www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West What the West Thinks of Tradition

I can't claim to know much about "throne-and-altar royalists," but my impression is that they really believe the ideal situation for the Church would be to return to a time when monarchical governments would enforce Church discipline, and were seen as having both a right and an obligation to persecute non-believers and heretics (of course, the question of who were the "believers" and who were the "heretics" was problematic, especially when a new king came along who disagreed with the old one).

I try to stay off these threads. I really do. Sometimes it's too much.

The liturgy isn't a proxy war. Everything else is.

And when they've stamped out the last of the Latin Trads, they're coming for you next.

Well, it is "The Law of the Church" now; isn't it? :grin:

Of course they'll change it tomorrow if it suits their purposes. But I don't think it does suit their purposes. Seen from the perspective of the modernists in the Vatican, it only makes sense to get rid of the Tridentine rite or to assimilate it. It represents a challenge to their authority. That doesn't apply to the Eastern Catholic rites. They give the RCC a sense of "diversity" which is very PC these days.

Now, let me say, that should not be construed as in any way denigrating the Eastern Catholic rites.

Now you've got me curious to learn where you are from.

Since I am a Bi-Ritual Catholic, namely a Catholic that "Breathes with both lungs," I would like to direct my first post to this exact subject. I have had experiences throughout the broad sphere of Western Catholic Worship and Tradition. Also, I have studied with the FSSP, an Extraordinary Form Society of Apostolic Life. While in college I learned the Byzantine Rite and how to serve as an Altar Boy; thus, I am a bi-form, bi-ritual Altar Boy.

The West now thinks of tradition in a more pragmatic way; if this or that tradition leads to greater Holy Mass attendance, to a healthier collection, or to keeping Catholics interested in the Faith then this or that tradition is acceptable. Each parish in the Latin Rite also has a mantra that "This is how we do it here," outside of what is happening in the Universal Church. Local customs are the pre-dominant "tradition" in the Latin Rite now; each priest determining what traditions are pastoral or feasible. As a philosopher, historian, and theologian, who loves continuity with the past I am at odds with this approach.

The one aspect that I have never understood with the current liturgical and theological vernacular model of the Latin Rite and the deeply held vernacular value in the Eastern Rite is the over-reliance on vernacular translations. In an age when we can study the ancient and sacred languages that gave birth to the Latin and Eastern Rites, we should adopt the use of these languages as very proper for our age and future ages; I am referring to Latin and Greek and I am a classicist. In Sociology and in Psycho-Linguistics there is a strong emphasis that our language(s) form our mind in a very dramatic way. When we go to Church and encounter the same language we use in daily life, our sense of the Sacredness can be diminished, but good solid ritual can usually fill in the gap.

There is solid evidence that over-emphasis of the vernacular can cause division in the Church of God; this reality is keenly felt in Latin Rite parishes that share the church with more than one ethnic group. Moreover, in the Orthodox Churches there is much division between ethnic groups, having the same Faith, but different languages gives rise to the desire to belong to one patriarchate or another over whether they want more or less local control. What happens in both situations is a power struggle for a particular church or governance. This situation could be resolved with a language such as Latin or Patristic Greek. One strength of Conservative, Orthodox, or Israeli Judaism is the common Sacred Hebrew, which effects a great unity among them; it is the reformed Jews that use the vernacular and they are all over the board in thought and deed.

To wrap up my point, the Latin Rite used Latin exclusively for over 1,000 years and kept more or less united even in the face of heresy and regional conflict. The Latin Rite should return to Latin to preserve unity among many different ethnic and linguistical families. Maybe, the Byzantine Rite would be helped by a return to Patristic Greek, Ancient Slavonic, or Hebrew (For those in the middle-east). Many ecclesiastics are beginning to realize the divisiveness of vernacularism in the West. What is for sure is that the greatest and most mocked tradition of the Latin Rite is Latin, but in our modern era not even some Eastern Rite Catholics understand this great tradition.

Infinitus est autem numerus stultorum! Q.E.D.

As this thread has little to no relationship to the Eastern Churches nor even to interaction between West and East, despite the effort to use it for fear-mongering, I'm closing it.

As has been noted on any number of prior occasions, this is not a place for exploring, praising, or bemoaning the Latin Rite in any of its forms - traditionalist or otherwise. There are a multitude of sites on-line available for those purposes.

Thanks to all who participated.

Many years,

Neil