What makes you think those priests that went astray were traditional priests ? What you are describing is the fruit of modernism. I’m talking about traditional priests. It doesn’t matter that a priest is raised on the TLM and has taken the OAM, if he breaks his vows before God.
Don’t try to tell me these priests you are describing are traditional priests. They are not. You are taking my point entirely out of context. I said/meant, traditional priests and the practice of traditional Catholicism, untainted by modernist leanings, is not to blame for any of this mess.
Traditional Parochial schools, traditional seminaries, traditional clergy, and the Gregorian Rite are indeed the answer. The fruits of Modernism are undeniable.
It is that simple, imho.
You need to do a bit of basic research. A priest wanting to get married has nothing to do with Loisy’s attacks on dogma; in case you have not noticed, celibacy is a discipline, not a dogmatic issue. Modernism is not the boogey man under the bed for each and every thing we don’t like. I am not defending the decisions of the priests who left; simply pointing out that it was not Vatican 2, it was not the change in the Mass, but a completely different issue that caused many to leave. I am not the one holding up pre-Vatican 2 era as the era of great faith. I am simply pointing out, as I usually try to do, that issues are far more complex than the simplistic answers that are too often given.
Were some of the people, post Vatican 2, working on theories that could be traced to Modernism? Perhaps; or perhaps post Modernism, as most theories such as the roots of modernism evolve over time and turn into new theories, which are not the same but only related in that they have a root in history.
Do we have priests, nuns, laity, and theologians (who could also be priests, nuns or laity) acting in a way that appears to be Modernisinm? Yes, but it is the idle and not particularly critical observer who makes lazy connections. They also could be reacting to issues that have nothing to do with Modernism, or rather, that are sourced in things other than Modernism, and yielding similar results.
To presume that priests who left to get married were all Modernists is so totally without any foundation whatsoever as to be nothing more than a knee-jerk response. You may want to go down the path of a minuscule group of faithful who have held onto the faith in spite of massive, worldwide and almost complete rejection of the faith. That is far too close to the conspiratorialist crowd that I avoid at all costs. It also flies in the face of reality. I know there are sede-vacantists out there as I have met a couple. They live in an alternate reality to the rest of us. And the attitude that most priests and bishops, or the majority of them were closet Modernists borders on the same behavior and world view.
How is it that all these priests, who were raised in what you style as Traditional schools, on the Baltimore Catechisms, and were in parishes that still taught that, are all of a sudden wild-eyed Modernists, but never showed a trace of that before?
The short of it is that we have people, priests, bishops, nuns, and laity that have been impacted by a multitude of issues. Modernism is a phrase that was meant originally to cover a multitude of positions, and is so broad a word as to defy clear and understandable defintion. It becomes a catch all for what ever is not liked, not understood, and partially, what may be wrong.
What we need to do is to be true to the Magisterium. The Magisterium supports Vatican 2 documents, so those who do not want to go down that path are doing so on their own, with their own definiton of what the Church actually teaches. That is another definition of cafeteria Catholicism, something that those on the very conservative to ultra conservative end of the Catholic spectrum are so quick to accuse those on the very liberal to ultra liberal end of the spectrum of doing; a version of the pot calling the kettle black. And the net of that is that those who choose to follow the Magisterim, but don’t do it according to the very conservative or ultra conservative manifesto, are labeled.
There are a lot of people who are not to blame for this mess. Some of them are Traditionalists. Some are not. There are also a lot of people to blame for this mess, but a sweeping denunciation of them is not going to result in any intelligible understanding of how we got to where we are. Both John Paul 2 and Benedict 16 have defended Vatican 2 documents. Either you follow the Pope or you don’t; and if you want to re-write what the Magisterium teaches, then according to your own loosely defined term, you are a Modernist even if you style yourself as a Traditionalist.
