Traditionalism…the historical mainstream…

[SnorterLuster]

I ran across this on “Dappled Things”, a blog by a young diocesan priest in northern Virginia. There appear to be more & more young priests embracing their Catholic heritage. Bodes well for the future I think.

One of the things I hope that I’ve done through this blog is to have shown that a dedication to traditional liturgy and liturgical forms is not the sole property of the hard right. Or, to put it another way, traditional liturgical forms are proper to Christianity itself and are not indicators of ideological camps. Although you wouldn’t know it if you listened to certain loud voices (on the left and right), love of Gregorian chant, time-honored vestment styles, the Old Mass, traditional architecture, old-time devotions and ceremonies, eastward worship, and Latin is in the historical mainstream of Christianity. It is not some weird, far-right ghetto province.

donjim.blogspot.com/2007/01/eastward-liturgy-in-lutheranism-and.html

 

[Catholic_Dude]

I ran across this on “Dappled Things”, a blog by a young diocesan priest in northern Virginia. There appear to be more & more young priests embracing their Catholic heritage. Bodes well for the future I think.

donjim.blogspot.com/2007/01/eastward-liturgy-in-lutheranism-and.html

Its not too complicated, the idea there is a “right” and “left” is not really what Catholicism is about, either you accept the teachings of the Church to the best of your ability and knowledge or your not Catholic. Its kind of sad that the conservative Catholics have to take on the qualifier “traditionalist” because we are not doing anything beyond what the Church already calls for.

p.s. I always get a kick out of the idea of a “Traditionalist BLOG”

 

[RobedWithLight]

I ran across this on “Dappled Things”, a blog by a young diocesan priest in northern Virginia. There appear to be more & more young priests embracing their Catholic heritage. Bodes well for the future I think.

donjim.blogspot.com/2007/01/eastward-liturgy-in-lutheranism-and.html

I do find the use of the terms “hard left”, and right as disturbing because it makes the Church look and sound like a political movement, and compartmentalizes Catholics into mutually incompatible blocs which is inconsistent with the unity of the Church, and likewise confuses outside non-Catholic observers. You are either Catholic or you’re not, as Catholic dude said above.

 

[TNT]

Call it what one will…Modernism, Liberalism, hard left, reformers…
Consider that the Church has enemies not just OUTSIDE, but moreso INSIDE and professing to be Catholic.
100th Aniversary:
PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS

[**Encyclical by Pope Saint**](http://www.dailycatholic.org/pascend1.htm) Pius X on Modernism given on September 8, 1907  Articles 2-3

2. That We should act without delay in this matter is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; but, what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are the more mischievous the less they keep in the open. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary man.
3. Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt.

 

[Malcolm_McLean]

I do find the use of the terms “hard left”, and right as disturbing because it makes the Church look and sound like a political movement, and compartmentalizes Catholics into mutually incompatible blocs which is inconsistent with the unity of the Church, and likewise confuses outside non-Catholic observers. You are either Catholic or you’re not, as Catholic dude said above.

It’s a hangover from 20th century thinking, when conflicts between labour and capital were seen as the defining force in politics.

Twenty years ago, if you knew a man’s opionion on, say, nuclear weapons, you could make a pretty good guess at his opinion on other issues, such as “look and say” teaching of reading in the classroom. Now in Britain we have two parties with essentially identical economic policies, and that is no longer the case.

In particular, traditional Catholics tend to be very sceptical of the claims of big business. As the Church has declined in influence, business has stepped in to fill the void, with their ideas on what ethical behaviour should be. Normally this hasn’t been done with a conscious attempt to oppose Christianity, more it is a natural consequence of being a influential organisation in a secular culture.

Needless to say, we must oppose success ethics as firmly as we oppose degenerate hedonism.