Daphne McLeod has written
an article suggesting that Traditionalists are not pulling their weight in the effort, spearheaded by her group Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, to oppose bad RE textbooks and the like in Catholic schools and parishes. It is discussed on
Catholic Action UK,
Hermeneutic of Continuity, and
Catholic Truth Scotland (the comments on each of these are interesting).
Here is my reply.
Reply to Daphne McLeod.
I hope I am in a good position to reply to Mrs McLeod’s important article, on behalf of Traditionalists, because I assume that she regards me as a positive exception to her generalisation. Speaking about Traditionalists, she says they devote all their time and resources to promoting the Traditional Mass, whereas the smaller but indomitable group of which she is a member devotes all its time and resources to restoring catechesis. As a local representative of the Latin Mass Society, many of my leisure hours are indeed devoted to promoting the TLM. On the other hand, I am also a founder and participant of the St Catherine’s Trust Summer School, which addresses precisely the failure of modern catechesis, in the form of a week-long residential summer school for children, where Catholic history and culture, but above all catechesis, is delivered. Mrs McLeod has not only supported this project in the abstract, but has been a member of staff at the Summer School for the last two years, so I know she approves!
So I, for one, don’t fall into either of these categories: I divide my time between promoting the TLM and promoting catechesis. However, I am not alone in this. The Traditional Catholic Family Alliance, with which I am also heavily involved, is a group of families committed to the TLM who get together to ensure, among other things, but importantly, sound catechesis for their children. Related groups of Traditionalist home-schoolers in different places meet more frequently to give each other mutual support; they recently held their first conference on the subject. The Traditional Catholic community in England is deeply concerned about Catholic education in general, and catechesis in particular. We have no illusions about Catholic schools; we have no illusions about modern RE textbooks; we have no illusions about the nature of modern seminary training; and we are devoting enormous quantities of time and effort into doing something about it. The commitment and sacrifice of Traditional Catholics who teach their children at home, for example, not infrequently crosses over from the admirable to the heroic.
It is very surprising to me that Mrs McLeod should imagine that Traditionalists complacently send their children to ordinary Catholic schools expecting them to receive sound catechesis. This is simply not the case. The key to her mistake here may be indicated by her phrase, describing her own work, that it aims to bring good catechesis back to ‘our schools and parishes’: possibly, Traditionalists may seem thin on the ground in the places her supporters are fighting their battles. But that is not because they are being complacent about the local Catholic school, or the local parish family Mass, but because many of them are so fed up with them that they are teaching their children at home, and taking their children to a Traditional Mass down the road. In both cases these are not easy options: they usually require great efforts to set them up and maintain them. But in terms of ensuring good catechesis for their children, they work.
Those engaged in trench warfare in schools and parishes or elsewhere can lose sight of the wood for the trees. Daphne McLeod tells us that good catechesis is key to the crisis in the Church: I don’t disagree. But this cannot be done in isolation from the other issues which beset us: it is impossible to put in the key-stone, if that is what it is, without the rest of the supporting arch.
It seems to me that Traditionalists are rather good at keeping a perspective on things. Traditionalists’ concern with the liturgy has not prevented them from having a deep commitment to Catholic education, to spirituality, and to the Pro-Life movement.
But what of Mrs McLeod’s argument that the ‘new catechetics’ was the historical cause of our current problems? I have no doubt that the countries which escaped this plague, under communism or in Africa, are better off as a result. No country, however, has escaped unscathed from the crisis in the Church. It is unfortunately very difficult to compare Western countries with countries with completely different social, economic and political conditions, and treat the others as a kind of ‘control group’ for examining the effect of the new catechetics. One reason why the seminaries are full in Poland is that many of them were closed down under the communists. One reason why they are full in Nigeria is because their inmates are given something approaching a Western education and lifestyle. That doesn’t mean the seminarians are insincere—it may only mean that their families are more supportive—but it certainly makes a difference.
But there is a more relevant historical example of people affected by the new liturgy who were not affected by the new catechetics, namely the non-teaching adult population of the Western world in the decade after the imposition of the New Mass. They had received traditional catechesis, but nevertheless a large proportion of them ceased to practice the faith in the course of the 1970s.
What we don’t have is a case where the new catechetics was imposed and not the new Mass. But there is a very simple reason for this: it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do it, because in a thousand ways the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass would have contradicted it. The modernists who imposed the new catechetics did not get rid of the TLM as a convenient ‘red herring’: it was essential to their project.
The counter-catechising nature of the Novus Ordo, as it is usually experienced, has been explored by no less a person than Pope Benedict XVI. In his book ‘The Spirit of the Liturgy’ he explains how, to give just one example, Mass facing the people creates the impression that the community is worshipping itself in a closed circle. The impression is insidious: it is repeated at every Mass one goes to, and bypasses intellectual arguments. The ‘closed circle’ is established in the mind as the objective reality of worship. The effect of ritual on belief is also the theme of Martin Mosebach’s brilliant book ‘The Heresy of Formlessness’: he talks, for example, of the shattering effect on ordinary Catholics of being told not to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. They are being told, in a way which it is impossible to evade, that the Blessed Sacrament does not have the importance which demands the posture of kneeling. Again, Archbishop Ranjith has written about how communion in the hand undermines faith in the Blessed Sacrament. The effect of the liturgy on faith cannot be ignored: lex orandi, lex credendi.
Mrs McLeod’s article is an appeal for unity among those who uphold the Catholic faith in its entirety and wish to see it restored. I would very much like to echo that appeal. She suggests that Traditionalists should stop expending so much energy propagating the TLM, but energy is not finite as this suggests: it is the TLM itself which provides Traditionalists with the energy which Mrs McLeod acknowledges them to have, and would like to see applied to catechesis. If they seem absent from the fight, it is because they have chosen a different theatre of conflict—homeschooling and the nascent centres for the Traditional Mass—where their efforts are bearing visible fruit. My suggestion, accordingly, is this: that those outside the Traditionalist movement who share Mrs McLeod’s concerns should join us. The TLM is a rallying point for orthodox Catholics: not only does it give us strength and inspiration, but, in purely natural terms, communities and networks or orthodox Catholics grow up around it, providing mutual support and making collective endeavours possible. Anyone wanting to achieve something in the Church needs to connect with this network, not dismiss it.
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