Catholic and Enjoying It!
It’s pretty much summed up in this reader’s report:
The trads at Rorate Caeli are gnashing their teeth already. It’s simultaneously depressing and amusing. The things that horrify them are . . . curious. It seems to disturb them that he asked the throng to pray for him. Seriously–they’re upset that the Pope said, “Pray for me.” That he seems to have refused the mozetta, and only briefly wore the stole, has also set them off. Trads are so obsessed with papal couture and pomp that humility and simplicity openly offend them. What curious people.
Where the MSM will see a theocratic fascist wolf in Franciscan clothing, the Tradosphere will see a sinister heterodox Jesuit liberal lurking beneath the trappings of the papacy. Traddery generally wants the Pope to hit all the marks as far as ceremony and aesthetics goes, so violations in this department are seen as signs of sin, not of humility or diversity. Above all, Traddery wants a Church and a Pope exercising political power and kicking people around who are not up to snuff for the Trads. So this whole asking people to pray for him gesture was a huge turnoff for the Trads at RC, who want a Pope like Innocent III or, better still Julius II, ready to go out there and make war on most of the actual members of the Church in order to drive out the Impure neo-Catholics (i.e., almost every member of the Church) and make thing comfy for the Trads huddled in Fortress Katolicus. Evangelization is, in this worldview, one of the biggest dangers the Church faces, because Jesus has inexplicably called Catholics to keep bringing in all these non-Catholics into the the Church who screw everything up with their indigenous cultures, non-European worldviews, and (shudder) non-Trad aesthetics. Francis’ gestures were an ominous signal that he does not share the views of those in Fortress Katolicus and will continue the unfortunate pattern of New Evangelization begun by John Paul the Overrated and Benedict, the Pope saddled with Vatican II.
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