"Those Angry Traditionalists"
Posted by: tony on 08/20/2008 03:54 PM
Updated by: tony on 08/20/2008 03:54 PM
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Expires: 09/20/2008 12:00 AM
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That was the title given to Mark Shea's article Those Angry Traditionalists by the Inside Catholic folks, but he's taking a lot of flack for it.
All this abuse for basically telling the truth.
I've mentioned before that I'm a traditional minded guy. I love the extraordinary form of the Latin rite and I attend it with my wife once a month on first Friday. The people who attend the chapel at the Franciscan hermitage where the Mass takes place are friendly, helpful and gentle people. When we first attended, the ladies in the pew ahead of us (mantilla-ed, each and every one) passes us back the booklets that are available to follow the Mass properly. I smiled and showed them the 1952 missal that I had brought with me (my wife has a small, zippered 1962 version). The point I am making is that we were treated not as interlopers, but as members of the Body of Christ.
When I first started my journey back to faith, I began at the internet newsgroup alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic. I figured this was going to be a place for Catholics to discuss their faith.
Wow, was I wrong. The place was a nasty, troll-infested, Catholic slam-fest. We had atheists who thought the newsgroup fertile ground for believers to mock. We had assorted Protestants of every denomination who figured this was a place to find papists to convert. When I tried to defend my faith, I realized how weak and uneducated my faith was. My in-dept knowledge of the Bible was next to nil and I had no talent for apologetics at all.
Then I met James Black. He was a Protestant convert to Catholicism and a biblical scholar. I watched him, learned from him, and started following in his footsteps. One of the other denizens of the newsgroup was a gentleman who was coincidentally named Mark too. He was a traditionalist who swore that using the formulation of "for all" instead of the proper translation of "for many" (or "for the multitude") of "pro multis" completely invalidated the consecration of the Eucharist.
This is the sort of uneducated, narrow and wrong headed sort of traditionalist to whom I was first exposed. He let you know that he was bitter, marginalized and the Mass you attended weekly at your "trendy corner chapel" singing "cornfield ditties" was invalid and you should join with him and attend a Latin Mass at an SSPX chapel or an indult Mass if you couldn't find an SSPX chapel. He preferred the SSPX chapel because he didn't believe an indult was needed, and he preferred to worship without one.
There is a name for this attitude. "Disobedience".
The deal I found out was this... The Novus Ordo was validly promulgated by Pope Paul VI. As such, it is the Holy Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. This means that Jesus is real and present after the consecration formulated in the Sacramentary in whatever language it is provided.
So. Traditionalist Mark was wrong. The SSPX was wrong. The Catholic church is still one, holy and apostolic. She carries the deposit of faith, the Truth of God, in Her Bible and Holy Tradition. Since She is the one Church founded by Christ (He didn't found a book club, He founded a community) then in the immortal words of St. Peter: "Where else could we go, Lord. You have the words of eternal life".
The "angry" traditionalists seem to despise "community" (probably since that has become the focus of many Novus Ordo parishes to the exclusion of Christ). They don't seem to want to become members of the community. They are more at home in the "catacombs" of their own making. Pope Benedict is dragging them, kicking and screaming into the community. He did it with his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum. He normalized the "Tridentine" rite and brought it into a position of honor by reiterating that it is the extraordinary form of the Latin rite as opposed to the ordinary form of the Latin rite. Both are equally valid. Both are equally licit. No those with an attachment to the extraordinary form have no excuses for sticking with schismatics, or other marginalized "catacomb dwellers".
I invite my now angry traditionalist brothers and sisters: Put aside your anger, forgive your Church and come into the light. Allow your devotion to be salt for the mix, leaven for the whole loaf. Exert that gravitational pull that the Holy Father mentioned on the ordinary form and help make it more than "ordinary". Help make it more "extraordinary".
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