Hello everyone. I have not been posting much, because I get very tired very quickly. Sometimes, when I post, some people want to engage in a long drawn out discussion. I don’t mind responding to one or two posts, but not to several dozen as I did once upon a time. Having said, I saw the title of this thread and was struck by it. It doesn’t exactly say what the OP is trying to ask. I clicked the triangle, suggesting a slight modification so that it’s clearer. Let’s see what happens.
In any case, I’d like to share a session that we had in our community this past Monday on traditionalism. We’re a very young community. We have three houses; that’s it for now. Though we’re looking for a fourth one in the Miami area, if anyone knows of one for a reasonable rent. Be that as it may, on Mondays, the three houses come together for some fraternity, prayer and on-going formation.
We were discussing that traditionalism has been hijacked by a small group of people and narrowed down to mean the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, Latin, Gregorian Chant, incense, fiddle back chasubles, scholas, mantillas, and almost all things liturgical prior to the Pauline missal. In this mindset there are the catechisms that preceded Vatican II and the writings of the Magisterium.
Then we compared it to the mind of great Traditionalists like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare, St. Bonaventure, Bl. John Duns Scotus, St. Colette, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Pius X, St. Margaret of Cortona, St. John Vianney, St. John XXIII and Ven. Pius XII, all very traditional Franciscans. For those who didn’t know it, many secular priests, bishops and popes have been secular Franciscans, Carmelites and Dominicans.
If I look closely at the lives of these men and women and at the life of my brothers in our community, the Franciscans of the Renewal, the Franciscans of the Eternal Word, the Franciscans of the Holy Eucharist, the Franciscans of the Primitive Observance and several other communities that are part of the Franciscan reform, I don’t see division. Allow me to speak only about Franciscans, because I don’t know the internal mechanics of other communities and schools of religious thought that are undergoing reform. The Franciscan school I know very well.
Division comes from many sources, but none of them is tradition. I can prove it. If I look at our younger Franciscan communities and compare them to our older ones, such as the Friars Minor (OFM, OFM Cap, and OFM Conv), the Secular Franciscans (OFS) and the Poor Clares (PCs). I see small communities trying to recover the original way of life of the friars in the 13th century and the first constitutions of the order, which were written in the 16th century. However, the larger and older communities have been very helpful and they have sent vocations our way. On one or the other occasion, the superiors have lent us formators.
Division comes from zealotry. Zealotry is a malignancy that affects people who want to go back and pretend that the present is not here, as well as people who want to go forward and pretend that the past did not happen. Both groups share a common evil. We call it spiritual pride. Neither group of zealots wants to admit that there is good and bad in the past and present and that there is no line of demarcation. The only line of demarcation is the one that has been draw up by the sin of division.
Again, if both groups were to agree that there is much to learn in the writings of St. John XXIII, Ven. Paul VI, St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, as well as the writings of St. Pius X, Leo XIII, Bl. Pius IX, St. Pius V, then they wouldn’t be zealots would they? They would be students of the development of Christian doctrine, much like Bl. John Henry Newman described in his work. They would be looking at entire schools of thought, not pieces of this and slices of that. They would be paying attention to how the popes interpret and understand their predecessors, not how we want them to be understood or interpreted. They would be docile to the voice of the Holy Spirit as he speaks through the current pope, just as he did through the 265 popes who preceded the current Bishop of Rome.
We must be very careful that our love for something does not displace the perfection of charity or inflict an injustice on others. I can see people who pull in either direction too ferociously doing such harm to the Body of Christ. The problem is not tradition. The problem is caused by those who equate tradition only with what is familiar and those who equate tradition with what they consider obsolete. The problem is not one of tradition, but one of opposition.
I wish that I could invite all of you to sit in on one of our community meetings on Mondays and listen to a young brother explain what veiling means to some people while he also explains why the Church saw fit to take it out of Canon Law, but never banned it. You may also enjoy listening to a brother speak about the place of honor that Gregorian Chant has in the Roman liturgy, while explaining what it is contrary to tradition to include it in every Franciscan liturgy, especially community liturgy. You may also enjoy another brother who walks us through the CCC and connects all the dots in the CCC with those catechisms that came before it and other Christian writings. We even have one brother who is Chaldean Catholic and can explain the Anaphora of Addai and Mari and no one jumps up and down or huffs and puffs. The problem is neither tradition, nor difference. The problem is zealotry. Zealotry is a form of bigotry that can be found among the most conservative and the most liberal. Hatred and anger are like flies and roaches. Try to find a place where they have never been.
Please forgive any errors in my typing. My eye-hand coordination is very poor now.
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