I don't think it is entirely bad but I think there is something bad about it.
I love all sorts of music made from 1996 to 2006, from when I was age 13 to 23. That music is now officially old, like, classic rock station old.
I know, theoretically at least, that there is all sorts of music made in the last twenty years that it amazing. It will, however, never be amazing to me. I will never be open to it like I was from 1996 to 2006, in part because of my love for old things.
That's tragic, in a way, but in the end it's just music. It exists in the world of time, space, and causality. It come and goes.
God is different, he transcends that, and if religion is about God, brings us to God, and allows us to experience God than it seems like it should not be old but ever new.
Religion between Adam and Pope Leo XIV has taken many forms. It is dynamic, developing, growing. Which makes sense, because God is the God of the living not the dead. Alive in the Church's tradition, its present, and its future.
My fear, hopefully unfounded, is that traditionalists don't see that.
They have great difficulty seeing that. Absolutely. And that is a real deficiency.
But the “and that’s just music” point cuts both ways. Liturgy and Sacraments are far, far more precious than any Boston album, but my anecdotal experience suggests that most modern people have a very hard time grasping that. These people truly loved them, saw them as something genuinely precious, more like a medieval peasant might have done. And that’s the *right* way to see it, or anyway I think so. It’s sufficiently strange though to the modern mind that maybe it takes a reactionary oddball to robustly preserve that truth.
My position isn’t that everyone needs to resemble liturgical traditionalists in every way, but that they should properly be viewed as a resource we need.
Thank you very much for this wonderful article and series that made me look at traditionalism in a new light! Traditionalism can be seen as a custodian of many treasures that yearn to be discovered by a broader audience.
But as you point out there is also a dark side associated with the movement. I would add to your comments that traditionalists do not only have a temptation towards schism but also seem to have a latent inclination towards antisemitism. The most egregious representatives would naturally be Bishop Williamson and the Gibson family (Hutton along with his son Mel). But as far as I can tell they are only the tip of the iceberg.
Would you say this is a fair characterisation? Have you ever encountered any manifestations of antisemitism or is this something you never experienced personally? Maybe the long memories that you mention do not only include the gems of catholicism but also some of the defects it accumulated over the centuries?
I don’t think antisemitism is a major motivating force within liturgical traditionalism, but yes, I’ve seen it, it’s very ugly of course, and I fear there may be more today than when I was more involved in such circles just because they overlap with right wing/reactionary circles generally and there’s more of it there now.
Reactionary views and attitudes tend to cluster to a large extent. I think reactionary views on women were by far the most prominent, which isn’t strange at all because of the concerns about marriage/family/sexual revolution. Antisemitism second, but a pretty distant second. I saw it here and there on the blogs but even when people railed against Masons they mostly seemed to have diminished the “Jews” part of that old conspiracy theory. Racialism wasn’t much of a thing but some people did really love the old South, the Confederacy, agrarianism etc, so you know, glimmers could probably be found. More now perhaps given the influence of Nick Fuentes etc.
Part of my theory here is that there will always be people prone to reaction, and the TLM will always attract them, but unlike (say) white nationalism or masculinism or what have you, liturgical traditionalism attaches them to something that’s genuinely very good! A deep and largely wholesome tradition. Very much a best-case, but often *actually very good*. But yes, it’s true that when you blow the doors off of modern solutions to old problems, some of the uglier gremlins also come crawling back. And that can be legitimately a real problem.
Thank you for this response and the reflections on traditionalism! I have seen this movement from an outsiders perspective and therefore I have mostly observed the negative sides associated with it. However, I have been to a Tridentine mass about a year ago on a work trip to Tallinn in Estonia. Primarily wanting to catch a mass on Sunday I stumbled into a Tridentine mass that takes place about once per month in the cathedral in Tallinn. It has been a moving experience seeing the devoted flock of people practicing their faith.
Imagine that: In a country where catholics make up about 1% of the population there are people that still practice this style of worship (effectively being a minority within a minority). I did not understand much since the sermon was in Estonian, but still the experience made it clear to me that some people feel a deep-seated longing for tradtionals forms of worship.
This series of articles has given me a better handle on why traditionalism is still attractive to many persons and how this may also be a benefit to the overall church!
This essay made me think of traditionalists in a new way!
What if all living religious traditions produce traditionalists in the way the Freud thought civilization creates its discontents?
Das Unbehagen der Religion!
Yeah. Thought-provoking. There will always be people who love old things. This isn’t entirely bad, is it?
I don't think it is entirely bad but I think there is something bad about it.
I love all sorts of music made from 1996 to 2006, from when I was age 13 to 23. That music is now officially old, like, classic rock station old.
I know, theoretically at least, that there is all sorts of music made in the last twenty years that it amazing. It will, however, never be amazing to me. I will never be open to it like I was from 1996 to 2006, in part because of my love for old things.
That's tragic, in a way, but in the end it's just music. It exists in the world of time, space, and causality. It come and goes.
God is different, he transcends that, and if religion is about God, brings us to God, and allows us to experience God than it seems like it should not be old but ever new.
Religion between Adam and Pope Leo XIV has taken many forms. It is dynamic, developing, growing. Which makes sense, because God is the God of the living not the dead. Alive in the Church's tradition, its present, and its future.
My fear, hopefully unfounded, is that traditionalists don't see that.
They have great difficulty seeing that. Absolutely. And that is a real deficiency.
But the “and that’s just music” point cuts both ways. Liturgy and Sacraments are far, far more precious than any Boston album, but my anecdotal experience suggests that most modern people have a very hard time grasping that. These people truly loved them, saw them as something genuinely precious, more like a medieval peasant might have done. And that’s the *right* way to see it, or anyway I think so. It’s sufficiently strange though to the modern mind that maybe it takes a reactionary oddball to robustly preserve that truth.
My position isn’t that everyone needs to resemble liturgical traditionalists in every way, but that they should properly be viewed as a resource we need.
Thank you very much for this wonderful article and series that made me look at traditionalism in a new light! Traditionalism can be seen as a custodian of many treasures that yearn to be discovered by a broader audience.
But as you point out there is also a dark side associated with the movement. I would add to your comments that traditionalists do not only have a temptation towards schism but also seem to have a latent inclination towards antisemitism. The most egregious representatives would naturally be Bishop Williamson and the Gibson family (Hutton along with his son Mel). But as far as I can tell they are only the tip of the iceberg.
Would you say this is a fair characterisation? Have you ever encountered any manifestations of antisemitism or is this something you never experienced personally? Maybe the long memories that you mention do not only include the gems of catholicism but also some of the defects it accumulated over the centuries?
I don’t think antisemitism is a major motivating force within liturgical traditionalism, but yes, I’ve seen it, it’s very ugly of course, and I fear there may be more today than when I was more involved in such circles just because they overlap with right wing/reactionary circles generally and there’s more of it there now.
Reactionary views and attitudes tend to cluster to a large extent. I think reactionary views on women were by far the most prominent, which isn’t strange at all because of the concerns about marriage/family/sexual revolution. Antisemitism second, but a pretty distant second. I saw it here and there on the blogs but even when people railed against Masons they mostly seemed to have diminished the “Jews” part of that old conspiracy theory. Racialism wasn’t much of a thing but some people did really love the old South, the Confederacy, agrarianism etc, so you know, glimmers could probably be found. More now perhaps given the influence of Nick Fuentes etc.
Part of my theory here is that there will always be people prone to reaction, and the TLM will always attract them, but unlike (say) white nationalism or masculinism or what have you, liturgical traditionalism attaches them to something that’s genuinely very good! A deep and largely wholesome tradition. Very much a best-case, but often *actually very good*. But yes, it’s true that when you blow the doors off of modern solutions to old problems, some of the uglier gremlins also come crawling back. And that can be legitimately a real problem.
Thank you for this response and the reflections on traditionalism! I have seen this movement from an outsiders perspective and therefore I have mostly observed the negative sides associated with it. However, I have been to a Tridentine mass about a year ago on a work trip to Tallinn in Estonia. Primarily wanting to catch a mass on Sunday I stumbled into a Tridentine mass that takes place about once per month in the cathedral in Tallinn. It has been a moving experience seeing the devoted flock of people practicing their faith.
Imagine that: In a country where catholics make up about 1% of the population there are people that still practice this style of worship (effectively being a minority within a minority). I did not understand much since the sermon was in Estonian, but still the experience made it clear to me that some people feel a deep-seated longing for tradtionals forms of worship.
This series of articles has given me a better handle on why traditionalism is still attractive to many persons and how this may also be a benefit to the overall church!