More and more in recent days, in my conversations with Priest-friends and Catholics I have known for the greater part of my life, I hear whispered concerns that the Church may be facing some very serious divisions within it ranks. Certainly, very public stories about Cardinals threatening to formally chastise Pope Francis, Bishops sniping at one another, contradictory policies regarding the divorced and remarried being admitted to the Sacraments, all these controversies have given occasion to a growing anxiety among the Catholic faithful.
In the midst of the reforms which Pope Francis has and continues to introduce, there is a rising tide of those who oppose his efforts, an amorphous grouping of very conservative minded Catholics generally referred to as members of a “Traditionalist” movement.
These “Traditionalists” comprise nothing but a fringe movement. Little is known about them other than the fact that much of their agenda seems focused upon devotion to the Tridentine Mass as well as a desire to restore the arcane trappings and rituals of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Like any fringe group, the Traditionalist movement is an annoyance rather than any real threat to the unity of the Church. They are, in a word, nothing but a swirl of gadflies. And so, rumors and whispers of the winds of schism blowing across the Barque of Peter are exaggerated at best.
Most Catholics are quite moderate in their willingness to welcome the advancements in doctrine and liturgy which have taken place in the half century following Vatican Council II. The overwhelming majority of those still practicing their faith do not appear to be emotionally obsessed with Baroque vestments, or Masses celebrated in a “dead” language.
In my years as an active Pastor, I cannot remember many Catholic women begging to return to the days of wearing scarves or lace head coverings to Mass. There were a few, but these ladies were either well advanced in years or emotionally fragile souls.
Pope Francis seems to have described Traditionalists very well as those who live in a world of nostalgia, those who so are dissatisfied with themselves and their lives that they long to recapture a “golden age” of Catholicsim that never was and can never be.
Traditionalist voices, at times, can be loud, distracting and disturbing. But their voices will never really be important or critical to the life of the Church.
Pope Francis knows very well how few the Traditionalists are in numbers and how self-referential and narrow-minded their focus. Unlike Benedict XVI, Francis is not prepared to indulge the tantrums and the whining of such dissidents. They represent a retreat into a clericalized triumphalism which ultimately fails the proclamation of Christ’s Gospel, and transforms the Catholic Faith into theater, or worse, into an historical curiosity. Traditionalists, sadly, are more concerned with spectacle than they are with a living faith.
Such a living faith is, as Pope Francis has described, “messy”. It is not precise or pretty. It is as chaotic as a “field hospital” where the wounded are treated and lives are saved. A living faith does not retreat behind a veil of incense or the delicacy of lace vestments. It boldly emerges into the highways and byways where real people live with all their blemishes and scars, with all their doubts and insecurities.
Consequently, are Traditionalists numerous and powerful enough, is their agenda popular enough to bring the Church to schism? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. The days of the Traditionalists are numbered. They are (no pun intended) “old news”, as old and useless as yesterday's newspaper left abandoned on a park bench.
All they bring to the altar of Christ's mercy is confusion and resentment.
Sadly, however, for some Catholics, already fragile in their faith, for those bruised and scarred by the arrogance or folly of some in Church leadership, for those wounded or scandalized by stories of the sexual abuse of children by trusted Priests and Pastors, the Traditionalist rants are just one more nail in the coffin of their dying faith in the Church.
These folks will not will not leave the mainstream Church to join their ranks with the Traditionalist fringe movement. They will simply leave. Quietly and anonymously drifting away never to be seen or heard from again. A silent but real Exodus from parish pews.
This is the real impact which Traditionalists can and may have upon the Church.
But to think that their influence is robust enough to divide the Church into the kinds of warring factions which history has recorded is to afford this fringe movement with a significance and relevance which it neither deserves or merits.
To the millions of Catholics anxious about these troubled times, I offer this simple advice: Be patient, this too shall pass.
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