Francis Berger
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Tradition is Eternal Creativity, Not a Fortress

12/13/2022

5 Comments

 
My triple-pecked priest – who locked up the village church in 2020 and then pulled a seven-month disappearing act that would have made Harry Houdini gape in awe – has recently begun reverting to more traditional rituals and modes of worship on Sundays. 

For example, after he finally declared it safe for the congregation to remove their masks about a year ago, he stated that he would only distribute the Eucharist on the tongue. The announcement caused considerable consternation and confusion among my fellow churchgoers, most of whom had more or less gotten used to the priest treating them like permanent, irredeemable bio-hazards. 

A few months after that, my priest proclaimed that he expected all able-bodied parishioners to kneel before receiving the Eucharist on the tongue. During the mass, he ceremoniously instructed my son and the other altar boys to haul out an old prie-dieu and place it at the foot of the dais before the altar. The parishioners did as they were instructed. 

The reversion to more traditional forms during Mass is my priest’s response to the liberal bishops and cardinals in Germany calling for a change in Catholic teaching on homosexuality and women priests. I know this because he informed us of it himself. As far as he is concerned, the Church is on the cusp of yet another schism, and it was his sworn intention to ensure that my little village congregation remains on the right side of Church history. 

Though I respect my priest for his stance against the QWERTY agenda, I would respect him much more if he had shown a similar level of doggedness during the birdemic. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Litmus Tests, when you fail one, you pretty much fail them all. And my priest failed the birdemic Litmus Test miserably. 

Failed and passed litmus tests aside, my priest’s reaction and subsequent actions against the ominous liberalizing threat seeping in from the West made something eminently clear to me. The more traditional elements within the Church have not sufficiently acknowledged the reality of the evolution of consciousness. Consequently, the only response they can offer against the mature vices, evil, and sins of modern consciousness is to fortress themselves in the past and tradition. 

The impetus to barricade behind tradition arises from the belief that past Church teachings form an eternal criterion of truth from which it is impossible to stray without consigning the world and everyone in it to damnation.

Attached is the conviction that the Church, the world, and men are finished. Spiritual authority is external to the person; authority must be recreated to sustain that eternal criterion of truth ensconced in 2000 years of history.

How far will my village priest go to stem the prevailing evil trends? How far back will he reach into those 2000 years? How many rituals will he reintroduce to ensure we all remain on the right side of Church history? Time will tell; unless, of course, another birdemic hits the world. Then I suspect he might close the church doors again in an effort to keep everyone safe.

The tradition my priest is trying to defend is fixed, static, and external. I wonder how things might be different if he viewed tradition as eternal creativity.

​What if he understood God as continuously creating and expecting eternal newness?

What if he embraced the notion that Christians must play a role in this eternal newness by answering God’s call to conquer the giveness of the world and enrich divine life through co-creation?

​Well, things would probably be quite different indeed. 
5 Comments
Lady Mermaid link
12/14/2022 02:59:52

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” ― Gustav Mahler

This quote comes to mind when discussing what went wrong w/ modernity. While it was a serious error to jettison what our ancestors built; we cannot simply turn back time. William Wildblood stated that the future will probably look more like the past than now but w/ the maturity we will have gained from our experiences w/ modernity.

It's telling that Scripture begins in a Garden back in Genesis and ends w/ the New Jerusalem in Revelation. On one hand, Christ did not come to abolish the Law and Prophets but to fulfill them. However, He did come to make all things new and warned not to pour new wine into old wineskins. We must take the best aspects of tradition and build upon them into higher levels of creativity. Right now we're stuck in a state of spiritual adolescence. However, we cannot become children again. We must grow into mature adults.

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Francis Berger
12/14/2022 08:04:51

@ Lady Mermaid - Traditionalists tend to draw a demarcation line somewhere within tradition where everything within Christianity is supposed to stop. This creates a backward-looking, ossifying, idolatrous veneration of the past that leads to a sense of nostalgia that leads people away from creativity.

This approach offers no guidance or solutions for the challenges we face now. It is utterly powerless against the forces that oppose it. In this sense, the tradition I have described has served its purpose.

That doesn't mean it was insufficient or faulty. It was exactly what was needed in previous times, but it offers little now. Does this mean tradition should be abandoned? I guess that depends on what means by abandoned. Does one abandon one's childhood by maturing into adolescence or from adolescence into adulthood? Some aspects, sure, but the being is essentially the same, albeit in a different form with different needs, talents, and capabilities. The biggest problem with tradition is it wants to force everyone back into spiritual childhood (as you note) -- this is an impossible and undesirable motivation.

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Lady Mermaid link
12/14/2022 18:34:59

The synchrony fairies are out in full force as this recent article in The Spectator describes the fundamental flaw in conservatism (or traditionalism). There's a sign up required for free articles but this quote has made the rounds on Twitter.

"The very thing that many conservatives find attractive about their outlook is also what limits it. Conservatism is a reassurance, a view that sees the world as complete, the nature of beauty captured already in the greatest works of the past, once and for all, just as there is no improving on, say, the US Constitution. When you believe you have the perfect truth, there’s no need to search for more. Yet mankind keeps searching — and those who lead the search, lead the culture." What Conservatives Lack by Daniel McCarthy

Conservatism tends to be a defensive position as opposed to liberalism's never ending offensive strikes. It views the past as complete and in no need of improvement. Therefore, it is fundamentally unable to resist the onslaught of leftism.

You mentioned your priest's stance against the QWERTY agenda. The failure of conservatives in this task illustrates the flaw of the "fortress" approach. Most of the arguments against gay "marriage" appealed to tradition and warned of the slippery slope. It's not that these arguments were wrong, but they were inadequate against the leftist argument for "love is love" and "freedom". There was no positive argument about the nature of men and women and the purpose of marriage beyond utilitarian notions of child rearing.

I'm going through the Gospel of Luke and have just read about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. This illustrates that even God Himself is not static. God had to learn what it was like to be a flesh and blood human subject to temptations. This is why the Son as opposed to the Father has the authority to judge men. Perfection is a dynamic state.

JMSmith
12/14/2022 14:54:19

I'd say your priest is engaged in performative traditionalism. It is superstitious and will not work, but I'd urge charity at the personal level. The poor fellow isn't very smart or discerning, so he didn't see the sinister side of the covid panic. It took me a while to smell the rat in that business. But even he can smell the rat in sanctified sodomy and he should get credit for that.

Performative traditionalism doesn't work by itself and is, as I said, a sort of superstition or idolatry. But it does at least show that the performative traditionalist smells the rat. I say we see it as an invitation to talk to the performative traditionalist about the rat.

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Francis Berger
12/14/2022 15:19:43

@ JM - Yes, you're right. It is a performative traditionalism. As I mention in the post, I do give him credit for taking a stand and being on the right side in this issue, but as you say, what he is doing is mostly a form of idolatry.

I certainly don't blame him or hold it against him. He's doing what he thinks is best for the Church and his congregation. He really doesn't know what else to do. As for speaking to him about the rat, my religious perspectives would just upset him.

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