The Traditionalist

The Body of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church, has been inflicted a great wound, more grievious
than any other She has suffered up to the present time because this wound has been wrought by
the most loyal of all Her members, the Traditionalist.

The wound is especially most telling for the reason that the Traditionalist would have been the least
of Her followers to inflict it.  Recall Shakespeare describing the "unkindest cut of all."

That a division exists, a cacophony of voices ringing out not in unision but like a babel of discordance,
in the Traditionalist camp, is very evident. Accusations of distrust spew out from among traditionalists
and are hurled at each other at every opportunistic moment.

At times, it seems there isn't, in a sense, a true Traditionalist.

First of all, they are a splintered group, at the present time quite numerous, very few of whom conform
to each other. Thus splintered and dissected, broken away from the principal cause, each group claims to
be the authentic one.

What is happening and why?

First, let's ask what is Traditionalism, and who are its adherents, the Traditionalists. In the short span of
some 30 years, the term has already affected some vulgarism, because of its misuse by psuedo-traditionalists
and a variety of pretenders.

Prior to Vatican II, traditionalism had two definitions:
1) The transmission of teachings or dogmas by successive series of witnesses, whose testimony is included
     in word or writing.
2) a movement of heterodox teachers , also known as fideists, led by the bishop of Avranches (1721),
    who taught that the truths of natural religion and the existence of God cannot be arrived by reason
    alone. This false doctrine was finally condemned by the First Vatican Council.

The first definition is probably what Catholicism understands about Sacred Tradition. The second definition
has expired from usage but it appears that it has again found itself resurrected in the philosophies of
phenomenology and secular humanism, both very much rampant in the modern Catholic Church.

Since Vatican II, there has emerged a third definition: the preservation of all things that existed before
the Council. Although it is not admitted, this is a reaction to the havoc brought about by the
dismantlers of the Church. It is a self-defense mechanism against the heresy being propounded by
self-interpreters of the conciliar documents.

The thing that all Traditionalists find a common ground on is that they rightly consider themselves
"defenders of the faith."

Ask anybody who has been around before the Council and you will be told that nobody called himself
a "traditionalist," in any sense that we all have taken to the meaning of the word.

The definition of "traditionalism" is therefore to be understood in context of the post-conciliar age.

When did Traditionalism emerge? Was it a spirit or a movement? People speak of the "spirit of
Vatican II," so then, there should be a spirit of Traditionalism.

In 1962, Fr. De Pauw started the Catholic Tradional Movement. It was created for the purpose of
keeping check of the goings-on of the newly opened Second Vatican Council. It was almost prophetic
because some years after the Council ended, true traditionalists were viewing the emergence of a "new"
Church, one which did not hold to Tradition and which in fact broke with Tradition. The Resistance was
born, the impetus of which was to keep Tradition alive: "Itaque frates state: et tenete traditiones..."
(2 Thess 2:14). One among the first in several groups rallying to the cause of the Resistance was a
nondescript society of priests led by a maverick Roman Catholic Archbishop at Econe, Switzerland.

At the risk of being labeled a "Lefebrist" by the very people whom I should find affinity in traditionalism,
I would unequivocably say that Traditionalism as we know it today was born in 1976.

It was in the torrid summer of that year when the archbishop proceeded against the Pope's orders to
ordain 12 Society priests according to the traditional Roman Rite. The punishment was swift and
uncompromising: suspension "a divinis," forbidding the exercise of their sacred priestly functions.
Rome believed that the decree would have put an end to the rebellious prelate, and pronounced the
demise of a traditional fraternal society of Priests, who would carry on the Traditions of the Church as
she has known them for some 2000 years.

The opposite happened.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

An unprecedented and unqualified support rallied behind Mons. Lefebvre. The laity, suspicious of the
motives of Rome, began to see the wisdom of this diminutive archbishop, who all alone stood to defy
Rome.  Thus "traditionalism" was born.

Let us now look into the splintered groups.

Who are the traditionalists? Who are these who take upon themselves to be guardians of "Tradition"?
Who are they who take upon themselves to be the new Inquisitors? Are there different persuasions of
Traditionalism? What makes a Traditionalist? Is it enough to qualify as a Traditionalist one who simply
aspires for the return of the Immemorial Latin Mass?

What about those born after the innovations of Vatican II have been implemented, who have known
nothing of the "old" Church -- are they Traditionalists too who simply yearn for the Latin Mass and nothing
more.

And those who burn the candle from both ends, seeking answers to countless questions and propounding
endless theories about licitness , validity, the priesthood, conciliar documents, the new Mass, Encyclicals,
the Papacy, and so forth -- are they Traditionalists too?

And those who disagree with everything else, who are swayed and influenced by interpretations of
proprietary meanings of Tradition posited by false messengers, who don't know any better, are they
Traditionalists?

In essence, as we have seen, there have emerged countless splintered groups: most giving cause to
the Resistance movement, and true to Tradition, desiring the restoration of all things in Christ; some
joining simply for a reaction; others mainly to disrupt the proceedings and cause more grief to the
already grievously wounded divine Heart of Our Lord.

And those who teeter between the brink of two worlds -- the Indultists. Loyal to a fault to the Conciliar
Church yet clinging to the hope of returning to an ordered way of things, celebrating two diverse paschal
ceremonies, one truly a mystery, a true and Holy Sacrifice, the other nothing but a banal meal.

And it may come as a shock but even some Novus Ordo functionaries are waving the "traditionalist"
banner high enough for all to see. After all it is a new Church, so it is a "new" tradition. We shall see who
they are.

However, to be more precise, it is valid to say to be a Traditionalist means NOT to belong to the
Novus Ordo persuasion.

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