Tea at Trianon: Problems in the Traditionalist Movement

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Problems in the Traditionalist Movement

My thought on the new Motu Proprio is this: Repent and do penance. There is a reason for everything. We are called to be disciples no matter what. "For we have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." (Hebrews 12:4) From Father Rippinger at Tumblar House:

The second problem is it’s becoming a generational spirit. What's a generational spirit? It's one in which if parents commit particular kinds of sins, they open the door to demons inserting themselves into their family life, and it gets passed from generation to generation. Now my own estimation of this is, is that the generational spirit is pride. But it's also becoming a generational spirit of impurity, because you're seeing it almost it's across the board, where the parents had a problem with the impurity, they haven't gotten it under control, or they've never done anything to undo this the generational spirit in their family or some spirit of pride.

And it's getting passed from generation to generation. What’s this mean? It means that kids that are coming up who are normally good kids, who are doing what they normally do (okay they might be disobedient here and there what-have-you), but they're getting to be 10, 11, 12 years of age and they're seriously struggling with impurity when they shouldn't be. There's nothing in the family other than the externals of the family life, but then you find out the father has a problem of pornography or self-abuse or they're doing other things or what-have-you. And this is where it's becoming a serious problem. If you look at the number of sins against the sixth commandment, sins like self-abuse, pornography, fornication, among traditionalists, they are not any better than the people who go to the New Mass. In fact, there's some estimates by some priests that it's worse than is among the New Rite people.

This is a serious problem. It's going to drag us down. Why? Because if we're not careful, we're going to end up suffering what St. Paul says which was “and God gave them over to their lusts and they started sleeping men with men and women with women.” It's already happening among the youth of the traditional movement, because of this generational spirit. If parents don't want this problem among their children, they've got to get their act together. If they've started stuff in the past they've got to get this generational line straightened out and cleaned up. (Read more.)

NOTE: I think many of the problems Father mentions are not limited to the Traditionalist movement but pervade the entire Church as endemic to the times in which we are living.