Conservatives Are Running Out of Arguments Against the Traditionalists

Photo by Miikka Luotio

On social media last week, a kind of exchange took place between me and a prominent conservative theologian that I think readers here will find an interesting exposé of the current state of the debate. The name of the theologian is of no significance, in the sense that I am not going after him personally, but wish to stay focused on the ideas and the attitudes. If you do know who it is, please pause, say a prayer for both of us, and refrain from bringing his name into the comments.

It started with a post I made, concerning an article by Ryan Burge called “The Conformity Gap: What American Catholics Actually Believe and Practice”:

I will never cease to be amazed that there are people out there who don’t think the Church is in a state of unprecedented freefall (that is, things aren’t “pretty good” or “getting better,” as some ever-hopeful conservatives would like to have us think; remember, they were saying this back in the JP2 and BXVI days!). All you have to do is look at the data about what Catholics say they believe and how they practice to realize that even churchgoers, let alone nominals, are not remotely orthodox by any normal meaning of that word. Hence, the notion that we should somehow be policing a minority of Catholics (trads) to ensure that they “accept Vatican II” when most Catholics barely accept Catechism 101 is a double standard on steroids.

I also posted a quotation from Timon Cline’s “A Catholic Moment or an Evangelical Century?”:

Contrary to online chatter, we are not in a “Catholic moment.” But we may already be in an evangelical century. Significantly more people are leaving Catholicism than converting to it. By contrast, evangelical Protestants boast remarkably high conversion and retention rates and healthier levels of practical piety—church attendance, Bible reading, catechesis. Through the upheaval of the past half century, evangelicals have remained numerically and spiritually stable, have repeatedly reformed their institutions, and consistently outperform their counterparts. To cite one example, the percentage of Americans who convert from Catholicism to Protestantism (4 percent) is higher than the percentage of all converts to Catholicism (1.5 percent).

Such things (and there are vastly more like them out there) tell you: Not all is well with the Church in the USA since Vatican II—not that you needed me to tell you that!

It was not long before the explosion came from this theologian:

It never ceases to amaze me that Kwasniewski thinks the Vatican is “policing” trads over Vatican II. He has been writing against Vatican II for years and years now. Has he been censured? Denounced by Rome? No. In fact, he is quite well known and cavorts around the speaking circuit quite freely. He is a minor celebrity. So where is the “policing”?

Obviously, he is alluding to the SSPX and the recent excommunications. But as Kwasniewski well knows, those excommunications were canonically automatic and were the result of the illicit episcopal ordinations. The Vatican has actually been quite patient for 50 years concerning the SSPX rejection of some elements of Vatican II. That argument in the current crisis is a red herring. And it is the SSPX, and not the Vatican, that has made Vatican II into one of its main obstacles to full regularization with Rome. There are all kinds of theologians, including Ratzinger himself, who have leveled criticisms at the Council. The difference is that those theologians did not use their differences with the Council as a pretext for creating their own breakaway parachurch within a church. The issue therefore before us is not Vatican II but the episcopal ordinations. And Kwasniewski knows that. But he is clearly sympathetic to their cause so he is running some rhetorical interference for them here. But it is a deflection.

Yes, the Church in the West is in decline. But Kwasniewski exaggerates the extent to which “conservatives” deny this. I know not one astute observer of a conservative bent who would claim there is no decline and things are fine. But it serves his rhetorical purposes here to make it seem as if the critics of the SSPX are a gaggle of Pollyanna truth deniers as opposed to the “sober realism” of the giant intellects that run the schismatic cult called the SSPX.

It is clear that Kwasniewski thinks that the antidote to this decline is to restore the preconciliar form of Catholicism. Most trads think this way.

By all means. Let’s go back to the days of thinking that most non Catholics, and probably half of the Catholics, are going to Hell. Let’s go back to the days of liturgies so poorly done that the vast vast vast majority of preconciliar bishops knew it needed reform. Even Lefebvre voted for Sacrosanctum Concilium. Regardless of the liturgical reform we actually got, the fact remains that Sacrosanctum called for a reform of the liturgy and Lefebvre voted in favor of that. Kwasniewski treats the old Mass as this untouchable platonic form of liturgical perfection. Not even Lefebvre thought that way.

So yes, let’s go back to the days of damnation for most everyone. Massa damnata Catholicism will win back the lost. That and more Latin. Because we all know that is what most people want these days. Hell fire and Latin.

If preconciliar Catholicism was so strong, why did it collapse almost overnight after Vatican II lifted the lid off of the ecclesiastical libido? Why were so many millions of Catholics so happy to rid themselves of it? Kwasniewski’s romanticized historical revisionism would have us ignore the deep, deep problems that existed in the preconciliar Church that led directly to the problems exploding into the open in the post conciliar Church. His “We are the Holy Remnant” thinking therefore begs the question: The “Holy Remnant” of what, exactly?

About this post, my first reaction was to write:

Note how there is no attempt to engage the main point, which is the alarming lack of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the vast majority of Catholics, versus the obvious penalization or marginalization of trads for six decades now because they have problems with Vatican II, even though they are known to be faithful and generous.

Note how he instantly makes the discussion appear ridiculous by reducing it all to Latin and damnation, as if these were the twin stars of preconciliar Catholicism. (Although, truth be told, we could actually use a revival of faith in the Four Last Things and in the abiding value of Latin, as taught by John XXIII and Vatican II.)

But as I pondered it, I felt that such a tangle of assertions deserved a much more thorough response. I subsequently posted a guide to why we should not put too much stock in the talking points of conservatives. (The text is edited here as compared with its social-media version.)