Tuesday, January 18, 2011

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.

6 comments:

  1. I am sorry for this, Father. This is the kind of stuff that makes it hard for the rest of us who want Mass in the Extraordinary Form to get it at all. The good father who celebrated the E.F. Mass I attended has just been transferred. This Mass was 50 miles from where I live; the next nearest one is 170 miles away. Now begins the uphill battle to have it closer to home.

    So: hey rad-trads: put a lid on it! Many of your traditional-minded brothers and sisters still don't get to have the E.F. Mass at all. You are not helping. Nobody likes a chronic complainer. The Pope may have said we must be provided this form of the Mass if we ask for it, but this doesn't do away with the reality of politics on the ground, and he didn't say the priests have to put up with your endless beefing. So instead of blowing it for the rest of us, why don't you just bite your tongue next time you feel like whining about some picky detail, and give thanks that this inestimable treasure of the Church is open to you.

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  2. I regularly hear/watch Mass on www.livemass.net, an FSSP church in Sarasota, Florida. One small sermon from the priest was that his flock should avoid the danger of feeling superior and elitist, turning in on itself and evincing a lack of Charity towards others.. A profound cleric indeed.

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  3. So, is the organ symposium at St Aloysius still going ahead? I'd been planning to come to one or two of the open events...

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  4. Yes, as far as I know. I hope to get down to one or two events myself.

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  5. I've heard that Dom Alban is worth taking the effort to hear. It's a pity I missed him the last time we crossed paths -- I think it was somewhere between Durham and London.

    Well, I hope we may coincide at one of the recitals on the symposium program.

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  6. Disappointing that you should have interperated good will and enthusiasm for your efforts as interference and ill will.

    PAX

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