Steve:

I have more disagreements with this piece than I usually do. A few examples:

"Tradition is not, of course, just about maintaining the things of the past; it’s a living thing that is certainly rooted in the past, but it keeps breathing, keeps growing organically."

I think this is already happening. Almost any very elderly person will tell you that the TLM scene is quite a bit different today than when they were growing up - mostly for the better. And I read a lot of books about the past, and it seems to me that the Church of the 1920s or 1930s through the 1950s had very many qualities (good AND bad) that are almost nowhere to be found today, like the instant obedience of laity to clergy, or the dominance of certain cultural and social expectations/standards.

"The result of its isolation is that it can seem frozen in time. The missals and texts most commonly referred to by traditional Catholics are now half a century old at their youngest."

How could this be a problem? Most of the missals we have in the history of the church were used functionally for centuries, with perhaps a few lines inked in here or there when needed.

"Of course, in tradland, if someone quotes any Church document from later than the 1950s, eyebrows immediately arch in that person’s direction. We’re incredibly suspicious of anything recent, and by recent I would have to include not a few documents that are older than I am."

Perspective: almost all historians agree that there was intellectual decline in Western Europe from the 14th century to the Renaissance. In other words, with Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure, you had a splendid flowering, and then a slow decline into nominalism until the Reformation. I'm not saying there weren't any bright spots, but we have to recognize that history goes in these great big cycles of rise and fall. We shouldn't expect the Church to be at the top of her game all the time; in fact, I rather suspect that this is true a minority of the time.

"We need to reconnect tradition to the river that is the Church, somehow. I don’t claim to have an answer to this seemingly intractable dilemma. But imagine what it would be like if we could actually be excited for new encyclicals because they were treating, competently and in an orthodox fashion, the issues of our day? That’d be amazing. It’d be great not to have to try to apply 19th century analysis to 21st century problems."

Yet most traditionalists welcomed and even rejoiced in such masterful encyclicals as "Veritatis Splendor" and "Fides et Ratio" from John Paul II, or "Deus Caritas Est" and the "Regensburg Address" from Benedict XVI. We don't have to go back a century or two to find good material; we just have to go back to before this criminally incompetent pontificate.

There is much else here I certainly can agree with, and I hope as much as you for leadership in the Church that we can be proud of and feel confident relying on and following.

Yet most traditionalists welcomed and even rejoiced in such masterful encyclicals as "Veritatis Splendor" and "Fides et Ratio" from John Paul II, or "Deus Caritas Est" and the "Regensburg Address" from Benedict XVI.

If we're being honest with ourselves, though, none of these documents really stands in the same class of the major encyclicals of the late Tridentine period - not least because of their reticence to make formal docrinal pronouncements. Every single one is informed by various strains of Nouvelle Theologie, and not always the last harmful varieties.

You are very right, indeed. Especially the Regensburg Address isn't as spicy as progs made it out to be. It's quite mild, in fact.

And if we're being really honest, many (perhaps most) traditionalists nitpick these, too.

All you have to do is mention JPII and you get hackles up. Right or wrong, it's a thing.

I don't deny that, and I think there are good reasons to get one's hackles up.

I'm just saying that it's not all a total wash-out that leaves us stuck in amber. It would be impossible for me to count the debts I have to all the popes and thinkers of the second half of the 20th century (e.g., Ratzinger), even if I would not class myself as totally aligned with them.

The other point I'd like to make is that whenever Pope Francis mentions "nostalgia," for him it's always a negative thing, a trap, a closure. Yet nostalgia, properly understood, is a noble and necessary affection, as both John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger recognized. I quote and comment on them about this topic in an article at NLM:
http://www.newliturgicalmov...

Quite apart from the language of nostalgia, we just have to recognize that every reform movement in the history of the Church, without exception, took its bearings from looking backward to a pristine model from the past that it wanted to emulate or revitalize in the present. At worst, this can become "false antiquarianism"; but at best, it becomes monasticism or the mendicant movement. And today's traditionalist movement fits this pattern, I believe.

Whenever I hear the phrase, " ...discovering what the Holy Spirit prompts....", a little alarm goes up. So many times I have heard this said to me directly, or have heard wacky priests use this type of phrase, without adding, looking to our Lord's Commandments, His teachings in trying to understand what the Holy Spirt, ( God, Third Person) is telling us. Personally I think this type of phrase used by Bergoglio is very modernistic, very self serving to a soul.

It is as if the phrase, " What is the Holy Spirit prompting you to do", leads to many

to look inside themselves, to " their heart", instead of upward to God.

The ' experience' of the soul ,in phrases such as this, seems to override God and our desire to obey Him, to take up the Cross and follow Him.
Instead of one's knowledge and belief in God and His teachings leading ' the heart', it seems as though one's own experience leads one to rationalize, and make decisions that are not in keeping with God, and hence will only produce more chaos, and more sin.

Speaking of "stuck in amber", doesn't this in many ways describe those who, like Pope Francis the 1960's and 1970's and haven't moved on from that (failed and confused) pastoral church period. If that's not a metaphorical oxbow, I don't know what is.

And why is it an oxbow? It is because it is cut off from the river of tradition.

Yes, this is so true. It is like the nostalgia for marxism - O if only we could get a do-over, we would make socialism work! I think HISTORY is better than nostalgia too. We learn from history, and if we don't we will perish - but we are comforted by nostalgia in that we can feel the warmth from things that wee good and true from the past.

The Odyssey is all about nostalgia - and so, arguably, are quite a few prayers.

There is an enervating kind of nostalgia, and that may be what he is objecting to. But nostalgic as Odysseus is, he is far from enervated by it.

> All you have to do is mention JPII and you get hackles up. Right or wrong ...

Well, this kind of remarks prohibits any rational discussion by suggesting that it is only a matter of fillings and taste. However, it is not.

Perhaps it is good time to finally have a fair discussion in 1P5 about the deeds and writings of JPII. Years ago, I was one on his admirers, but after learning better the authentic Church Doctrine I changed my mind radically. Now I wonder, how one man was able to do so much evil to the Church? How it was possible that he did not meet much resistance?

Thus, if you do not have a better idea, I can write an article about it.

They should be nitpicked, as they were all written by those on board with the Judas Council. Wolves in shepherd’s clothing must be approached with extreme caution.

Not to mention that even trads frequently quote recent pronouncements of the Magisterium, even of V2. I personally have found many beautiful passages in the conciliar documents which I quote in my writings. Although I personally don't see why so many Catholics love and revere JP2 so much, he is also frequently quoted and referenced. To say that "in tradland", any mention of post-1950 documents merits raised eyebrows, is simply a false statement. And let us not forget, that the Modernist crisis didn't start in 1950. So I could quote a book by Teilhard de Chardin written before that, and no one would bat an eye? Oh, come on!

In partial defence of the present pope:

I think he has done well in adding new Marian feasts, and new Saints, Beati, and Venerabiles.

Credit where credit is due.

I admit, I am puzzled as to the claim in the article that there has been no addition to the social teachings of the magisterium in a hundred years. Pius XII wrote extensively on modern matters. Furthermore, Pope Francis has addressed the negative aspects of technocracy. https://distributistreview....

Steve is in the process of going Modernist, and possibly full apostate. Mark Shea, Part II.

IP5 is a sinking ship, Peter. Abandon ship ASAP.

Is this a joke? I am not sure if it is nor not.

it is either sede or full modernist nu-church. otherwise, as with vigano, you exist in the tension of contradiction: : "

[Francis is] simultaneously Pope and heresiarch, Athanasius and Arius, one who is de iure light but de facto darkness...in order to remain in Communion with the Apostolic See we must separate ourselves from the one who should represent it."

untenable position.

I do not believe a faith or a church with an amorphous, changeable 'truth' can survive because it feels silly at that point. That is the Francis church, and I suppose the novo church as well. :/

> Yet most traditionalists welcomed and even rejoiced in such masterful encyclicals as "Veritatis Splendor" and "Fides et Ratio".

You seem to mistake the neo-conservatives, like the admirerers of "St."JPII, for traditionalists. However, these camps are disjoint, or almost disjoint. There are serious problems with these encyclicals, thought they are not doctrinal error ridden as otherones by JPII. Similarly, no traditionalist would extol Ratzinger, quite the opposite.Ratzinger, according to his own memoirs, was one of the main villains acting behind the scenes of V2.

What you are speaking to is breaking free of an artificial dependency on the Pope, and indeed all bishops, as celebrity. If the Church can survive a John XXII (to say nothing of other loser ordinaries of other major sees, east and west, over the centuries), the Church will survive PF or whomever. Granted, the faithful in the time of John XXII did not have the overweening and preening bureaucrats which plague all manner of human organizations in the modern era (it's not just in the Church, but everywhere); and, they did have access to a highly valued continuum of public prayer life, wherever they were and whatever their rite. So they did have that going for them to survive. But they also probably didn't look to the Papacy for all this inspiration and guidance as modern laity have been taught to do these past few centuries; "just help us pass on to our children, please, what you and we have received, and otherwise just shut up" may very well have been their saving MO! Would that more clerics in our day and time do the same.

I couldn't disagree more with your point of view, starting from the oxbow river analogy.
The traditionalists are not stuck on a river bend because they split up from the main body, rather they were cast away and relegated to a small village that is now and has been for many decades under siege by the ruling power, much like Maccabees.
Imagine spending 60 years under siege, with a very small population (compared to the ruling cultural power), standing your ground not only against the temporal powers as well as against the One who cast you way.
That is the situation the Traditionalists are facing, they can't produce anything because their main concern is keeping the walls sealed and the doors intact, or else.
Once the siege has been loosened or defeated, we'll be in for a REAL renaissance.

There is no way to deny this. Fr. Faber said (170 years ago) that the world had become a whirlwind in his time and it is not incumbent for those in a tornado to stop it, but to find safety.

We are not in a position to reflect on new ways for the new to blend with the old organically. Both the Church and the world is moving so fast it is too hard for a human to possibly understand the complexities of how this is destroying us psychologically, spiritually and intellectually.
I do agree it would be interesting to have a Church teach how to deal with modern communications in relation to children, or how to deal with the entertainment culture.

Instead I have to deal with the Church producing a sodomite culture, with blasphemous statements and actions while the world politically is descending into Communistic chaos.
Trads are reactionary because we have no way to be in action. At this point unless there is Divine intervention we are all looking at women priests, and a complete takeover of the western world.

“Fr. Faber said (170 years ago) that the world had become a whirlwind in his time and it is not incumbent for those in a tornado to stop it, but to find safety.”

I like that. Where can I find this quote in context?

I agree with what you said. My point was that Fr. Faber thought it was "the end" before all of "this" which you elucidated correctly. My overarching point was that he considered his time a place not to stand in the tornado but go to shelter. I think both society and the Church degraded hundreds of years before today.

My mention of women priests was mostly tongue in cheek. Whether they happen or not is fairly irrelevant the moment we accepted the premise that tradition was dispensable and the wisdom of the saints gave way to Jesuitical moralisms, while focusing on Greek philosophy to the detriment of our patristric wisdom.

When I read this article I didn’t read it as Steve making the accusation that Traditionalists themselves split off from the Church by their own volition just that it’s a fact Traditionalists got split off. If we look at Catholicism as a whole, what percentage attend the TLM? It’s tiny. What percentage believes what you believe, what I believe? It’s tiny. It’s just a fact.

...and Steve himself spoke of almost stream-of-consciousness here. Ideas develop, get fleshed out and that will happen for all of us. This topic scares me, that's why I sometimes react negatively to any suggestion that Traditionalism must be self-regarding. I'm afraid. I don't want to lose my parish, my Mass, my priest! That could all go, and soon. So discussions of what we are doing wrong bring my fears between me and any discussion.

Well, you're wrong.

I wish to be deleted from your mailing list

There's an unsubscribe link right at the bottom. I'd make it bigger if I could, but I can't, so I won't.

That doesn't mean you're right

I'm going to continue to operate on the assumption that I am, or that I'm at least asking the right questions, until someone persuades me to the contrary.

I don't think you payed any attention to Steve's point. The oxbow lake is not a part of the river that separated itself from the main body, it's part of the original body of the river that got left on the sideline because the river "created a shortcut". You're just trying to put up a defense on tradition suposing Steve is doing the oposite. I 100% understand his atitude to just say "you're wrong", because I too don't have patience for such things.

Look at you, assuming what I'm thinking.
How did you come to the conclusion that I assumed Steve is attacking the Tradition? I used another analogy to explain why there hasn't been 'progress' from this side (debunked by Prof. Kwaniewski in the comments below).
I read this blog very often to know where Steve stands, but you on the other hand is using of malice and deceit to make a point.
I do have patience even for people like you, maybe so I can help you get real.

Malice, now? You are the one sugesting that that the oxbow was used as an analogy for traditionalists to signify "they split up from the main body"! Where in his article did you see anything about the traditionalists having isolated themselves rather than being isolated to begin with, my brother? Only if you're refering to the 'timely' aspect of Steve's point (nostalgia and all), but that's not about tradition itself, it's rather about traditionalists thinking it's cool to dress as victorian aristocracy when going to mass.
Anyway, I think I acctualy have some patience- otherwise I wouldn't be replying, I found all this to be well explicit on the text- but I believe Steve's lack of it is justified for your missinterpreting of his words.

To be sure, we want to be more like Maccabees than Masadans.

There are some military strategists who will tell you that if you are a smaller force, the key is to maintain your freedom of movement, not to be tied down and overwhelmed. WE end up keeping moving, while the big force gets bogged down in the 1970's and ends up stagnant and dying.

Careful. Saying you agree with Bergoglio about anything does not automatically mean you are a heretic. But as George Kostanza would say, "it doesn't help." Seriously, without his realizing it, what the Pope is saying actually applies more to HIM and his amigos than to anyone else in the Church. It is they who are "stuck in nostalgia for the past" of an imaginary Vatican II "renewal." His recent comments on the Council make that very clear, when he essentially said: "NO questions. Vatican II IS the Church. Deal with it, or get out." It is Francis who is completely disconnected from reality, past and present.

It's this bit I don't like:

"We need patience and courage to keep progressing and exploring new paths, discovering what the Holy Spirit prompts”

Progressing progressing, but where to?

"Progress”, wrote Chesterton, “is a useless word; for progress takes for granted an already defined direction: and it is exactly about the direction that we disagree.”

or this one, from the same man

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.”

Steve,

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying. The current situation is unsustainable long term - maybe the COVID catastrophe in church attendance will launch either the mainstream and/or the Trad stream in a new direction.

Looking at the links you provided, the comments below CatholicSat's Twitter posting offer little comfort, with one commentator rightly asking if the Holy Spirit has recently changed his mind after 2,000 years of inspiring totally different teaching.

And the link to the French Bishops' reactions to the large Latin Mass movement in their country is unsurprising. The last time I went to Mass in France (in Montpellier, at the historic church of St Roque, the city's patron Saint) the ageing hippy priest had a long grey pigtail down his back. It was enough to make you run, not walk, to any alternative.

We plainly have a slow motion schism in progress. The teaching of children in TLM religious classes in France is reportedly different to that in mainstream Catholic schools. Any reconciliation between the two streams is becoming impossible.

In fact, we probably have multiple slow motion schisms happening. The Novus Ordo grouping contains multiple sub heresies, from universalism to LGBTQetc. And if you check out the various Integralist sites, especially the diverse interpreters of Dignitas Humanae and Catholic Social Teaching, it is too obvious that even the Trad movement is by no means speaking with one voice.

At one point I started a project about a future stuck conclave deciding to elevate the first eligible person to walk into St. Peter's, and ending up with a exiled Chinese Priest who had grown up in the underground Church and had therefore missed most of the developments from 1950 onward. It was going to be a collection of encyclicals, exhortations, and bulls written from the pen of this imaginary Pope Polycarp, disciple of Cardinal Ignatius Kung, all short in the style of encyclicals before Vatican II, with a fictional introduction framing the story.

Like a papal Rip Van Winkle, both adjusting to and adjusting the new times with wisdom that had been mostly left behind, with subjects that the Modern world find less interesting and even embarrassing: St. Joseph, The Holy Family, the Rosary, those things that kept the underground church in place during decades of oppression. Rather than 200 page encyclicals written by pseudointellectuals for other pseudointellectuals that nobody reads, 5 or 6 page letters with perhaps a simple embedded prayer. (I have also been noticing that most new prayers written by Bishops offices for vocations and whatnot tend to go on for about three extra paragraphs after they should stop.)

I never made it past the introduction: It was a lot harder to do than I thought. But at the same time, it was fun, and I might take it up again.

Please do! Fascinating premise for a book.

In a fascinating lecture delivered at Fontgombault Abbey in 2001 entitled "The Theology of the Liturgy" the then Cardinal Ratzinger asked the question "Who still talks today about "the divine Sacrifice of the Eucharist"?

Fast forward to this morning, February 3, 2021 to Pope Francis' catechesis on "Praying in the liturgy". We can say in answer to Cardinal Ratzinger's question - certainly not Pope Francis! See for yourself:

http://www.vatican.va/conte...

Pope Francis invariably misses the point on this and so many other things. He's caught in a circa 1960/70's oxbow, if you will, and never will he leave it.

Yes: I like to say that it's the ageing hippies who are stuck in the past, far more than the trads.

In fact, organic development is happening within traditionalism: it simply takes the form of discarding the foolish "reforms" of the 20th century and taking up the fuller riches of Roman Catholic tradition. This is happening spontaneously, here and there and everywhere, with no centralized direction (thanks be to God).

It doesn't matter what we like to say. The facts are the facts. Tradition is the branch of Catholicism that got cut off. It's the minority piece now. The Church has moved on without us, hippies and all. And the restoration, though it's happening in pockets with impressive speed, is such a fractional part of the larger picture that we delude ourselves if we think it will take over any time soon.

Is it the future of the Church? Most likely. Will we live to see it? Most likely not.

Will you live to see it? Um...yes, you most likely will. If my guess is correct you're in your late thirties to early forties. The hippies have about 15-20 years left on their clocks and given what I saw in my NO parish during those halcyon summer days when hysteria took a bit of a hiatus, they aren't coming back. So the collapse of the institutional, Novus Ordo loving Church is coming sooner than was expected in February 2020.

That doesn't mean the hierarchy is going to be down for it but when their only source of money is traditional parishes and their only recourse to stopping that is to close those parishes and--most likely--lose many to SSPX and have those who stay become much lower commitment, they'll come around--if grudgingly--in short order.

I don't think it matters if one lives to see our Lord's Restoration of His Church.
I know that sounds pretty pathetic and despairing.
But, truly, our reason on this earth is to give glory and praise to Him, The Almighty.
And in that, how much one shall truly KNOW His love.

The Church is so fractured, torn to pieces. Souls seeking Christ and His Peace.
How can this be achieved without the First Commandment? it can't.

What can we do in such a world, in a Church that has become one with it? How can we draw souls to the Everlasting love of Christ, through all He gave us, on the Cross, when there is such little earthy guidance in The First Commandment? Who can one trust in Church leadership to help us on the road to Heaven, to Eternal True Happiness, then?

The answer, I believe, lies Above, with the Church Triumphant and the intercession of souls in Purgatory. There doesn't seem to be much down here to turn to, barring a distant bishop or two, whom I personally, greatly appreciate and respect.

What matters, is that this " The Great Reset" takes place in our souls, placing Him before all others, in all humility, and in great prayer and fasting for those of a deeply hardened heart, or a heart that has been SEDUCED by evil in the name of compassion,
and mercy.

Yours is a generous heart, Steve. Hang in there. stay tuned. To Confession tomorrow, I go.....it has become less " nerve wracking" and more humbling, thanks be to His grace and mercy in leading me there far more often than I used to go.

I accept vatican 2 i just would like to ask if its so great then why is it that parishes are dying and belief in the true presence is at such a lower percent than right before??

Why does it matter if we live to see it...?

Depends where you live. In my diocese, the trad parishes are thriving, the conservative ones are doing OK, anything to the left of that has been bulldozed by Covid. Some have lost two thirds of their congregation in a year.