I could not disagree more. It is the traditionalists that are the ones that seem to want to take the personal relationship with GOD out of one’s relationship with the Church, and instead worship the Catholic Church and all of it’s man made rules.
Neither of us can prove our points objectively. But, for the sake of discussion, I think I ought to at least point out that there are lots of variations in what might be called “traditionalists”. I am personally very put off by at least the leaders of the SSPV, for example. I am very tempted to agree with your assessment as regards them. I am not so ready to put their parishioners in the same boat, as I have known (admittedly) a few, who struck me as being quite devout and serious in their spirituality, though horribly misguided.
I know a few more SSPX folks than that, and they seem to vary, and I am not quite as skeptical about the motivations of their clergy as I am of those of the SSPV.
Then there are people (those who attend The Grotto in Detroit, for example) who prefer the Novus Ordo in Latin and a choir worthy of a concert hall. But I saw long, long lines in front of the confessionals there, notwithstanding that six or eight priests were hearing confessions simultaneously. I met some of them and, while I can’t read their hearts, I would never accuse them of “worshipping the Church and its manmade rules”. They struck me as quite devout and caring people, though some perhaps were as you describe.
Then there are people like me, who love the TLM, Byzantine rites, Anglican Use and the Novus Ordo in Latin or English. I guess I consider myself a “traditionalist” of a sort, notwithstanding that I love the words of “Old Rugged Cross”. Yes, I do love the Church, and I respect its rules. But I know Who I worship, and that’s God Himself, who invites me into His life, in the Eucharist and forever.
But I’m old enough to have “been around” in a highly intellectual Catholic setting during Vatican II. I watched the Jesuits “melt down”. (I saw with sorrow that the Missouri Supreme Court ruled recently that St. Louis University is NOT a “religious school”, and I think the Court buttoned that one.) I watched nuns by the score become social workers only. I watched some parishes where the priest and the tabernacle are almost undiscoverable in the crowd of people in the sanctuary; where you can’t hear the Mass without straining, if at all, and where the focus is on some cantor or reader or army thereof, and where “social justice” and “fellowshipping” are the only gospels. I have seen bishops endorse John Kerry and equate Medicaid rule details with the killing of innocent unborn children in moral importance. I have seen the derision many of the “spirit of VII folks” have for “the old ladies who mumble their rosaries”. (And who are they to judge? How do they know they’re not mocking saints?) I have been treated to the endless self-congratulatory pontifications of the “liberation theologians”, and those who proclaim that their every secular policy utterance is “prophetic”. I have seen bishops who want those who cherished the TLM; the Mass of their childhoods and First Communions and Confirmations and Weddings, to go to their graves without ever seeing it again, even once, because it’s “old fashioned”. Well, so is charity. We have all seen bishops who bought into the psychobabble of recent years and who, in doing so, exposed children to sexual abuse. Perhaps they ought to have “worshipped” the Church’s rules more, not less. And perhaps some should not be so quick to judge what, among those forms approved by the Church, are and are not conducive to prayer, piety and redemption.
I have read that in designing the plaza in front of St. Peter’s, Bernini deliberately formed the columns in such a way as to signify the “open arms” of the Church, and thus of its spouse, Jesus Christ. I think Bernini had it right, and I think there is room in that embrace for traditionalists too. Yes, and for those who say “thou art”; those who say “Gospodi Pomilui” and those who sing “I’ll fly away”.
