AN OBSERVER of the Catholic Church today might well be perplexed that any traditional Catholics exist at all.
Given that the Church has been modernised from top to bottom - Catholics adapting as far as possible their teaching rhetoric, worship, and styles of life to conform to secular norms - this remnant of 'traditionalists' stands out as a remarkable curiosity.
"Here," the observer surely notes, "is an anachronism: living artifacts of Christian archaeology stranded by the receding tide of cultural revolution. This is all that remains of the old Church and culture, though not for much longer. The tide is building again and the surge is greater than before. When it comes in, even these fragments of history will be swept away."
The observer is right, up to a point. An era has been ended. The Church of the Counter-Reformation is dead. It will never return. It would be a mistake, however, to think that traditional Catholic faith and life has been swallowed up by history. On the contrary, the course of secular history is about to be challenged in a wholly unexpected way. The Church, far from being vanquished, is actually on the verge of a new, and perhaps its greatest, missionary effort. The principal missionary field will be the extended world of Western culture - Europe, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.
But, let there be no mistake about it, this new 'crusade of missionaries' will not represent a vindication of the policies of aggiornamento. Quite the reverse. At the end of the day, it will not be an 'updated' Catholic Church which sends forth missionaries to the nations of the West. In the Church of the future, however much it differs from what has been in the past, whatever developments there will be in evangelical styles and techniques, whatever creativeness will be shown in integrating the natural goods of modern culture with the need to communicate divine truth, whatever new kinds of apostolate emerge, particularly kinds of lay apostolate, the bedrock of missionary inspiration will be our Catholic tradition: tradition, that is, in the round; tradition in faith and in worship and in forms of religious life.
How, one might ask, can one claim to foresee such a new missionary era? Because the only reply that the Church can make to a world which has rejected God is to preach Him and to win men and women to Him. To fail in making that effort would be for the Church itself to deny God. Since the Church, which is the mystical body of Christ, cannot deny God - as that would mean Christ denying himself - then the only possible response available to the Church in the face of atheism is preaching and the call to conversion. We are either confronting the imminent consummation of human history, or we are at the beginning of another new missionary age.
How, one might further ask, can we foresee that reanimation of Catholic tradition after 30 years of systematic destruction carried out from within the Church itself and in obedience to directions taken by its pastors? Yes, we can foresee it because miracles are conceivable and, indeed, necessary. If God has work for us to do, then He will not deprive us of the means. The means, however, which in their prudential judgment our leaders have supplied us for the moment, are not merely inadequate to the purpose, they actually open the way for the spread of impiety and unbelief among the Catholic people themselves. Clearly, then, these means - the new, continuously evolving liturgical forms and the secularized styles of priesthood and religious life - will be abandoned.
Naturally, the people who now lead the Church do not see things this way. How could they? Since they have devoted their lives to building the 'new Church', they sincerely believe it to be for the best. Either they will be converted or they will die without heirs. In fact, the generation which has made the 'new Church' is already fast coming to a close. One way or another, their project will not survive them. After that the only 'option' for the Church will be Catholic tradition and the grace to recover it.
In the meantime, the seeds of the future mission to the western world are being sown and the first delicate shoots have begun to show. As the traditional Mass is restored here and there, and becomes more settled from place to place, conversions and reconciliations with the Church begin almost immediately. Apostolic works spring up, or are renewed. The minds of young people turn to the priesthood and the religious life. Prayers for vocations intensify. Young men and women enter traditional seminaries or seek admission to traditional religious communities. In various places entire houses of religious are being reformed by a return to the traditional liturgy and rule of the order. As communities grow - whether of laity in their parishes or religious in their monasteries and convents - thoughts turn almost inevitably to ponder the missionary implications of their existence.
All this sounds remote from the immediate experience of those Catholics who cannot persuade their local bishop to make provision for the regular Sunday celebration of the traditional Mass. Nevertheless, these things are happening in Australia and abroad. They are things which spur us on in the dark times when we are scoffed at and rejected. For not only are we doing these things (most importantly) for the salvation of our own souls; we are doing them for the salvation of men and women everywhere - especially for that our own countrymen and for that of those peoples from whom we inherited our Faith and our once great Christian culture.
We traditional Catholics are preoccupied, then, in what we do today with thoughts of the future. When we ask for the traditional Mass to be reinstated it is not a matter of 'turning back the clock'. It is all about turning it forward. It is all about paying our debt of gratitude to those who went before us by making a gift of faith and culture to those who will come after.
Return to past editorials
Return to Oriens home page