I kept coming back to this little statement-
We are what you once were.
We believe what you once believed.
We worship like you once worshipped.
If you believe you were wrong then, what makes you believe you are right now.
If you were right then, we are right now.
And I said to myslef- this is the problem!
The attitude that ***“I am right and you are wrong”. ***
I am sad to say “thewanderer”, that from my experience of the world,
it is this attitude that may be the “unifying factor” you are trying to identify.
I sure hope not!
I hope not too. I haven’t been able to keep up with this thread as another thread was occupying my time, but since my article has been discussed a bit I thought I’d weigh in now.
In some measure, Tim’s examples actually demonstrate my point. Change, even change for the better, is disruptive and prejudicial to the common good, as St. Thomas teaches. In the end the good may outweigh the disruption, but change is not seen as possessing some inherent good.
So then who decides? Well, obviously with respect to doctrinal developments ultimately the Magisterium decides.
But I think we can still take away some lessons from the post-conciliar period. At the very least, if the Church puts some teaching before it the faithful, it would be best to have the lines along which it can be harmonized with the Church’s prior teaching worked out ahead of time. Surely we can agree that there is something unpleasant with the need for theological talks into how to reconcile certain aspects of Vatican II with prior Church teaching. One would have hoped that this harmony would have been self-evident, or at the very least worked out ahead of time and presented along with the teaching.
And yet we can look at certain aspects of the teaching of Vatican II and find that it is not at all self-evident how they can be reconciled with what the Church taught before. And we do not
yet have official explanations for some of these. (Please God, we will.)
But notice that the Church is not saying that certain Catholics, “traditionalists”, are automatically wrong and bad for raising these questions. Catholic are permitted
by the Church, in a spirit of humility and due deference to the Magisterium, to say, “I do not see how such and such can be reconciled with Tradition and in conscience I can only hold to it conditionally, that is, as interpreted in harmony with that Tradition.” This is very different from what “traditionalists” have been told by many of their fellow Catholics, who have reproached them for their supposed disobedience and lack of fidelity to the Magisterium.
And then there are a host of other changes that come at a sub-doctrinal level, at a more pastoral level. These changes too have real potential to disrupt the common good. Surely it is all the more legitimate, again in a spirit of humility and filial respect, to point out that some of the pastoral approaches officially undertaken have disrupted the spiritual equilibrium of many Catholics and therefore represent in the aggregate a harmful change. Some Catholics, in their enthusiasm for Vatican II and their desire to be faithful, have I think rather uncritically embraced every single pastoral directive as infallibly good and helpful.
One can trot out all sorts of specifics as illustrations–they have been debated at great length here on CAF. But again, to me at least, it is this attitude toward change itself (God willing not an “I’m right and you’re wrong” approach) that characterizes a traditionalist.
