tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078331897510807942.post7308412104511352766..comments2023-12-28T01:11:49.188-08:00Comments on Cum Lazaro: Conservative Catholics and Traditionalist CatholicsLazarushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09716412032074416331noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078331897510807942.post-50845510800837786952018-01-09T06:36:51.587-08:002018-01-09T06:36:51.587-08:00Thank you for taking the trouble to reply!
I con...Thank you for taking the trouble to reply! <br /><br />I confess I do wonder what I would have voted if I'd had a vote on whether or not to replace the Latin Mass with the vernacular. (I know that's a fantasy in many ways but...) I'm pretty sure I'd have kept the Latin Mass but, whether or not that would have been the right decision, we are where we are and, for various reasons, I don't think the restoring the liturgy will have more than a marginal effect. (Which isn't to say that abuses shouldn't be removed, merely that, between a competently said OF and a competently said EF, I don't think there's much to choose in terms of anti-secularizing power!But that's a hunch and I am quite seriously delighted that others disagree and will try an alternative path.)<br /><br />For me, the key (if there is just one factor which I don't think there is) is catechesis and more generally the intellectual life of the Church. And there I think that Vatican 2 and specifically St John Paul II have oddly helped by recognising the subjective turn of modernity and mapping out some sort of a path for the future. (I say 'oddly' because it is also quite clear that the Spirit of Vatican II has also brought intellectual devastation.) That's too big a topic to deal with here (perhaps anywhere) but to the extent that traditionalism would want to restore pre-Vatican II catechesis (and I appreciate there's a certain amount of handwaving here on my part on what that might be) I strongly suspect it won't work. <br /><br />So, roughly: a) I don't think the liturgical reforms post Vatican II are central; and b) I don't think that pre-Vatican II intellectual life (which I do think central) should be or is recoverable.<br /><br />[This is a bit of aside, but I know that my experience of Anglo-Catholicism is affecting/clouding my judgment here. Beautiful, traditional liturgy, but unable to resist the tide of progressivism in the Anglican communion -and indeed complicit in some of its murkier aspects.]<br /><br />On the timing of secularization: it's a complicated topic, but much depends on whether you think the sixties were created by Vatican II or Vatican II (or at least its spirit!) by the sixties. I'd put my money for what its worth on the change in the social roles of women (which is a thesis argued for in the UK by Callum Brown http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/236 ). (And that's one of the reasons why I think that 'traditionalism' of any form is unlikely to have much impact on a deeply embedded social change.)<br /><br />Apologies for the misdescription of you as a 'self-identified' traditionalist! (I did wonder at the time whether it was quite right!) I suspect we would both simply aim at being good Catholics. (And I would definitely underline the *aim* part of that for me.)<br /><br />Once again, thank you for taking the time to engage.<br /><br />LazarusAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5078331897510807942.post-10796113865902494652018-01-09T05:55:35.325-08:002018-01-09T05:55:35.325-08:00I enjoyed your post. However, I am not a "sel...I enjoyed your post. However, I am not a "self-identified traditionalist" in the terms you set forth. For example, I say the Novus Ordo Mass, and largely in English (save for the sung ordinary). <br /><br />As to secularism as a cause of Aestern ecclesial decline, I am utterly convinced it is. The Mass of 1965, for example, is per se quite acceptable to me, and embodies the conciliar teaching on liturgy far more than anything that came after it. However, seen in the larger context, it was the foot in the door for the secular agenda, and we now know, thanks to archival research and the memoirs of those involved in the reforms, that it was clearly conceived as the first step in a much longer, far more revolutionary journey.<br /><br />Moreover, the vigorous level of Mass attendance immediately prior to the Council, and its sudden and precipitous decline after the reforms began, require an explanation if one refuses to accept the correlation between the decline and the reforms. Given that where the traditional Mass is celebrated, or the new Mass celebrated in a traditional way, Mass attendance is both strong and impressively youthful.<br /><br />It is an undoubted truth that secular society would have affected the life of the Church in some ways despite the Council. However I believe that if the Mass had been reformed in line with the conciliar decrees the decline in Mass attendance and priestly & religious numbers would have been much less drastic, and that the hippies and disco babes of the 70s, for example, would have found something reassuring and attractive to return to if the Church had not ruined its timeless liturgy.<br /><br />I had to re-think the use of the word "ruined" just then. But I think it is true; the new Mass is valid enough, of course, and it celebrated strictly by the book it can be beautiful. But I have now reached a position that that the Novus Ordo is not a patch on what went before it. The way it is celebrated now it pretty much invites laxity and irreverence unless celebrated by a disciplined and educated congregation, with rubrical fidelity and employing every element of traditional that can legitimately be used in it. A building that needs that much propping up has, I am afraid to say, been ruined.<br /><br />Pax!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com