Tag Archives: Traditionalism

The Church is Hierarchical and Charismatic

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Today in the second reading from the Office of Readings was from sections 4 and 12 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church from the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium.  It is apropos to the Novena in preparation for Pentecost and provides me with the opportunity to develop ideas I introduced in my last post.  There I posited that in the light of the teaching of the postconciliar popes the traditional and charismatic approaches to spirituality should not be considered fundamentally opposed, though much of what goes under the title of both “traditionalism” and “pentecostalism” is problematic.

I believe this is the sense of sections 4 and 12 of Lumen Gentium in which the Council indicates two things: that the Church is equipped and directed by both “hierarchical and charismatic gifts”; that it is “not only through the sacraments and the ministries of the Church that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and leads the people of God and enriches it with virtues, but, “allotting his gifts to everyone according as He wills, He distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank.”

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Rorate Caeli and Marcelo Gonzalez Dig Themselves In Deeper

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Marcelo Gonzalez is the Argentinian blogger who was the source for Rorate Caeli’s report on the status of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass in Beunos Aires under Cardinal Bergoglio. Dawn Eden pointed, from one of Gonzalez’s articles that he is a Holocaust denier and also called his report on the status of EF under Cardinal Bergoglio a “smear.” A controversy has ensued.

Rorate Caeli has defended the accuracy of Gozalez’s report and seems to be correct that Cardinal Bergoglio provided only one priest for the EF, who celebrated only a “hybrid mass.” Apparently, this was unacceptable to the Latin Mass community and so poorly attended that it was discontinued. But the report of Gozalez, as reproduced by Rorate Caeli, begins thus:

Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral seem to have been irrelevant to him.

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Six Million Jews Killed by Mistake?

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Dawn Eden has published a further update on the use of the work of Marcelo Gonzalez, a Holocaust denier, by Rorate Caeli to criticize Pope Francis.  I have also called out RC for the hypocritical arguments it uses in order to cloak the lack of charity going on over there.

Gonzalez has posted a clarification of his original piece on the Holocaust in order to reply to Dawn’s objections.  Dawn’s response is excellent.  So is the article to which she links at the bottom by Jeannette Pryor, which describes by way of personal experience the extremes of ideological thinking to which traditionalism can lead.  Jeannette’s piece is a must read.

New Catholic at RC claims to be free of ideological thinking, and also claims that I have some kind of personal vendetta against him.  That simply is not the case.  My problem with Rad Trad propaganda has nothing to do with RC in the first place.  It is only that RC has made itself the premier traditionalist blog and is a clearing house for all things Rad Trad, and the same time protects itself from criticism in a “passive-aggressive” manner. (See also this.) Continue reading →

Updated: Antisemitism Cloaked in Lace and Brocade

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Rorate Caeli is engaging in one huge piece of hypocrisy with its post entitled: “Our supreme priority is love.”  Dawn Eden has taken RC’s reporting to task because of its use of the opinions of an antisemitic blogger, and now RC accuses her of being an uncharitable ideologue.

RC is a clearing house for every spiteful opinion on the postconciliar Church, and no one is exempt as a target, including Pope Benedict, who now RC claims as their great ideal—the man who reached out the SSPX in charity and has been despised by the progressives for doing so. Now RC claims to share in the Pope Emeritius’ persecution because like him, RC is a the promoter of pastoral charity towards those most marginalized.  Like Pope Benedict, RC wants “to educate with love.”

What?

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The Franciscan Papacy: Rebuilding or Demolition?

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The life of St. Francis is subject to much sentimental hype because of his love for creation and his identification with the poor.  The saccharine images on holy cards and sculptures in gardens don’t help the matter.  And Zeffirelli’s hippie-revolutionary film version of the saint is positively infuriating.  Pope Francis seems be subject to the same kind of misinterpretaion.

The media and the Catholic propagandists on the left and the right will continue to mythologize about St. Francis and Pope Francis’ selection of the name.  The pope himself has said the reason for the choice of name has to do with “peace” and “poverty.”  Oh, those two words: two little threads out of which the propagandists will weave a rope to hang us all with.  Sandro Magister puts it well:

In the pseudo-Franciscan and pauperist mythology that in these days so many are applying to the new pope, imagination runs to a Church that would renounce power, structures, and wealth and make itself purely spiritual.

But it is not for this that the saint of Assisi lived. In the dream of Pope Innocent III painted by Giotto, Francis is not  demolishing the Church, but carrying it on his shoulders. And it is the Church of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, at that time recently restored and decorated lavishly, but made ugly by the sins of its men, who had to be purified. It was a few followers of Francis who fell into spiritualism and heresy. Continue reading →

Second Guessing the Conclave Before It Happens

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This brings us to a short meditation on our current pre-Conclave period. That there are in some sense factions among contemporary cardinals is clear. Tension among these factions ought to be quite intense, given the fact that the road that the Church will tread will be very different depending upon which of three possible “parties” comes out of the Conclave victorious: one that will follow Pope Benedict XVI’s lead, but perhaps more consistently brake the Revolution within the Church and ultimately realize that it must reverse it entirely; one that will more openly and enthusiastically join in the dismantling of the pitiful remains of Catholic Christendom; or one that will continue mindlessly to smile and praise the “fruits of the Council” as the Mystical Body of Christ is mocked, outraged, and reduced to utter impotence.

—Dr. John Rao

Dr. Rao’s assessment is a good summary of the traditionalist/crypto-traditionalist habit of mind.  As a writer for The Remnant, he can hardly be characterized as a crypto-traditionalist, but I believe his tripartite division of the partisanship within the conclave betrays the evangelical bent of the crypto-traditionalists.  It is a bit of having it both ways in the interests of “conversion.”

So, according to Dr. Rao the three parties of the conclave are as follows:

  1. Party of Pope Benedict on Steroids
  2. Party of Modernist Dismantlers
  3. Party of Conciliar Disaster Denial

Rao and the crypto-traditionalists would have us believe that they are on the side of Pope Benedict, who they claim agrees with them in principle, but for one reason or another (lack of moral fortitude, blackmail from the homosexual cabal, fear of the Jews or whatever) has not found himself able to follow through with his own beliefs.

But this is where Rao wants to have it both ways.  The crypto-trads wave the Holy Father’s flag when it suits them.  Rao claims to be following “Pope Benedict’s lead,” but with perhaps with “more consistency” than the Pope himself.  Under the banner of the Holy Father and against those who wish to see the Second Vatican Council implemented properly, Rao hopes to stop the Revolution which is the Council and turn back the clock. This we are told is, in principle, the position of Pope Benedict, which he has not been able to apply consistently.

But more transparent traditionalists would say that this is just silly, because clearly the Holy Father has not abandoned his support of the Council at very fundamental levels of principle.  Take, for example, Pope Benedict’s most recent defense of interreligious dialogue, which traditionalists claim is undeniably contradictory to the position laid out by Pius XI in Moralium Animos.  Likewise, in his last substantive address on the matter of Vatican II, the Holy Father renewed his defense of the hermeneutic of continuity, which is hardly something that the traditionalists, such as Professor Roberto de Mattei, to whom Rao refers, except.  I wonder how far Dr. Rao will go to follow the following “lead” of Pope Benedict XVI:

It seems to me that, 50 years after the Council, we see that this virtual Council is broken, is lost, and there now appears the true Council with all its spiritual force. And it is our task, especially in this Year of Faith, on the basis of this Year of Faith, to work so that the true Council, with its power of the Holy Spirit, be accomplished and the Church be truly renewed.

If Dr. Rao were not trying to engage of boilerplate traditionalist propaganda he would more logically realize that there are actually four parties in the conclave to be reckoned with:

  1. Party of Benedict XVI’s Hermeneutic of Continuity in Reform
  2. Party of Trad/Crypto-Trad Counter-Revolution
  3. Party of Modernist Dismantlers
  4. Party of Conciliar Disaster Denial

In actuality, I believe the fourth party is rather small.  Rao tries to invoke Pope Benedict as his leader and places the hermeneutic of continuity in the Party of Conciliar Disaster Denial because that is what the propaganda requires.  The moment the traditionalists admit that the current situation is more complex than they imagine, and thus, that the solution is more nuanced, is the moment that their show is over.  In all actuality, those who are neither modernists or traditionalists are quite willing to engage in the reform of the reform.  They just wish to do in on the basis of the sound principles laid down by the Council and taught by the postconcilar popes. Continue reading →

Gnostic Catholic?

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Your comment seems at least to tend towards making of the Catholic religion a sort of Gnostic cult where no Catholic can ever know his faith until and unless the pope tells him what to believe, even if the pope tells him something totally different than past popes told him.

—Mike

I have to admit, this is a new one on me.  It had never occurred to me that adherence to the authority of the living pope, as a matter of presumption on the part of the ordinary faithful, could ever be construed as a form of gnosticism or as the logical error of appeal to authority (definition).  So, I guess we could say that the postconciliar Church of today is the Gnostic Church of Vatican II.

I have never claimed that the traditionalist arguments have no plausibility whatever.  What I have argued is that the only Church that Christ established is the one under the authority of His Vicar on earth.  Papal teaching authority cannot be reduced to documents, nor can the living pope be put in a box until he is needed to define something.  As I have already pointed out, the pope’s

power of jurisdiction in matters of faith, morals, discipline and government is supreme, universal, absolute, and immediate over the whole Church and each of its members. To deny this is heresy.

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The Heresy of Popular Sovereignty

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 It was a political hermeneutic: for the media, the Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different trends in the Church. It was obvious that the media would take the side of those who seemed to them more closely allied with their world. There were those who sought the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression “People of God”, power for the people, the laity. There was this threefold question: the power of the Pope, which was then transferred to the power of the bishops and the power of all – popular sovereignty. Naturally, for them, this was the part to be approved, to be promulgated, to be favoured.

—Benedict XVI’s Address to the Roman Clergy of February 14, 2013

The complete address has been released on the Vatican website.  Please read it in its entirety.  It is extraordinarily important.

In the Hands of God: Updated

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The Lord is calling me to “climb the mountain,” to devote myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church, indeed, if God is asking me to do this it is so that I can continue to serve the Church with the same dedication and the same love with which I have done thus far, but in a way that is better suited to my age and my strength.

—Benedict XVI, February 24, 2013

These words from the Holy Father rise above the confusion of the media feeding frenzy, tearing into every rumor, conspiracy theory and rash judgment about his abdication.  I am not so naive as to think that the media circus should be surprising, nor am I scandalized that men should speak the sincere convictions concerning this matter.  But there are risks involved in all of it. Continue reading →

The SSPX and ot…

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The SSPX and other traditionalists have problems with Vatican II mostly on account of the thought-form and world-feeling that emerge from the conciliar documents. Search as they might, they cannot find the religion that elevates their souls in the present manner of the Catholic Church. To their souls, the Church has become concrete, glass, and steel- whereas their spirits thirst not simply for incense climbing the Gothic vault but for sanctuaries where all ancient symbols go untouched by modern eyes, touch, and thoughts. The entire project of the Council cannot but appear a monstrosity to them. It is the difference between communion received kneeling and on the tongue versus communion received in the hands while standing. Their religion is poetry and the Council’s is prose. Some of them might piece together arguments after they have experienced the breech between what they feel to be transcendence and what they see in the contemporary Church. Ultimately, such things are rationalization, which is why they are so poorly argued. Besting them in debate is easy. Presenting them evidence of their disobedience is similarly not a challenge. They fly only all the more into a rage and insist upon the truth of their position, because their hearts cannot rest inside so cold and alien a space as the present world.

Only orders such as your own, Reverend Father, have any hope of drawing them back, specifically by its promotion not simply of devotion to Mary but of the kind of devotion to her that hearkens to the spirit of St. Bernard and all that entails.

—Aegis