What is the 'Way Forward'

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JMJ

An online friend recently asked:

Tradical, I'm interested in finding out more about the statement on your blog: "looking for a way forward".  How do you envision this? 

Here are my thoughts, made clearer after a couple of years of slogging:

From my point of view there are two groups of issues that need to be resolved before this crisis of the Church will come to an end and the next one start.

1. Doctrinal ambiguity
2. Cultural ambiguity

The doctrinal ambiguity is, relatively, easy to resolve.  With the stroke of a pen the Pope and hierarchy could literally correct the ambiguities and contradictions within V2, abolish the Novus Ordo Missae, Communion in the Hand, Altar Girls (as you know the list goes on ... but fortunately it is finite).

However, the culture is embedded in the people and it will be hard to change.  It is also the part that is fraught with danger for the souls of all (Trads as well as Modern Catholics) within the Church.

Modern Catholics:

Over the past 50+ years they have been (almost literally) steeped in a semi-to-fully protestant cultural milieu.  In this case, they no longer recognize various artifacts, beliefs and assumptions as Catholic.  They see them as foreign to the 'spirit of the Church' as they have come to understand it.

For the past four years I've providentially been brought into close contact with 'conservative' Catholics who are bewildered by some of the actions of the local bishops. 

However, artifacts such as kneeling for a blessing are foreign to them.  I once brought a Dominican to a men's meeting and at the end I asked for Father to give us a blessing.  I knelt, the host (who saw me and had some experience with me) knelt, but the others didn't. Finally, Father said "I thought you were Catholic?"  One man muttered something about being out of practice.  Father then simply said, "Either you kneel or I won't give you a blessing!" Immediately they knelt.  That little cultural artifact had been reasserted - with surprisingly little pain.

There are other ones that will cause a great deal of pain and when the Church begins to reassert the cultural artifacts (Tridentine Mass, Kneeling etc), Beliefs/Values (EENS, Sacerdotal Priesthood, etc), Assumptions (The Roman Catholic Church IS the Church of Christ, etc) it will create a cultural immune response. 

In short, Modern Catholics appear, in varying degrees, allergic to the Culture of the Catholic Church.

In many ways the 'modern' Catholics will be faced with a Church that they literally don't recognize.

It will result in a terrifying crisis for them on the individual level as they will be faced with three alternatives:

1. Fight
2. Flight
3. Acquiesce

We've already tasted the fight when the modernists/liberals believed that a 'no compromise' regularization was going to occur.

Looking back, the fight was on multiple levels (and yes I do take Bishop Fellay at his word concerning the unofficial communications) all over one cultural assumption: You cannot question the Second Vatican Council. 

Fr. Greiger over at Mary Victrix is a prime example of someone who holds this cultural assumption.  He's moderately mild compared to some of the reactions that I've seen and look at what he is happy with --- the basic destruction of an order he's belonged for over a decade and a hafl. All because someone was either reaching or reached the same conclusions as the SSPX concerning the Second Vatican Council.

Take this example and imagine what will happen when (not if) the pre-conciliar beliefs, values and assumptions are reasserted (IMO they will be because they are linked to the doctrine and dogmas of the Church).

So, as a layman, my 'looking for a way forward' is to develop ways and understanding of how to help and prep the 'modern' Catholics for this pending cultural cataclysm (from their point of view).  The better prepared they are ... the faster the Church will recover and hopefully the schism/heresy will be smaller.

Traditional Catholics

I've noticed over the last few years a trend among a number of Trads to reject Church teachings because it goes against assumptions about what the Church teaches.

Catholicam is a practical example. (http://tradicat.blogspot.ca/2013/01/cognitive-dissonance.html)

He wrote that the words " the muslims worship the same God as the Catholic" is just V2 hogwash.

Well it isn't ...  I found the same terms in two pre-conciliar references from pre-1920 during the era of Pope St. Pius the X.

Catholicam literally could not accept the fact that these two reference existed because it undermined his own assumptions about the Second Vatican Council. 

That's not rational, and it is very dangerous for him and people like him.

A similar crisis may occur for Trads in that when the Pope does start to correct the problems (understatement) he won't be going far enough to suit their taste. The emergence of Feenyism is a good example.  Because of their rejection of this teaching of the Church, they will stay in their foxholes when the war is over and a new war on a new front will have begun.

The Way

So I see the 'way forward' as Trads helping (in a charitable manner) Modern Catholic's to recognize, reject and eject the protestant artifacts, beliefs and assumptions that have infiltrated the Church.  Then to recognize, accept, and inject the Catholic artifacts, beliefs and assumptions that have been suppressed for decades. 

Easy to say, hard to do.

Until a Pope tolerates the basic cultural assumptions of Traditionalists this is is problematic and at best a rear guard action.  The Traditionalist organizations (FSSP, ICK, et al) won't be able to make any headway until a Pope supports their cultural assumptions.  Ordaining Bishops from their ranks would be a good sign, regularizing the SSPX and braving the storm that would follow would be another one. 

One last issue, for Trads they will need help to understand the teaching of the Church as the Church understood it before the Council.  There are strong prejudices and down right warped perspectives of the Church among some traditionalists.  For example the 'resistance' and particularly Bishop Williamson have a warped understanding of the Four Marks (http://tradicat.blogspot.ca/2014/05/the-four-marks-of-church-of-christ.html) that I was able to expose by a simple reading of the Catechism of the Council of Trent.  That they are able to fall into such a problem is (imo) a result of a narrowing of perspective by simply allowing prejudices and conspiracy theories to cloud their view of Church teaching and to see everyone who is not a Trad as an enemy.

There is a similar phenomenon in police forces where after a while their perspective of people is reduced to 'law enforcement' and everyone else.

Not a very good way to move forward.

P^3