Why do people care so much about "Small t" traditions in the RCC?

[thewanderer]

I certainly agree with you that some aspects of the Liturgy are 't’raditions. I just wanted to make the point that 'T’radition includes the liturgy in some sense. One hears sometimes that 'T’radition is nothing more than a collection of doctrines and the essentials of the sacraments.

Well, yes, of course, thats why my reply was a matter of “quibbling”

 

[OraLabora]

B

Then the gulf must not be as wide as some seem to think. I cannot believe that the Holy Father woulkd try to impress the Jesuit charism on the entire Church.

Of course he won’t. He will live by his charism though, but he won’t ask Benedictines to become Jesuits, or anybody else for that matter.

 

[TimothyH]

Where is Catholic teaching on this? Because like I said above, it seems backwards to me.

There was a Pope once, I think he was a Franciscan, who on becoming Pope, asked the superior of his order for permission to wear what the Popes have always worn instead of the habit of his order. The superior said, “But your Holiness, you are the Pope!”

The vows of a religious don’t end because he is Pope. He has vowed poverty, chastity and obedience or, if a Benedictine, vowed obedience, stability and ongoing conversion. These vows don’t change because a man becomes Pope. If he breaks these vows then he forfeits his immortal soul.

Let’s look at one of those vows as an example. To my knowledge, all religious vow obedience. Many will ask how the Pope can live out his vow to obedience if he is the Pope. Whom does the Pope obey? It is a good question. We have to understand that in living out his vow to obedience the religious imitates Christ who became a slave. Obedience is then, for the religious, an adotion of the state of being a servant, even to preferring the will of another.

*Obedience is not given merely to hierarchical superiors, but is an attitue of the soul which spontaneously expresses itself to everyone whom he meets. It implies that we are willing to put our own desires aside, even so far as to prefer another’s wishes.

• Andre Louf, The Cistercian Way*

It’s the state of being a servant. That’s what the Pope is, the Servant of the Servants of God, not a king.

Obviously Pope Francis is the Vicar of Christ and his ministry is to protect the faith and protect the teachings of the Church. But in terms of his vows as a Jesuit, as I said in one of my posts, there is nothing to reconcile. His ministry and his Jesuit spirituality actually fit nicely, and it is amazing. He already has the world agasp that he took the bus and not the limo, and paid his bill at the hotel. The entire planet was talking about it!

-Tim-

 

[TimothyH]

I think a lot of people are going to see Jesuit spirituality and have a hard time with it. I don’t say this to insult anyone, but some on these forums have a “High Christology” view of Jesus, the view of Jesus as a king and judge. Some emphasize Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity.

Jesuits see Christ as present anywhere, and they pray as if they are having a conversation with Jesus who is sitting in a chair right next to them. I think this is going to seem a bit too friendly for many traditionalists of the “Imitation of Christ” mindset who emphasize reverence for Christ the King and downplay the fact that Christ was a human just like us.

St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, spoke of that pride he felt at being a Son of God, one of God’s family and a brother of Christ.

I’m not tyring to insult anyone. I tend to think of Christ as King and Judge myself, but I have relaxed quite a bit after listening to some monks who are head over heels in love with Jesus and especially through the writings of St. Josemaria Escriva and his idea of divine filiation.

-Tim-

 

[Eufrosnia]

I have to admit that I really don’t understand your point here. Both are important. Pope Francis is doing both.

Um, Pope Francis is also discarding/contradicting some traditions for better or for worse. That communicates something to the people regardless of whether he intends to communicate or not. That is where the problem arises.

Perhaps what we must do at such a time is what the Catechism advises:-
Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Respect for the reputationof persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

    of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;
    of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them;
    of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way: "Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved." (CCC 2477-2478)

So perhaps it is better for us to always see it in positive light and make sure we get others to see it in positive light i.e. according to Church teaching of the Papacy or whichever other things.

When and if Pope Francis actually acts contrary to his office by lets say declaring that he is just a first among equals, then we can start going at him. I have a good feeling that will never happen

So till then, we must always perhaps interpret all his actions as Pope in positive light (which in this case means that he is trying to be consistent in uplifting the doctrine of the Church rather than undermining it). It doesn’t however mean that we should interpret the acts themselves as positive though. We can decide that it might have been better if they did X instead or avoided Y. But we can help reduce the damage it may cause by actively convincing others who misinterpret these actions to accept the proper interpretation. That I feel is the more practical way forward after all.

EDIT: In my case, I personally have qualms with an action of the Pope that many do not care as much. I do not consider the Pope responsible but I see it as important that others do not follow the action. I advise them of not pursuing the action while explaining to them why the Pope was not culpable in thinking and acting that way.

 

[Mike30]

B

Of course he won’t. He will live by his charism though, but he won’t ask Benedictines to become Jesuits, or anybody else for that matter.

The problem is though that by his doing so, it will impact directly on the hundreds of millions of us who are not Jesuits. By imposing that kind of from the top down mentality he seems to be saying in effect this is the way things should be done.

That might not be and probably is not his intention, but I can easily see people believing it is the proper way to do things merely because he does them that way. particularly with all the media trumpeting about it and the photos which will likely accompany everything that he does or says.

I think that he owes it to the entire Church to try to strike some balance in what he says and does. Otherwise, things could get quite confusing for the average Catholic on the streets.

Just my opinion with no disrespect to the Holy Father…

 

[JReducation]

Whether it’s this pope or another, people may want to look at this from several points.

As has been stated quite clearly, the Holy Father is a Jesuit. He brings with him not only his vow of obedience to Ignatius the man, but also to the theological Ignatius. This may sound strange, but it’s very real. Religious orders that have had very charismatic founders eventually find themselves with a theological version of their founder. This means that one not only obeys and follows what the founder said, but also how the founder lived the Gospel. The members of such order put a great deal of time and effort into getting inside the soul of their founder in order to understand his or her relationships with God, the Church, the order and the world. This is the theological figure. It’s much more comprehensive than what the founder said.

Ignatius is one of those founders who left his mark on his sons. Although he never gave them a rule of life as did Benedict, Francis, Augustine, Albert, John and Basil, he did not need to do so. Ignatius was a living walking rule of life. His sons observe everything that he did, study everything that he ever said, scrutinize what he never said, and ask themselves why and why not. Over the centuries, they come up with an Ignatius is more than just a man. He is a model of Christian perfection. Since the vocation of every man is to become a saint, it stands to reason that when one finds such a model, one makes his mindset one’s own. The longer you’re with a religious community, more this paradigm of the Christian life become part of who you are. It’s not just things that you do and don’t do. It’s a way of living, thinking, breathing, eating, walking, talking, teaching, relating, loving and existing. Try as you may, you can’t take this out of a person.

Take for example Pope Benedict. The man was a scholar and an educator all of his life. Try as anyone could, not one could take that out of him. Thinking, speculating, observing, analyzing, theorizing, researching and then teaching the fruit of this labor was not something he did. It is who he is. That’s why I always call him the Teaching Pope.

Pope John Paul was a Pole and a philosopher. Here again, you could not take this out of him. Even as pope, he was very much involved in the affairs of his people back home. He could not stop being Polish. At the same time, he had spent his entire life teaching philosophy. Philosophers are rather strange creatures in our production oriented world. We expect outcome. Philosophers are not very moved by the pressure to get things done or make things happen. The philosopher wants to understand and help others understand. This is who he was. If one reads his works, they are very deep in philosophy, as were his sermons and his way of life.

Going back to Pope Francis and tradition, it is true that there are traditions that are part of the papacy. But let us remember where they came from. They did not come from Peter. These traditions are the product of 265 men sitting on the same chair. Each of them brings something to the papacy. When he dies, what he brings stays with the Church. While it is true that there is a papal tradition, it is also true that the greatest papal tradition is the each pope brings something new to add to the tradition.

Among our list of 265 popes prior to this one, there were many Benedictines, several Dominicans, and a number of Franciscans. It’s not the first time that we’ve had a religious as pope. When these religious have been popes, yes the Church did take on the flavor of their respective religious orders. It was not that the pope pulled out the Rule of St. Benedict and made an edict that commanded everyone to pray the Divine Office. The Benedictine popes did not do this. The Dominican popes did not command everyone to study, contemplate, pray and preach. The Franciscan popes did not command everyone to detach from their own will and their possessions.

However, these popes continued to live they had lived before their reign as popes. The way that they lived influenced how they work what they saw as priorities, how they related to the rest of the world and how they governed. But these are the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to the Church. When he gave us the Jesuit Order, he gave us a gift. Now, he gives us a Jesuit pope. Maybe, the Lord believes that putting the Jesuit charism in full view of the Church is good for the Church.

Sometimes we have to ground ourselves not in what we believe, but in what we know for certain. We know that the religious life is a gift to the Church. We know that God only wants what is best for his Church. We know that God knows more than we do. We know that God has a plan and maybe we should get out of his way. We know that speculation, complaining, worrying, or politicking has no influence on God’s plan for us. God will do whatever man will allow him to do. The best thing that can be done for a pope is to pray that he will grow into a union of wills with the Holy Spirit, not that he becomes what we believe should be a pope. To do that would be to stifle the papacy. We don’t want to stifle the papacy. We want it to continue to grow and evolve has it has done for 2,000 years.

The papacy is one of those curious ministries that evolves and yet remains the same. I think this is what makes it so interesting to the media. The idea that something is very different from its origins, on the outside, yet it remains the same as its origins on the inside attracts the attention of the world.

The media is going to say what it believes about the papacy, regardless of what the pope does. Most often, it’s because journalists don’t understand what it is they’re observing, so they apply standards and rules that don’t belong there. When they do this, they reach the wrong conclusion. This is going to happen regardless. Look at Pope Pius XII.

 

[QuestingKnight]

Take away the traditions and you left with a bunch of people in a bare room, listening to someone read from a book. That’s Islam. Or protestantism. And I believe I detect a strain of catholics who that wouldn’t bother at all.

 

[JReducation]

Take away the traditions and you left with a bunch of people in a bare room, listening to someone read from a book. That’s Islam. Or protestantism. And I believe I detect a strain of catholics who that wouldn’t bother at all.

As long as you have the Eucharist, you will never have Protestantism.