Regarding “Novus Catholics”: I must include myself among those who have never come accross the term except on this blog. I suppose I do sometimes say “novus ordo Catholic” but when I do I generally make the inverted commas sign with my fingers, to show I’m just using it as a helpful distinction, “for want of a better word”. For example, “I was pleasantly surprised to see books by some “novus-ordo” Catholics such as Scott Hahn on the bookstall of the Society chapel in Zurich” would not be easy to express if such a way of describing our non-trad brethren did not exist. It would be a pity if we let hang-ups about “name-calling” get in the way of clear meaning.

That said, I agree with AG that non-trads are really too diverse to lump together under one umbrella. I think the main division is not ethnic but doctrinal. There seems to me to be a world of difference between conservative Catholics of the John Paul II We Love You variety and liberals who reject the veracity of the NT, objective truth etc. It’s not quite fair on the former to tar them with the same brush as the latter (tho I sometimes do just to wind them up). I suppose I prefer to call them “neo-conservatives” and “liberals” in everyday speech.

Tobias Petrus, thank you for calling me on this.

Father, it seems wrong to say that a non-practicing Catholic is not a Catholic. If you believe the Faith and have not been cut off from it by excommunication, you still belong to the Church. You are a disobedient Catholic, a lazy Catholic, a bad Catholic, an unworthy excuse for a Catholic, but you have not done anything to get yourself kicked out of the Church. The Church includes sinners as well as saints, and those sinners include people who don’t go to Church. If they aren’t Catholic, literally speaking, they are no longer under the Church’s authority.

“Also, I think one major distinction that should be made among Novus Catholics is between faithful and non-faithful, or practicing and non-practicing.

“Most Catholics don’t go to Mass or in any significant way try and lead Catholic lives.

“Novus Catholics are Catholics trying to lead Catholic lives in a Novus way.”

This is another problem with using the terms Novus or Traditional. If you’re not practicing, you’re not Catholic. You may self-identify as Catholic, but you aren’t. To be Catholic entails that you are a practicing Catholic. You go to Mass. You try to lead a Catholic life.

There are people of both “parties” who are not practicing. They aren’t Catholic. There are people of both parties who reject Church teaching, [Sede Vacantists or Liberalists (in the strict sense)] are not Catholic.

You are Catholic or you are not Catholic. If one insists on useing terms of distinction, since we cannot do so by using rite as a descriptor, what about OF Catholics and EF Catholics? If you assist at the OF of Mass you are Catholic. If you assist at the EF of Mass you are Catholic. The terms don’t carry the “baggage” of Novus or Traditionalist and imply one is a practicing Catholic in union with the Pope or working toward that union. They also clearly designate which liturgy with all it’s associated practices and ways of living out the Faith one prefers.

Any thoughts?

And these differences aren’t absolute. However, you’re mostly likely to see a strong relationship among members of the same group.

In jest I posted the Top Ten Signs You’re a Novus Catholic list.. Certainly there are Novus Catholics who have nothing in common with that list and there are Latin Mass goers who can identify with the entire list — but in general, you there are probably statistically significant differences between the two populations.

Also, I think one major distinction that should be made among Novus Catholics is between faithful and non-faithful, or practicing and non-practicing.

Most Catholics don’t go to Mass or in any significant way try and lead Catholic lives.

Novus Catholics are Catholics trying to lead Catholic lives in a Novus way.

For instance, if you’ve ever referred to Pope John Paul II as John Paul the Great, you may be a Novus Ordinarian. (Similarly, if you have a child named John Paul, you may be a Novus Ordinarian)

If no Sunday is complete without hearing such hymns as Eagle’s Wings or Here I am Lord, you may be a Novus Ordinarian.

If you honestly prefer attending the Novus Ordo to assisting at the Traditional Mass, you definitely are a Novus Ordinarian.

If you do unnecessary servile work on Sunday (like mowing your lawn), because you don’t find it work, it’s more of a relaxation because you work in an office, you may be a Novus Ordinarian.

That’s the problem - there IS NO “average and typical Catholic” in this country, nor do I think there ever was. Is your average and typical Catholic of Hispanic, French, Italian, Irish, Polish, or German descent, keeping distinct traditions and Catholic practices that are tied to those cultures? Is your average and typical Catholic working-class, middle-class, or upper-class? Does your average and typical Catholic live in urban or suburban areas? To what ethnicity does this average and typical Catholic belong, and what is his or her education level?

You’re actually trying to describe a subset of Catholics who attend the Novus Ordo which by my guess is white, educated, middle-class, and doesn’t self-identify strongly as Irish-American or Italian-American or whatever, not everyone who happens to most often worship in a Novus Ordo Mass. And even in that subset, as someone pointed out, it’s quite a stretch to group conservatives and liberals together.

“I recognize the need for having a term to refer to this group of Catholics. Admittedly they’re the much larger group, as compared to Traditional Catholics, but that’s irrelevant. It’s a group of people, they have significant commonalities among them, and we sometimes have reason to refer to them”

From a scientific perspective, this is where the problem lies – it’s NOT irrelevant that they are the much larger group - your basic assumptions are way off. You are trying to say being a “Novus Catholic” is a preference when it is largely not. Additionally, Catholics who strictly attend the Novus Ordo are indeed a MUCH LARGER group than those who strictly attend the traditional service, and in a much larger group, “significant commonalities” tend to wash out. Being a “Novus Catholic” is the default position in this country, and not necessarily a choice (your own definition for it leaves out any reasons for why people “primarily assist at the Novus Ordo Mass”), and to attempt to label them as such in order to suggest that they have “things in common” that you can compare and contrast with “traditionalist” Catholics simply doesn’t hold up.

As an example, here are 4 groups that I am familiar with that you would like to label as “Novus Catholics:” 1. Cajuns who works as shrimpers and live on the bayou in Southeastern LA who attend their local country parish that their great-grandparents helped build. There is no traditional Mass offered anywhere near them. 2. Mexican laborers who live in West Texas and have to work on Sundays; they attend the nearest Catholic Church to their jobs. 3. Adults and students at an urban university in Chicago whose Catholic student organization offers the Novus Ordo in Latin. The nearest traditional Mass is impossible to get to without a car. 4. Working-class and middle-class blacks in the East Bay who attend a Novus Ordo service that violates many of the rubrics of the Novus Ordo in order to give people an “authentic” African-American worship service. There are only two traditional Masses said every Sunday for the entire diocese.

Other than attending the Novus Ordo, being Catholic, and being in the United States, these groups share very little in common. Their devotions, personal practices of their faith, and even practices within the Church community they are involved with vary greatly. (French colonial descendents don’t celebrate the same feasts nor in the same way as Hispanics do, and African-American Catholics have their own favorite saints and practices, and people who like the Novus Ordo in Latin are their own group. Except for the last group, these are also differences that existed way before there was a “traditionalist” culture.)

This is a bit like making a distinction between red-haired (RH) people and non-red-haired (NRH) people, and saying the NRH group shares significant things in common in appearance. No, not really, other than that they don’t have red hair – the group is too large to make any claims or generalizations about hair color, eye color, and skin color, other than that they are not in the RH group. The RH group does probably share certain traits – they tend to have pale skin, light eye color, and freckles. But not even everyone in the RH group fits those traits, and members of the NRH group may have the exact same traits – except for hair color – that most members of the RH group have.

Thus, my objection isn’t to the labeling, but rather to applying a label that means nothing. Or, applying a label to suggest similarities of belief, practice, etc. that simply do not exist. Recently, you’ve used the term “Novus Catholics” to describe fellow female students at (presumably) Cornell University, yet these Catholic students probably do not have all that much in common with Catholic Hispanic day-laborers in this country except that they both attend some type of Novus Ordo service. Perhaps you really mean to say, “Catholics with the means and/or access to attend private universities who also have the means and/or access to assist at traditional Catholic Masses but – most importantly - choose to primarily assist at the Novus Ordo.” But that group shares little in common with many other Catholic groups in this country, and often has little in common (in both Catholic practice and culture) with the most rapidly growing Catholic population in this country who are also quite likely to assist at Novus Ordo Masses - Hispanics.

(And most people I know who primarily assist at the Novus Ordo Mass don’t fit at all into the list that JSP gives in the previous post, other than perhaps the very last one. I think what everyone might really mean is “Catholics who choose to attend the Novus Ordo AND frequently post in blogs and forums on the internet,” although there is a great deal of variation in that group too.)

My whole view will be explained at much greater length, though, in the post that I should be putting up soon. It’s not far from finished. Maybe then you can identify more nearly where we agree and disagree.

If you, as one who prefers to attend the extraordinary wish to have your own distinct name, choose it for yourself, but I refuse to be labelled by someone else.

As for your amazement at the hornet’s nest you’ve created, that ranks right up there with Kelly Holloway cancelling an Abortion Debate at York University, by saying that arguing the morality of abortion islike debating the morality of a man beating his wife, and wondering why cancelling a debate at an university is upsetting intellectuals.

Think also of some of the prominent people in each group. I don’t think all “Traditionalists” want to be associated with Bishop Williamson or the CMRI. Nor do all “Novus Catholics” belong in the same category as Richard McBrien or Womyn Church. Two groups or descriptors just won’t do it. The CMRI and Womyn Church are not Catholic yet they fit one into each group. The terms are not accurate since they both include Catholics and non-Catholics. The use of such terms puts people into a box they might not fit well in or might not want to be in.

Again, while you might only be seeking a way of describing a group of people, no more, no less, most people won’t see it that way. The issue isn’t really as simple as it seems to be.

The point was raised that using the terms “Trad Catholic” and “Novus Catholic” are the same as using the terms “Roman Catholic” and “Byzantine Catholic.” This is not so. One is either a Roman OR a Byzantine Cahtolic (as far as I know only clerics are bi-ritual. If non-clerics are also the number is very few). This is not the case with “Trad” or “Novus” Catholics. All things considered, most people fit somewhere in between.

I think the terms are inherently problematic. I don’t know what the solution is. Perhaps if the terms are used precede them with “so called” or put them in quotes. It’s what I’ve been doing when I can’t find a way around it. But I don’t think that’s a good solution either.

But meanwhile, I wanted to briefly apologize to Peregrinator, though she apparently isn’t reading at the moment. I did not forget about my promise to answer her question after I got back, but I only returned from my trip this afternoon. My other quick comments were posted from my BlackBerry, but long answers can’t easily be posted from a BlackBerry, which is why hers was deferred. Hopefully I’ll get to it in my upcoming post.

Ah, “diversity” — so this has been your evil design all along, Maximilian?! Did not Pater M. and I disabuse you of this subversive notion one day over pasta? Next you will be speaking of the Mozarabic Rite, pre-Tridentine sequences, Neo-Platonism, . . . even the Valentino collection at the Ara Pacis Augustae will be defended! :) I kid, I kid.

I must say that I am shocked at posts which automatically presume that Trads would immediately look down upon other Catholics just because said Trads make use of a neologism for those other Catholics. Surprisingly, on this thread at least, it is not the Trads who are ranting and raving on the basis of stereotypes, but rather Nordites ranting and raving against Trads on the basis of stereotypes they hold against Trads. Can we get beyond this bickering and just accept the fact that legitimate diversity has always existed in the Church, and therefore different Catholics can be identified in different ways?

Please sign your name or pseudonym at the bottom of your posts, then. This would make it easy to distinguish between us.

The phrase “Novus Ordo Catholic” is used, and can have no other meaning but to convey “non-Catholic” or “not really Catholic.” It simply is not used for any other purpose.

“Neo-Catholic” is a neologism coined a few years back by one or more of the more wild-eyed traditionalist writers and it even more offensive in intent.

The attempt to categorize non-trads, or non-western rite trads on the basis of some nebulous shared characteristics is asinine; I am shocked to read that that suggestions, made by others, is being deliberately misread as an assault on the idea of categorization in iteself. “This category does not exist” is not equivalent to “no categories exist.”

It is also a way station on the road to a series of crackpot notions, which would read out of the Church those who attend the new rite occasionally, or send their children to schools where it is celebrated, and so forth. Few–and a dwindling percentage, as the old Mass becomes more widely available–of those who prefer the old Mass live lives hermetically sealed against contact with the rest of the Church, like a sort of Catholic Amish.

It is also an attitude profoundly politically stupid, even for traditionalists, since it in exactly the same fashion reads out of the Church nearly all priests and all legitimate bishops of the Roman rite.