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There is no doubt, I think, in anyone’s mind that persecution from the World is simply something that Christians are going to have to deal with in every time and place until the end of this world. “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” was our Lord’s promise at the Last Supper, after all! As unpleasant and odious as this is, it is no intrinsic difficulty to Christian piety. Indeed, our Lord’s example and the cult of the martyrs give us aid, comfort, and guidance in coping with, contextualizing, and even — for the holy — loving persecution.
What I’m curious about is what persecution from within the Church does to piety. Can it be compared with standard extra-Ecclesiastical persecution? And how should we respond to it? Obviously, this is an apt question to ask in a modern age where the most vehement hatred for traditional and orthodox Christianity has come from the ostensible ministers and leaders of the visible Church. This sort of persecution has happened to some extent before, but never, I think on such a scale: the Arians had Bishops and priests, and misled many people, but in that age men were made of sterner stuff and those sorts of heretics got no comfort or collegial attention from their orthodox brethren. Today is different: disobedience is rewarded and in many places the most faithful are subjected to the most severe attacks and hatred from their priests and bishops.
I’m posting this as much to hear other people’s thoughts as to flesh out my own position, but let me give my first intuitions. In short, I think that internal persecution is an awful and satanic thing that can distort and pervert the piety of ordinary folks like no external persecution ever could. This is related to the central “tension” of traditionalism fingered by Iosephus and Raindear recently, namely, the question of how far one can trust one’s own discernment of the Tradition of the Church Historic in contrast to the plain and simple obedience to the sorts of things one is taught by one’s own pastors, this latter being the method of contact with that same Tradition that has been the normative transmission method throughout the Church’s history.
It is the sense of betrayal by those who ought to be our friends that ends up leading so many traditionally minded believers into the bitterness and pessimism that are the popular caricature of Trads. And indeed, it’s a natural thing to be bitter about: betrayal devastates communion, and communion is at the heart of what it is to be a part of Christ’s body on Earth. Of course, the natural response isn’t enough: we are part of a supernatural communion, and we also have Christ’s example to follow when it comes to betrayal! In fact, we can see the ideal of personal persistence in the true Faith even in the old Testament: “As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord,” said that first Yeshua. But it’s harder on us, because Christ meant for the Church to be a refuge for those who follow Him, not to be an extra-tense place of discord.
I can see the corrupting influence of this internal persecution in my own life. When still in Ithaca, just entering the Church, I was not really ever able to relax: the parishes, priests, and faithful there, I knew, were mixing falsehoods in with the truth when they were presenting the Church’s teachings. The constant vigilance required there to remain faithful and obedient, on the one hand, and yet true to orthodox teaching on the other was exhausting. The founding of this Society, of course, marked the beginning of my own turnaround, yet even within its warm embrace, all of us Good Timers have spent a startling large amount of time responding to, complaining about, and fretting over the sins, lies, sacrileges, and imprudences of others. As necessary as all this felt at the time, we all knew — even as we indulged our wagging tongues — that it was not good to be so focused on other people’s sins and on the battles for the faith, since they were both to the detriment of simply living the Faith.
It’s not all bad, of course: friendships are forged in such flames, as this blog gives evidence, and one grows more devoted to the Church when one must defend Her constantly — that, at least, is shared in persevering under persecution both from within and without. But does the Beatitude about rejoicing when they persecute you fully apply when the persecutors are from within the Church, or is something else going on? What do other people think about this?
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
I’m just speculating, but I think what you may be feeling is some sadness that so many priests and bishops could actually persecute orthodox Catholics. In other words, you feel like you shouldn’t rejoice because the ones persecuting are the ones who shouldn’t be persecuting.
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.
Those holding fast to the traditional faith and morality are the remnant living within the largely apostate Church.
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.
How does one respond to a long, intense, psychological and spiritual persecution inflicted by one’s own leaders? Please consider my journey.
I remember vividly when the collapse of Catholic tradition began in the mid-1960’s. I was in my twenties at the time. It began with the changing of the Mass, the most visible and influential aspect of Catholicism for the average layman. Suddenly, almost over night, the Latin hymns were gone, replaced by very low quality substitutes. The poor translations of the Mass and readings were not only grating to the ear and mind numbing, but led people astray by their inaccuracies. As the central act of worship was trivialized and degraded, quickly went the belief among the people in the pews in the real presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass. After this, acceptance of other teachings quickly disappeared.
In addition, priests, who just weeks before the changes began would have vigorously defended the Latin tradition, were telling us that we were wrong not to joyfully accept this renewal as “gift of the Council”, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I would ask myself over and over if the Holy Spirit had been on vacation for the last two thousand years!
The clergy, aided by many “obedient Catholics”, hurled contempt and opprobrium at those of us who were experiencing a profound sense of loss at the suppression of all that was dear and familiar to us.
The persecution of Catholics faithful to the “old” Church intensified during the 1970’s with the adoption of the novus ordo missae. Apparently, Paul VI was intent on erasing all vestiges of our liturgical heritage. Except for a few rare places on the planet, the Mass of St. Pius V could not be found! Would that we had the internet in those days! I know of people in my own diocese who wrote to our bishop requesting the traditional Latin Mass only to be informed the it never would be allowed!!!
What a horrible persecution where orthodoxy becomes “wrong” and the unorthodox is the “norm”! Welcome to wonderland, Alice! I almost envy the early Christians who were sent to the lions. At least by day’s end it was over for them. Many of us have endured for over 40 years.
I nevertheless really believe that my faith has been strengthened by this struggle. But the cost to the Church in souls gone astray is beyond measure.
If the impending Motu Proprio does see daylight and has a positive effect, it should bring an end to much of our suffering and a vindication of our position. If it turns out otherwise, let us take consolation in the words of Vergil, “Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.”
Gripping, Antonius. This very evening I was trying to explain this idea of which you have written so well to a young priest who thinks the Church must be all things to all men. But, I responded, that is not so! She is our Mother! A mother does not allow a child to stick its finger in the light socket, or eat Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for breakfast! Holy Mother Church must teach and instruct! Ah — but it will take many more years to undo what the past 40 years have done. Sort of like those poor youngsters who were allowed to eat candy for breakfast — their teeth are rotted and what is there to do.
You know, whenever I encounter hatred, my first thought is always: have I done anything to engender such a reaction? Am I lacking in compassion, being unkind, judgmental, thoughtless, unChristlike?
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?
“I have never heard a real laugh from a traditionalist. They all titter.”
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.)
Petra, you wouldn’t happen to have posted here before under the name ‘Brigid’, would you? Sorry, just a hunch.
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.
A serious and sorrowful question it may be, but there are shades of self-pity in it as well.
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.
Petra,
Give me a break. You’ve done nothing here to “reach out a hand.” You’re the one indulging in judgment and self-pity. When I wrote the post, I had in mind things from my personal experience, like having the nun at the Cornell Chaplaincy warn numerous folks to avoid me because she thought I was “misogynist,” a calumny based — apparently — on her understanding that I was against women’s ordination. And the point of my post was to point out, precisely, that bad, wrong, behaviors do arise in traditionalists that are subjected to this sort of persecution. So try reading and being charitable, rather than accusing others of self-pity.
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.
‘Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.’
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.
Here’s another thought: and back to the point of the post. The persecution of the orthodox by those having authority in the Church is not unheard of, but the saints have adopted two very different responses to it: the Athanasius response, and the Gerard response. St Gerard Majella was accused of serious crimes, and he thought that was just great: a fantastic opportunity for self-mortification, and a corrective to any exaggerated reputation for holiness he might have had. He refused even to defend himself, but was eventually vindicated anyway. Athanasius, on the other hand, defended himself with tooth and nail, and attacked his opponents with unrelenting vigour.
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.
Thanks for the insights, Dr. Shaw. On why the liberals are so fanatical about destroying the last remnants of tradition, I agree that’s it’s partly guilt, but I also think a part of it is bitterness that their “springtime” seems to be withering. In their own sad way they were idealists, but now look at the fruits of their labors! Even the most liberal among them surely wasn’t anticipating or desiring a dramatic decline in Mass attendance or a rash of embarrassing priestly scandals. Some are prepared merely to patronize older people whose attachment to the Latin Mass dates back to before Vatican II, but the attraction of young people to tradition mystifies and infuriates them. It underlines the extent of their failure.
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.