Servants of the Holy Family and the SSPX

[stpurl]

I think I’ll disagree. The Reporter is not at all Traditionalist in the sense of the word as it is recognized by traditional leaning people and indeed the vast majority of Catholics.

They are not about restoring ‘old tradition’. They are about ‘revisionism’. Many of the so-called ‘restoring the early Church’ practices were bunk, based on a lot of speculation masked as ‘historicricial’ findings.

Make no mistake. The Distorter will use whatever buzz or argument ‘works’, and then drop it like a hot potato when they need to argue something that’s 180 degrees away.

What is a ‘traditional restorationist?:

You see, this is part of the whole problem people have with discussions on the internet. Somebody, often a very intelligent somebody, has his or her own ideas and definitions of what a word like “traditional” or ‘restoration’ means, and then they’ll start applying it as if “everybody’ uses those words with the same understanding. And so instead of being able to discuss actual events and actions, we wind up having an argument over, shall we say, what we think the word “is’ is.

Catholics who like Tradition, as in what the Church not only has always believed, but what the Church ‘does’ as it develops organically, are often labeled or choose to apply the name “Traditionalist” in order to make clear that they feel that in many ways the Catholic of today has been deprived over the last 50 years of many good solid organic traditions.

That doesn’t mean the Traditionalist wants to completely upend Catholic actions and events and even 40 or 50 year old ‘traditions’.

But it doesn’t help to get misunderstood, as it appears, and be presented as “the Rightist extreme” and compared to a “leftist extreme” and told that both groups are both going to ‘restore tradition’.

Because it isn’t that at all. The “traditions’ of the majority of the “progressives’ or V2 or “modern’ Catholic are directly antithetical to proven, organic, and longstanding developments of the Church. To argue that these traditions of theirs are equivalent to the 2000 year proven and verified traditions of the Church is to completely miss the point of Tradition itself.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Strictly speaking, the National Catholic Reporter, and similar ilk, are Traditionalist. They defend their positions as Restoring the Traditional, more open, egalitarian view of the much earlier Church, before recent innovations like Trent.

Are you sure you’re not thinking of the National Catholic Register, which is a newspaper entirely faithful to the magisterium? The National Catholic [sic] Reporter, while an excellent newspaper in some ways, makes no pretense of being faithful to the magisterium in all things. They bill themselves as an independent news source, reporting on matters Catholic, and have been asked by their local bishop to remove the word “Catholic” from their name, which they refuse to do. I have said before that it would suffice for them to rename their paper The Reporter — serving Catholics and all of God’s family, or something like that. Publications such as America, Our Sunday Visitor, The Tablet and The Wanderer have nothing specifically Catholic in their names.

 

[commenter]

I was not in any way defending NCRonline. I hate it. I’m just saying the Left does in fact try to dress up its proposals, not as innovations but as restoring some (supposed) very old practice or belief, that the church somehow got away from.

They’ll find some quote out of context from some old authority to justify dissent from the current Magisterium.

The same thing happened during the Reformation. You seldom find any kind of a dissenter saying “let’s do or believe something totally new and different”. Whether it be a Luther, or a Hans Kung, they usually point to an earlier (ideal)Tradition, supposedly before Purgatory belief, before papal infallibility, etc.
It’s always easier to “obey” a dead pope or bishop (represented by a document you cherry picked out of context) than the current living one.

I’m not equating Call to Action, for instance, with One Peter Five, or CM. not saying they are equally dangerous.
1p5 is more sincere in use of Tradition. But I see the same kind of pattern, not identical. I belong to “restoration” groups in union with the Current magisterium.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I was not in any way defending NCRonline. I hate it. I’m just saying the Left does in fact try to dress up its proposals, not as innovations but as restoring some (supposed) very old practice or belief, that the church somehow got away from.

OK, I stand entirely corrected, I see what you mean. I thought that sounded like a strange way to characterize the National Catholic Register.

Nonetheless, I stand by my assessment of the NCReporter. Good job of reporting straight news, not so good with their commentary and editorial policies.