How To Be A Traditional Catholic

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Over at the Universe, Moretben defined the "traditional Catholic". Not the Traditionalist, or the Trad, or the neo-Trad, or the member of the People's Liberation Front of Judaea. But somebody who anybody over 50 will recognise, or at least dimly remember.

This could be an epitaph for my father or my mother, for many of my uncles and aunts, and for the parents of most of my friends. It won't be for my generation, or for my children's generation, but I begin to hope that the Benedictine revolution might make it an unselfconscious reality in my grandchildren's.

A traditional Catholic would typically:

- be faithful to prayer.
- fast quite a bit.
- remember the poor.
- be un-selfconsciously immersed in the invisible world
- be deeply formed by the ancient liturgy - its feasts, fasts, seasons, familiar rites and ceremonies, though to a lesser extent, perhaps, its texts.
- go to Holy Communion quite infrequently by modern standards, and never without confession, preparatory fasting and prayer.
- maintain a rather arid understanding of sacramental and liturgical theology.
- have a serious attitude to theology, while remaining content nevertheless with the Penny Catechism.
- have a great devotion to the saints - especially the very ancient (even semi-legendary) ones.
- be spontaneously "orthodox"
- have a profound reverence for Rome and the Pope, taking for granted the teaching of his Church, but having little interest in Vatican politics or personalities.
- think the expression "loyal to the Magisterium" a very odd, if not actually alien and ideologial way of describing or thinking about his faith.
- far rather tell his beads than read an encyclical.
- understand instinctively that everything tending to disrupt the peace of the Church - violent controversies, revolutionary discontinuities, incongruous innovations - is from the Devil.
- know that in the presence of his fathers, it would be him that looked the bloody eejit.
- Have an acute sense of original sin and a corresponding scepticism, if not outright pessimism, about all human affairs.
- be profoundly distrustful therefore - if not contemptuous - of ideologies of every stripe, knowing that in every age and under every kind of regime, the saints have been few, and usually persecuted; be politically pragmatic, placing little trust in princes, but dutifully praying for them nevertheless and trying hard to be a good neighbour.
- be unafraid of natural or historical science.
- be devoted to the episcopate and the clergy generally, while maintianing a realistic view of human frailty, and the just limits of clerical competence.

- be faithful to prayer.
- fast quite a bit.
- remember the poor.