I'm pretty new to this forum but I've realized that quite a few of my posts end up coming back to this, so I thought I should make a standalone post on it.
In my opinion there's two sides of Traditional Catholicism:
One let's call being a "tradcath", it consists of following the Church's perennial teaching and liturgy as opposed to the modern novelties and errors of the Crisis.
The other let's call being a "trad", it involves being part and identifying with the certain subculture, mores and customs that have grown around the groups of people that make up tradcaths.
Now I don't think I'm alone when I say this, I'm interested in being a tradcath, but I'm as interested in being a trad as I am in being goth, preppy or culturally hungarian.
The big problem I see is that for a lot of people these two get conflated, for them, being a tradcath is synonymous with being trad, and if you offend the rules of traddism and of 1950s suburbian sensibilities, according to them you're a heretic and a quite simply a bad Catholic.
This isn't a new phenomenon, I posted this once but I think it's the perfect quote, here's a Spanish writer in the 50s decrying how the same thing was happening in Spain.
All of this stems from a spirit, prevalent in our Spanish Catholicism, that is quite alien to Catholicism in itself, and which could be called "insatiability." There are too many people in Spain who are not content with someone simply being a Catholic; it is not enough to believe in the articles of faith, receive the sacraments, and fulfill the commandments as best as possible; one must also hold the opinion that the only authentic Catholicism is the Spanish one; one must adopt certain political positions with which Catholics from the rest of the world do not identify; one must be a Neo-Thomist in philosophy; one must believe that Balmes is a great philosopher, that the solution to Spanish problems is already found in the books of Menéndez Pelayo; one must prefer the poetry of Gabriel y Galán to that of Jorge Guillén; one must think that Spanish art is necessarily realistic, that Amor Ruibal is more important than Unamuno, that Gonzalo Bilbao is a better painter than Picasso, that Navarro Villoslada is a better novelist than Baroja, that the Filósofo Rancio was a better Catholic than Jovellanos, that a newspaper should look more like El Siglo Futuro than El Sol; one must be of the opinion that Spanish cinema is full of spirituality, that if you are interested in Donoso Cortés you cannot be interested in Valera, that the only possible logic is Aristotelian, that there are intangible curricula for secondary education, that Christian morality is identical to the customs of the Spanish provincial petty bourgeoisie. Try to disagree on one point, the most minuscule one, and you will see how these people charge against you with all their might.
— Julián Marías
Within the same article this anonymous commenter is also quoted:
The problem is that, at least nowadays, being a "traditionalist" doesn’t mean putting Tradition in its proper place, but rather signing up for a whole host of other ideas and practices. I started frequenting "trad" circles a few years ago, driven by the doctrinal confusion that was spreading more and more. At first it was great, a very beautiful experience because of the liturgy. But as soon as the "trads" gathered to talk and share ideas, that’s where things changed a lot. Basically, to be a "trad," you have to have a favorite Pope and it has to be Pius XII. You have to believe that aircraft leave chemtrails in a conspiracy to kill us all. You should preferably be a Carlist or a Falangist. You have to shout "Viva Cristo Rey" during the Corpus Christi procession with a military impetus, like a platoon of soldiers responding "yes, sir; no, sir!!" to their commander. And so on with many things.
(...)
In short: I love Tradition. But I am not a "trad," because loving it doesn’t mean traveling back to 1936 and signing up for a whole host of dogmas quite unrelated to the Catholic faith. (...) And because of all this, I stopped frequenting "trad" circles. Unfortunately, the "trads" give Tradition a bad name when they do this.
Adiophoron: An indifferent matter.
(philosophy) A matter that is morally neutral.
(theology) Something neither forbidden nor commanded by the Christian religion.
There are many things in the world which are adiophora, here's an image with plenty of them:
The crucial part is this: take almost any of those, and you will see the Catholic Church has either never spoken about it or if it has it has always left the governing principles broad enough to fit both a 1200s Swedish jester, a 1800s African mud-hut dweller and a 2026 Japanese video game developer. The Church is Universal after all.
All of this is to say: whether you like uptempo, you like sanrio aesthetics, you're a gun nut, a biker, a speedrunner, a crypto enthusiast, an anime watcher or any other unusual thing under the sun, don't ever let anyone tell you that you're a bad tradcath solely on account of that. Your sins are whenever you break the ten commandments or do one of the seven capital sins, not whenever you commit what to trads is uncomfortable or a faux-pas
Topic: Adiaphora (Read 90 times)