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[Catholic Caucus] The Importance of Not Being Us
Remnant Newspaper ^ | December 31, 2017 | Christopher A. Ferrara

Posted on 01/02/2018 10:11:40 AM PST by ebb tide

While Francis sows chaos and subverts the Church, three neo-Catholic figures bicker over whether one of them has become a “radical Catholic reactionary” because he has recognized that Francis is sowing chaos and subverting the Church.  If only it were a joke...

Someone has brought to our attention a running online debate between Karl Keating and one Dave Armstrong over Philip Lawler’s upcoming book Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is Misleading His Flock. Therein Lawler, a prominent spokesman of the Catholic “conservative” or neo-Catholic* versus traditionalist** constituency, expounds the reasons for his “reluctant” conclusion that Francis is a “radical [who is] leading the Church away from the ancient sources of the Faith” and is “engaged in a deliberate effort to change what the Church teaches.”

What Keating and Armstrong think about Lawler’s exposition of what has long been obvious to traditionalists is uninteresting in itself. Worth noting, however­—if only as a kind of sociological observation of our troubled ecclesial commonwealth­­—is that here we have two “conservative” Catholics bickering over how to approach a book that essentially echoes the traditionalist view of what Lawler himself calls “this disastrous papacy.”

For Armstrong, it is a matter of maintaining the neo-Catholic polemic of “radical traditionalists” as objects of fear and loathing, even though Lawler, a decidedly non-traditionalist commentator, agrees with them regarding Francis. For Keating, it is question of how Lawler can be defended without also conceding that the traditionalists who preceded him by years in reaching the same conclusion were right from the beginning.  Both agree, therefore, on the same implicit premise: under no circumstances can the traditionalist assessment of Francis be credited at all, much less acknowledged as prescient, for this would mean that the neo-Catholic commentariat has been wrong and wholly lacking in prescience.  Wrong not only about Francis, but the entire course of the post-conciliar crisis in the Church whose roots in unprecedented and manifestly destructive ecclesial novelties they, being neo-Catholics, refuse to acknowledge. While Francis has made that refusal untenable as to his own novelties, the neo-Catholic polemic nonetheless precludes any admission that traditionalists had a point concerning him.

As one of our correspondents astutely observes: the argument between Keating and Armstrong, who are friends, is thus really over how to continue discrediting the traditionalist position now that Lawler, a non-traditionalist, has been driven to accept its accurate diagnosis of this pontificate. The interplay between the two disputants, ultimately joined by Lawler himself in the compendium of comments linked to above, is really rather amusing.

In his approach to Lawler’s book, Armstrong recalls that precisely on August 3, 2013 he coined the term “radical Catholic reactionary” to replace his earlier epithet “radical traditionalist” (“radtrad”) and then revised his many writings accordingly­—as if anyone should care­—to reflect the new epithet, which he defines as follows:

I define “radical Catholic reactionaries” as a rigorist, divisive group completely separate from mainstream “traditionalism” that continually, vociferously, and vitriolically [sic] (as a marked characteristic or defining trait) bashes and trashes popes, Vatican II, the New Mass, and ecumenism (the “big four”): going as far as they can go without technically crossing over the canonical line of schism. In effect, they become their own popes: exercising private judgment in an unsavory fashion, much as (quite ironically) Catholic liberals do, and as Luther and Calvin did when they rebelled against the Church. They can’t live and let live. They must assume a condescending “superior-subordinate” orientation.

The reader will note that Armstrong’s “definition” is merely a string of insults and further undefined terms amounting to nothing more than a caricature of the traditionalist view of our unparalleled ecclesial situation. The resulting cloud of pejoratives allows Armstrong to smuggle back into his polemic precisely the condemnation of “mainstream traditionalism” he professes to eschew, as seen by his inclusion in the category of “radical Catholic reactionary” pretty much the entire universe of traditionalist and even quasi-traditionalist commentary, including “The Remnant, 1 Peter 5, Lifesite News, Rorate Caeli, [and] the reactionary-dominated Correctio,” the last being that group of Catholics who, like Lawler, have publicly protested the chaos Francis has provoked with Amoris Laetitia, the very document Lawler calls “subversive.” 

Armed with his new definition of the same old target, Armstrong has hit upon the saving tactic of denouncing Lawler’s book as a “radical Catholic reactionary” tract while absolving Lawler of the personal delict of radical Catholic reaction.  He thus informs Keating: “I didn’t classify Phil as a reactionary, though I can see why someone would think so. I merely noted that in what I have been able to see so far in his book, he is thinking like one in some key/characteristic respects.” According to Armstrong, while Lawler quacks like a radical Catholic reactionary he is “not a reactionary now, but he may yet be. And if he ends up there, I called it, and warned people that it was coming…”

For his part, Keating protests that “Lawler isn’t a reactionary at all (even though, granted, he is ‘reacting’ to certain papal actions), and I can’t think of any Traditionalist Catholics who would label him even a Traditionalist.” So, Lawler is neither a reactionary nor a Traditionalist. This must be made clear, lest Lawler’s respectable credentials be tarnished. Rather, Keating continues: “he is a man of conservative temperament, slow to draw conclusions, anxious to give Churchmen the benefit of the doubt. He is more a Russell Kirk than a Michael Voris.”  

Here Keating reveals more than he realizes, for a “Russell Kirk Catholic” would be precisely the kind of modern conservative—which is to say, a moderate post-Enlightenment liberal—suggested by the ecclesial equivalent “neo-Catholic.” Just as Kirk accepted the fatal principles of political modernity while arguing for their compatibility with traditional values via a “conservative” application, so does the neo-Catholic accept the officially approved novelties of the past fifty years, despite their manifest incompatibility with the traditional teachings he would defend.  (See definition below.)  Francis, however, has made that exercise impossible.  Hence Lawler’s book and the ensuing sociological disturbance it has caused in a neo-Catholic cohort that did not even exist before Vatican II.

But just a moment: Voris absolutely refuses to criticize Francis, no matter how much evidence accumulates against him. So, what does that make Lawler in comparison with Voris, given that Lawler has concluded that Francis is a radical “leading the Church away from the ancient sources of faith” in “deliberate effort to change what the Church teaches”? It seems that Voris would join Armstrong in denouncing Lawler as someone who at least quacks like a radical Catholic reactionary. I will leave Keating to sort out his own confusion in this regard.

Armstrong in reply frets that Lawler is “possibly heading down the road to reactionary Catholicism” and is “starting to argue and think more and more like them.”  But Keating assures Armstrong that no such awful prospect is in view: “No, Dave, what Steve Skojec may opine tells us nothing. If you were to say something he agrees with on some other issue, he might praise you and claim that soon you’d join his little army. But you wouldn’t be doing any such thing.  That Skojec or someone else praises Lawler tells us nothing about Lawler, other than that he has written on a subject that Skojec is interested in. You’re trying to draw far too much out of the situation….  As for Lawler sliding down what you consider to be a slippery slope (and without brakes), someone could take your logic and say about some well-known theological liberal who recently has embraced a few orthodox positions: ‘there’s no stopping his slide, from one extreme to the other–he’ll end up a Traditionalist!’”

Translation: Don’t worry. There is no chance that our man Phil will become one of them.  He is the Russell Kirk of papal criticism, who takes his time before declaring that Francis is a dangerous radical who is trying to change Church teaching, that Amoris Laetitia is a subversive document and that his papacy is disastrous. Not like those radical Catholic reactionaries—which Lawler is most assuredly not—who said the same things much too soon. Big difference, you see.

Finally, Lawler has entered the fray personally to assure Armstrong that he has not become a radical Catholic reactionary: “If you give me your email address, I can send you a copy of the proofs, and you can make your judgment on the full book. I don’t doubt that you’ll still have problems with it, but I hope you won’t conclude that I have become a reactionary.”  Perish the thought that any Catholic would react radically against a radical Pope bent on changing Church teaching!  Catholics must always remain inert in the face of radical attacks on the Faith, especially when the radical is a Pope. Lawler thus hastens to give assurances of his continued inertness, despite his book.

So, Armstrong, Keating and Lawler himself are all essentially agreed: one must never allow oneself to become a radical reactionary Catholic, even if what those unclean ones at The Remnant and elsewhere are saying happens to be perfectly true. The neo-Catholic narrative of passive acceptance of the post-conciliar regime of novelty qua superior fidelity to the Church remains intact, even if Lawler has unsettled the quiescent status quo by observing that Francis has gone too far down the road to officially approved disaster they have all been following for decades without protest.  Despite this lapse of protocol, Lawler is still not one of them. He has not sullied himself by joining the untouchable caste. And isn’t that what matters before all else? 

Such is the profound sociological disease of the human element of the Church in the midst of the worst crisis in her long history.

 

Here's a clip of our three neo-Catholic friends calmly discussing the importance of not being us...

________________

* neo-Catholic:  a Catholic who accepts and defends the officially-approved ecclesial novelties of the past half-century, despite their destructive results and even though no Catholic is obliged to embrace a single one of them in order to be a member of the Church in good standing. These novelties, none of them binding on the Catholic conscience, have arisen primarily under the headings of “liturgical reform,” “ecumenism,” “dialogue,” “interreligious dialogue,” and the “updating” of priestly and religious formation, which has emptied the “reformed” seminaries and convents. Neo-Catholicism, whose ensemble of characteristics would horrify a Pope such as Saint Pius X, the arch-foe of Modernism and what he called “the Modernist as Reformer,” is the ecclesial equivalent of “neo-conservatism” in the political realm: i.e., a liberalized, “moderate” form of conservatism that attempts to reconcile true doctrine with novel practices, attitudes and fashions of the day that tend to undermine true doctrine. The current prevalence of the neo-Catholic “style” of Catholicism constitutes the essence of the post-Vatican II crisis in the Church.

**traditionalist: a Catholic who, being perfectly free to do so, prescinds from the recently introduced ecclesial novelties and continues to practice the unreconstructed Faith of his ancestors, including the traditional liturgy and the traditional formation of priests and religious in seminaries and convents that are full. The descriptor “traditionalist” was unnecessary before the Second Vatican Council, because every practicing and believing Catholic was, by today’s prevailing neo-Catholic standard, a traditionalist.  



TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Moral Issues
KEYWORDS: francischurch; neocats; traditionalist
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Link to video clip:

https://youtu.be/u4ZgVRJ-H8U

1 posted on 01/02/2018 10:11:40 AM PST by ebb tide
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To: ebb tide

I like Chris Ferrara, I’ve met him and heard him speak - and frankly, I’m surprised that his article would have this tone.

My feeling is: stop calling names and “defining” Catholics, just welcome anybody who has finally woken up and had to admit that Francis is (not unintentionally) destroying the Catholic Church, and go on from there.

Personally, I don’t like the term “Traditionalist,” precisely because it has now become a church-politics definition. Also, in practice it means a tiny group of often hostile bow-tie wearing men and their hijab-wearing women who regard US Catholicism in 1952 as the apex of the Church. It wasn’t; I lived through it, and the Church would never have collapsed so quickly with VII if it hadn’t already been seriously undermined by the “Greatest Generation” (not Boomers, btw - we were the victims; even the 1968 riots were led by people about 15-20 years older).

I’d like to just go back to using the term Catholic. Let others scream their insults at Catholics who are orthodox - and even the “Neocons” that Ferrara mentions actually are orthodox, if somewhat timid about it - but we shouldn’t define ourselves right out of the box as a splinter group. Unfortunately, the person who cannot claim the title of Catholic happens to be the Pope. And that’s the problem.

We need to unite and get him out of there, and I think Lawler has finally been forced to admit this.


2 posted on 01/02/2018 10:28:34 AM PST by livius
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To: livius

[applause]


3 posted on 01/02/2018 10:34:16 AM PST by Campion (Halten Sie sich unbedingt an die Lehre!)
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To: livius
“I like Chris Ferrara, I’ve met him and heard him speak - and frankly, I’m surprised that his article would have this tone.”

I'm surprised Ferrara’s tone isn't more sarcastic, given how snidely many Catholics write and speak — I'm not implying you are among them — about Ferrara and others like him. I have attended only one Latin Mass in my life, so I would be classified a Traditionalist by no one; and I agree with you 100% about wanting all of us orthodox believers to be called simply “Catholics”. However, what Pope Francis is doing to the Church appalls me and the inability and unwillingness of most bishops to stop him from wrecking the Church astound me. I cannot help but wonder if Ferrara and his Traditionalist friends have indeed been right all along: something went terribly wrong with Vatican II and the Church is now breaking down on account of it.

Again, I agree that we orthodox believers should unite and all call ourselves simply “Catholic”. However, Ferrara does have a point: some Catholics are spending a great deal of energy to make sure no one gives Ferrara and Company credit for having suspected at the outset what has turned out to be the truth about Pope Francis: he doesn't seem to believe in Catholicism or to love the Church or to like Catholics very much.

4 posted on 01/02/2018 11:04:20 AM PST by utahagen (but but)
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To: livius

Women did not wear hijabs. Or shorts or flip flops for that matter. They wore either hats (which every woman wore in those days) or pinned a hankie or “mantilla” on her head if visiting a church on a whim. It was simply out of respect for God and his son. I wish more people today, men and women, dressed appropriately in church. Like African Americans do!


5 posted on 01/02/2018 11:58:50 AM PST by miss marmelstein
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To: livius
Also, in practice it means a tiny group of often hostile bow-tie wearing men and their hijab-wearing women...

I find the above statement quite offensive and false.

Frankly, I'm surprised and disappointed to hear it coming from you.

Look up "hijab" befoe you attack your fellow Catholics.

6 posted on 01/02/2018 3:30:48 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide
Look up "hijab" befoe you attack your fellow Catholics.

Name-calling, of any sort and in either direction, is not helpful. "Hijab-wearing" is not helpful. "Neo-Catholic" is not helpful. "Raddie Traddie" is not helpful.

There are people in positions of great power who are undermining the Church from within. That is a fact. There are Catholics who recognize that and oppose them, some who do not yet recognize that but who might join the opposition if educated, and there are people who clearly play for the other team.

The Remnant (I don't even like the name; there's a cult group near where I live that has the same name; the name is a sign of incredible arrogance IMO) has engaged in name-calling and other juvenile behavior for years. It's counterproductive, divisive, and plays right into the devil's hands.

7 posted on 01/02/2018 3:53:30 PM PST by Campion (Halten Sie sich unbedingt an die Lehre!)
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To: Campion
Well as far as name-calling, I recommend you take your complaint up with the man at the top and tell him he's setting a bad example, in more ways than one.:

The Pope Francis Little Book of Insults

As far as the statement that some Catholic women wear hijabs, it is far more than name-calling; it's false witness.

8 posted on 01/02/2018 4:08:21 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: Campion
The Remnant (I don't even like the name;...

What Does Remnant Theology Have to Teach us About the Church Today? by Msgr Charles Pope

9 posted on 01/02/2018 4:23:23 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide

No, I’ve been to too many “traditionalist” churches where the most important thing is that the women wear a veil or a headscarf, and ladies in the narthex will hustle forward with some rag for a woman to drape over her head if she comes in without one.

And the men seem to spend most of their time writing blogs and being marginally employed (because of course they’re anti-capitalist distributionists) while the women are out there dealing with the six or seven children. Not a good image, but way too common.

And there shouldn’t be such a thing as a “traditionalist” anyway. We’re all Catholics and we’ve got to get back to thinking of ourselves that way. Right now, this bizarre cult of the small, select group is simply giving the field to Bergoglio and his completely non-Catholic followers.


10 posted on 01/02/2018 4:34:49 PM PST by livius
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To: livius

There’s a big difference between a hijab and a mantilla; but I see you refuse to apologize for the false witnnesss.

And the first two paragraphs in your post are nothing but attacks against your fellow Catholics.

Try practicing what you preach, for once.


11 posted on 01/02/2018 4:41:01 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: Campion; livius
The church will become small
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
12 posted on 01/02/2018 4:47:44 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: livius
I’d like to just go back to using the term Catholic.

Then you may want to edit your homepage where you describe as a "conservative Catholic"; not just "Catholic".

13 posted on 01/02/2018 5:01:01 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: livius

Hijabs, rags, veils and headscarfs?

Big differences.


14 posted on 01/02/2018 5:53:28 PM PST by ebb tide (We have a rogue curia in Rome.)
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To: ebb tide; livius; Campion

I am also disappointed by some of livius’ comments (and let’s not leave out campion’s applause)


15 posted on 01/03/2018 2:37:43 AM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: livius

Seriously, you need to find a different church if the most important thing to the pastor and churchgoers is a veil. I belong to St. Agnes one of the most traditionalist of churches - Father Rutler was once a priest here. I’ve never seen anything like you are posting.

On Sunday, I sit in the back of the church. I come casually dressed.


16 posted on 01/03/2018 3:31:17 AM PST by miss marmelstein
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To: miss marmelstein

I loved St Agnes and used to go there all the time - both when I was in college and a waitress at the Schraffts across the street and later as an adult devoted to the Old Rite (but not to the nuttiness that seems to accompany it in many places).

I live in Florida now, not because I’m retired, but because I live with my sister and she needed to get out of her high-stress job and go someplace completely different, and we picked this because I’m a Spanish translator and Florida has a big Spanish history.

I get Fr. Rutler’s bulletin from St Michael’s and I love it.

Interestingly enough, I’ve met Old Rite (SSPX) priests and laity in France and Spain, and none of them have the obsession with fictional dress codes and bizarre economic systems that seem to be common in smaller Old Rite churches here.

I’d like to take people to see the Old Mass, but it is usually badly done and they’re afraid to go because they think people are going to criticize them for not dressing correctly or for having made some mistake in when to stand up or sit down.

I think this may be because a lot of people in my area are converts and never knew the Church when it was really the Church. So they’re very insecure and so are the priests, many of whom are also converts.

BTW, nothing wrong with converts! But I think unless you knew the Church as it used to be when it was a hodgepodge but a faithful hodgepodge, you may have a somewhat off base idea of it.

I remember one time being at Midnight Mass and seeing people around me who I knew were professors at Columbia (I grew up on the UWS), Puerto Ricans from the 6-story walk-ups on Amsterdam, a wide variety of French and non-English speakers, the Irish supers ... and a row of cops in the back who had gotten out of their squad cars to run in for enough of Midnight Mass for it to “count.”

That’s what I want to see come back. Not a tiny community of the perfect, but just - well, Catholics.

I think the only one who is opposed to that, alas, is the current occupant of the See of Peter. And that’s the big problem.


17 posted on 01/03/2018 3:47:29 PM PST by livius
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To: livius

Oh wow. Your most recent post made me realize that I had mistaken you for another poster....Legatus. I wonder whatever happened to him. I see he hasn’t posted since October 2016.


18 posted on 01/03/2018 3:55:33 PM PST by piusv (Pray for a return to the pre-Vatican II (Catholic) Faith)
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To: piusv

I have no idea what happened to him. One of the sad things is that people disappear, for one reason or another, and you never know the end of the story. We should have a Freeper memorial wall!


19 posted on 01/03/2018 3:58:15 PM PST by livius
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To: ebb tide

Oh for Pete’s sake, they don’t think of themselves as Catholics - that’s too déclassé- they think of themselves as “traditionalists.” And that’s what’s got to change.


20 posted on 01/03/2018 4:00:27 PM PST by livius
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