This blog starts after a particularly gruelling weekend slaving over a hot altar. You would think that gaining access to the Usus Antiquior would be considered a major plus in a very average parish but, no, the traddies have got so used to complaining, that they just have to find something, or somebody, to pick on. By Sunday evening the sentiments of the Reverend Frederick Rose (vide Rolfe's Hadrian VII) were resounding around what was left of my rationality; 'loving the faith' and 'hating the faithful' seemed quite a reasonable proposition.
Well you can pick your cause; Gothic versus Roman, Polyphony versus Plainchant, High versus Low. It seems some traddies are just not happy unless they're miserable. Just as well. They've got a lot of purgatory to look forward to. So will I for that matter for my own lack of charity.
I really do sympathise, Father. I believe it's called "cognitive dissonance". I lived in it myself for years. The title of Mark Shea's blog "Catholic and Enjoying It" used always to trouble me, knowing in my heart that I was Hating Practically Every Minute of It.
ReplyDelete"Religion addiction" is part of it, of course; but as I wrote three years ago in the depths of my own despair: "I'm a Trad: one of those whom the abnormality of the times has compelled into a variety of absurd and unnatural postures; one of the mad, driven in my leisure hours to the digestion of turgid encyclicals in order to defend what ought to be self-evident; to contrive some kind of "systematic statement of the obvious" in the face of universal denial and purblind stupidity".
Crisis-tianity and religion addiction: absolutely fatal.
Thank you for your careful comments.
ReplyDeleteHave mercy on us Father. I think that years and years of being told that SSPX types are unfaithful but that Religious Education Conference types are faithful tends to make one kinda crazy.
ReplyDeleteI often wish that I didn't know anything about traditional Catholicism. It would be much easier.