What is a Traditionalist Catholic?

[Pat_Orlich]

What is a “Traditionalist”? The lay minister on my son’s ship says he is a Traditionalist and doesn’t believe a lot of what the Church teaches, yet he is the lay minister and is going to be distributing Communion and conducting the Sunday services for the Catholics on board.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Generally speaking, a Traditionalist Roman Catholic is a Catholic of the Latin church who prefers the Tridentine Latin Mass and the sacraments celebrated according to the pre-Vatican II rites of the Latin church.

Some Traditionalists simply prefer the extraordinary form of the Roman rite but are otherwise in line with Catholic orthodoxy. Others have more or less strange understandings of Catholic orthodoxy (although they consider themselves to be fully orthodox) and think that all that came with and after Vatican II is more or less suspect (and consider the post-Vatican II teachings of the Church to be less orthodox than the teachings of the pre-Vatican II era). On the most belligerent end of the Traditionalist spectrum, there are some who will claim to merely believe and teach “all that Catholics believed and taught for 1900 years before Vatican II” (which is simply ahistorical and untrue) and who will separate themselves from full communion with the Church in one way or the other, from “faithful dissent” all the way to sedevacantism (believing that there is no current valid pope).

As for your son’s shipmate, it is strange that he considers himself a Traditionalist and yet takes on responsibilities that many Traditionalists believe should be reserved to a priest. If he were consistent in his principles, he would not be leading Communion services or distributing Communion. In any event, your son is free to attend these services and receive Communion at these services. If his shipmate begins to proselytize his fellow Catholics in his uniquely “Traditionalist” ideology and encourages dissent from the Church though, your son may want to contact the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, for support and counsel.