The
Big Picture
During
the past several months there has been controversy, and anxiety, in the ranks of
traditional Catholics over internal disruptions within the Priestly Fraternity
of St Peter and Roman intervention in its affairs.
Given that the foundation of the Fraternity, and its
subsequent growth, have become for many a source of hope, it is no surprise that
during the last year that the Fraternity’s trials have become a cause of
consternation and fear.
There
were two elements to these troubles: internal discord within the Fraternity and
the role played by the Ecclesia Dei Commission, which has responsibility in Rome
for meeting the aspirations of traditional Catholics.
Conflict within religious communities is hardly news - except, perhaps, for those with a roseate view of how real religious and clerical life has been (and, sometimes, must be) lived. Even after 35 years of continuous religious convulsions, there are still pious Catholics who put religious and clergy on a pedestal; and when they find that religious and clergy are much like the rest of us, who row and fall out, there is a tendency to suspect treachery afoot when, in reality, life is running in its accustomed course.
As for the part played by the Ecclesia Dei Commission in these matters, this was compromised by the long, invisible, and indecisive presidency of Cardinal Felici. During that period, and especially during its final months, the Commission appeared less the authoritative and respected umpire than a fisher in troubled waters.
But
that is all finished. With the
appointment of a new president, in the person of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, the
Ecclesia Dei Commission has been provided with the kind of leadership that Oriens
(at least) has hoped for.
Cardinal
Castrillon has made some tough decisions. We might - or we might not - agree
with them: though, for any one who has given close attention to the actual
circumstances in which they were made, it would be difficult to argue that Rome
should have done nothing when the Fraternity’s own leadership was paralysed by
- or blind to - the problems which confronted it. The argument that Rome has directed a mortal blow to the
Fraternity is not credible. If Rome were determined upon the destruction of the
Fraternity, it would have done nothing. At the same time, Cardinal Castrillon
has signalled an active approach to fostering the pastoral needs of traditional
Catholics. More than that, he has
indicated that what we might call the “apostolate of tradition” has an
important evangelical role to play in the Church and the world today - a notion
which corresponds with the line of thought advocated by this journal for several
years now.
The phrase “new evangelisation” is these days on many a Roman and episcopal lip. The expression has become debased by over-use and by its very clumsiness - not to mention the fact that the “new evangelisation” proclaimed by the Second Vatican Council heralded a generation of retreat from the missionary apostolate.
To the activist laity - those who have remained true to the Church’s teaching and mission - who were formed in the various arms of what used to be termed “Catholic Action”, the idea of being a missionary was nothing foreign. In fact, up to mid 1960s, a large body of Catholic lay men and women had been prepared intellectually and spiritually to become ‘front line’ missioners - though not ‘far away’ in Africa or Asia, but right at home in the new mission field which was (and still is) the Western world itself.
It is too painful to recall the history of what happened next: except to say that the very people who were champing at the bit to begin the new mission to the old - or, rather, former - Christian world, suddenly found themselves thrown onto the defensive. Instead of carrying the Gospel forward into the West of Unbelief, they were forced to defend it in hearth and home - often literally - against brethren who had turned against the Faith. The struggle was fought - and is still being fought - in our schools, universities, and media … even in our churches. On the side of orthodoxy, dozens of organizations, movements, and networks, with all their paraphernalia, have sprung into being around the Western world, mostly lay in character, and all determined to defend the Faith as a body of truth and teaching against a threat from within.
Still, these events have had their refining value. Some who have been deeply engaged in this struggle have been obliged to go back to the primal experiences of being a Catholic, indeed, of being human beings. We speak here of a realisation - so to speak - of “Who’s who in the universe”, of an apprehension that arises through the act of worship and lies at the root of the missionary apostolate.
|
"The Deepest human experiences cannot be silenced by "correctness' of any kind, whether political or religious." |
It is not well received by today’s ecclesiastical authorities when traditional Catholics speak openly of the things they have seen within liturgies new and old. There is clicking of tongues and waggling of fingers and warnings against “division”- code for never doubting the value of a highly favoured project upon which lifetimes have been spent and positions established. But the deepest human experiences cannot remain entombed in the silence imposed by “correctness” of any kind, whether political or religious: God, the Creator and Master of all things, the Lord of all glory and Father of mercies, the Saviour and Sanctifier of crippled men, He, against Whom the circle of self-‘celebration’ has closed, He has shown Himself to us again in the traditional worship of the Western Church. We are witnesses to His presence; we have been felled by it.
This is the fundamental personal ‘event’ which has been ‘lived’ - in all its interior uniqueness and power of common expression - by great numbers of Western Catholics during the past decade and more. They combine generations of men and women who were systematically formed in the missionary mentality and those who have received it as a heritage. They are all profoundly grateful for what has happened to them and they are fired with a desire to resume unfinished business.
Meanwhile, as prelates begin to signal their people forward, traditional Catholics have already gone ahead, restrained only by the reluctance, and refusal, of even conservative bishops to bless and support their apostolates and to ordain the new generation of traditional Catholic priests and religious: the “new evangelisation” does not come to us free of worldly calculations, false anthropologies and, now, failed agendas.
For all that, we are nothing if not hopeful. This is because traditional Catholics have received a great blessing: a renewed insight into the beginning and the end of all apostolate which is the worship of God - the missioner goes out from the altar to bring back new worshippers of the One who made and loves them.
So
it is the ‘big picture’ that matters - when we can see it, then the friction
inherent to any human movement (divinely graced ones no less) falls into its
proper, and much less significant, place.
