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I agree with Father when he says traditionalist are ridged, locked into themselves, and always condemning.   Anyone who has traveled in Traditional circles long enough must admit that this is true.  Just last week there was a small family who had never been to the Latin Mass.  I watched the "faithful ".  Some made facial expressions that clearly indicated their displeasure with slacks and no head covering.  After Mass others walked by and just looked at the ground.  Luckily, there were a few who were very welcoming.  One kind lady even went and sat next to them, offering them missals and showing them how to use it.  Most however ignored them.  Why? Fear? Pride? Lack of charity?  HMMmmmm...

There are the "little house on the prairie" folks who openly claim that if you don't ware prairie dresses, can your own food and slaughter your own meat you are somehow too worldly.   We have intense home schoolers who, with tears rolling down their face preach your children will go to hell if you send them to school.  We have the holier then thaugh types who boldly quote papal docuмents and spew off Lain phrases to pontificate their Catholicism ....throw in the conspiracy theorist, sedevecantists, and the pious prayers, and you have a mixed bag of pickles.   We even had one person frown in disbelief that we actually let our kids join the local soccer team and little league baseball.

There is a lack of charity in Traditional circles that must be addressed.  We use to have a very good priest who was great at coralling the factions.  One time he preached that if God wanted us all to live on little house on the prairie he'd have had us born in 1857.  If that's how you choose to live your life That's fine as long as you understand that such a lifestyle may not be for everyone, nor does that Catholic Church require it. He was great at breaking down these cliques.  Once left these cliques started to return.

I believe something must be done to address this issue.  One visitor to tradition said "these people are all over the map."  However compromising with doctrine, sleeping with modernist Rome, and ignoring the danger (poisoned soup) of Vatican II is not the answer. We must continue to shout these dangers from the rooftop.   Like St Bernard said, a Catholic priest must be like a guard dog who barks at approaching danger.  If the dog stops barking, it's useless.  

I found this type of behavior very off-putting when I first took notice of Tradition. It delayed my coming out of the Novus Ordo but I persevered. These days I have developed a sense of humor toward the condition, but I often observe others wounded by it. I think it has something to do with the personality types drawn to Tradition.

Fr. Pfluger has a reputation for being the 'forward thinker' of the Society and more deadly that his boss. Had his career coincided with the onset of the conciliar revolution, he may have done well in Vatican circles ...a position he was hoping to acquire late in the game! But he doubtless considered climbing aboard the Society bandwagon was of some value and a way of rising to the top or climbing up the slippery pole as others would put it.

And once at the top his real work starts! Of course, traditional rigidity is his number one enemy in all this because it prevents him from flexing those progressive muscles in waiting. He confirms the standard conservative/liberal pattern and the main business of Menzingen, apart from money-making, will be how far to push the Society in the new direction and hopefully acquire a level of peer respectability entitling it to a seat at the table discussing the 'future of the Church'. Will he have studied Bugnini closely and the art of joining two opposing ideologies seamlessly? Cunning is required here and slight of hand, not Joseph Ratzinger's impossible intellectualism.

Behind the facade of 'doctrinal talks' we endured for years as we now endure 'rosary crusades', the real debate is about the Society's future place in the new church. A generation may die off before those in the pews fully realise and accept this. But Father is honest enough to turn up the volume in the hope that his ideas for change can be absorbed faster. It is therefore left to the wide-awake laity to prove they prefer to be rigidly locked in the past as appropriate and can spot a usurper when they see one.