"Ideas have consequences"
September 20, 2007

In this trilogy of columns there remains a loose end to tie up. I said in the "battleship priests" column:

A couple of evenings ago a priest friend called me and we fell to discussing this very problem: namely that Trads in general don't seem to like ideas either. On a practical level my exercise of any ministry has only been in the United States so I cannot really speak for Trad laity elsewhere but I have an idea that the principle is probably applicable elsewhere if my surmise of earlier this year is correct - more on that later.

I return to this theme now. Earlier this year I noticed that three of the SSPX bishops were in Paris in the space of 6 weeks and their audio conferences were posted online. I listened to them walking around the park with an MP3 player on three successive evenings. Every one of the conferences had the same theme - keeping on the outs with Rome and possibly for the long haul. The image conjured up by one of the Bishops was the persecution of Christians in the first three centuries of the Church - boy that was setting up the SSPX for a long-term rupture indeed !

I am not interested here in what was said in these conferences only why it was said. Reading between the lines and all Trad clergy on the outs with Rome are walking a tight-rope...

If you're a sede - how on earth can you continue to convince your people that the Church can go almost 50 years without its foundation (the Pope) with no end in sight ?

If you're an SSPXer how do you convince a Catholic that continued (faithful) disobedience is in fact a Catholic virtue and again with no end in sight ? Answer: Rome is full of Modernists....freemason etc. etc. etc..

As I said in the first of these three columns Bishop Williamson always taught us in the seminary that we should follow our conscience because ideas have consequences. In the abstract I would agree, but in the concrete, in my experience, the laity don't care what their Trad priest serves them up as far as his particular "-ology" on the Church crisis is concerned - they just want the Latin Mass. They don't care whether the Pope is the Pope or not, or whether he's fully Traditional or not - they just want the Mass and they don't want the wackiness seen in so many NOM parishes ! The Pope himself said this in his letter that accompanied the MP  when he wrote about "deformations" of the liturgy.

Discussing this with the priest friend mentioned above, he said to me "Well obviously we've failed to communicate the issues to them." To which I jokingly (but in reality in all earnestness) responded: "You mean failed to brainwash them !"

I am fully convinced that most Trad clergy are not remotely interested in reconciling with Rome. None of us has really had to answer to superiors - we rather like doing our own thing. The problem with this is that most Trads are in reality practical protestants picking and choosing the Catholic elements they will follow and those they will not. We lambaste the Modern Catholics for their "cafeteria Catholicism" but are we any different ?

The laity, on the other hand would like nothing better to have their cake and eat it (or should I say Pope and the Latin Mass). Many Trad clergy are finding this out for themselves and a little belatedly as well ! It is not a question of dissenting from a hierarchy that dissents from the previous Magisterium, it is simply the sensus fidelium telling our layfolk the simple truth: Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesiam - Where Peter is there is the Church ! (St. Ambrose). Thus, some ideas have consequences... not necessarily all of them !

+TF

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