Tradition - Traditionalism

[presbyter]

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Discuss!

[Lakelark]

This one really puts your meditation through the wringer! An immediate reaction, which I offer for discussion - no more than that - is that when you start talking about life and death in a Christian context you must take into account what St Paul said: If we have died with Christ we shall live with him. Given that, are the mental gymnastics implied by presbyter's dictum actually possible? When death means life and life means death, how can I get to grips with this one? Not that I am denying a chasm between tradition and traditionalism, be it understood.

[SOP]

I came on the thread to see what 'taditionalism' meant!

[presbyter]

ooooops - I didn't type that too well did I. There's an R missing.

[I have fixed the typo in the thread's title - Musicus]

[presbyter]

It's quote from John Baldovin's Reforming the Liturgy - a response to the critics (Pueblo 2008). Baldovin himself is quoting Jaroslav Pelikan (The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine Vol 1 - The Emergence of Catholic Tradition - Chicago 1971)

I'll finish the quote -

To insist that the pre-Vatican II liturgy of the Catholic Church represented an objective tradition that should not have been radically reformed is traditionalism.

[NorthernTenor]

So it's a polemic. An interesting one, but the wrong one for here, because it's likely to provoke agreement. That's no challenge

For what it''s worth, I go with the idea that Tradition is the living faith of the Church, and that its organic nature requires careful nurturing and occasional pruning, not the chain-saw.

[Southern Comfort]

There's also a strong argument which says that during the mediaeval period the Church got itself up a blind alley and Vatican II simply pulled it back down to somewhere where it could once again grow in a positive direction. In other words, not drastic pruning but resetting the compass from a point where navigation could commence anew. I rather like those computer software updates that automatically set a restore-point before mashing your existing files in the course of installing the update, just in case anything goes wrong. I view what Vatican II did as very similar to setting the restore-point.

The problem is that we can't all agree on where the restore-point should be set, so perhaps we could just agree to differ without getting involved in yet more acrimonious argument.

[musicus]

It doesn't have to be acrimonious. There's nothing wrong with a good argument.

[nazard]

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Discuss!

This quote just coves over as rather silly, if not downright rude. Tradition can be taken as the practice handed down by the past. As such it is likely to be close to what at least some people who are now dead believed when they were alive, and similarly it could be an approximation to the faith of some living people. The second clause looks like a definition of traditionalism, but it isn't. Surely traditionalism is a movement of people who are alive and have faith, and believe that some older practices of catholics are more helpful than the corresponding more recent practices. To class this as "dead faith" is likely to offend, and would require strong evidence in its support.

The problem we have is that considerable changes have been made in the last forty or so years, and the number of catholics in Britain has, I am told, declined. Those who like the changes insist that they are not the cause of the decline, and recommend that we stick with them. Those who do not like the changes blame the changes and recommend going back to what worked once upon a time. The net result is that we have divided into two groups who only seem to speak to one another in abuse. This is the road to schism.

Another problem we have is that the word tradition has become abused. I know some catholics who talk about the tradition of guitar accompanied folk praise in our worship. They assure me that this tradition goes back forty years. I would consider that to be still in the tentative experimental stage.

Another problem we have is downright disobedience. The arguments over chant fall into this category. Surely it is not that difficult to have a little chant on a regular basis? For a religion based on charitable service to others we seem very unwilling to try.

Don't think that this problem is limited to guitar strumming and chant, they are merely two examples of our polemical approach to life which is threatening our living church.

Pray for peace.

[NorthernTenor]

There's also a strong argument which says that during the mediaeval period the Church got itself up a blind alley and Vatican II simply pulled it back down to somewhere where it could once again grow in a positive direction ... The problem is that we can't all agree on where the restore-point should be set.

You've put your finger on the problem, SC. The last time this approach was tried, the Reformers couldn’t agree on the re-set point, and the multitude of local solutions reflected contemporary ideas and concerns clad in historical garment more than an understanding of history. It would have been far better all round if they'd followed the example of Erasmus, rather than Luther.

So perhaps we could just agree to differ without getting involved in yet more acrimonious argument.

The Church of England was held together for a long time by law, cultural cohesion and fear of civil war. As those constraints disappeared, so the range of belief and practice broadened remarkably, to the point at which it could not be considered a single body. Your suggested approach to unity was tried in the twentieth century and found wanting. As things stand, I fear we face the same problem. However, I agree with nazard that the Church is bigger than this brief time and place, and have confidence that things will not stay as they are.

[NorthernTenor]

So it's a polemic. An interesting one, but the wrong one for here, because it's likely to provoke agreement. That's no challenge .

I'm glad to have been proved wrong.

[festivaltrumpet]

The problem is that we can't all agree on where the restore-point should be set.

There is a viewpoint that believes Mother Church should return to a restore-point and remain in stasis. One does not have to peruse the internet for very long to find commentators who favour organic development of the liturgy, but absolutely no deviation from the most minute rubric. Perhaps it is this school of thought at which the latter part of Fr Baldovin's soundbite is hinting.

[NorthernTenor]

There is a viewpoint that believes Mother Church should return to a restore-point and remain in stasis. One does not have to peruse the internet for very long to find commentators who favour organic development of the liturgy, but absolutely no deviation from the most minute rubric.

Those who argue for organic development aren't the same as those very few who wish for a stasis set in 1962, or some earlier point. It's simply incorrect to suggest otherwise. And there's nothing inconsistant in the attitude you describe. Rubrics and their interpretation can change over time as part of the liturgy's organic development.

[mcb]

The net result is that we have divided into two groups who only seem to speak to one another in abuse.

I think this is untrue. Those who identify strongly with a particularly contentious factionalism tend in my experience to be stuck out on the fringes. The mainstream, on the other hand, is oblivious of the imagined divide. It's an internet thing - people with angrily eccentric views can trumpet them to their heart's content, and persuade themselves that they're giving voice to a tidal force of opinion. But for the most part they're just talking to each other. The abuse, too, in my opinion, tends to be rather one-sided. The noisy internet fruitcakes and demagogues get angry because they're marginalised and ignored, not because anyone's arguing with them.

I'm all for tradition, I just haven't got any time for the idea that there's a war going on.

[Southern Comfort]

Thank you, mcb, for a very wise post.

Let's hope that we don't have any of those from the fringes in our midst.