Saying The Quiet Parts Out Loud

 

I really am not a fan of taking screen shots, but sometimes it's just helpful to have a bookmark for later. A couple things strike me about the posturing of this individual:

-Liberals often virtue signal all over themselves, but trads can do it too, and they wear it well for all to see. This is as good an exhibit as any.

-Zeal requires wisdom and temperance to be a complete protein. Unchecked, it's like trying to drink from a firehose.

-It's good to be ready to die for the faith, to have the right disposition. I'm not sure this is it, though. 

-I don't think this is theatrics per se (if the individual really would pull the trigger), but it is effeminately dramatic.

-It's brute tribalism.

-It backs you into a corner, serves as a kind of oath if you will. Nothing to do but double down.

-Just get off Twitter, online knight. Nothing good comes from it and it doesn't advance the cause. And I think people get self-goaded into posting this arm-flailing stuff because they know they have an audience and people are following them and so they have to 'stake their claim' to where they stand on x, y, z.

In one sense, though, he's taking the hardcore trad 'line in the sand' stance to it's logical end, so I'll give him credit for that. It only sounds outlandish when you go from A to Z without seeing the rest of the lead up in the middle of the alphabet. I just wonder how many other trads really think this way besides the 134 that liked the post.

I used to have a saying--don't be extreme in anything except charity. It's served me okay, and these kinds of tweets are a reminder to test all spirits (1 Jn 4:1). 

I sent this email to someone I know recently. I thought maybe it is worth publishing here (I never got a response) to share my own thoughts, which do not square with the individual above. Call me soft. We all have to make these decisions for ourselves when the time comes, and take responsibility for them. I've made a lot of wrong decisions in the past, but all we can do is work with what we have, continue to pray and ask for wisdom, and step out in faith. Not that I ever had a trad card in my possession, but I'll probably lose whatever I had with this revealing. Anyway, here it is:

I just watched the Michael Lofton video ("Can Pope Francis Ban The Latin Mass?") you posted on FB (my wife still has an account). I wanted to respond, as someone who is not a Traditionalist (in the strict sense of the term) but who has exclusively attended the Latin Mass for the past four years, has fallen in love with it, and has never had the desire to return to the Ordinary Form.

Since the last time I wrote you about a year ago in struggling with various attachments, I feel that God has been giving generously from the storehouse of grace and supplying me with what I need to grow closer to Him. Thanks be to God, I have cut out tobacco/nicotine (a very pernicious 25 year addiction, mind you), have committed to a minimum of twenty minutes of mental prayer a day, regular Adoration, and undertaken a variety of commonplace mortification to discipline the body (cold showers, fasting, etc). I still have a ways to go with service to the poor apart from personal charity and coordinating various volunteer opportunities at our local soup kitchen, but one thing at a time at least. Ironically, the Youtube video referenced above may be one of the last, as I'm trying to forgo that attachment (to Youtube) during the Lenten season.

I make note of the above because I hope it is clear that my intention in undertaking these things is to empty my hands, so that God can fill them. That includes physical attachments and minor comforts, but also attitudes and judgments. I know I have no good in me of my own, but that He is great enough to make me "as holy as I should be," according to His will--ie, that He desires me, as well as all his children, to become sanctitified. In other words, I want to learn to suffer well, so that I may see His face in Heaven and join the company of his saints, whether on earth or after death.

As mentioned, it is hard enough to navigate the interior life sometimes, so I try to keep it basic (scripture, rosary, Mass, confession, spiritual reading of the classics, state of grace, charity, etc). But just as difficult can be where my place in the Church is. I have an eclectic community which is comprised of both hardcore traditionalists and just plain good, faithful Catholics happy in the Ordinary Form. Watching the Michael Lofton video was somewhat over my head (I'm not an intellectual or an academic), but it also made me sick and angry. If it is true that Pope Francis has the rightful authority to abrogate the Traditional Mass, and if one does not assent to that authority and, say, goes off and continues to attend underground (Latin) Masses, or whatever....that this is an act of willful disobedience. Well, it's all very confusing. And my own community will completely fracture. It is almost too much to think about.

But I also realize my personal "preference" for a solemn liturgy in the Extraordinary Form may in itself be an attachment. I wrote a post a while back titled "Should You Have A Liturgical Plan B?" in which I had to really wrestle with these practicalities. It is heart wrenching to think that is may very well be on the horizon (and I have good reason to think it would be). 

But the fact stands--if God deigns to see fit that Pope Francis abolishes the usage of the '62 missal, there are some (most) in Traditionalist camp that call for resistance, a kind of "civil disobedience" of not accepting this decree. Others maybe not so invested will accept and not put up a fight, and revert back to the Novus Ordo. For people like myself and my family, it would be a great humiliation almost (perhaps that is not the best word, but it's all that comes to mind right now) to follow in that second path. 

But if it means a kind of spiritual humbling that can lead to greater sanctification, for however long, I am willing to undergo it. Even though everything in my natural faculties is screaming "No." As I write it, I see how cultivating detachment has a lot of trails still to undergo. 

I do feel it is a grave injustice, and I don't understand why the Holy Father seems bent on this. And to know that our dicocesan TLM community will completely fracture, we will lose everything we have grown to love (many will go to the SSPX or FSSP, if even the FSSP is untouched)--it fills me with grief and heart sickness. 

But our Lord was filled with grief and heart sickness throughout his ministry and on the cross. If we deign to imitate Him, follow Him, why do we think we can avoid entering into this state with him (being baptized in his death, as Paul says)? If God wills I crucify my desire for the TLM, I pray for the grace to shed it then in order to follow Him. I pray for a holy docility, a holy indifference, but it is so incredibly hard. And incredibly confusing times.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. I don't know if you have any advice or insight, but I thought at least you might want to hear from someone pretty much all-in on the traditional liturgy who is still willing--through tears--to crucify it should it be in disobedience to continue to attend it (if that were even possible). I don't know what to do, but I pray God will give me the grace to discern when and if the time comes. Please pray for me as well.