties.  The liturgy needed gradual reform.  During the days of the Indult and now Summorum Pontificium, traditionalist communities have largely shown what an authentic liturgical reform looks like, as the average Catholic there knows probably ten times more about the liturgy now than their ancestors did even though the liturgies are about 90% similar.

The problem with what came after the Council was that we didn't get a gradual reform.  We got a reform that attempted to change everything, and relied upon commissions of experts thousands of miles away rather than pastors who had a sound knowledge of the needs of their parish on the local level while still adhering to the same general framework everyone else was.  I have little doubt that had this kind of regime been in place during that golden age of the Church, the exact same result we see today would've happened.

This isn't to say that we can just 'turn back the clock' to the days before the Council and expect everything to be good again.  Of course we can't.  Yet in building the Church of today up, there really is a lot we could learn from the lessons of history.  Not just with what didn't work (the "conservatives" out there today can tell us all about that), but what did work.  An honest reading will tell us that the answer is "quite a bit actually."

Why We are All Irrelevant Scrubs

The following message is hard to hear, but it is something that needs to be said.  The blogopshere is abuzz with the issue of Anti-Semitism in traditionalist circles since Dawn Eden helped the issue go viral amongst the Catholic blogosphere.  Some wish that more prominent voices would get involved in this, and that traditionalists all over would see what a problem Anti-Semitism is in their circles.

I feel the approach that many are taking right now is flawed, and it stems from the fact that they suffer from an information disadvantage.  Allow me to explain.

When I say information disadvantage, I mean that we lack certain knowledge that others have.  We don't lack it because we are close-minded.  We lack it because we live in a bubble.  This happens in politics all the time, where someone is surprised that evil creep won an election when everyone they knew voted otherwise.  Traditionalists had this problem with the Mandatum issue.  They were horrified over the Pope "setting aside" a liturgical law.  To most Catholics, even Orthodox ones, they didn't know such a law even existed, or why it exists.  To try to explain the subtleties of laws to people who aren't even aware they are laws, you will just look like a fool.  Should they know?  Yes.  Yet they don't, and you gotta deal with that.  

So, you are asking, how does this relate to the problem of Anti-Semitism and traditionalists?  I'm so glad you asked!

When confronted by such vile Anti-Semitism, many traditionalists have acted with horror and revulsion, condemning the words.  Yet we also remind people that this kind of stuff is a minority within the traditionalist movement, and it is virtually non-existent in most parishes.  In short, what you see on the Internet is not representative of the whole.  The current response to this has been..... to point out nasty things people are saying on the Internet.

Why is this a problem?  Those who write and read blogs are a pretty small minority of the overall Catholic population.  They tend to be highly motivated individuals who take their beliefs seriously, for better or worse.  The majority of traditionalists and Catholics in general are blissfully ignorant of this entire dustup.  Even the most known of Catholic personalities online are probably only known by maybe 5% of the Catholic population.  An even smaller number of that 5% actually read them on a regular basis.  The kind of problems the blogosphere deals with are not the problems that exist in the majority of parishes or that we experience.

It is for that reason I disagree with one point of Simcha Fischer's otherwise excellent work.  Outside of the nonsense I run into online, I haven't encountered any Anti-Semitism.  Since the majority of Catholics (including traditionalists) don't really spend much time on trad blogs, I can say with confidence that the idea that "If you're a traditionalist and you hang out with other traditionalists, then sooner or later, you will run into Anti-Semitism" is actually a load of crap, and only someone who is a blogger would make that statement.  I know that I've migrated between 3 different traditionalist communities over a decade, and Anti-Semitism wasn't in one of them.  My experience is also what a lot of traditionalists are trying to say.  So we are lucky that it isn't in our neighborhood.

That isn't to say this is all much ado about nothing.  No, the problem is real.  Even if it exists in just a few corners of the Internet, it can have a lot of far-reaching conclusions.  That small bit of Anti-Semitism can damage our ability to witness.  Furthermore, we want those people on the Internet who read blogs.  They take things passionately, and they are serious about our beliefs.  Like any movement, traditionalists can use more serious individuals.  Yet they aren't going to give us a second look if they don't see that we really and truly oppose this crap.

If we are wondering what we can do to make others stand up, we need to do more to show that this kind of stuff actually has an impact, and the damage it creates is real, because to the majority of Catholics, they look at us the same way.  We really are a bunch of irrelevant scrubs who are talking about issues they have no clue about.  Such a message isn't appealing to the ego, yet if you want to be an effective witness, the first thing you need to do is tell your ego to knock it off.

Why Tradition Matters

After wrecking the Roman Rite for roughly two or three decades, Msgr. Annibale Bugnini wanted to make even further changes to the spiritual lives of Catholics.  His next "reform" was to radically alter the Rosary.  His proposal was firmly rejected by Pope Paul VI, and the reasoning behind it is the point of this column today.

Making an Idol of Tradition

In order to get a proper understanding of the role tradition plays within the life of the Catholic Church, we sometimes need to encounter some uncomfortable realities.  One of these is that sometimes, traditionalists (and sometimes all Catholics as well!) make an idol out of tradition.

Why Traditionalists Have a Point

So there's been a ton of concern trolling about how bad traditionalists have looked over the whole footwashing issue, and how they really just need to pipe down.    Yet little noticed is how even if some might have reacted badly, there was a point behind it all.  This point was proved by Fr. Thomas Rosica of the Vatican's Press Office in a statement on Pope Francis' ignoring of established liturgical laws.  It is statements like this that make traditionalism so appealing.  I'd like to examine why. 

First, it speaks of the populist nature that is inherent in traditionalism.  According to Fr. Rosica, liturgical rubrics really just matter to experts instead of the faithful.  This kind of thinking is what led to the wasteland of the Post Vatican II era.  It essentially tells the Catholic faithful to keep their mouths shut, don't care about what is in the liturgy, just pray, pay, and obey.  This kind of age led to rampant liturgical abuse, and tracked in almost linear fashion with the decline of faith following the Council.  Blessed John Paul II admitted near the end of his pontificate that he allowed this attitude to fester way too much, and that it damaged far more than just the state of the liturgy.  It is for this reason that the work Redemptionis Sacramentum states the following:

On the contrary, it is the right of all of Christ’s faithful that the Liturgy, and in particular the celebration of Holy Mass, should truly be as the Church wishes, according to her stipulations as prescribed in the liturgical books and in the other laws and norms. Likewise, the Catholic people have the right that the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass should be celebrated for them in an integral manner, according to the entire doctrine of the Church’s Magisterium. Finally, it is the Catholic community’s right that the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharist should be carried out for it in such a manner that it truly stands out as a sacrament of unity, to the exclusion of all blemishes and actions that might engender divisions and factions in the Church.
 

 In the end, it doesn't really matter whether or not someone is a liturgical scholar or expert.  They still have an expectation of a liturgy according to the norms.

Dr. Edward Peters also touches on another problem with the statement:  it presents a separation between law and spirit which, quite frankly, isn't Catholic.  Quite the contrary, any authentic Catholic reform comes from a healthy obedience to laws and regulations concerning Catholic practice.  Religious orders were only restored via a return (in many cases a radical one) return to their rules and constitutions surrounding their following.  The beauty of the reform of the Counter-Reformation was how the Church shed those practices which led to the flouting of Church laws.  Once those laws were followed with greater frequency, general holiness flourished, the Church won converts, and some of the highest level of thought occurred.  Christ did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.  Most of the calls for reform since the Council have followed the outline Fr. Rosica advocates, and the results have been by all accounts disastrous.  The reforms of the past two pontificates (more or less) rejected this mindset and the results have been far  better.  (Look at the young generation of priests and the overall beliefs of catholics who attend Mass regularly to see that their approach has succeeded.)  Not ideal (such an ideal is not possible this side of the eschaton), but positive.

These concerns aren't just the concerns of traditionalists, and I would argue that is what makes our way of doings things so appealing to many in light of this controversy.

Traditionalists, the Mandatum, and the Way Forward

Various thoughts on Pope Francis "disregarding" (In the words of the Vatican's spokesman) the liturgical laws on Holy Thursday:

Anyone who spent their Good Friday screaming on comboxes or whining about how the liturgical reform is dead, yup, shame on you all.  Instead of reflecting on our Lord's death, how our personal sins led to him being nailed to the cross, you were whining about the perceived shortcomings of others, just as Adam did Eve.  There was a time and place for all of this stuff.  The Triduum (especially Good Friday) was not that freaking place or time.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of discomfort.  We are already seeing it, as priests took the advantage to tell their congregation "Benedict only washed the feet of priests, whereas Francis does for the poor, which is far better."  Others are openly flouting liturgical laws, and claiming the Pope as their model.  That one can easily defend this from a theological standpoint doesn't change the fact that there is unnecessary confusion in Catholic circles.  If you think some of those traditionalists need to shut up and grow up, you are probably right.  Just as the one making that accusation probably needs to shut up and grow up from whatever spiritual flaw they have.  There's nothing cheaper than the "pox on both houses" shtick, but in this case, it does hold.  Some traditionalists really couldn't wait to bash the Pope, and others couldn't wait to bash the bashers.

I'm going to ignore the whole debate of whether the Pope does or doesn't have the authority to do what he just did.  Men who are real canonists (such as Dr. Edward Peters and Pete Vere, JCL) are of the opinion that the Pope probably isn't bound at least from a canonical standpoint, whereas from a prudential standpoint, Dr. Peters shares his misgivings.  Let's just say in theory the Pope is bound canonically, and he has flagrantly violated liturgical laws which every priest is bound to uphold.  Traditionalists hate when someone says "are you going to put the Pope on trial?"  You can hate it, but they have a point.  There's really precious little that can be done.  Maybe people think that by typing on some blog they can start a public grassroots outcry to have the Pope change his mind.  Remember, they also think this Pope is the outright enemy of tradition, who goes out of his way to spit in the face of traditionalists.  I don't think the Pope is that in the slightest.  Yet I do think everyone needs to ask themselves before saying anything in public:  what's your endgame?  What do you hope to accomplish, other than letting off steam?  Far better to blow off steam at the gym, an adoration chapel, or a video game, preferably a first person shooter.

The Internet SSPX'ers have an endgame, and that's to fill their chapels.  They are the ones most giddy about the Pope "disregarding" liturgical disciplines the SSPX claims to love.  That should tell you all you need to know about their Internet trolls.

Now that out of the way, my thoughts.  I can understand the symbolism the Pope wished to convey.  I don't think he meant anything ill by what he did.  Yet I think that in the end, this style of governance is going to cause more harm than good.  While we do need to focus on evangelizing and going outward, there will be a time the Church needs to focus inward.  All reforms start from within. All great reform movements start with humble obedience to laws, even ones you don't care for.  So even if one has the authority to disregard those laws, it normally doesn't do any good unless there is a real special circumstance.  How are we going to get a lot of liberal prelates and the Curia to be obedient in carrying out reforms when the rules are set aside constantly at the top.  Now people will respond "But Kevin, this was a one time thing!"  Indeed it has been, and let's hope it doesn't become too common.

Answering my own question above, what's my endgame here?  My endgame is a lot smaller.  We believe that this method of governance leads to more problems than it will solve.  Yet there's also little we can do about it, other than what we should already be doing:  Get to Confession.  Live holy lives, and draw more people to the traditionalist movement.  This move caused a lot more controversy than Rome anticipated.  (When the Vatican spokesman has to come out and speak during Good Friday about why this happened, there were more people concerned than a few angry Internet traditionalists.)  There will be a lot of good Catholics and priests who don't like this, and they can be informed that here in the Extraordinary Form, all these issues are moot.  Fr. Z was right, this is an opportunity.

It would be nice if the Internet would tone down their snark and rhetoric, but this being the Internet, that's not likely to happen.  We aren't going to take advantage of that opportunity if our logical allies and converts to the cause see us as bitter and angry.  The traditionalist movement flourished over the past 5 years in the Church because people saw as happy warriors in the fight for holiness.  We've got the motu proprio now, and we've got a lot more organization.  Time to make use of it.

A Way Out on the Mandatum Debate

Dr. Ed Peters brings forth an idea that is simple, yet kinda brilliant:

May I suggest that discussion of this matter begin with what canon and liturgical law actually say (and don’t say) about the Mandatum rite, and that serious attention be given, if not this year then next, to eliminating this ill-conceived and merely optional rite from parish liturgies altogether and instead making it a powerful part of the bishop’s Chrism Mass?

Hmm.  I'm not too sure about the history of the mandatum, but there's something to be said here for this.  The rite is meant to symbolize Christ washing the feet of the Apostles, of the High Priest giving an example of service to the men he was about to ordain priests.  The Chrism Mass includes some very powerful symbolism of the unity between the Bishop of the diocese and his priests.  This would be a pretty Ignatian act of symbolism, and by Ignatian, I mean Ignatius of Antioch.  (Where the Bishop is, there is Christ.)

Considering that we traditionalists really don't have this problem with the Mandatum, I would of course be incredibly territorial and ask that we get to keep it.  Yet I gotta admit, I can't seem to rule out the attractiveness of this proposal, even though I'm trying to.

(via Fr. Z)

Concern Trolling Traditionalists

The Internet can be a very edifying realm where individuals exchange ideas and make things better.  It can also be a place of nothing but urine and vinegar, where egotists obsess about things said almost ten years ago as if they are fresh battles, and portray even the smallest of disagreements as lies and willful distortions of the highest order.  Everyone loves the former, and most (except those who thrive on urine and vinegar as a way to generate traffic or sometimes revenue) avoid the latter.  There's a lot of that going on in the latter, and I really have no interest in dealing with it, except to chuckle that with all the things that have changed in the past decade, a lot remains the same.

The trick is trying to figure out how to handle the things in between.  I like to do what I can to expand positive perceptions of the traditionalist movement.  During these endeavors, some good questions are asked.  Other times, it is just pure concern trolling sadly.

A classic example is when traditionalists are told not to use the moniker "traditionalist" because it implies that those who are outside those circles are somehow second class Catholics.  When I hear this, more often than not I'm dealing with a concern troll.  For the serious questioner, here is why it is concern trolling.

One of the under appreciated beauties of the Catholic Faith are the various movements and charisms that all lead to the same truth.  The faith has different spirituality's, approaches, gifts, all different ways of communicating the faith "once for all delivered unto the saints."  Yet while there are these differences, they aren't as profound as you think.  Dominicans tend to be big on preaching and scholarship.  Yet there are many great Franciscan scholars, or Benedictine preachers, and so on.

The same principle applies here with traditionalists.  There is no denying that traditionalists approach the liturgy in a certain way, with a certain emphasis that is different from others.  Our spirituality is centered on certain things, the language we use can be different, etc.  There's something about a traditionalist that makes him stand out.  That doesn't mean that they are superior in the faith to others.  Nobody approaches the Little Sisters of the Poor or the Sisters of Charity and says "hey, just because you claim to embody charity doesn't mean we aren't charitable!"  The Dominican Sisters of Mary in Ann Arbor a real puzzled look if you told them that "you know, there are those who love Our Lady outside your order!"

This is how the concern troll sounds when he says the same thing to traditionalists.  Nobody (or at least precious few people) say that you can't have reverence and a love for the liturgy unless you are 100% Extraordinary Form all the time.  In the end, we are judged on a few things.  Did we believe the Catholic Faith which comes to us from the Apostles?  Have we used the charisms and gifts we have so as to properly display faith, hope, and charity?  If so, then it doesn't matter what particular school you subscribe to, if any.

"But, but, but, buuuut Kevin!  Some mean people on the Internet in comboxes believe that if you aren't a traditionalist, you are a second class Catholic.  These .05% of traditionalists are a blight upon the entire movement, and until they are eradicated, nobody should ever listen to anything a traditionalist has to say!"  Again, enough with the concern trolling.  Internet comboxes are never the place for sanity and rational discourse.  Putting them on a Catholic website isn't going to change things.  Blame concupiscence.  Anyone who actually spends real time amongst traditionalists in our parishes, at their events, or even at dinner & drinks realizes the Internet minority is a nasty yet irrelevant crowd that most traditionalists aren't even aware of.  That's like this everywhere in all movements, and has been throughout history.  We haven't needed a Pope to come in between us and tell us to go to our respective corners like major religious orders have.  Yet those orders were still respected!

If you really want to offer advice to traditionalists about how they can better express themselves, we are always all ears.  Yet please, drop the concern trolling.

Why do Traditionalists Care So Much About the Latin Mass?

Since the election of Pope Francis (and some of the overreactions of various traditionalists) I've had several friends ask me what at first may seem like an odd question.  Why do traditionalists care about the Latin Mass so much?  We aren't like the moonbat crowd that rejects the validity of the Ordinary Form, so what's the big deal?  If you aren't a traditionalist, it can be very tough to describe the attachment we have towards the extraordinary Form, even if we view the Ordinary Form a valid and lawful mass as we must.

When you go through dark times as a Catholic, you usually have a lot of avenues to turn to.  You have Church socials.  You have friendly priests.  You can seek encouragement from prominent Catholics that what you are doing is right.  For the longest time, traditionalists had none of these things.  They were faithful catholics persecuted in their own parishes.  Around the dioceses, they were seldom at the socials, as it was made clear they weren't welcome.  If you had a bishop who decided to offer a concession (and it was almost always a concession!) for a Latin Mass, it was typically in a bad neighborhood in a bad time that you were forbidden from advertising about.  If you found out about the Latin Mass, it was by accident more often than not.

These negative opinions were reinforced by a lot of the commentariat amongst Catholics.  It was never any surprise that the likes of National Catholic Reporter despised us.  Yet amongst magazines like Crisis Magazine, the disdain for traditionalists was unparalleled.  Janet Smith will lecture against contraception, always presuming the goodwill of those who nevertheless do a very bad thing.  Yet a traditionalist is a fossil, a relic of "yesterdays Church" who stands in the way of true progress in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Considering these factors, traditionalists tended to become tight knit small communities at the Latin Masses they went to during the Indult days, even in spite of those in authority doing everything possible to keep them apart.  Things began to change with the election of Pope Benedict, albeit in subtle ways.  I would say that there was never any revolutionary change under his pontificate for traditionalists.  Instead, we slowly but surely were able to rejoin the church at large.  Most Masses were still in the city (as they were designed for that kind of Mass) but they were a lot more out in the open now.  You started having religious orders like the FSSP encounter incredible growth, to where they are just now beginning to pump out the first generation of priests where the Latin Mass was an acceptable thing to celebrate.

Once traditionalists had that all important stability (rarely do we worry anymore that a bishop might wake up on the wrong side of the bed and outlaw the mass in his diocese), we were able to develop stable communities, host events, develop homeschooling networks, and begin to pass on to others all the good we have to offer, with little of the bad.  We even have leaders in the church who are not just sympathetic to our causes (like Pope Benedict XVI was), but outright advocates of our cause.  10-15 years ago, a Cardinal Ranjith or Bishop Schneider would have been unheard of.  The Congregation for Divine Worship has been ran (or had secretaries) who could count as close allies like Cardinal Llovera.  In short, the growth of traditionalists in the last decade has been stronger than many would have thought possible before Pope Benedict.

Even with all this growth, it is still a young phenomena, and many fear that without leadership encouraging traditionalists, it will whither and decay.  I think such fears are overblown, but I can completely understand why they exist.  We are too used to the old ways and sometimes forget how much we have accomplished, and how much more we can accomplish.  Yet I ask those who aren't traditionalists to keep this in mind whenever these discussions come up.  For traditionalists, the Latin Mass has been a rock of stability in our faith lives, and nobody wants their rock taken away.

Why This (Semi) Capitalist Wants a Social Justice Pope

On Facebook and various other venues, there has been something a lot of people have noted when talking about Pope Francis.  They note his general skepticism of a lot of the way capitalism is practiced today, and wonder what the political right in America will think of that.  While it is still far too early to tell, there is a chance (so the story goes) that Pope Francis will be far less friendly to free market capitalism than one like Blessed John Paul II.

There are quite a few ways to respond to this, outside of the obvious that they probably don't know much about either Francis or John Paul II.  First and foremost, whatever happened in Argentina, a military dictatorship known for its rank nepotism could hardly be viewed as a capitalist entity.  Yet this misses the point entirely.  Quite simply, the Pope is no economist.

Now before everyone thinks I'm going to say we can just safely ignore his teaching if you end up not liking it, no, we really can't.  While there is a difference in weight one might place on issues like the immorality of contraception or abortion and the amount of government involvement in an economy, his voice should carry great weight for Catholics.  The Holy Father is a pastor of souls, and the care of souls is his primary concern.  This leads to a truth that might shock you, so take a deep breath.

How to Handle Doubt

For the moment, people seem to be calming down about Pope Francis and are back to adopting the "wait and see" approach.  Sure, there are those whining in comment boxes, but I think a lot of people got the initial surprise of the decision out of their system.  Reality has set in.  Pope Francis is Pope Francis, he is my pope and your pope.  There really is no point condemning the decision if you don't like it, unless you would like to discover just how little your opinion matters when he is still the Pope.

I've tried to do my best to point out the past few days that even if the way the guys like "New Catholic" handled this were truly atrocious, that's not to say his worry is completely unfounded.  If they go to far, I think others are doing the same when they are dismissing the existence of doubt as proof the "doubters" have a lack of faith, are enemies of the Church, etc etc.  My answer would be, maybe not.

We hear constantly in the media that the choice of a new Pope is obviously "the choice and work of the Holy Spirit."  This is not inherently true.  We pray for the Cardinals to be guided by the Holy Spirit, but any cursory reading of history (say anywhere from the year 1000 to the reign of St. Pius V) will have popes that were bad popes.  The Holy Spirit didn't directly will Benedict IX.

What the Holy Spirit was successful in doing however was keeping these popes from teaching error and leading the faithful astray.  So if we are doubting on the issue of whether or not Pope Francis is going to destroy the faith and lead the faithful Catholics into error (as some of the more unhinged commenters in some traditionalists blogs are doing), then yes, you are doing it wrong.  Yet if we doubt that a particular decision of this or any pope will always be the best decision or the best choice?  There's nothing wrong with that, and that kind of questioning can be healthy, provided it is handled in the right manner.

Doubt is a human emotion.  As it is an emotion, it is not something you can just will away.  Instead, we need to question that doubt as aggressively as possible.  As Kevin O'Brien states, we must "doubt the doubt."  I don't have to tell anyone, concupiscence sucks.  It warps natural and even healthy emotions and twists them into something sinful.  The best thing we can do is remember this fact whenever we begin to doubt.

Then we need to try and see things from the other way, and accept at least a fifty-fifty chance we could be dead wrong in our predictions.  After that, concede that even if we are 90% sure of something, that ten percent is real and it exists, and always temper our statements with that in mind.  When others take a different position on how a prediction will play out, we can view them as misguided and likely wrong, but until the event plays out precisely how we viewed it, we can't state for certain they are wrong.

Finally, when you have that doubt, go do something else.  All of this scandal would've likely been avoided had people went and had a drink, a smoke, hit the gym, say a rosary, something instead of jumping to social media in the first five minutes where we can anonymously type behind a keyboard and people who look at things precisely the same way we do agree with our outrage and heap up on the outrage in hopes more people see it and becoming even more outraged and, well you get the picture.

This kind of attitude isn't going to drive blog traffic.  Yet it will soothe your nerves and help you to focus on those things which we actually have control over.

Reverse Pope Worship (Or why the identity of the Pope isn't as important as you think)

I'm one of the old school traditionalist bloggers, if you can count "old school" as the early 2000's.  When I started Restore the Church, I wanted to provide a place for balanced traditionalist commentary.  I wanted to call things as they existed, yet doing so with respect for the Church and the papacy.  I also wanted to avoid what I viewed pope-worship by many "conservatives."  These individuals typically treated every utterance of the pope (or more often their flawed interpretation) as the inspired word of God, and if you didn't join them in such assesments, you were a heretic who resisted the Holy Spirit.  For them, they needed the permission of the Pope to go to the bathroom.

I think sometimes my traditionalist brethren do the reverse.  To them, the Latin Mass and the traditionalist movement is one papal utterance away from obliteration.  While technically true, would it really hurt to have a bit of faith in God?  We believe the Latin Mass is the most beautiful thing this side of heaven.  8 years ago we lived in Indult Ghettos.  My mass was literally in the ghetto, right across the street from a strip club, on Sundays at 4pm, in the murder capital of America, so when it was dark, barely anyone came.  We also were forbidden by the Bishop from advertising its existence.  Yet we were brave (or incredibly stubborn) and went, and from time to time it even grew.

In 2013, that Latin Mass still exists.  It is joined by two parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit offering the Extraordinary Form every Sunday and several times throughout the week.  They are joined by a Church a few minutes across the border in Canada, and at least 3 or 4 different churches in a 15 mile radius who offer the Latin Mass at least once a month.  When it was time to choose the priest to say our nuptial mass, I could think of ten priests in the metro detroit area alone.

Now some will state that this is not a typical experience.  To which I say you are darn right it isn't.  Detroit got where it was through some outstanding priests, and a lot of really energetic laymen who were very creative in promoting the Latin Mass.  Once the Pope allowed such instances to come into being, they ran with it.  They didn't need a papal bull laying out every detail of how to do it.  When people complained about how they wished priests and the pope were even more accomodating, they snapped "well what are you going to do about it?  Complain to the choir?"

The other big contributor to the growth of the Extraordinary Form was people finally realized not all traditionalists are like the Rorate Caeli crowd.  The church at large found out that the traditionalist movement was stacked with young guns whose mind was as sharp as their wit, and all of them had broods of children who knew the Latin Mass better at age 5 than most adults did 50 years ago.  They are even becoming less socially akward!  Better yet, they weren't a bunch of cranky boogeymen yelling at people to get off their liturgical lawn.  They were too busy living out their Catholic family life to be sucked into some echo chamber on blogs and social media.

Don't get me wrong, what Pope Benedict XVI did with the motu proprio was important.  Yet the success or failure of the traditionalist movement has always resided with the people who are traditionalists.  If we believe in the beauty of the Latin Mass, God will preserve it.  Even in the remote possiblity this pope or any pope were to ban the Latin Mass or severly restrict its usage, the enemies of tradition would just learn again what they learned last time: you can't kill this mass, and you can't snuff out tradition within the souls of the faithful.  When the Latin Mass would rise again, there will be those like me, dancing a jig on the graves of those individuals who were foolish enough to try.

What We Do (and don't) Know about Pope Francis

So day one of the papacy has come and gone, and everyone is parsing it.  Sounds like a lot of fun.  Let me try the same!

First, what do we know of his past?  According to the SSPX sympathizers at Rorate Caeli, "The application of Summorum Pontificum in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires has been non-existent."  Fr. Z and others debunked this almost immediately.  "New Catholic" (I suppose 9 years ago when he was first blogging this was appropriate, now I think its just dumb, but personal preference) then moved the goalposts back.  Okay, Pope Francis as a Cardinal did setup a Latin Mass within 48 hours of Summorum Pontificum.  However, the Mass was not celebrated as he liked it, ergo it was "non-existent."  Yet the moving goalposts aside, he presented information that is not going to make any traditionalist smile.

Now while I sound a bit flippant there, I don't want to be too hard on him.  It is obvious that the conclave did not go the way he wanted to.  Instead of doing something else, he did what anyone this age does, he went to social media to vent his frustrations.  In the course of that, he overstated his case a bit.  I don't think any traditionalist can say with a straight face that His Holiness as His Eminence was the kind of cardinal traditionalists dream about.  (Nope, our hearts are only with you, O Ranjith!)  Yet facts are facts.  He clearly stated something that wasn't true.  Combine that with something else he had an SSPX sympathizer write.  We must fear Pope Francis because "he has no Curial experience."  Belonging to the group that had such traditionalist luminaries as Cardinals Sodano and Bertone is an interesting criterion for we traditionalists to employ.  The author also stated that as a Cardinal His Holiness was weaksauce on gay marriage.  "New Catholic" had to walk that back in a later post, noting that his opposition to gay marriage, far from being weak, was "beautiful."

New Catholic probably should have hit the gym or an adoration chapel before posting.  He enraged a lot of Catholics (most of them traditionalists), had to spend the past 24 hours walking back what he wrote in haste, and now is on a recess for an indefinite time.  That's probably for the best.  Give him time to clear his head, and perhaps write with a bit more charity, but also clarity.

Dr. Taylor Marshall (a fine traditionalist is he) wants to write as much as he can about the Holy Father that is positive.  I hope to write in a balanced and truthful manner.  Fr. Z provides photos of The Holy Father's first Mass as Pope which ended the conclave.  As a traditionalist, there's no sense denying there are changes from Pope Benedict I don't like.  I don't like it going back to versus populum.  The Latin wasn't as crisp as it probably should be.  Honestly, I never liked the mass concelebrations in the Novus Ordo Mass, even when Benedict did them.  I don't think its bad mouthing the Pope to say I'm not a fan of that style, and I would prefer a style more in line with what Pope Benedict XVI did.  Then again, I could say that while I was okay with what Benedict did, I would've far rather preferred he celebrate Mass the way Pope Pius XII or St. Pius X did.  If I'm impossible to please, pray for the woman I'm marrying in under 3 months.  She will have to put up with me.

So while I wasn't too thrilled with the liturgy, his homily was borderline epic.  He stated a Church without Christ was little better than a "pitiful NGO", and that without Christ, there are priests, bishops, even popes, but not disciples.  He then rounded it out by stating he who didn't pray to God prayed to the devil, and hinted at shake ups coming.  Traditionalists might not like him, but if this is what he is about, we can talk turkey and do business with him.  I can't get too thrilled about the liturgy he celebrated.  But there's a lot to like in his homily that makes you want to see more.  Heck, see something!

And that was the whole point of yesterday.  It isn't that I don't share the concerns of the Rorate crowd, I do.  Yet if we end up ginning outrageous outrage over something that never happens, we look dumb.  We might even be guilty of scandal and leading people astray.  I go to Confession enough, and I doubt my confessor wants to listen to me constantly confessing rash judgement and causing scandal.  There are things in this pontificate I will not like, just as there were in the previous two of my life.  There will be times I would wish he does something different, and I'm certain I'll say that out loud here.  Yet in the end, traditionalists maybe make up 2% of the worlds Catholics on a generous day.  We can't even get everyone in our own parishes to do what we want (yes, even in our traditional parishes), so perhaps we should be focusing on something which is far easier for us to control and influence?  Look, either we are like the old "Neo-Catholics" who depend on the Pope's actions to breathe, or the beauty of tradition is that it is beyond any Pope, even one who does things which will at times moderately irritate you when you have to submit and be obedient about the manner.

In the meantime, there are still souls to save, and a gorgeous liturgy to promote.  So if you'll excuse me...