There is a difference between “Traditional Catholicism” and “Catholic Traditionalism” and it is all too easy to confuse the two and to reach misunderstandings through use of this sort of terminology. I often wonder whether this forum is actually meant to appeal to Traditional Catholics or to Catholic Traditionalists.
A “traditional” Catholic would be any Catholic who accepts and embraces the Church’s two millenia of tradition, with respect to doctrine, liturgy, sacraments, customs and so forth. A faithful Catholic, in other words, who hears and completely accepts the magisterium, who is obedient to the hierarchy, and who participates appropriately in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. My late grandmother, who went to Mass every day and said her Rosary every night, “offering up” her sufferings, was the epitome of a “traditional Catholic”.
A Catholic “traditionalist”, however, means something else, entirely. A “traditionalist” will probably first and foremost insist upon public worship in Latin, and almost always in the context of the pre-Vatican II form of the Mass. In addition, a “traditionalist” will probably insist that such a celebration be rendered using all the external trappings that he imagines were universally and exclusively in vogue before Vatican II: fiddleback chasubles, lacey albs and surplices, cassocks, birettas, tabernacle veils, white (not wheat) hosts, altar boys with patens, sanctus bells, sanctus candles, &c. This insistance upon pre-Vatican II liturgy and external trappings is what all “traditionalists” will tend to have in common, although some “traditionalists” whose traditionalism stops there are regarded by other “traditionalists” as merely “conservatives”.
Many “traditionalists” go beyond just attendance at the Latin Mass, having not much use for most anything that arrives in the Catholic world from about the end of the reign of Pope Pius XII (1958), onward. A typical “hard core” traditionalist will eschew the contemporary Catechism in favor of older catechisms (the “Catechism of the Council of Trent” and the school-age “Baltimore Catechism” seem popular amongst many “traditionalists”), new translations of Scripture in favour of the Douay-Rheims (the only translation many traditionalists will accept at all, in fact), the new Enchiridion in favor of the old, and some even the new Code of Canon Law for the old (no matter, apparently, that the old Enchiridion and the old Code are quite null and void). “Traditionalist” priests, beyond using the 1962 Missal, use pre-Vatican II forms of the ritual. Nuns belonging to “traditionalist” groups will typically wear the complete habit, and priests will typically wear the cassock everywhere (even though that was not the custom before Vatican II).
Some “traditionalists” go so far as to completely reject, outright, without any apology, everything that happened in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. For some, it becomes a bit of a time warp, because they reject not only liturgical changes, but cultural changes, too, sometimes forbidding themselves “modern” things like televisions, the internet, fast food, and contemporary fashions.
On the outermost extreme end of Catholic traditionalism, there are those who so completely reject Vatican II that they deny the validity of everything concluded after the death of Pope Pius XII, including all papal conclaves. They deny the legitimacy of Pope John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, regarding all of them as modernists and heretics, and therefore as “antipopes”. These extreme traditionalists have an additional label: “sedevacantist” (the Chair of Peter, they say, is vacant). Some of these have even gone so far as to elect “popes” of their own.
Some “traditionalists”, such as those forming or adhering to the Society of St. Pius X, fall somewhere between the mainstream traditionalists and the sedevacantists. They believe that the current pope is legitimate and they acknowldege his reign, but they do not obey his commands, believing them to be harmful to the Faith. Traditionalists falling into this category tend to walk the cusp of outright denial of the validity of the reformed Catholic liturgy and certainly regard those reforms as dangerous. They will not, under any circumstances, celebrate or attend a Mass celebrated using the current Missal, not even if it is celebrated in Latin, using all the “traditionalist” external trappings. Neither will they administer or receive any of the Sacraments according to the modern forms and texts, as they question their validity.
Traditionalists of this variety are likely to be torn with respect to what they will accept or reject about the “modern world,” culturally-speaking. Most accept much of mainstream culture, rejecting only those things which are manifestly immoral. Others will go a step further, rejecting things such as television and the internet. They will insist that women wear veils in church, that women never wear pants under any circumstances, that men not have piercings or tatoos or long hair, and so forth. Some go even further, insisting that women not permit themselves careers, and that men should never do “women’s work” at home. Some traditionalists of this variety will insist upon moving to “Mass Centers”: communities with a large traditionalist presence, usually rural and away from the dreaded “modern world”. Some refer to these types as “Catholic Amish”.
