I can find myself feeling sorry for these older priests who feel like their life’s work was a waste. That’s got to be a hard blow.

I think a lot of Traditionalists’ problems here derive from the fact that well-meaning on-lookers think that, if we were really good people, we’d be following the Gerard model. You get this advice from sympathetic but uncommitted priests: put up with the persecution; offer it up; it’s tough but it’ll do you good. Part of the emasculation of the Church is that the Athanasian approach is sidelined. But in fact it is more appropriate to our situation.

St Gerard’s accusations affected him alone. He was a Jesuit lay-brother; relatively little depended on his reputation, and the truths of faith were not at stake. What Athanasius was defending was the Faith, not himself. However, smears against character also have to be answered in this situation, because they undermine one’s credibility in defending anything else.

Was Athanasius a ‘nice’ person? Did he avoid rocking the boat, upsetting sincere people, stirring up conflict? I’m sure the the Petras of his day heartily detested him. But his strategy was morally imperative.

There are two extraordinary things about life in the Church today, and one perfectly straightforward thing: that the Church has adopted the policy of ‘self-demolition’ (as Paul VI put it); that the demolishers should attack the pathetically small and ineffective number of people who resist them with such ferocity; and that some of these resisters should become somewhat embittered about it. On the last: what do you expect? You meet the embittered ones from time to time, few though they are; they can be annoying, but there’s nothing interesting or revealing about the fact that they exist. It is just part of the Church’s self-inflicted damage, along with the millions of lapsed.

More interesting is the second thing: the relentless hatred, the undying desire to destroy: to destroy any remaining vestiges of tradition found in church architecture, to destroy the people’s faith in the Blessed Sacrament, and devotion to Our Lady. They’ve had it all their own way for 40 years, but they’re not satisfied. However, I think I can explain it: it’s suppressed guilt.

I’ve read that paedophiles hate children, because they embody the innocence which they themselves have lost; they want to destroy that innocence. The chief priests hated Jesus, not because he was guilty, but because he was innocent. The Church is persecuted, not because it has failed to be clever or sensitive enough, but because it is it divine. There’d be no reason to persecute traditionalists if all that distinguished them was that they were nasty individuals; the movement would collapse on it’s own, in that case! Traditionalists provoke such strong reactions in so many liberals because they remind them of the faith they have rejected.

Your condescension and high-handed self-assured smug passing out of your unassailable “personal experiences” and pious sermonizing over how to reach out to others are odious, offensive, off-putting, and uncharitable in the extreme. If this is the attitude that your lenten penances have put you in at the opening of Holy Week, then I tremble to know how you would have written when “ordinary time” still reigned. This sort of commentary is unwelcome here, and I will without a moment’s hesitation or the smallest pang of regret delete forthwith any future comments from you that continue down the path set by those previous. Consider yourself warned.

I *did* use the phrase “significant number” and *MY* observations, which have been corroborated by others, including traditionalists I sit down and have coffee with on a regular basis. Every last one of those categories, Clara, came from years of *personal observation*. Since I used the words “significant number” and made it clear that I had *seen* this behaviour, I think I made it clear that I wasn’t talking about everyone, but a *proportion*.

The point I was making is that stereotypes develop out of the behaviour of a significant proportion of the population. Traditionalists get stereotyped because a significant proportion behave in the way I’ve indicated.

Now, that’s not to say that somewhere back across the decades, there wasn’t reason for acting like that: when you’ve been marginalised, had your back up against the wall, been ridiculed, been swimming upstream, you’re *going* to be angry and defensive. It’s human – you’re trying to protect yourself and what you consider important.

But there comes a point where that becomes counterproductive, because the group (ANY, and that includes liberals, extraterrestrials, whatever) becomes too closed in, those feelings feed off of themselves, and they never manage to break out of that cycle and turn outwards towards others, which is the real essence of love.

Of course I used some of the more extreme examples – sometimes it’s the only way to shock people out of their perspective into someone else’s. It’s a *technique*, not hypocrisy. There was a lot of frustration as well: sometimes, I think “Traditionalists should be thanking God that things have come so far. Why do so many still act like victims?” And a number of people I care about – including clergy – have been hurt by rigid traditionalists, so yes, I’m a bit angry and protective as well.

As a cheeky slogan once put it, “The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.” If traditionalists look around and receive anger and resentment over and over again, then maybe God is giving them a mirror, not a test. Maybe He’s asking you to look at whether or not that’s what you’re putting out and therefore getting in return.

I’m not saying that the people who react angrily are in the right – what I’m saying is that this isn’t “they’re treating us badly”, it’s about “there’s a bad dynamic between us, and what can *we* do to change that?” And it starts with something as simple as really listening and not getting defensive and angry when you talk to a Tablet reader and working from there. One step at a time – *if* you really want things to change.

If people don’t want to change because the payoff of martyrdom and feeling rightfully persecuted suits them, then fine. But they need to be honest about the fact that that’s what they’re doing, and stop worrying about it.

This is God’s church. There is *NO* us and them, just *us*. And if things are bad between us, then it’s time we really started talking to eachother – no masks, no agendas, willing to hear everything from the other person’s point of view. And yes, sometimes it’ll be angry or hurt – but you stay with it and see it through, because no matter what, this is your brother or sister in Christ.

But the only hand that you can reach out to get that started is your own.

Whoever you are, I think you should contemplate for a moment the hypocrisy of answering a serious and sorrowful question with a lengthy treatise that high-handedly references splinters and planks and concludes resoundingly that traditionalists as a whole are unkind, judgmental, thoughtless, unChristlike, bad parents, effeminate men, and “not nice people.”

That’s all I’m going to say. It is Holy Week, after all.

For whatever it’s worth, I assure you that this is not a problem at the Society.

(I’ve deleted a post here that wasn’t quite relevant and wasn’t entirely thought out.)

Most often, the answer to at least one of those questions is “yes”.

So let’s turn it around. Are traditionalists bringing this upon themselves? Are they lacking in compassion, being unkind, judgmental, thoughtless, unChristlike?

The answer for a significant number, sadly, is “Yes.”

I have observed fellow traditionalists making ugly, contemptuous comments about those who aren’t one of them. I have seen traditionalist parents *ignore* their children during mass whilst staring piously into their breviary, then smack the children b/c they’re bored. Feel free to parent them, since that’s an issue you go on and on about. I see effeminate men poncing around in little cliques discussing form over substance – there are very few red-blooded males amongst them. I see them treating their fathers in Christ with disdain and disrespect. They yell more than they listen, they throw stones more than they show compassion, they treat people with contempt.

I have never heard a real laugh from a traditionalist. They all titter.

One traditionalist went up to an Oratorian priest and said, “Father, *I* [i.e., unlike his fellow Tridentinists who had been there, and had said so in Father's hearing] believe your orders are valid,” after Holy Hour.

To which he rightly responded, “That’s good, otherwise you’d have just spent the last hour worshipping a piece of bread.”

And that’s one of many stories of its kind.

With that Holy Grail of traditionalism, the London Oratory, known as much for its camp nastiness (even about its own) as it is for its high mass, is it any wonder all traditionalists get tarred with the same brush and are treated with caution, at best, and their own contempt, at worst?

As one of my friends noted, “They’re just not nice people.”

Splinters and planks, folks. You can’t change anyone else, but if you *really* examine yourselves and pray about it, you might find that as you remove your own planks, people remove their splinters and your relationship is transformed.

Not a bad idea for Holy Week, eh?

Even the best of our bishops are problematic -
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/abbott/070328

We cannot put our faith in men, even be their names Chaput or Burke or Benedict – only in Jesus Christ. The truth is out there for everyone to see. This isn’t traditionalist Gnosticism. This isn’t disobedience. This isn’t self-righteousness or Phariseeism. Or whatever other slander the Novus crowd wants to throw down.

Those who refuse to follow the path of our Sacred Tradition, do so willingly and consciously. By and large, following the herd in New Church makes them feel more comfortable in their largely morally unreformed own lives and/or makes it easier to accommodate those living closely around them – peace at all costs.

The Church is like a hospital for sinners, and when the doctors and nurses are hurting and killing the patients, then obviously something is desperately wrong.

When you are being persecuted, then you know that you are doing that which is right and orthodox. But after you try to change the ways of the persecutor and to convince them, and subsequently fail, then one experiences sadness I think, because one realizes that one should not really rejoice that the leaders are persecutors.

I think the distinction to be made is that one rejoices over being persecuted for the sake of righteousness, and not rejoicing over the fact that there is someone who is a persecutor – even if that persecutor is part of the hierarchy.