What should I do about radical Traditionalists who are sowing discord?

[Cece]

My homeschool e-mail group is going through a crisis brought about by ultra-traditionalists who will not attend either what they refer to as “Novus Ordo” Masses or the local, very accessible Tridentine Mass due to certain words in the consecration. They have gone over to what the Vicar General has described as a schismatic group, yet they insist they are loyal to the Magisterium.

This divisiveness has been most upsetting, not the least because many of their arguements have some merit. Can you please speak to what they mean when they say the “Novus Ordo” Mass is a manifestation of the heresy of Modernism, and that it is an invalid Mass because of the words of consecration, and why the Tridentine mass is not “good enough”?

I object to their propaganda against the Church, John Paul II, and their general holier-than-thou attitude which I discern as not coming from the Holy Spirit. Am I amiss, here?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Ultra-traditional Catholics – sometimes called “radical Traditionaists” in order to distinguish them from those Catholic traditionalists who simply prefer the Church’s traditional forms of worship – have a great many claims against the Church, all of which generally boil down to an apparent unwillingness to concede the development of the Church’s disciplinary forms and to trust the Church above and beyond their own ability to understand why the Church does what it does.

To your specific questions, I recommend the resources linked below. The book by James Likoudis and Kenneth D. Whitehead is currently out of print, but you should be able to find it through used-book sources or through interlibrary loan. As for the more general problem of what to do about the disruptions to your homeschool support group, you might want to petition the moderators to insist that participants remain “on-topic” and discuss homeschooling. The group administrators may wish to consider disallowing discussions outside the purpose of their email list.

Recommended reading:

What Constitutes Valid Consecration? by Michael E. Daniel
Holier Than Thou by Brian O’Neel
The Pope, the Council, and the Mass by James Likoudis and Kenneth D. Whitehead