Burnt again!

I really should have known better than to get involved. I was invited to take part in a small conference to do with something vaguely traddie and, after some thought, agreed to help out. Oh dear! You see the sons of mediocrity within the traddie movement are always hiding around the corner ready to pull anything down that might might question their undoubted position as arbiters of what is just, right, and unfortunately good taste. I hold very little faith in good taste indeed, when it becomes the yard stick of orthodoxy, I smell a sacristy rat. Today I received a message that some of the sons of mediocrity are slightly miffed that the conference is not as they had conceived it. It was the first that I'd heard that they had ever been involved but then the organisers must have known that I would have steered a wide berth had I known.

It's moments like these that I begin to understand why some quite reasonable clergy want nothing to do with traddies. They've discovered through bitter experience just how nasty people can be when mediocrity lays ownership to something which is not actually theirs and then somebody else comes along with a lace alb to spoil their Gothic party. Our little local problem is just symptomatic of the wider movement at the moment. When a local tat merchant becomes the sole arbiter of the traditional rites then you've got trouble. When a cleric believes himself to be the only proper interpreter of tradition in his area then you've got trouble. When a traddie organisation tries to lay claim to jurisdiction over all celebrations in their country then you've got trouble. When a couple of battling minor traddie curial officials actually impede the supplying of the traditional rites to the faithful- then you've got trouble. I could go on. Whilst the movement may not be particularly way laid by gin and lace at the moment (although that aspect is not unknown) backbiting is alive and well and it is strangling progress. Here ends the rant.