Last week I was advised to remove a comment I had made vis-à-vis Traditionalists. Since I did not know (and still in fact do not know) how to delete a comment on Blogger, I deleted the whole post. I have now re-published the text of that post since I believe what I said was good and true. Many of you may find it strange for me to say: ''I am not a Traditionalist.'' I used to be one - that is, when I ''converted'' to the Old Rite in the days before Summorum Pontificum. I have since moved on from that hopeless and utterly spurious state - a state which cannot remain a permanent feature of the Church - because I think Traditionalists are boring (yes I know you were expecting some profound reason but there isn't an underlying one reason - just lots of little things which I will not elaborate). What, therefore, is young Patricius? That remains for another post, which I shall write when I can be bothered. Comments will be published as normal.
I was in two minds about whether or not to actually publish this post, which many of you may find disagreeable, but two things have happened to change my mind this evening. You understand that I write not with my readers in mind. I write because I enjoy writing, and hope that my efforts redound to the greater glory of God. A friend of mine counselled me recently to be mindful of ''politics'' whenever I write posts for this blog (at least posts of this sort). While I do not spurn this counsel, I feel supremely confident in the insignificance of this blog to say what I feel like anyway, plus if something has to be said, then it must be said. I have, afterall, been known to ''tell it how it is'', as the saying goes...
I am not a ''traditionalist'' Catholic, whatever that means. Such a spurious label carries with it a heap of unfortunate connotations, and many sentiments, which I repudiate. I shall try to explain these in due course. I am a simple Catholic, and a Hobbit, living and worshipping according to the traditional Roman Rite (at least, whenever this is possible), in the North-west of Middle-earth. I have an interest in Liturgy, the rubrics and the history thereof, and the Latin language. Nothing much else really. I find ''traditionalist'' Catholics irksome. I mean those who fondly suppose that they reverence Tradition and yet accept every innovation coming out of Rome (every decision of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, for example, even if these decisions go against liturgical orthopraxis) out of blind obedience and without any qualms whatsoever. I despair when I ask such people what some idiot in the S.R.C knows about Liturgy. Most ''traditionalists'' are ignorant of most of the changes anyway, and many stupidly confuse novelty with tradition. I laughed bitterly when last year I saw a ''traditional mass'' advertised somewhere for the feast of San Giuseppe Communista! What annoys me is why ''traditionalists'' who blindly accept novelty (what do the Scriptures say? They exchanged the Word of God for a lie...) do not question it. Why was this Feast moved? Why was that Octave abolished? Why were Folded Chasubles, an ancient and Roman tradition, done away with? In fact, why has Liturgy been entirely rewritten with complete disregard for the rest of Church history? Etc, etc...I could go on, but it would be as long and tedious as years of torment. Acceptance of such changes is not the catholic thing to do, and this is not my opinion. You must understand that I do not have opinions...
This is not all strictly true though. Some ''traditionalists'' do at least question the decisions, but are too spineless (is this too harsh a word?) to admit that the decisions were wrong, and fundamentally so. Does it really go against the grain that much to admit that Rome can in fact err, as can Popes? My understanding of the Petrine office (of which I am 100% convinced, by the way) is that Infallibility applies only to matters of Doctrine. I just think that some notorious 20th century Popes, mad with power, took this too literally, and began to tamper with things that are infinitely above them, and their office as pastor, not lord; guardian, not arbiter. Therefore, decisions of Popes about Liturgy in the 20th century should be taken as much notice of as if the Pope solemnly declared after a Papal High Mass that his Sunday roast was good for the Salvation of souls. Perhaps it behoves Pope Benedict XVI, a man I love and respect deeply, to draw up some sort of Magna Carta for future Popes telling them what they cannot do. The first item would have to be: ''You know nothing about Liturgy, so leave it well alone.''
A Traddy (we'll call them this for convenience - ''traditionalist'' is a bit of a mouthful, and a nuisance to type) once told me that my attitude to the New Rite was ''wrong'' - why is it wrong? I just see the New Rite for what it is, and avoid it like the plague, since it is strange, crooked, utterly removed from Liturgy, and pernicious. It's rotten, rotten to the core, and no amount of ''reform of the reform'' is going to improve it, so why do people bother about it? If you wilfully attend the New Rite, and actually like doing so, you are not ''traditional'' at all, you just see Liturgy as just one of many choices in the cafeteria of modern Catholicism - and this boils down to that great enemy of the Church today, namely, relativism. The New Rite is not equal in dignity, eld and status to the Old Rite, as though attending and assisting at one is just as good as attending the other. The Old Rite is infinitely greater than the New Rite, the validity of which I would seriously call into question were the dictates of my Faith not nagging me about that all the time. You can thank the Scholastics for that.
Another Traddy once called my aversion to Low Mass ''untraditional.'' Again, why am I being ''untraditional'' for seeing Low Mass as an abridged, meeting-the-bare-requirements, boring form of Liturgy? High Mass is more traditional than Low Mass, and far older, and no serious historian of Liturgy would find this objectionable. I met an old man at a Liturgy conference 2/3 years ago (I won't be going to any of those again, at least not any organised by any ''traditionalist'' group), who was nice and genuine, but genuine also in error, and blamed all liturgical woes on Vatican II and seemed to think that High Mass developed from Low Mass! This was too much for me and I walked away. You would think that for someone old enough to have witnessed all changes from Pius XII onwards would be a tad more aware. However, I do not blame people for not knowing about the changes, just for acting as if they do. I'm sick of this now so I shall leave it at that - just letting off steam, don't you know! I have a tendency to ''build things up'' silently and then explode. I hope the damage isn't too great...
PS: Amusingly, I thought of writing a children's horror story today. It would begin: ''Once upon a time, there was a bad old Pope called Pius...''
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
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For once, i find myself agreeing with you. However, when you say: "My understanding of the Petrine office (of which I am 100% convinced, by the way) is that Infallibility applies only to matters of Doctrine.", well, lex orandi est...Prime agrees better with Tradition than supreme. Just my gratuitious opinion. Good evening.
ReplyDeleteUnless you inhabit the Tradition confidently, spontaneously, unselfconsciously, you don't inhabit it at all. A "Tradition" which is the subject of self-conscious reconstructions and inhibitions, of endlessly asserted "preferences", of scholarly and legal postivism, has simply ceased, that's all. It's dead. "Traditionalism" is something that happens when Tradition has failed - "the dead faith of the living" as opposed to "the living faith of the dead"
ReplyDelete...strangled by several hundred years of alienated theology and a fundamentally wrong understanding of the Church
ReplyDeleteMoretben,
ReplyDeleteYour, as ever, wise comment reminds me of the description of the Baroque liturgy given by Louis Bouyer of the embalmbed corpse...
But can Tradition be revived or resuscitated? I am thinking in particular of ROCOR and its ever growing and varied collection of non-Byzantine rites such as Sarum, BCP, Liturgy of St. Mark etc. With respect to the first example I would have thought that particular rite would have needed a rather powerful defibrilator to get it back to the living faith of the dead?
I confess to believing that WRO is a long-term solution - but I may be wrong.
Moretben, I agree. This is precisely why I do not have ''preferences'' vis-à-vis Liturgy. Something is either fundamentally wrong (the New Rite), an abuse or what-have-you, or it isn't. Reducing Tradition to one's preferences, as in the famous analogy of the Cafeteria, naturally relativises Tradition, which leads to atheism eventually, which in turn leads to sorrow and wrath, and eternal damnation.
ReplyDeleteRubricarius, I think that Western Liturgy has lost it if I'm perfectly honest and any attempt to resusitate it is just an anachronism, and boils down to picking and choosing good points from eras in the Church, albeit, I feel most at home in Western Liturgy. Something went wrong somewhere, and who's fault is it? The Scholastics? The Religious Orders? The invention of the Missal/Breviary? Low Mass?
I have always been suspicious of ''Western-Rite Orthodoxy.'' It is another example of trying to pick up the pieces, very clumsily (inserting an Epiklesis into the Canon, using the old Julian Kalendar etc), when those pieces have long since fragmented and cannot be pieced together by any act of Man alone...
For some reason blogger wouldn't publish my last comment, so here goes again...
ReplyDeleteMoretben, I agree. A Tradition that is reduced to one's preferences is no longer perfect, which is exactly why I do not have ''preferences'' vis-a-vis Liturgy. Something is either fundamentally wrong (the New Rite), an abuse or what-have-you, or it isn't, which is why I adore Tradition and loathe novelty. Such things as formae extraordinariae etc are just temporary ''solutions'', a small plaster placed by a nurse over a hideous gash in the desperate hope that this will one day all be forgotten about. Not by me, or by many of similar disposition! I think that to say that two mutually contradictory things are one and the same thing is Orwellian Doublethink. The New Rite is not the same as the Old Rite; it doesn't even look like it, they are as far removed as peas are from apples. Such attempts at ''preferring'' one tradition to another tradition just relativises Tradition in the end, which leads to atheism, sorrow and wrath, and thence unto eternal damnation...
Rubricarius, I have always been suspicious of Western-Rite Orthodoxy, but perhaps I am misinformed. To my knowledge, all they have done is inserted an Epiklesis into the Canon, gone back to the Julian Kalendar and one or two other things. I think that this is doomed to failure, and trying to revive Western Liturgy is a false hope. It would be good to ''hand'' the Liturgy over to the Orthodox though, they always seem to have had better liturgical sense than us Westerners.
One would ask: what went wrong? Who's fault is it? The Scholastics? The Religious Orders? Low Mass? The invention of the Missal and Breviary? Trying to pick the pieces up, when they have long since vanished or fragmented, is, as I have said, a false hope, and I strongly dislike this sort of thing anyway. It's another way of placing the Liturgy upon an operating table and cutting out things which we do not like, so let us have a care! lest, in our pride and despair, we become Bugninis...
For some reason blogger wouldn't publish my last comment, so here goes again...
ReplyDeleteMoretben, I agree. A Tradition that is reduced to one's preferences is no longer perfect, which is exactly why I do not have ''preferences'' vis-a-vis Liturgy. Something is either fundamentally wrong (the New Rite), an abuse or what-have-you, or it isn't, which is why I adore Tradition and loathe novelty. Such things as formae extraordinariae etc are just temporary ''solutions'', a small plaster placed by a nurse over a hideous gash in the desperate hope that this will one day all be forgotten about. Not by me, or by many of similar disposition! I think that to say that two mutually contradictory things are one and the same thing is Orwellian Doublethink. The New Rite is not the same as the Old Rite; it doesn't even look like it, they are as far removed as peas are from apples. Such attempts at ''preferring'' one tradition to another tradition just relativises Tradition in the end, which leads to atheism, sorrow and wrath, and thence unto eternal damnation...
Rubricarius, I have always been suspicious of Western-Rite Orthodoxy, but perhaps I am misinformed. To my knowledge, all they have done is inserted an Epiklesis into the Canon, gone back to the Julian Kalendar and one or two other things. I think that this is doomed to failure, and trying to revive Western Liturgy is a false hope. It would be good to ''hand'' the Liturgy over to the Orthodox though, they always seem to have had better liturgical sense than us Westerners.
One would ask: what went wrong? Who's fault is it? The Scholastics? The Religious Orders? Low Mass? The invention of the Missal and Breviary? Trying to pick the pieces up, when they have long since vanished or fragmented, is, as I have said, a false hope, and I strongly dislike this sort of thing anyway. It's another way of placing the Liturgy upon an operating table and cutting out things which we do not like, so let us have a care! lest, in our pride and despair, we become Bugninis...
Honestly, P? I think you've had it coming from the day you took it upon yourselves to bugger up the Creed; that, and 1500 years of fecklessly cranking the "Primacy Ratchet". I really don't think it takes a world-class brain to connect cause with effect. Tree-fruits/fruits-tree.
ReplyDeleteI'm very dubious about WRO. As an RC, I was very keen, precisely because as an RC I had no real grasp of the gulf between sentimental proclivity, and genuine metanoia. I keep saying it: Orthodoxy is not Roman-Catholicism-minus-the-Pope; and the fact is the Western rite has developed outside the Orthodox Tradition for a millenium, or more. Quite apart from the artificiality of "revivalism", the very real danger exists of creating an environment within which discontented Latins are perhaps encouraged to seek refuge without genuine conversion.
Twenty years ago, a parish priest rolled his eyes at me in exasperation: "Why can't you just be an ordinary Catholic?". The rebuke stung, because to be an "ordinary Catholic" was all I ever wanted. "I don't know, Father", I replied with genuine sorrow - "I just can't". Getting from there to being an ordinary Orthodox required letting go of everything - not just the addictive anger and indignation of "Crisis-tianity", but so much else that one had hitherto thought of as essential. Newman (and by the way I look forward to the time in which it's possible for Catholics to be a lot more critical of Newman than is perhaps possible at present), speaking of his "conversion" wrote somewhere of its singulalry undramatic character - no turnaround, no new illumination, just a quiet sense of coming home; for me, it was utterly the opposite. There is no renewal without repentance - genuine repentance, for the ideas and attitudes that landed you in the pig-pen. "Hermeneutics of continuity" will not suffice. There is no illumination without purification; no re-birth wthout death.
Five years ago, I wrote in my blog of "unbearable sadness" at the prospect of relinquishing the Roman Rite. Today I would not return to it, even if my Archbishop were to institute a WRO parish on my doorstep.
Moretben, do you believe that the Roman Rite is Liturgy? What you say about the ''development'' of the Roman Rite outside the Orthodox Tradition is noteworthy...
ReplyDeleteAs for me, leaving the Roman Church would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord and I could never do that, for all the sins of her Popes and unfortunate things like Low Mass. I have always said to myself that perhaps we must put up with so much scandal as a ''test'' of the virtue of loyalty (which is of course, as Tolkien said, only virtuous when one is put under dire constraints to abandon it)...
Moretben,
ReplyDeleteI suspect you are correct about WRO: however, I am not sure. In theory at least, I still believe that WRO should be possible. My point about ROCOR was re-adopting post 10th century Western rites.
We'll see, Rubricarius. The ROCOR bishops think it's worth doing, apparently (I believe their "Anglican Use" is named for St Tikhon - a very tenuous attribution indeed)but it's not for me. I'm more than half-way through life and I simply haven't the time to engage in necessarily long-term (i.e. centuries long)experiments. I'm not enrolling my children in them, either.
ReplyDeleteP - more after work.
Patricius - you pose three very interesting questions. Each of them demands a great deal more attention than I’m able to cover with the following few thoughts.
ReplyDeleteIs the Roman rite 'liturgy'? Of course it is, considered "anthropologically", as an artefact. So is the Book of Common Prayer. What we ought to be asking is, as liturgy, is it everything that ancient, orthodox, catholic Christianity requires liturgy to be - a living incarnation of the fullness of the Mystery of Christ and His Bride - or have centuries of wrong ecclesiology, bad theology, clericalisation, positivistic tinkering, decadence and neglect (the 'Greek' delegates to Council of Lyons were already scandalised by the decadence of Latin liturgical culture) compromised its essential stability and transformative power to the extent that – even in its ‘Tridentine’ manifestation -it's no longer fully functional 'ortho-doxia'? That’s the significant question from the Orthodox perspective, quite apart from the feasibility of refurbishment and rehabilitation – of pasting in an epiklesis and excising Roman dogmatic errors. Here it's worth reminding ourselves that a crucial aspect of the effect of 'bad theology' apart from striaghjt is precisely the neglect of any 'transformative power' beyond ‘confecting the sacrament’ – a reduction of ‘liturgy’ to little more than a regulated, decorous rigmarole surrounding the Magic Words. This mentality remains fully operative not least among neo-conservative apologists for the Novus Ordo, but in the greater part of the Trad archipelago too.
Which brings me to your second ‘question’: the idea of institutional ‘loyalty’ as a kind of absolute value requiring one to ‘offer up’ the agonies of cognitive dissonance that arise from involving oneself in wrong doctrine and defective worship, is an utter absurdity. I used to get it all the time from neo-conservative NO apologists, insisting that my clear duty was to “sit at the back and offer it up”. Please furnish me with a scriptural or patristic or historical example of the saints recommending tolerance of, far less involvement in, heresy or deformed worship as a test of ‘loyalty’? Loyalty to what? How could Christ, Who is the Way and the Truth, ever require that? It’s utter madness, comprehensible only in the context of the theology of ‘merit’ (itself quite alien to Orthodoxy) taken to the point of absurdity, and ‘salvation’ as a mere legal transaction expedited by the acquisition of “brownie points” gained by running a ridiculous and spiritually harmful obstacle course. This has nothing to do with Christianity.
Of course I understand where you’re coming from as a Roman Catholic by equating loyalty to the Roman Church with loyalty to Christ himself (essentially your ‘third question’): the ingrained circularity of “the Roman Church can’t defect because it’s the Roman Church”, or – as Hitchcock has the sinister brain surgeon in The Lady Vanishes put it – “My theory is good – it’s the facts that are misleading”. I know very well how seemingly impossible it is to extract oneself from this perspective . I also wrote once of the “insurmountable obstacle of Tu es Petrus..... I’m not going to abuse your combox by attempting to persuade you that the ‘insurmountable obstacle’ is in fact a mirage, a completely wrong exegesis and appropriation of the relevant texts, ratcheted up over centuries, and established at least in part on the basis of conscious deception and forgery. The truth, as they say, is out there. Suffice to say that, permitted to speak for themselves, the Fathers and the Councils do not speak for Roman Catholicism. They can sometimes be made to do so by “retrospective appropriation”, it’s true, but we all have to make up our own minds about which perspective seems the most authentic, honest, substantial, consistent-with-fruits, and so on.
Apologies for the atrocious grammar, syntax and outright gobbledygook in my last offering. I'm blaming the children, the rush to get out, and the netbook keyboard ;o))
ReplyDeleteMoretben, that was a lucid, intelligent and well-thought-out comment, so never mind about grammar. I shall repsond to it appropriately in a long blog post (or series of posts, I am not sure yet). You can email me if you wish.
ReplyDeleteHow could Christ, Who is the Way and the Truth, ever require that? It’s utter madness, comprehensible only in the context of the theology of ‘merit’ (itself quite alien to Orthodoxy) taken to the point of absurdity, and ‘salvation’ as a mere legal transaction expedited by the acquisition of “brownie points” gained by running a ridiculous and spiritually harmful obstacle course. This has nothing to do with Christianity.
ReplyDeleteIf I didn't know any better, I would have said the above comes from a Lutheran.
It’s as well you know better, then, because you’d be wrong. It has nothing to do with Lutheranism or the “works salvation” neurosis – so how about adressing yourself to the question? Does “offering up” the experience of involvement in something you can see is objectively wrong at the level of doctrine and worship make any sense? Is the Church a hospital, and her Sacraments, her Services, her Scriptures and her Saints the God-given regenerative means by which alone we are enabled to “become by grace what God is by nature”, or is it a kind of arbitrary boot-camp for testing our “loyalty” by absurd, point-scoring bushtucker trials? “Swallow this, or you’re not a real Catholic!”?
ReplyDeleteThere many places in scripture that talk of "offering up" temporal sufferings in order to draw ourselves closer to God in union with the sufferings of His Son. The most pertinent that comes to mind is this passage from St. Paul:
ReplyDelete"Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church" (Col 1: 24)
Your bootcamp comment is almost redolent of the caricatures that atheists make of God, when they use natural disasters or other forms of suffering as "proof" of his non-existence.
Hestor, you're entirely missing the point. You cannot "offer up" to God something that takes away from God. You cannot say (to put it in the most extreme way) "I can see that what I'm involved in here is blasphemous and sacriligious. I'll offer it up." That's just mad. Again, we're not discussing natural disasters - we're discussing worship, faith, and the life of grace. The purpose of the Church is to immerse us totally in "right-worship" and "right-doctrine" so as to make us live His life(not that I think the RC Church IS "the Church", you understand - I'm speaking as an Orthodox) - not to test our "loyalty" by discovering our determination to remain unmoved, however much these are distorted. That's a grotesque notion, suggesting a completely skewed idea of what "communion" is and what it requires of us. I repeat: please furnish me with a scriptural or Patristic admonition to bear wrong worship and wrong doctrine as part of a necessary test. it's entirrely back to front!
ReplyDelete