“Relax and get with the times”: Christianity Lite

With the confidence born of divine faith and true ecclesiastical authority, Pope Leo XIII was able, in 1899, to diagnose one of the characteristic errors of modern times and the only proper response a Catholic can make to it:

The underlying principle of these new opinions [he is speaking of Americanism] is that, in order the more easily to attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them. It does not need many words, beloved son, to prove the falsity of these ideas if the nature and origin of the doctrine which the Church proposes are recalled to mind. … Let it be far from anyone’s mind to suppress for any reason any doctrine that has been handed down. Such a policy would tend rather to separate Catholics from the Church than to bring in those who differ. (Testem Benevolentiae)

Can papal writing get clearer than this? That which belongs to the doctrine of faith and morals handed down by the Church is immutable, unassailable, always relevant, always required; it is from God as its author, for God as its final end, within man’s power by the help of God’s grace—and by it every man will be judged, for God is no respecter of persons.

Religious Liberty in the United States

In his speech on the South Lawn of the White House, Pope Francis spoke of members of the American Congress as being “called” to “fidelity to [the] founding principles [of the United States],” and praised the American tradition of religious liberty:

With countless other people of good will, [American Catholics] are likewise concerned that efforts to build a just and wisely ordered society respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty. That freedom remains one of America’s most precious possessions. And, as my brothers, the United States Bishops, have reminded us, all are called to be vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.

The U.S. churches Francis will visit

Pope Francis is currently in the United States, for the first time in his life.

During his visit in America, he will step inside five churches (not including chapels): the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Saint Patrick's church, all in Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York City; and the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

Remarkably, four of the five churches still have altar rails, which of course will not be used during any of the liturgies with this pope.  All of the churches were built before the Second Vatican Council, and three of them have seen traditional Latin Masses offered at their main altars since the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei in 1988.

Having visited each of these churches, we thought it may be of interest to present a brief summary, from a traditional viewpoint, of the sacred spaces the Holy Father will encounter.

1) The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle started out as a parish church when Washington, D.C. was part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It is most known for the Requiem Low Mass offered by Richard Cardinal Cushing, archbishop of Boston, for President John F. Kennedy's funeral in 1963.

Today, in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, it is considered one of the most liberal parishes in the region, with a notable portion of its congregation opposed to Church teachings and natural law (to put it kindly). Although the cathedral offers a Sunday morning novus ordo partially in Latin (except when something more important bumps it) attempts to offer traditional Latin Masses have been denied.  The cardinal-archbishop lives at another parish, not at the cathedral.

Book Notice: Thomas Storck, From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond

Converted by the World

Rev. P. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., 1877-1964

In the following words from Vol. I of The Three Ages of the Interior Life, first published in 1938, Fr. Garrigou Lagrange, O.P. speaks of Modernism and Americanism as things of the past, but sadly the errors that he described are quite common today.

What does it mean to be a "traditional Catholic"? Aren't all Catholics traditional?

a guest-post by Peter Kwasniewski PhD

Tradition means handing on something to someone
(Traditio of the keys to St. Peter - 12th Cent. manuscript, France)

It is sometimes asserted that traditional Catholicism is bound up with a prideful attitude—that it is impossible to profess traditionalism without being pharisaical. Some even object to the phrase “traditional Catholic,” as if it were redundant: Aren’t Catholics by definition adherents of Catholic tradition—and thus, any Roman Catholic has as much right to be called “traditional” as he has to be called “Roman”?

How nice it would be if this were true, but alas, it is far from being the case.

First, the psychology of the issue. There is a danger of pride or pharisaism in any possible true description of oneself: Christian, Catholic, Roman Catholic, traditionalist. To say “I am a Christian” is a genuine boast for St. Paul and for every martyr who has died for Jesus Christ, including the God-fearing victims of Islamic extremism in Syria and elsewhere. Are we to say that because someone might revel too much in the title of Christian and think himself better than his unbelieving neighbor, the very title ought to be abolished? One might just as well avoid baptism, which, thanks to no merits of our own, truly makes us better than we were before, and far better off than any unbeliever.

Tradition of goods and assets: a concept well established in Roman Law. 
"Traditio nihil amplius transferre debet vel potest ad eum qui accipit, 
quam est apud eum qui tradit." (Corpus Iuris Civilis, Dig., XLI)
(Justinian, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna)

Or, to take up the charge of redundancy: “Catholic Christian” may seem like a triple redundancy, yet it is useful precisely because there are Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

“Traditional Catholic,” likewise, is no redundancy, because there are so many Catholics who are, intentionally or not, modernists in their thinking and their practices. In an ideal world, the Christian ought to be the Catholic, just as the Catholic ought to be traditional; but even as not every Christian is Catholic, not every Catholic is traditional in a meaningful sense of the word.

Pursuing this point, we would be deceiving ourselves if we did not recognize that it is quite possible today—in a startling and unprecedented way—for Catholics not to be traditional, not to be thinking and living in accordance with major elements of their 2,000-year tradition, such as asceticism, liturgical praxis, and adherence to orthodox doctrine. For the first time, we have seen the widespread acceptance of an interpretation of Catholicism that is anti-traditional, that considers itself free from tradition, free to reshape itself according to indeterminable “modern needs.” Apropos the concept of aggiornamento, Karl Barth apparently asked the Catholic Church this uncomfortable question in 1966: “When will you know if the Church is sufficiently updated?” This is the Achilles’ heel of every Weigel-style critique of traditional Catholicism: just like Bugnini in his liturgical reform, Weigel has to pick and choose what’s worth keeping and what ought to be discarded in his evangelical re-envisioning of the Church, as if he were standing outside of tradition, history, and papal teaching, standing over it rather than submitting to be formed, measured, and judged by all of it.

If there are dangers of pride in any state or way of life, there is no less a danger of being proud of one’s very open-mindedness, one’s freedom from ideology, one’s immunity to the error of judgmentalism, one’s superbly balanced apprehension of reality. One can be a Pharisee of open-mindedness, an ideologue of dialogue, a dogmatist about refusing to dogmatize. One can be simplistic by seeing everyone who takes a strong line as a simpleton.

The only one who can escape pride, judgmentalism, and ideology is the one who completely submits his mind to an objective external standard, one who submits his heart to another whom he loves without qualification. The traditional Catholic is one who says: There is such a standard, and it is Divine Revelation, communicated to us in Scripture and Tradition and guarded by the perennial Magisterium. He is one who says: There is such a beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom absolutely everything—all human actions and sufferings, all arts and sciences, all cultures and governments, cities and nations—must be intentionally and explicitly ordered if they are to achieve their God-given purpose. And when they are not so ordered, they are doomed, over time, to feebleness, perversion, anarchy, and suicide. The traditionalist can maintain these positions humbly because they are true, and it is the truth that sets us free from all sin, including the sin of pride.

Traditio means delivering something to someone
(St. Peter holding keys delivers Epistle to St. Silas from his Chair -
cf. I Pt 5:12 - 14th Cent. Bible, France)

The traditionalist desires to receive humbly what the Lord has given us, to open wide his heart to his blessed inheritance that is always so much greater than his own limited mind can comprehend, much less improve upon. The pridefulness of the modern(ist) Catholic consists in thinking himself superior to his Catholic inheritance—in a position, one might say, of “self-absorbed promethean neopelagian” creativity towards what has been devotedly handed down, century upon century. The judgmentalism of the modern Catholic can be seen in his dismissive attitude towards traditions and the traditionalist who loves them, whom he refuses to see as a lover of the full breadth and depth of Christ and of His Church, and whom he finds it easy to caricature as narrow-minded, rigid, joyless Pelagian, et cetera.

I am reminded in this connection of some pointed remarks by Cardinal Siri, published in the Rivista Diocesana Genovese in January 1975 (courtesy of Rorate):

Slogans abound, while catechism is not taught; “pastoral” is continually mentioned, while sacred ministries are gradually abandoned; there is talk of the Word of God—yet it is taught as if it were all a fairy tale. There are dissertations about closeness with God, while at the same time the Most Blessed Eucharist is mocked or ridiculed. At least in practice. And all of this is progress!

One might have thought, in recent years, that Catholics were at last beginning to escape the shadowlands of the seventies, leaving its pomps and works far behind. Alas, in the Church today we are seeing a renewed effort on the part of some to promote the same old postconciliar “progress” lamented by Cardinal Siri. We are being given as our “pastoral model” a modus operandi that originated in the secularizing confusion of the years immediately following the Council—a modus operandi that badly failed back then and will, by God’s justice, fail again and again, since it is anti-traditional in content, method, and goals.

Indeed, something worse has come upon us: a return to the open denigration, marginalization, and persecution of traditionalists. It is as if, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, there were a new regime intent on reintroducing slavery or, at best, arranging strict segregation and second-class citizenship. In the realistic words of Don Ariel Levi di Gualdo:

We did have the Second Vatican Council, but, in practice, during the following years, we returned to the period that preceded the Council of Trent, with its corruption and alarming internal struggles for power. After abundant discourses ad nauseam about dialogue, collegiality—for nearly half a century now—new forms of clericalism and authoritarianism have emerged. The progressive champions of dialogue and collegiality use aggression and coercion against anyone who thinks outside of the “religiously correct.” (Don Ariel, cited at Rorate)

To return to our point of departure: in normal circumstances, “Catholic” should be equivalent with “traditional.” Today, it decisively does not mean that; indeed, with the infiltration of modernism into the highest echelons of the Church, it cannot mean that, for some individuals. And yet, since to be a Catholic is—and must always be—to adhere to the Tradition handed down to us from the saints and to honor and preserve Catholic traditions, it follows that an explicit or implicit adherence to Tradition is, in fact, necessary for salvation, whereas hating or despising Tradition is a sign of one’s intention to depart from the Church of Christ, as a result placing one’s soul in jeopardy. There is far more resting on this matter than a particular person’s preference or inclinations: the very salvation of souls is at stake. The joy of the Gospel is bound up with knowing the truth, confessing it in season and out of season, and clinging to it with the determination of love. May God preserve us from the false joys of this world and all of the new Gospels that clamor for acceptance.

[Images and captions chosen by NC for the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter.]

Editorial Note: After "reactionary", "illiberal"...

Christ is the true Light
[Lucien Simon, Les communiantes (The First Communicants), 1911, Musée d'Orsay]

What will be the next "insult" that this strange breed of Americanist Catholics whose century-old dream has been blending water and oil will choose to depict Traditional Catholics?

"God-fearing"? "Conscientious"? "Principled"?

Traditionalism (that is, Catholicism) is both historical and non-historical. Naturally, a Catholic imbibed in Tradition is often in love with the traditions of his land - but these two cannot be confused. Love for God and love for country are not the same thing, and there should be great suspicion that trying to infuse Catholicism with the values of a specific place and time as a condition for the healthy "development" of the Church might come too close to idolatry for comfort.

In other words, it is understandable that, having had a couple of centuries of reasonably (though not completely) safe exercise of their religion, American Catholics have become joyful or almost proud of the civil liberties recognized to them and the true Church of Christ. This historical contingency does not and must not alter the doctrine of the Church one iota - and much less can it be demanded of American Catholics to fuse into one the humanistic founding principles of their nation, rooted in specific circumstances of time and place, and the eternal principles of the hierarchical Religion established by God Incarnate Himself.

One thousand years henceforth, if this Earth is still in existence, there may or may not be the Constitutional Federal Republic known as the United States. But there will certainly be a Catholic Church. And the circumstances of 1776 or 1787 will be as remote then as those of the age of Charlemagne may seem now. This is why Tradition, while based on a permanent historical foundation (as willed by God Himself when He incarnated in History and established a succession that the word "tradition" itself depicts), is also above and outside History. When entering a Traditional Latin Mass today, a visitor from the age of Charlemagne would encounter many differences, but he would immediately recognize the setting, the sounds, and most of the words. And so, we know it, would one of us in that hypothetical far future, when the Traditional Mass will still be celebrated and cherished, if only by a remnant...

A gracious acceptance of the Law (as long as it does not impinge upon the rights of the Church) and thankfulness for the bounty of the earth do not prevent the Catholic faithful from recognizing that their own land departs significantly from the demands of Catholic doctrine. Instead of silly anecdotes and vignettes, let us look back at the reality lessons of the Martyrs of our Enlightened Age. Enlightenment is a tricky concept: it leads to the guillotine and mass graves, and to the drownings of Nantes, and the Vendean Genocide, and to atheism and all its horrors that deigned to abolish Christ in the name of the workers or convert him into a model for a paganized yet enlightened and superior race, and to the nuclear obliteration of Urakami. It leads to the rivers of blood of unborn children, the victims upon the Enlightened altar of an Enlightened polity. It can be a light of goodness and reason, or simply the deceptive light of Lucifer.

'Even if every nation living in the king's dominions obeys him, each forsaking its ancestral religion to conform to his decrees, I, my sons and my brothers will still follow the covenant of our ancestors. ... We shall not swerve from our own religion either to right or to left.' (I Maccabees ii)

Neither to Right nor to Left: Amen.