There is no there there. Those who prefer condensed arguments, that was it.
At various points one asks oneself a very simple question, “Why am I a Christian?” At different points in my life, I have answered the question differently. At one point, it was a simple matter of rebellion. At my evangelical point, it was for joy. That even carried over when I came back into the church. Well, I’ve experienced too much, and the health and wellness garbage and Jesus as Santa Claus ran its course. As for rebellion, I’ve grudgingly come to the conclusion that even if things were better in the past, a proposition I don’t really believe anymore, there are very real limits in what I can do to approximate those times. Even the approximation is closer to theater than it is reality. Those that have followed the organic food movement past the hype know what I mean. For those that haven’t, organic farming is based on a business model of consumers paying an outrageously greater price for a product which the producers cannot profitably market and manufacture at that price. Attempts to reconcile this have resulted in a gradual lowering of standards. Those standards should be thoroughly eviscerated within the decade. People will still want their organic produce even if it is basically a fraud. Likewise people want their old time religion even if it really shares nothing with the original.
A true traditionalism embraces cafeteria catholicism. Perhaps not embraces so much as recognizes it as a necessary sign of exercising the evangelical mission. True traditionalism will take the half loaf of Christmas and Easter catholics rather than push them out the door. And in a world of widely distributed communion, one will have to tolerate the loosely attached receiving communion unless we are going to believe the farce that the only sins worth getting excited about are missing mass and being a politician. If we are going to basically be methodists, we might as well embrace it. Personally, I think treating communion as a prelude to heaven would mean recognizing there are quite a few more sins and perhaps no more than 20% should receive on any given Sunday, but I’m not in charge. And despite all the trite Chesterton quoting of the problem with the church being me, the only places we see the former practice of infrequent communion is amongst Hispanics.
I imagine it is true with all ideologies, but it is definitely true with traditionalism: to be a good traditionalist one must choose one’s hypocrisies. Another way to put this is that you can’t have it all because you can’t control everything. Goods are in conflict. By choosing one good, you reject another. Some folks do this consciously; many never recognize they are rejecting anything. A case in point is passing 4 parishes on the way to mass. If we go back 200 years ago, the idea of bypassing a number of parishes so that you could go to mass that pleased you would have seemed patently ridiculous. The idea of changing parishes because you were looking for a more pleasing pastor would have seemed ridiculous. (Of course running the pastor out of town wouldn’t have seemed so ridiculous. See the ethnic parish phenomenon.) Traditional catholicism was predominantly a phenomenon of the majority, and even where it was practiced among a minority, that minority was a closed society, not just religiously, but economically and socially. The values held by the people at that time reflected those realities. Being separated socially and economically was part of the reason the major brewing families in Milwaukee became good Episcopalians. Traditionalism was never about being alienated from the predominate culture because it was the predominate culture, and it was never about creating and sustaining a remnant amongst a tiny minority of catholics. In as much as modern traditionalism has embraced this, it has abandoned traditionalism.
Moving forward, one faces more questions and fewer answers. Having hope in traditionalism allowed me to have easy answers. No, I won’t be able to resolve these questions here. In the near term, I am very pessimistic on the future of the church in this country. The church has always been somewhat dependent on the organization of the family. In the absence a familial continuity within the parish, the church will be increasingly dependent upon marketing. To pay for that will require an increased dependence on professional class parishioners. That will result in that demographic having its needs catered. We see this already with the suburbanization of the church. Unfortunately, funeral homes and wedding chapels will provide where the church once did.
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