Catholicism, and the New Religion of Tradition
On radtrads and why we should be concerned about their growth
And in fine, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble: Not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing: for unto this are you called, that you may inherit a blessing. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile.
1 Peter 3:8-10
The words of a man who denied Christ. Peter’s faults are well-mimicked in our own. Just as he denied the ultimate flesh-and-blood intermediary of God — not just an angel, nor a burning bush, but a man as the Word — likewise we deny Christ in all of our sin. Perhaps, in more specific, however, we deny Christ when we deny our brother. Who is our brother? Well, how are we to treat a neighbor if as our brother? Just as we are to treat our enemy, with the love we have for our neighbor — like a brother. We deny the Truth when we abstain from forgiveness. Just as if one were to spit out the Holy Eucharist. Christ did not deny us because we sin, but so many of us have the gall to deny others because they sin. Do you in earnest go to confession and recant the sins of others?
The sentiment I see building in all nominal Christians is a pop form of religion. One they can fashion their life image out of, but bereft of spiritual equivalence. To many Catholics especially, the traditional expression of religion is the flavor of the week. It’s something they use to differentiate themselves from the “wishy-washy” or “whitewashed” Catholics. It is a genuine reflection of faith for some, pastiche for others. However, for certain groups, it has become the forefront of their faith. It is something that has taken the driver wheel wherein all their faith follows behind. This has culminated in a sentiment of rebellion, of unrighteous indignation, of high-falutin’ behavior, but most importantly — of a type of Christian that has forgotten their prime objective to love, lead, and forgive.
Without understanding the impetus of history as being in constant motion, we will fail to illuminate the truth and love of God by corrupting our faith in His Church, our hope for the future, and our love for others and for Christ. If the laws of nature did not have the changes set upon them by reality itself, then the practice of these laws put forth by God would never be proven or fulfilled.
In this article, I will provide some examples from my life that hopefully elucidate a crisis of faith, and it isn’t coming from “liberal bishops” or “oppression from within the Church,” but rather from quasi-schismatic trads who are allowing a spirit of rebellion to inhabit their parishes and hinder the growth of the Faith — ultimately leading themselves and faithful Catholics away.
Tradition
God is the unmoved mover. Without His action, we would not exist. All is a culmination of His beginning motion, but what in specific did He do?
He spoke.
And God said: Be light made. And light was made.
Genesis 1:3
His Word was action. His action was Word. The most evidently powerful thing that man can do is use his own words to rationalize, understand, command, and bargain. Because of his words, he is like God. This is no coincidence, as that was God’s gift to him. Words carry the ultimate power, just as they carry deceit and lies, they carry love and forgiveness. Words can simultaneously begin confrontation, and end it. This is the transcendent ability of man. Not his dreams, not his towers, not his science, but his words.
Just as Christ did miracles, He spoke. He spoke the law that was now fulfilled. The power of language, though it warps throughout history, and has varying levels of success at interpreting concepts, it can preserve truths that have existed far longer than the subject language has. Greek was instrumental in the fostering of Christianity — it was what was required for Christianity to truly blossom, as it had hundreds of years of philosophy there to explain every concept our Lord was bringing to the world. It was the right place and right time for His arrival.
The subject language in interpreting truth is perfunctory to the object of spreading the Word. The improper orientation to have is to make the object of the Gospel into a subject, wherein the language itself takes front and center the objective ends — nullifying any real teleology. Christ did not come, however, to spread the beautiful language of Latin (or Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew or English), but the Truth. Just as God choosing the Jews to spread the Truth. They weren’t the object — God was. The vehicle of using Latin to spread the Word is useful, but not the prime goal of the Church. The prime goal of the Church is not to enrapture everyone in the beauty of the Latin Mass, but to convert souls and spread the Faith. Latin Mass is an aspect of the Faith, and should be preserved.
Or should it?
If Tradition is meant to preserve the transcendent truths of history, the Word of God, and the rituals and prayers meant to preserve our sinlessness and faith, then what about when the motion of history demands alteration be made to action, but not the Truth? The Catholic Church does not demand a rewriting of the Word, it demands practicality in the spreading of it. Unfortunately, however, the indignation of the tradcath phenomenon has created a dilemma for the Church that would have otherwise gone much more swimmingly.
Simply put, the tradcaths do not recognize the importance of language, nor the motion of history — Parmenides was wrong when he asserted that all is one and there is “no motion.” This was refuted by the time of Plato and Aristotle, and evident in the very coming of Christ; the Levitical laws of the Jews were fulfilled, and furthermore their precious temple was smashed. History had changed forever, developments were made. Nothing stayed the same, and those who rejected the changes harbored a spirit of rebellion and rejection of logos in favor of a pagan sympathy for ethnos or “tradition.”
But just as Judaizing protestants and Talmudic Jews are obsessed with old laws and ethnos — inadvertently minimizing logos — the tradcaths put so much stock into the pastiche of tradition and not the importance of Truth and its evangelization.
SSPX and The Latin Mass
The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has a long, undeservedly complex history. If you want a good, neutral outlook on them coming from a man who loves the Latin Mass, but rejects schismatic sentiments, check this interview with John Salza out. For those unacquainted, I’ll give a quick rundown of this society, and how dangerous they are to the Faith. Perhaps more so than Protestantism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
SSPX was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1970 as an experimental reaction to the decisions of the Second Vatican Council. They were focused on practicing Mass in the Traditional rite. After the Archbishop ordained four bishops without decree from the Pope, he was excommunicated along with the bishops. The four would eventually have their excommunications lifted, but not Lefebvre’s.
This society would go on to become synonymous with schism. They are schismatics, though officially are categorized as “canonically irregular.” Those who are offended by me calling them that, then I implore you to manufacture apologetics against the persistent schismatic language they use against the modern Catholic Church. They have harangued the papacy since Vatican II because they indignantly interpret the move to “modernize” the Church as blasphemy. Even though SSPX priests will literally tell you that going to Novus Ordo is sinful and that you shouldn’t associate with non-TLM Catholics, they somehow aren’t schismatics! Their machinations prey upon Catholics who are concerned about the future of the Church because of a weakness in their own faith. What is truly damning of them is their ultimately delusional belief that they are the true Catholics which implies the modernist Church is a whore of Babylon, and all priests and bishops since 1958 are not legitimate therefore Christ isn’t present in the Eucharist (along with the validity of other Sacraments).
I could go on, but I highly recommend the John Salza interview. He associated with these people for fifteen years.
So why are people so indignant about Latin Mass, anyway? What even is it? Well, in short, for those who have never attended, it is the most reverent way to worship Christ. I will give my point-of-view, as I am a pro-TLM Catholic, but I find that the attitude of those who put it above everything have compromised their faith, and ultimately, have all the ingredients to be led astray into sedevacantism or worse.
Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), Tridentine Mass, Traditional Rite Mass, whatever you want to call it, is a generalized slang way of saying “High Sung Mass” Or “Missa Cantada.” It is a form of Latin Mass done in the traditional form (as opposed to “Latin Novus Ordo.”) The two other forms of TLM are Low Mass and Solemn Mass. I’m not intimately familiar with every little change, but the major characteristics are:
Priest faces Christ rather than parishioners (makes sense, it is about Christ, not us.)
Communion kneeling and on the tongue only.
No “kiss of peace” between other parishioners.
No raising your hands while praying like a protestant (don’t take that personally, I’m mostly joking).
Cooler vestments.
Everything is in Latin except the recessional hymnal, and absolutely everything is sung, except obviously the homily (lol).
More altar boys.
There is a lot more kneeling and fun ritualistic movements that bring you closer to Christ.
I cannot put into words how much of an explosion the Latin Mass was for my faith. I was lost in the desert of inquiry for years, dabbling in prot churches and EO. I knew I needed to be Catholic for probably two years, off and on, but finally experiencing Latin Mass was what did it. For many Americans and Westerners, this is going to be the case, because we lack tradition and ethnos in our own lives. In places like Africa, where the Novus Ordo Mass has converted millions of souls, they already have a strong sense of tradition and ethnos. Obviously, this is what would convert souls here in the US. Specifically, though, it converts city slickers like you and me. It converts sensitive young men — atomized from Truth.
I won’t pretend I am someone intently connected to TLM. Spiritual truth is hard to communicate just as the concept of God itself was hard for Plato and Aristotle to communicate. Or you know, thousands of years of human civilization well after the Fall. Many TLM Catholics will laugh at me for not having some mindblowing, autistically deep knowledge and sentiment about TLM. True.
He said therefore to them: If he be a sinner, I know not: one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.
John 9:25
In modern times, we like to make a big lengthy to-do about why we are so connected to the liturgy. We don’t stop to understand that the miracles of the Spirit are just that — miracles, not meant for explaining, but experiencing. What more does Christ ask but for us to be loving and sinless? TLM made me Catholic. I experienced lifelessness in the non-reverent Novus Ordo (regular Novus Ordo), but it isn’t for me to decide the liturgical future of the church and what dispensations ought to be mandated for those in need of specific liturgy. If five-hundred Eastern Catholics showed up in some small town in West Virginia, you can bet your bottom dollar that the economy of the Holy Spirit would provide the needed liturgy for them.
But what of those indignant and who treat their liturgy as a political or social statement against a nebulous “modernism” that exists? I can’t say I have much sympathy for what they desire. Even for myself, as I am just a modern man from a big, lifeless city. I thought I desired tradition and communion with what I saw as my culture at one point, but what I was really seeking was logos, and in God’s mercy for me I have been given enough patience and humility to understand this Church wasn’t made for me, but those who require the Gospel. It is always about the other, which is why all paganisms fell to their knees in worship of Christ when they realized He is logos.
There is no way the Church can exist without abiding by its Tradition, but frankly that Tradition is Truth, and what falls away is unrequired for Truth.
The New Religion of Tradition
We have spoken of logos, God’s existence through Word. We have spoken on how the Church’s Truth is encapsulated in a balance of Tradition and the motion of history, but what is this going to all culminate into? Why does it seem that there is a crisis of faith within the Church coming from those in power?
There are many answers to these questions that deserve their own tangents. As Scott Hahn has said, the previous crises in the Church are what has created a stronger foundation and integrity for it. There’s a reason the same problems do not persistently arise, but are eventually done away with and prohibited in some fashion. This is where innovation becomes pertinent to its growth. I’ve talked all about “motion,” so let’s dig into that because it is important. The motion of history is evident in that the Church never stayed the same (Communion in the hand came before Communion on the tongue), and in a sense, the heresies and schisms are what built it further. All that happens in seeming conflict with the Truth only end up building it. If one chooses to reject Truth, they only treat it as such by living in inversion of it, and living in decay, sin, or misconception.
The changes in the Catholic Church, in reaction to a modern world, are seen as an embarrassing attack on Tradition, but were simply moving in motion with the wheel of history. A way to conceptualize what is going on with the tradcaths is simple. They are compromising the present and future, for the sake of the past. They have faith in the history of the Church and its Truth, and are probably the last to compromise their faith in its traditions and basic teachings, but they have lost a love for evangelization and forgiveness in the present, and a hope for the future.
When a Catholic resists the Church, they ultimately damage the faith of those around them who entrust in their council or position of power. They damage those who would convert. They do this as even though they call themselves Catholic — implying a devout faith in the apostolic succession, Petrine succession, and magisterium of the Catholic Church — they are broken, impatient, untrustworthy, and sanctimonious. This is a bumpy road that leads to sedevacantism, which becomes the ultimate inversion of Truth, as it wears the vestments and calls itself Catholic, but is actively anti-Catholic for its disbelief in motion and change. Ultimately, it can’t reconvene with logos as it is stuck in a dead language, inconsequential rituals, and entrenched in a martyr complex it refuses to get out of.
The sedevacantists and those on the slippery slope to becoming sedevacantists are unhappy about other developments within the Church. These developments, they use as their ultimate firepower in being petulant towards the Holy See. This is the liberalization seen in places like Germany, where bishops are defying the order of the Pope, and blessing gay marriages. However, do you notice the keywords there? Defying . . . the Pope. It is very easy to make mountains out of molehills and start shaking violently and foaming at the mouth anytime a challenge comes your way — I get it, I’m American, too — but the reaction on the part of tradcaths towards their own Church shows a deep lack of an understanding for the Faith. I do not really think they understand that being a Christian isn’t that easy. Being a Catholic is quite fun, but the fun is balanced out by demonic attacks.
Are you really surprised that the most attacks the enemy would make on Christianity would be the Church that single-handedly evangelized the world?
The laws of nature dictate a predictability of reality, but it requires motion for those laws to be exhibited as true. What is a tradition if it does not hold up to the hurricanes, floods, and wildfires of reality thrashing against it? In peace, the incredulity and anachronistic qualities of a tradition certainly seem just, but in war and rapidly successive breakdown, what only stands is the truth that is integral to the laws of nature. More importantly, for man and his story, is the laws of his morality — dictated by God. Adam to Abraham to Moses to Christ, the law transcends throughout time, and yet we are affronted by its truth. Those who demarcate themselves from the Church establish their own stubbornness that the whirlwinds of time should stop, for their own special anachronistic artifact thing did not withstand what was integral to Truth. Just as Latin shall not withstand the primacy of English in the current time for the evangelization to most nations, so should the traditions that act as an inhibition to the ultimate reality of God through Christ as the organizer of Truth — the intermediary we needed to finally be saved and accept the reality God laid out for us. We are either in rebellion or communion. What defines that is our reaction — from our heart — either as love or hate, forgiveness or castigation.
For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.
John 3:16
Isn’t our prime purpose to recognize this very fact? God loved the world, and gave His only begotten Son. There is an implied reaction here — a Motion — where God could not give anything else except literally Himself materially for the sake of our Salvation. That whosoever believeth in him . . . may have life everlasting. The communion we must have in God’s Son — the most material evidence of Him — for we will have everlasting life. He gave Himself for us, just as we should for Him. The tale of history is ultimately communion in others — the transcendence of love and its absolute creative quality to replenish, revive, and build what is good, what is true, what is beautiful. If we refuse communion with His Church, then we have fallen to the faithlessness, hopelessness, and lack of love that heretics and schismatics end up at.
This is where the illusion of tradition captures those stuck in the hypnosis of traditional illusion. Not realizing the application of these traditions, their cultures, or relation to ultimate reality, they begin to relate the images of truth as God rather than understanding that God and His Glory are higher than just their ritual. God takes many forms, and it isn’t concluded in just the practice of an imitation of pre-modern tradition. He is carried through as long as our worship of Him is willed.
Which brings us to the conclusion. Is the counterattack against the Catholic Church by its own parishioners unfounded? In a sense, it is not. They are reactionaries, but their indignation comes from a pride they wouldn’t have otherwise had in previous generations. The advent of the internet and its many echo chambers has acted as a resounding gong for their frustration, while doing away with any patient love and understanding they may have otherwise had. Because of this, they side with schismatics who they would have otherwise not known about or shied away from.
Most of all, however, modernity has brought them to question their faithfulness in a way that they couldn’t have in the past, and all it does is corrupt their hopefulness and love; leading them to schismatic churches or heresy.
I am not sure what must be done for these angry Catholics but to offer dispensation when directed. In the case of my own Mass, it is in this boiling point where those who put their indignation ahead of their faith are going to be led down the path of sedevacantism. Unfortunately, they have no tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy, and would be treated as foreigners. Even if given dispensation for a TLM-styled EO liturgy, they would lack communion with Rome which they ultimately seek; Petrine succession, ecclesiology, theology, and the universality of Truth are not easily transferable to EO, and I don’t know if EOs really understand that. Perhaps that is why they never really evangelized past Eastern Europe in the last thousand years.
What can be said for them is their compulsion towards tradition, which is admirable, but the rejection of ultimate reality which implies motion (change, development, innovation) then they care not for the universality of that tradition. If time cannot be accepted, then the ultimate Truth cannot be. If one thinks they accept Truth, but not the love for those they must evangelize to, then they are not accepting the ultimate Truth — for why would it be kept to a limited few? Truth must transcend the mind’s conception, the heart’s own personal limits. It must be more everlasting than culture and ethnos. It must come from the most divine — the Creator — and if not, it is not Truth. Everything falls to the wayside. This is the reality of Truth. If one is to be honest with themselves, they either see this reality, or are left to the idolization of the past — mummification. Either truth is ethnos, a pastiche of tradition, or logos — logos which Christ fulfilled.
We change, but Tradition remains the same.
Maketh his round by the south, and turneth again to the north: the spirit goeth forward surveying all places round about, and returneth to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea doth not overflow: unto the place from whence the rivers come, they return, to flow again. All things are hard: man cannot explain them by word. The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing. What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.
Ecclesiastes 1:6-10
And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. The spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor knoweth him: but you shall know him; because he shall abide with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Yet a little while: and the world seeth me no more. But you see me: because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know, that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
John 14: 16-20
The common theme I see from the Devon Stack blackpillers, BAPists, rad trads and orthobros is a Gospel of despair and retreat. Isolate yourself and only interact with people who look, sound and act just like you because everyone else is harmful for your spiritual and physical well-being.
Jesus told Peter to cast his nets into the deep waters. The Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles at Pentecost so they could leave their hiding place and evangelize the rest of the world.
There is no greater reward than to suffer for living and spreading God’s Word. Catholicism is a tough man’s faith. We stand on the shoulders of brave men and women who gladly laid down their lives for Christ.
Ortho bros are interesting... their aesthetic is usually easy to see. I've noticed that EO is attractive to people who desire to grow in their faith but have never been shown a pathway beyond tradition. As a faithful prot (non-denom/charismatic), I understand that people desire an easy pathway to come to know christ, but there really isn't a formula. Yes, reading the Bible, prayer and certainly fasting is a good start, but someone could pray everyday and never understand that the purpose of prayer is to build relationship between himself and God.
If someone's life is a wreckage of broken relationships, then when he first encounters Christ through the discipline of tradition, he begins to believe that following the calendar and reading xyz prayers is the key.
But really the key was faith and trusting in the process of coming near to Christ through these activities not the activities themselves. It was faith that led to the outcome of nearness to God. I read the Bible voraciously in my early years of knowing him. I prayed without ceasing. I fasted and worshiped. I didn't do it on a calendar. I did it because I was hungry for God. I wanted to know him. Overtime, I naturally fell out of sinful patterns and Cursed thought and action cycles because I desires to become like him.
No one told me not to watch TV or listen to hellish music, I just stopped on my own as God's word changed me. I read the Bible every night the vast majority of nights for the last 7 years because I desire to and because it's good for me.
The line is thin when it comes to following a tradition and practicing the faith, and it can be very difficult to negotiate the difference (whether cath, ortho, or prot).