by
Alexis Bugnolo
"The true Catholic is the traditionalist." -- St. Athanasius, Father and Doctor of the Church
Every action of a disciple of Christ can only be characterized as essentially Christian if it is motivated by Christian principles, aims for Christian goals, and uses Christian means. Why this is the essential and fundamental characteristic of the Catholic Traditional movement in the Church can be clearly seen by a review of both Church History, the nature of human society and the actual course of reforms begun with Pope John XXIII.
Christ and History
Since the beginning of time there has been in creation a cosmic war between those who accept the Divine counsels for creation and those who opposes these. There was first of all the test of the angles: Lucifer and the angels he seduced rebelled against the decree of the Incarnation of the Son of God from the most pure womb of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. The second the test of our first parents: Eve preferring her own efforts apart from God's grace to attain to divinity, and Adam preferring the will of his wife to that of God. Since the time of Adam this wave of rebellion has swept through mankind's history, harvesting an every increasing bounty of wickedness, death, and damnation. To restore this fallen world God called Abram from Ur of the Chaldees, to worship Him alone, and in return for his test of faith in the sacrifice of his son Isaac, promised that the Messiah would be his descendant and bring salvation to all peoples and nations. No one is worthy to see God, and so among the descendants of Abraham, each was put to the test.
When in the fullness of time Christ came to save mankind, He came to His own, but His own received Him not. The High Priests, the scribes and Pharisees, conspired with the Herodians, and handed God over to Pilate to be put to death. This real Jewish Messiah had given all sufficient proof that He is God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the salvation this God was offering mankind was hated by those who ruled in Palestine 2000 years ago. If only the rulers of this world had known the mystery, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory!
The Church was born suddenly into this world of darkness, freed now from the fate of eternal doom by the promise offering the Paschal Mystery of Christ Crucified. The Holy Spirit descended upon the Church and spurred the Apostles and disciples to preach the Gospel of eternal salvation to all corners of the world. With the passing of the centuries the Church matured guided by the divine authority invested in the Successors of St. Peter. As the world grew cold the Church flourished within, growing every stronger day by day from the constant attacks and persecutions striking Her members day by day.
Since the life of the Church is the grace of God in Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit who calls all men to faith and remembrance of the Son of God Incarnate and Crucified, the greatest triumphs of the Church in history have, are, and always will be the doctrinal triumphs of truth over darkness in the Magisterium of Christ over the flood of lies, deceit, and filth belched forth from the beast dwelling at the heart of the City of Man.
Among these triumphs is undoubtedly the Sacred and truly Ecumenical Councils of Trent and Vatican I, which sealed forever against the inroads of dissent, the fundamental teachings of Christ about His own Church, Her worship of Him, and the pillars He endowed Her with against the ages.
In our own time, the cosmic war has been renewed at an unprecedented magnitude of conflict. For this turbulent century which is about to close, God sent His own Immaculate Mother to Fatima to prepare the Church by salutary warnings, reminders, and requests. Through two bloody wars of the most inhumane and wicked blood letting and countless revolutions, massacres, and travails, the world has plunged itself in to the madness, first of the external civil conflict of war, then of the internal civil conflict of moral and personal self-denigration and destruction, in all manners of murders (abortion, etc.) and perversions (contraception, sodomy, etc.).
In this century the Church has been both a witness and victim of the conflicts of this cosmic battle. The war is the same, but the front and tactics are new. While a complete review is impossible, it behooves us Catholics at the close of the 20th century to consider more closely the essential quality of the current troubles.
More than ever the world, and hence the members of the Church who live in the world-- though they should not be of the world--is devolving in to the mass perversion of human affections. Emotions according to their nature are God's gift to human kind: they are good. Their effervescence in the soul and body of man, while ontologically good, is neither good nor evil, dwelling as it does not on the level of will or intellect but of sense, which is merely a tool for the human person to assist in his relations with the world about him.
However ever since the Fall of Adam, the nature of mankind in each person has been wounded: the mind darkened by the effects of sin, the will weakened in its inclination to good, and the senses rebellion from the rule of reason.
In our own age, the agents of darkness have especially targeted the senses, the affection of the sons of Adam so as to cloud the intellect, from which and by which all freedom and human goodness is made possible naturally to the will in both the orders of nature and grace. Recalling the adage of Socrates, a human person is like a charioteer; even if he be feeble in the eyes of the many, if he can rule the horses of his chariot, he can nevertheless win the race. So likewise, if one be of no great intelligence or fortitude, nevertheless, if one can but govern his affections by faith and grace, he can effectively cooperate with God's graces and attain to the end God has chosen for him from all eternity.
If, however, he surrenders the rule of his mind
over his will to the governance of the whims of sense, with its undisciplined
emotions and passions, even if he has the greatest of minds and the strongest
of wills, he will end up in eternal ruin.
The Authentic Nature of Renewal in the Catholic Church
It follows then that the Church in all Her endeavors and in every aspect of Her life inculcate into Her members effective and sober remedies for the evils following from the Capital Sin of Adam. And more so in the epoch in which we live that She protect, foster and promote the salvation and sanctification of souls in the face of the ongoing and increasing attempts by the forces of darkness to pervert the affections of mankind, both within and without the only salvific community, the Catholic Church.
The Church is a perfect society constituted by Christ as the light of the world. Just as in Him there is salvation such as that there is no other name under Heaven by which one can be saved, so in the Church, His Body, Mystical and visible, united under the jurisdiction and supreme authority of the Successor St. Peter, is there alone found the salvation offered and promised by Christ. To reject the Church in theory or practice is to lose all possibility of eternal salvation.
The Church for Her part is the treasury of salvific means and doctrine for this shipwrecked world, headed to doom. Every storm of time which shakes Her to Her foundations, in attempt to deceive even the elect, if that were possible, attacks Her essential nature as a salvific community. Either the attack is directed at separating what is salvific from what is held in common or what is held in common from what is salvific. And thus through the course of ages have heresies, schisms, immorality and errors be whipped up the crew of Satan to the destruction of many souls, but never of Holy Mother Church.
Since the fundamental strategy against the Church is such, to separate what is salvific from what is held in common, it follows that the fundamental strategy for responding to what threatens the Church is to make every more united what is salvific and what is held in common. In the sub-Apostolic age (30-110 AD), it was Gnosticism which sought to divest the Divine from the corporal, and so render the Church a society incapable of sanctifying the corporal. In the Nicene Era (c. 300 AD) it was Arianism which sought to tear from the bosom of the Church the latria due the Son of God, Her Lord, Founder, and Savior. In the ages which followed new attempts were made that would render the believer incapable of following in the footsteps of Our Redeemer: Monophysitism denied the unity of the supernatural and natural in one person; Monotheletism, the unity of the human and divine wills by grace; iconoclasm, the manifestation and communication of revealed truth in sign, symbol, and art.
At the time of the Protestant Revolt (c. 1525) a new campaign was begun by Satan through the false prophet of private religiosity, the apostate heretic, Martin Luther. His was an endeavor to destroy the supernatural-salvific reality of Christianity by attacking the ability of the human will to cooperate and receive supernatural assistance by grace, Faith, Hope, and Charity. In a sense the revolt of Luther was a revival of Monothelitism, except whereas in that ancient heresy there only remained the divine will; in Lutheranism there remained only the human will exalted to the level of the Divine.
In this century we have seen one of the most bitter seeds of this Lutheran error bear the most bitter fruit in human society. It has done this through various, and though seemingly disparate victories, essentially identical movements to exalt the human will, and hence mankind himself, to the level of the divine. In nationalism, it became a religious duty to die en masse for the sake of the state (W.W.I); in Nazism, it became a religious duty to worship a human individual as a messiah of racial hatred; in Marxist Leninism it became a religious duty to make the human denial of God a religion and simultaneous politic of human progress; in liberalism, it became the religious duty to glorify the indulgence of human affects divorces from the norms of morals and ethics.
It would not be humble of the Church in our age to deny that as She lives among men afflicted with such woes, that She Herself is wounded in Her members by these same woes, and hence in Her members is tempted to these same errors. However, it surely would not be charitable or prudent of the Church in our age, if She forsook those for whom Christ called Her into existence as a salvific community, and failed to apply the remedies of grace and sanctification which Christ Himself endowed Her for all time.
It follows then that the only authentic norm of renewal in the Catholic Church is for the Church to be and act in continuity with Her past: to be what She was for She was what Christ made Her to be. If there is any authentic progress and development it is only this: to be more intensely and clearly and effectively what She has always been by Christ creative act by which He brought Her to existence in the pangs and humiliations of His Holy Cross.
This theological necessity is at once theoretical and practical. In doctrinal matters it means being docile and receptive to the graces of virtue and wisdom with which Christ manifests more clearly Himself and His Church to the saints who have gone before us into eternal glory. This means the actual recognition of authentic development in theology which leads to every more precise and definitive expositions of the teaching of Christ, expositions which by the nature of the grace of enlightenment by the Holy Spirit cannot be essentially different or at odds with what Christ or His Church have always in all times and places held and taught.
In the practical order this theological necessity requires absolutely a commitment from the pastors of the Church to exercise the ministry of their offices of priest, prophet and king in the enactment and maintenance of disciplinary measures which foster the every more perfect and widespread practice of all virtue, theological and moral.
In both orders, practical and theological, it is necessary by the very nature of the Church as a perfect society of men reborn in baptism and united in hierarchical communion to communicate the salvific riches of Christ and His Church to men by a continuously consistent mode of communication. Essential to this endeavor is the actual recognition that human disciples of Christ understand Revelation and receive grace through human symbols which are intelligible. Thus did Christ speak in parables to teach the most profound truths of eternity and supernatural life.
Indeed, since it is the nature of the human intellect to communicate by means of symbols, it is thus by means of symbols that the human intellect is enlightened according to truths received from others, the most important of which are the truths of Divine Revelation. Faith comes by hearing: but more precisely faith comes through the medium of human symbols. Since eternal truth comes to the human intellect by symbols, and since it is the intellect of man that enables the will to govern the affections with justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance, it is consequently and gravely of import that in an era such as ours, in which the world is being perverted in its affections, that the riches of Christ's doctrine and grace be effectively communicated by human symbols.
Now, it is of the very nature of human symbols that are actually used in the commun-ification of human society that they are of a continuous diachronic {i.e. throughout time} signification. Hence it is essential to human society that communication actually take place through TRADITIONAL signs and symbols if continuous, efficacious and effective results are to follow.
Thus the inevitable conclusion that it is a grave necessity of the Church to communicate the eternal and perennial truths and riches with which Christ endowed Her through signs and symbols and all other means which are commonly and traditionally accepted if She is to foster the sanctification and salvation of the majority of individuals in the most effective and practical manner. This principle touches every aspect of Christian life, every aspect of ecclesial life; most importantly that of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Indeed, if traditional signs and symbols were to be abandoned, there would result a widespread disorientation in the Church by means of the actual disintegration of a continuity of commun-ification of the teachings of Christ and His salvific grace in the lives of believers. If such an event were to occur simultaneously in a world which itself was undergoing a profound social and moral change for the worse, the result would be nothing less than a catastrophic debilitation of spiritual life and a loss of faith en masse among vast groups of the faithful. If such a devolution in the world was characterized by a fundamental movement towards the perversion of human affections away from the good, then the tumult in the world would find no remedy from the Church, deprived as She would be of the efficacy of communicating the salvific to the communion of the faithful. The result would be the widespread acceptance of the perversion of affections, both in the world and among the faithful.
The Fundamental Deficiencies in the Aggiornamento begun by Pope John XXIII
The policy of the Roman Pontiff who succeeded Pope Pius XII, was ostensibly to foster a renewed interest in the Christian religion by contemporary individuals by representing the Church in a set of symbols more accommodated to the intelligibility of contemporary society. In this Pope John XXIII, while recognizing the effectiveness and flourishing qualities of the Church in his own day, sought to increase every more the scope of the Church's ministry to non-Catholic and non- Christian peoples.
In the enthusiasm of the 60's the enthusiasm which greeted this innovative approach to ecclesiastical policy ran wild through the episcopate which attended the Second Vatican Council. To be effective in the attainment of the program launched by Pope John XXIII it was therefore essential that those signs and symbols, that means with which the Church had at that time achieve such an astounding advance in the authentic evangelization of peoples throughout every nation of the globe NOT be abandoned, but rather that it be augmented by an approach to non-Catholic and non-Christian peoples more suited to their present state of darkness and sin.
But what was the policy of the amiable and childlike John XXIII for specific classes of peoples who were not as of yet responding in great measure to the Church's call to eternal salvation, became with the pontificate of Pope Paul VI a general policy of internal reform which touched the tested, tried, true, and effective means by which the Church Herself had come to so greatly flourish.
Surely the Church was not in perfect health, but neither was the Aggiornamento, begun in earnest with the opening of the Council, aimed at the weaknesses that were smoldering through the reigns of three previous Pontiffs. The modernism condemned by Pope St. Pius X, the naturalism condemned by Pius XII, the ecumenism condemned by Pius XI all were very much unabated in the centers of formation the clergy throughout the Church. If the Council had resorted to condemnations directed at these spiritual diseases within Her membership, She would have undoubtedly been more capable of an authentic endeavor to evangelize those peoples who may be disabled by peculiarly western-Christian symbols to comprehend the actual and real supernatural nature of the Revelation and Redemption offered in Christ. But in failing to do this a fatal blow was struck against any possible salutary application of a policy of communicating the riches of Christ and His Church in contemporary society. The resulting freedom that would soon be granted to these distortions in the commun-ification of Catholic teaching not only would imperil a renewed effort at evangelization, but foster the disintegration of the very process of commun-ification itself.
Indeed, at this deeper level, the Church as a society requires essentially both human and divine aids for the maintenance of its integrity. Among these is the actual effective maintenance of virtue and doctrine by the power of jurisdiction in the threatening and imposition of penalties and exclusion from communion. These powers of any human society are what characterize it in fact and law as a corporate unity, and give rise to a definite character. Without these any collectivity of human individuals looses all authentic characteristics of a communion, for in the toleration of what is contrary to the essential nature of a human society there is the actual denial that this essential nature is the characteristic of the collectivity.
Thus, if there ever was an authentic hope attached to the Aggiornamento begun by John XXIII it came to a definite end with the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI who expressly denied his intention to use the powers of penalty and exclusion with which the head of any visible human society must be endowed, ready and willing to act, so as to preserve its corporate identify and unity.
In this one can see a sound rationale basis for the condemnations of the Abbé de Nantes in his accusations that by such a policy Pope Paul VI abandoned, in this sense, the government of the Church. What is of greater import to the crisis that has ensued, however, is the policy begun by Pope Paul VI and reinforced by John Paul II of using the supreme authority of the Vicar of Christ to entertain affections towards non-Catholic and non-Christian persons, customs, traditions, ideologies which by their ideological rationale of avoiding penalty and condemnation have omitted and diverted from the pastoral practice and example of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who did not hesitate to rebuke even the religious authorities of His day with the eternal consequences of their disbelief, frequently proposing to them the actual, eternal, and tormenting punishments that awaiting the perpetrators of such perfidy.
By such a policy of weakening the regimen of the Church in crucial and essential powers of governance and proclamation, which touch the essential duties of our sacred pastors to rule, govern, and sanctify, the Church has been stripped bare of a great many immemorial aides in Her mission of salving and sanctifying men and actually wounded grievously in Her members through the lack of sound doctrine (sound catechisms, formation of the clergy, preaching, scholarship), the lack of the means of grace (sacraments, sacramentals, devotions, etc.), and scandals that daily pierce the faithful to the heart.
Secondly, there was a fundamental ideologization of the Aggiornamento. What began with a desire born in the heart of Pope John XXIII to present a more humane and maternal fact of the Church became a rationale for excluding from the discipline and proclamation of the Gospel those aspects of the teaching of Christ that resounded most harshly in the ears of a decadent world. This "placing of the lamp under the bushel basket" policy dumbed-down the Tridentine theology of the Mass, the Sacraments, Faith, Justification, Catechetics etc. for the sake of obtaining the love of the world for the Church. And this policy continues in large part unto the present day (1999). In the practical order the execution of this policy is equivalent to the defection by the pastors of the Church from their sacrosanct fidelity to Christ Her Head. It is for this reason that many writers have characterized the fundamental sin of the present era of Church history as the "sin of Judas Iscariot" whose sin was not heresy, but infidelity.
The Actual Path towards renewal
The actual path towards authentic renewal must begin by a recognition of the actual problem confronting the Church in the present day. And departing from such a recognition there must be a direct and actual application of remedies aimed at the precise attacks that have occurred and been permitted through out this century and in particular in the years beginning with the reign of Pope John XXIII. If the real crisis is not recognized there will be no actual and sustained endeavor to effectively remedy the problems at their root. No doubt that such remedies await the formal response of the Vicar of Christ and the Sacred Hierarchy united with Him. But in the body of the faithful there needs to be a day to day lived response and reaction to the actual state of the problem.
This actual path towards renewal can be recognized in recognizing the essential problem of the present crisis: an attempt by the forces of darkness to separate the salvific from what his held in common in the Church by means of abandoning the actually effective and essential means of communicating the salvific in the Church among the members of the Church. What is needed therefore is a return to the traditional exercise of discipline in the government of the Church by the Pope and the Sacred Hierarchy by the imposition of penalty upon gross violations of morality and law and the simultaneous condemnation of doctrinal and moral errors and heresies, and in addition, no less a return to the traditional, effective, and proven signs and symbols by which the riches of Christ's grace and holiness have beef effectively communicated to the vast majority of the faithful from time immemorial. Such a threefold endeavor to return to the traditional will and can only be the effective solution to the problems of the present crisis in the Church, for they are the only means to a solution of the actual crisis.
Finally, it is neither disrespectful or rebellious to say what is true about a matter which is both of the utmost importance to the entire Church and which has been for 40 years a matter of the greatest publicity in the Church. It is neither uncharitable to discuss the patent failure of reforms on the basis of actual application of policies. It is not a matter of suspicions, discernment of motives, or the like; but rather of publicly stated and imposed decisions, that can be examined for what they actually are by their manifest public nature and effects.
On the contrary it is of the utmost importance to do such if the crisis that has gripped the Church since the reign of John XXIII is to be resolved and the Church to return to the vitality and fruitfulness of continuity with Her historic nature, so that the entire Church recognize and return to a historic continuity with Her past by means of the re-imposition of the essential and necessary qualities, as mentioned above, of discipline, faith, tradition, and sacrament. Essential to such a renewal is the actual pursuit of the restoration of the salvific communion of the Church and this necessarily requires communion with the Vicar of Christ in the maintenance of actual hierarchical communion with our sacred pastors, in a spirit of humility, docility, and a firm witness to what the Church needs in our present age, calling one another to personal repentance and spiritual renewal of our minds, hearts, affections, actions and goals in the execution of the duties of our state in life.
It is in such a Catholic Traditional movement that the preservation of the Traditional Roman Rite finds its most authentic and essential place in a program fruitful and reparative in the Ecclesial Community. And thus, it must be by both a recognition and utilization of the Church's own necessary traditional qualities, that the sacred pastors of the Church restore Her in Her members spread over the whole earth.