On Those Weirdo Trad Parishes

Cliches exist because they often serve as a sort of shorthand for truth, an often glib but also uncannily accurate description of a place, an event, a tendency, etc.  Now, cliches can serve to represent and advance unfair bias, and often do, and they can badly misrepresent and miss vital nuance.  But having said that, the cliche of the mean ‘ol trad Catholic is probably the dominant, knee jerk reaction we trads have to contend with.  And, not entirely unfairly, it must probably be said.

How has this come about?  Likewise, what about the trad cliche of the silly, far from groovy, get over the 60s hippy dippy happy clappy define your own truth Novus Ordo type?  How true are these descriptions, and from where might they stem?

My new sole source for blogging material, Tumblar House, has some answers below, which I found pretty insightful.  In this case, I thought Charles Coulombe’s confrere made perhaps the most insightful contribution – we trads/faithful Catholics are the product of long years of avoiding and overcoming constant deadly threats, both to ourselves and to our children – you think a few years of that might make someone a little reserved in charity and prone to pounce on perceived threats with maybe a bit more relish than absolutely necessary?  And how about the rank failure of the hierarchy to define and defend Truth, so that laity have, by default, often had to step into this role?  Think that might also have had some less than perfect fruit?

This short segment also provides a keen insight into that strange entity, the former devout pre-conciliar Catholic who now so loved the old Mass and all the old devotions, and now, as a septuagenarian or octogenarian finds them repellent.  This person may or may not be a hippy casualty leftist, they may be quite orthodox in their Novus Ordo way, but they just viscerally hate the old Mass.  How could that person, on an objective level, exist, when the TLM is so manifestly superior on practically every level possible?  Well, they went through the incredibly jarring experience of being told by the Church, their Mother, that all they loved and held dear was not just far from ideal, but positively harmful/dangerous, and would be replaced by something “better.”  I can’t imagine how painful that must have been, nor the depth of Faith those folks had, and have, to have seen them through that experience.  That’s not to say their reactions, then or now, were always the right ones or even virtuous (mass contraceptive use, anyone?), but it does help to explain how these people came about.  I think it hard for someone like me, who converted on the cusp of the 21st century, to comprehend just how obedient Catholics were in the 1960s, and the entire expectation of obedience that was woven into the fabric of Catholic lives at that time.  That ethos, once such a cornerstone of the Faith (to an extent that m may have been excessive and even unhealthy, as natural as it was given the external attacks the Church faced from 1789-1958, say) has been one of the biggest casualties of the collapse of hierarchical authority since the “new springtime” of Vatican Il Duce.

Basically the Church is badly broken, probably in worse shape than she’s ever been, and that has left the sheep largely fending for themselves.  We should not be surprised that under such circumstances, the laity would be left confused and even divided into hostile camps.  This will persist, in my surmise, until the revolution that afflicted the Church in the 60s/70s (and today) is definitively rolled back, either by overt act or by slow submersion beneath a renewed authentic Catholicism.