There are traditionalists and there are traditionalists. Some traditionalists when it comes to liturgy are quite liberal in social issues ranging from social justice to accepting the LGTBQ etc, etc, etc movement. In other words, they are flexible.
Other traditionalists are rigid, fearful of the world and unable to adapt to social and political movements which challenge their comfort level. This has nothing to do with spirituality but everything to do with psychological development. The Church should not be into psychoanalysis which is a faux pastoral solution to bringing people into line with a clericalist attitude which opposes their mentality.
I am very familiar with Pope Francis’ disdain for tradition and the pre-Vatican II Church.
When I was in a very liberal seminary in the late 70’s, I was open to what was being taught to me. But like most Catholics prepared for the Catholic Faith prior to Vatican II, a kind of dogmatism of that period was brought to being open to what Vatican II desired.
As I have always said, Vatican II was imposed on Catholics in the most pre-Vatican II authoritarian way. So was being flexible! The manner of implementation was of that clericalism which is authoritarianism. The two are the same and inseparable.
But after Vatican II, authority was challenged on all levels, be it in traditionalism or liberalism in the Church. Thus authoritarianism by shear mandate did not always work. Manipulation was necessary as well as grooming. Those two aspects are at the root of all kinds of abuse, from emotional to sexual.
Look at how Pope Francis has tried to crush young traditionalists. He relies not on theology, but rather psychology to ridicule them. He hurls name calling at them and labels them rigid and backwards thinking. It is unseemly to hear a pope speak like a psychiatrist and pontificate on psychological and sociological issues which are beyond the realm of his competence. But an authoritarian personality, coping with its own issues, has to rely on this kind of abuse to get what it wants.
His diagnosis may well be correct but does a rigid person not deserve respect and understanding? Isn’t it cruel to denigrate them in the way this pope does?
My seminary in the 1970’s was concerned about rigid candidates for the priesthood. They were rooted out as were potential seminarians by so-called liberal vocation directors. Signs of this rigidity or the litmus test was if they were too Catholic in the pre-Vatican II sense. Did they agree too much with Pope Paul VI who in his last years lamented so much of the division of the Church at the end of his life. He ruled out female priests around 1976. The liberal seminarians at my school were apoplectic and wanted to organize protest rallies. That was a sure way to find favor with the faculty of that period.
Were they opposed to female clergy, be it deacons or priests? Did they oppose altar girls and female lectors? Did they oppose Communion in the hand and homemade bread with many sweet ingredients for Holy Communion. Did they despise folk music and other contemporary idioms? Were they unecumenical?
Did they want to wear clerical clothes or God forbid the cassock?
In other words, were they pre-Vatican II and unable to move forward with Vatican II that was imposed form above and in an authoritarian way?
Pope Benedict was correct. His hermeneutics was correct. And he made sense. Pope Benedict is the true liberal because Pope Benedict isn’t an authoritarian monarch. His method was to propose not impose. If that had been the case after Vatican II, I wonder what the Church would be like today, if that mentality which is far from the clericalist’s mentality had prevailed.
What Pope Benedict said in this photo below is liberating! And it isn’t dictatorial:
14 comments:
Father, I know exactly what you mean! And--uh, wait a minute...maybe I DON"T know exactly what you mean.
You tell us, "Other traditionalists are rigid, fearful of the world and unable to adapt to social and political movements which challenge their comfort level."
But right before that you wrote, "Some traditionalists when it comes to liturgy are quite liberal in social issues ranging from social justice to accepting the LGTBQ etc, etc, etc movement. In other words, they are flexible."
Can someone be BOTH?
Father, I AM rigid and fearful. I HATE the direction our world is headed toward. I am repulsed by the vile antics of the LGBTQLMNOP warriors and am even personally offended by mere homosexuality and I DON'T accept it (maybe you can tell me where in our Bible or Catechism we are told to "accept" sins against nature). I am discouraged and angered by the liturgical fascism the current pope and his toadies are imposing. I believe society is headed towards a cataclysm that will change history. I cringe at folk Masses.
But I believe I am flexible. I remind myself that God is a author of our history and our destiny. I remind myself That everyone I meet was created by and IS loved by God and I treat them with some modicum of dignity and respect, regardless of how freakish I think they might be. I try to respect our bishops and pope and pray for them, even though I don't agree with their decisions. I remind myself that the Novus Ordo, for all its flaws, is still a valid Mass, so I go and keep my mouth shut week after tedious week. And I know a lot of other people like me.
So am I a flexibly rigid bigot?
I like folk music. Bert Jansch and early Bob Dylan recordings are loaded on my playlists. I just hate hearing it at Mass--especially since what I hear isn't really "folk" music, but mostly contrived protest songs disguised as hymns.
So am I an intolerant, closed-minded modernist?
I DON'T LIKE THE STATE OF THE CHURCH! I DON'T LIKE THE STATE OF OUR WORLD! I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE VERY, VERY WRONG IN THEIR IDEOLOGIES!
I ALSO TREAT THESE PEOPLE WITH COURTESY (at least to their faces) AND TRY TO MOVE FORWARD AS BEST I CAN AND BE A LIGHT RATHER THAN A COMPLAINER. In fact, I think one of the reasons I complain so much here is it is a safe place to unload all the negativity I am forced to eat every day!
So what is it Father? Are people like me hopeless? Maybe Captain Sanctimony and Fr. K believe the word and the Church will be a better place when people like me are finally gone altogether. What say you?
Why would a Faithful Catholic accept the LGBTQ Agenda? It's evil and totalitarian. It's gone from acceptance to "you will confirm" to our sick belief system. Sorry, no sale on that one.
With MT back, we are sure to receive a huge list of cut and paste non sequiturs defending his Golden Calf. But here is what is going on in PF's Vatican:
To eliminate tensions and conflicts in the church the Vatican suppresses real dialogue and has created a climate of fear that permits a rigid uniformity to be imposed in the name of a false idea of unity. Sounds like the premise of Traditiones Custodes to me.
Pope Benedict XVI: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."
We need to be careful in regard to the context of the above declaration.
"Traditional" Catholics have employed said declaration to ignore various Church teachings.
Said folks have even wielded that declaration to reject certain teachings promoted by then-Pope Benedict XVI.
Example: Pope Benedict XVI concocted a new Good Friday prayer for the Jews. Pope Benedict XVI forced said prayer upon the Church.
Later, as Pope Emeritus, he explained that the Traditional prayer in question had served to "wound" Jews.
Anyway, as Pope Benedict XVI, he had overthrown the traditional prayer for the Jews. Pope Benedict XVI had spoken. That was that.
Well...not so fast, replied outraged "traditionalists."
"Traditionalists" insisted that earlier generations had held as sacred the traditional Good Friday prayer for the Jews.
Said prayer had remained sacred and great for "traditionalists." Said prayer could not be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.
Therefore, "traditionalists" have insisted that they, rather than Pope Benedict XVI, have had the final say in regard to the solemn intercessory prayer for the Jews.
"Traditionalists" wielded Pope Benedict XVI's declaration in question to have toppled then-Pope Benedict XVI's authority in regard to the Roman Liturgy.
In regard to their war against the Magisterium: The above is just one example as to the horrific manner in which "traditionalists" have employed Pope Benedict XVI's declaration in question.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Saw this over at Rorate Caeli earlier:
Pope Mocks Roman Liturgical Art and Humiliates Sicilian Priests
Sicily is almost a nation in itself, and Sacred Art and liturgical beauty have always flourished in that island, in times of Christian freedom. Much of the liturgical beauty of vestments has been preserved in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy since the invention of the 1969 New Mass, and it is still used.
So it was astonishing to hear Francis mocking both Sicilians, their vestments, and their grandparents in a meeting with Sicilian bishops and priests today:
"More lace, but where are we? Sixty years after the Council! A little updating also in liturgical art, liturgical fashion! Yes, sometimes bringing some grandmother's lace goes, but sometimes. It's to pay homage to grandma, isn't it?"
MT,
Thanks for the laughs. You never disappoint!
Thomas Garrett, I am thinking of those liberals, democrats if you will, who love the beauty of the traditional Latin Mass (The Mass of the Ages) but they are not on board with all the moral teachings of the Church and prefer a “development” of doctrine in these areas.
Think too of High Anglicans whose liturgy is more Catholic than the Tridentine Mass! They love the smells, bells and lace, but are very liberal when it comes to the LGBTQ etc. etc. etc movement and many are gay, transgendered or whatever.
As Catholics we are not to be of the world but we must live in the world with the intent to live peaceable lives and to love as God commands. We have to be able to cope with the social changes we are experiencing, the most profound of course, the whole new sexual amorality we are experiencing. So many Catholic families, be they rigid or flexible have gay children they love or friends in the neighborhood who are in same sex civil marriages. They invite these people to their homes and have to associate with them in social settings. They are now mainstream whether we like it or not.
As it concerns the liturgy, when I was ordained in 1980 I never thought that I would be celebrating the EF Mass by September 14 of 2007. I thought that by the turn of the century, I need to prepare people for a female clergy and married clergy and other changes which seems to be what Pope Francis is now doing but in a stealthy way.
I have always said that if I don’t agree with this, that or the other, I would never leave the Church no matter if a pope himself was corrupt, mean or immoral.
I still feel that way and the only way to maintain sanity is to be flexible and live and let live.
I can live with the Ordinary Form Mass only and I have always tried to make it beautiful but to be open to modern idioms of music.
Music in my mind is the most divisive aspect of the Modern Mass and the music is often too eclectic and abysmal. But I close my eyes and ears and focus on Christ.
Father McDonald,
I understand your position but we really need to push back. The political left is not satisfied with tolerance but DEMAND you accept their perversions as normative. And they want to groom little children as young as kindergarten which is evil and is in direct contradiction to the words of Christ:
"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."
As they say, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. We are in a spiritual war and I find our bishops and clergy, in general, lacking.
"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."
(If a person is familiar with a certain, single subject, or has with them a certain, single instrument, they may have a confirmation bias to believe that it is the answer to/involved in everything.)
FRMJK, excellent metaphor of what the pope is doing to young traditionalists, just excellent. Thank you.
Fr. ALLAN McDonald, your traditional evasion never disappoints.
Fr McDonald,
Those young traditionalist Catholics will be the foundation of a renewed Catholicism in the not so distant future! PF should be embracing them!
Fr K,
Your Orwellian view of the world is sick - Abortion is healthcare? You are too cowardly to find another line of work. Instead you are living a lie
How do you diologue with the Democrats and Political Left (but I repeat myself):
"In a recent VIP post, Matt asks if Democrats want conservative Supreme Court Justices assassinated. I would weigh in with a resounding “yes.”
We’ve discussed this before here at the Briefing. The Democratic elites have long supported violence as a form of protest. They get the press to cover for them, saying the protests are peaceful, even when it’s apparent they aren’t.
The abortion ghouls have been very unhinged for a while now. They’re already on board with killing babies, so we know they’re not right in their heads. Since the SCOTUS leak about the possibility of Roe v Wade being overturned they’ve been getting much, much worse.
Athena wrote yesterday about another new low for the ghouls:
Disgusting radical pro-abortion groups are hard at work, firebombing churches and pro-life centers and threatening Americans who dare to work to protect the lives of the most vulnerable. Hours after a deranged man traveled across the country with the intent of assassinating Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a repugnant activist group calling itself Ruth Sent Us was putting targets on the backs of conservative justices’ children.
Seriously, this is a criminal enterprise, not a protest group. As Athena notes, the subtext is simple to read:
In other words, “We know where your kids are, we can get there any time, and no one will protect you.”
And if another deranged maniac just happens to target the children at that school, we’re sure Ruth Sent Us will once again deny any responsibility.
Earlier that day, the despicable activists reminded followers that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has seven children and pointed to the school attended by the kids:
These people need to have some harsh legal consequences visited upon them soon. Twitter is fond of banning conservatives for saying mean things about leftists but these lunatics get to use the platform to harass kids.
And every Democrat in Washington is OK with that."
Where is the comdemnation from the USCCB or Pope Francis? Crickets
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