Found this "gem" from Pope Jimmy. Perfectly points out the differences in the Neo-Cath and Traditional approaches to the Crisis. This is exactly who the Neo-Caths have made near zero progress curtailing the revolution.
http://www.jimmyakin.org/2006/04/overcoming_temp.htmlhttp://www.jimmyakin.org/2006/04/overcoming_radt.htmlOvercoming Temptations To RadTradismPart One
As promised in my post Surviving Sunday Mass, I want to offer suggestions for overcoming temptations to radical Traditionalism. If you too have struggled with temptations to spiritual fruitchucking and have so far triumphed, please feel free to add your suggestions.
First, to deal with a bit of “old business” from the combox for Surviving Sunday Mass:
What is my definition of radical Traditionalism? Unlike a devotion to the ancient Catholic customs and disciplines of the Church, radical Traditionalism is when a Catholic allows himself to become so disillusioned with genuine problems in the Church, such as liturgical abuses, and begins to reject the Church’s authority to regulate the Church’s customs and disciplines. RadTrads are most commonly found attending schismatic and “independent” Catholic chapels, but can also be found filling the pews of indult Tridentine Masses. I must quickly add that not all (or even most) indult attendees are RadTrads -- for example, I personally know a number of Traditionalists who can in no way be termed “RadTrad,” who simply prefer the Tridentine liturgy, and who dislike the black eye given the movement by RadTrads. But I can say that the RadTrads are likely to be at least part of the reason many bishops hesitate to expand permission to celebrate the indult Tridentine or to form indult Tridentine parishes.
Another reader said:
"Are you really of the opinion that Catholic Traditionalism is a sin which temptations to must be guarded against, or even a disease for which you must search for a cure or an innoculation?
"Words fail in the face of such condescension."
No, I’m not of that opinion because I believe that a sharp distinction must be made between Catholic Traditionalism (which is a spirituality allowed by the Church) and RadTradism (which is a movement of Catholics who have allowed themselves to become so angry that it has disturbed their spiritual peace). RadTradism is a distortion of genuine Catholic Traditionalism and should not be confused with it. Just as the so-called Spirit of Vatican II is a distortion of the Church since that council, so we might call RadTradism a false Spirit of the Council of Trent.
Now, on to a few of my suggestions, in no particular order.
Don’t church-shop. Recently, a gentleman contacted Catholic Answers asking if he could register at a parish outside of his diocese because “all of the parishes in his diocese” were allegedly so problematic that he felt could not worship as a Catholic in his own diocese. The only church at which he felt “at home” and “spiritually fed” was in a neighboring diocese. I told him that he was free to register at any Catholic parish he pleased, but I also cautioned him against the church-shopper attitude. Being “at home” in a parish is simply a matter of attending long enough to become part of parish life and Catholics are “spiritually fed” through valid sacraments. Privately, I highly doubted whether he had actually attended “all” of the parishes in his diocese and so could even make such a judgment about his ability to attend them. It was more likely that he was making an over-generalization about his diocese based on an overall impression of the diocese.
Church-shopping can be justified in certain cases, such as when you need to make sure that your children are properly educated in the Catholic faith, or when the problems in the parish completely outweigh any benefit the parish provides. But church-shopping to find a parish that you think will be heaven on earth can lead to RadTradism. Parishes are rarely static -- pastors are reassigned, liturgy committees change hands, DREs come and go -- and a parish you think will satisfy you could shift toward laxity within a few years. If you too easily throw in the towel and move on, where will your roaming end? For a former cyber-acquaintance of mine who was so disturbed by abuses at parishes he visited in his diocese, his roaming in search of heaven on earth eventually ended in sedevacantism.
Support your priests. A few years ago, a parish in Texas was outraged by the apparently unjust reassignment of the pastor. (I use the qualifier “apparently” because the only information I have on the case was what appeared in the blogosphere.) A member of the parish called Catholic Answers soon after the reassignment, distraught that the majority of the parish’s congregation had left to follow this priest to his new assignment. He was disappointed that the new pastor had adjusted certain traditional practices the previous pastor had adopted, but his main concern was how he could support the new pastor who was facing a terrible situation. This gentleman knew that any new pastor thrust into such a situation would have had a difficult job and he wanted to give this pastor the support he’d have hoped would be there if his own son were a priest facing such a situation. I was mightily impressed with this gentleman’s Catholic spirit. He could have followed the crowd to the new parish, but he felt it important to support the new pastor. And, perhaps because of that, he may have been unwittingly guarding himself against RadTradism.
Get to know your priests and religious. When a priest or religious is just a face on the altar or in the classroom, it is easy to depersonalize them into cogs in a “Vatican apparatus.” When you invite them to a meal, bring them Christmas cookies, get to know them on a person-to-person basis, you are inoculated against a tendency to believe the worst about people with whom you might disagree. One of the reasons I am generally optimistic about the state of the major religious orders is because I’ve met great Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, and even Jesuits. As a Dominican friend once put it, the troubles in the major orders are like a microcosm of the troubles in the universal Church. Being able to think in terms of concrete individuals whom you know and love can keep you from brooding over abstractions like Those Darn Jesuits.
Pray for spiritual peace. Feel free to use my prayer, “Lord, please don’t let me become a spiritual fruitchucker!” But pray for grace to overcome temptation. Without grace any struggle against temptation is futile.
Examine your conscience. Many RadTrads lamented bitterly over John Paul II’s decision to examine the conscience of the human element of the mystical body of Christ and repent of the sins committed by that human element throughout Christian history, rather than implementing their proposed method of dealing with dissent: Kicking butt and taking names. But if we expect God to grant us the grace to overcome the dissent, we must first be willing to repent and seek forgiveness. This is true on the universal level and on the personal level. If your parish disappoints you, first examine your own conscience to see whether you are yourself a part of the problem.
Part Two As promised in my post Overcoming Temptations to RadTradism, here are some more ideas for taming the spiritual fruitchucker in you. (For those of you who may have missed the article that inspired the spiritual fruitchucking metaphor, click here.)
Once again, more suggestions, in no particular order.
Accept that you don’t Know It All. In my original article in this series, Surviving Sunday Mass, I led into this series by recalling the problems at a recent Sunday Mass in my parish. Turns out, not all of the problems that bothered me actually were problems. At least one thing that occurred was a legitimate option. Which goes to show that however well informed you think you are about the Catholic faith, it is possible (indeed, even likely) that you may have some misconceptions. When you become upset at a perceived abuse in the Church, assuming that there is a possibility that you could be mistaken about what the faith requires can spare you a lot of frustration and resentment. And acknowledging that popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, and religious are more likely than you to be better informed about what the faith requires is a simple act of humility.
Don’t rely on hearsay. Awhile back I read a post by a St. Blogger who was fuming because he had stumbled across an online article reporting on an apparently dubious action taken by a province of a religious order in dealing with alleged abusive members in their ranks. In reading the article to which my fellow St. Blogger referred, I too was concerned, but, unlike my fellow St. Blogger, I personally knew a member of that religious order’s province and so I asked him about the story. His explanation of the province’s action threw entirely new light onto the story and made the previously mystifying action reasonable.
The moral of this story is not to try to track down the Other Side Of A News Story. You probably won’t have the kind of contact I did with an insider willing to speak to you “off the record.” You also probably won’t have the time or resources to invest in researching all such stories like that on your own. The take-away lesson here is to be dubious of what you read in the media. Even when a journalist has all of his factual ducks in a row -- which is not always the case -- he may be unable to obtain comment from all parties to the story. Especially in the case of religious news stories, authorities with a diocese or a religious order may be unwilling to speak to the media -- not out of a nefarious desire to cover up truth but because they are unable to comment on a particular case for any number of justifiable reasons. It will be far easier on your spiritual peace to assume that there is a reasonable explanation that could be offered if the circuмstances existed in which it could be offered than to allow yourself to become scandalized over every headline you read on the Internet.
Seek out the good. In the comments to Surviving Sunday Mass, some commenters were perplexed over why I should be grateful that my parish has far fewer liturgical abuses than others. The implied concern was that I should instead seek out liturgical perfection and be satisfied with nothing less.
Liturgical perfection is a meritorious goal. No denying that. But when a parish that has had significant problems is making strides toward liturgical orthopraxy to nitpick over the wrinkles that remain rather than appreciate the work that has already been done is uncharitable. It’s one thing to continue to hope for more ironing; it’s another to refuse to be satisfied with nothing less than instant transformation according to your specifications. Sure, if I were a pastor, there would be things that I’d do differently at my parish than are already done. Fortunately for the parish, that’s never going to happen. And fortunately for me too, because then I’d be on the field exposed to “quarterback sacks” rather than calling the plays from the comfort of my armchair.
Appreciate the concept of spiritual fatherhood. A religious order priest once told me the story of how a parish that was staffed by his religious order decided to offer a pre-Vatican-II Latin Mass to their parish. The priests became more and more concerned because RadTrads in the parish were causing problems because they had to share the parish with “Novus Ordo” Masses. Finally, when the RadTrads demanded that only hosts consecrated at the Latin Mass be offered at the Latin Mass -- they did not want hosts consecrated at a “Novus Ordo” Mass -- the priests had had enough. In short order the pre-Vatican-II Latin Mass was cancelled and the RadTrads were further embittered over what they perceived to be “persecution.”
But look at it from the priests’ viewpoint: They are spiritual fathers charged with developing Christians into spiritually-mature adults. As an analogy, let’s assume that you were a parent and in your home your family had very specific ideas about what they would eat for dessert. Because you love them, you usually try to accommodate the children’s desire for Haagen-Dazs. But one night you run out of Haagen-Dazs and all you could offer was no-frills, off-brand vanilla. What would you do if your children screamed for Haagen-Dazs and refused to be satisfied with the dessert that you offered? If it were me, the children would be lucky to get fruit for dessert that night, and that would probably be the last they’d see of Haagen-Dazs for quite awhile.
This is an imperfect analogy, but the point is this: Sometimes the otherwise inexplicable actions of the Church become more clear when we remember that clergy are not our employees who must be expected to provide us with what we demand but our spiritual fathers who are charged to provide us with what we need -- whether or not we want it.
Please feel free to contribute your suggestions to the combox.
Topic: Akin: "Overcoming Rad Trad Temptations" (Read 1628 times)