The "Traditionalist" Counter-Responds

[this person wishes to remain anonymous, so I have removed his name, or substituted "Bill"]

Bill mentioned my name in one of his papers, implying (typically of the general position that he espouses) that my views have (in some fashion) modernist influences (though he believes I am "orthodox"); and he labels me as a "neo-conservative." I replied with a critique. A lively discussion ensued in the combox, including comments from Bill himself. I also did a second post in direct response to one of his charges, entitled, Is It Dissent Against the Pope and the Church, and Downright Disobedient For a Catholic to Favor the War in Iraq? Bill had written in his paper:

Consider those who remained completely in favor of the Iraq war, just as the mainstream of neo-conservative apologists were, when their hero, John Paul "superstar" condemned it? You get a situation where I, one of the late Pope's critics, agree with him, and your ever faithful apologists opposed him! Yet no claims of disobedience arose, and when confronted with it they will ignore you or say they just cut the Pope some slack by not criticizing him.

He "confronted" me and I answered him (I think, decisively). That was a comprehensive answer, that I gave full attention to. I do not claim that my other paper or this paper are that. They are not intended to be.

Now Bill has written an in-depth counter-rebuttal. I wanted at least to make note of his response, and link to it, in fairness to him. So while I am "here" I will make a few comments. Bill's words will be in blue.

* * * * *

First of all, I have devoted my life to the "defense of the Traditional Catholic religion," so there is no argument or disagreement there. I am a Traditionalist in the only sensible meaning of that word: which is acceptance of all that the Church teaches; in other words, orthodoxy. Bill himself says nice things about my apologetics, generally speaking, and that is because he agrees with it when it is actually dealing with Catholic doctrines, and not getting sidetracked into these rabbit trails of Novus Ordo- and ecumenism-bashing.

First, I found it surprising because people I criticize don't usually condescend to my little and annoying blog, even when I provide them e-mails inviting their comment.

I replied because I don't appreciate being lumped in with modernist dissidents in any way, shape, or form: to any degree whatsoever.

In reality, Mr. Armstrong's critique is little more than a hit piece, with convenient cutting and pasting to create false arguments.

In my mind it followed my usual socratic method of puncturing holes in false premises. It wasn't intended as a comprehensive reply, per my explanation above. And I later revised it, because upon reflection, I felt that I had been too harsh and uncharitable.

He has edited the piece somewhat, but has not amended to take into account my defense and response to his main points.

I did so after this current reply. The discussion I had with you remains in the combox, per my usual approach. People are free to read both sides and make up their minds. I never intended to make this a major debate. But I'm not the only one active on my blog. Many folks have entered into the discussion. I'm very strict as to what I spend time writing about.

I clarified this in his combox, I do not consider the monolithic field of lay apologists modernists and heretics. I said they are separated from historical Catholicism by the modernism in the Church today. That is a big difference from what you will read on his site.

This was all replied to in that combox discussion. I noted how I asked rhetorically whether he was implying that I was a modernist (many sentences with question marks at the end). Of course, this was perfectly reasonable to ask, since Bill thinks Pope Benedict XVI is a modernist. He says it straight out. It is no speculation on my part. He did, however, helpfully explain in a combox comment exactly what he means in applying this term to the Holy Father.

At the end of the day I don't go to sleep with my eyes wide open fretting about what this or that person has said, usually I'm more concerned with my wife, my 7 month old baby and our eternal salvation.

Exactly. I have four children, and I make sure to spend time with them as much as I can: virtually every night at least. That is part of my time priorities as well. Most of my work time is consumed with defending the Church against her enemies and larger Christianity against atheists, not myself from some silly charge that I retain Protestant elements or am supposedly compromised with the modernists because I accept what Vatican II taught about ecumenism, etc.

The monolithic block of the "apoligetisterium" as I have coined it (I do believe I'm the first to create that word) is not wrong because they are heretics. They are wrong because of the prudential decision to espouse (to varying degrees and extents) the liturgical, linguistic and ecumenical disorder which has affected the Church today, or else to defend it even if they dislike it personally, and those disorders in turn undermine what the Church has always and everywhere believed.

I don't defend liturgical or linguistic abuses at all. Good grief! My mentor was Fr. Hardon: a person who was extremely concerned with abuses in the missals, and older Catechisms. I have maintained that concern, though I haven't written much about liturgy. I've written about a million other things. One person can't cover all bases. As for ecumenism, there is a legitimate form, and an abused, liberal form, as with so many things. I make the distinction very clear in my writing.

I've always felt that Dave Armstrong's works in defense of the Catholic faith are excellent, and I would still recommend them.

Thank you very much.

That is why I was so surprised to find a hit piece such as what he wrote.

It should come as no surprise at all, since I have been writing about the errors of so-called "traditionalism" since the beginning of my website in early 1997. I stopped interacting with this school of thought for the most part, in 2000, because I found most such interactions to be examples of "futile discussion," but in the preceding three years I had interacted quite a bit with them: with, for example, Stephen Hand and Pete Vere. They have since come out of that way of thinking. I also engaged in many exchanges with Mario Derksen, but failed to persuade him, and he became a sedevacantist. Ditto with Gerry Matatics (I only talked to him twice though: once on the phone and once in person). So this is nothing new at all. If you are so surprised that I did such critiques (not merely "hit pieces"!), then you were not very familiar with my work.

We do not receive the same treatment, instead, Dave Armstrong utilizes a term whose effect instantly calls into question the Traditionalist's orthodoxy: "quasi-schismatic".

According to Armstrong, this term means:

One who has much of the prerequisite attitude of the schismatic, and gets right up to the very edge of that error, without crossing the line.

Thus in reality he is not really schismatic, but almost. There is a problem with that: a schism is a canonical penalty, and one who falls under it is a schismatic de facto. If you do not fall under that penalty you are not a schismatic. There is only one way to be a schismatic, to adhere in communion to a schismatic while denying the authority of the true Church. I don't know about you, but I don't. Employing a term like "quasi-schismatic" automatically brings to mind someone who falls under the penalty of schism, and is outside of the Church.

Not at all, as I explained in the combox. It means exactly what the literal meaning implies: "near-schismatic" or "resembling in some respects a schismatic." I would also note that this is distinct from questioning someone's "orthodoxy". To be close to a thing (in this case, schism, not dissident heterodoxy) is not the thing itself. A woman could be close to being pregnant. I could come close to hitting a home run, yet I didn't. It was a caught fly ball instead. I could be nearly Catholic as an Anglo-Catholic, but I ain't Catholic.

Likewise, a quasi-schismatic is not a schismatic, but shows aspects that might lead one to conclude that he may conceivably one day become one, if he follows the trajectory (just as Derksen and Matatics did: I've personally witnessed these things happen). One who rails against the Novus Ordo day in and day out is obviously closer to a position of denying its validity than one who does not constantly criticize it. Such a person may never cross the line, but that doesn't mean he isn't close to it and could conceivably cross over it. Same thing with Vatican II. Many have crossed these rather fine lines. The description "quasi-schismatic" is, therefore, intended as a wake-up call and warning.

I find this curious because "trads" are usually more precise and concerned about literal meanings of words. You even teach Latin. Yet you continue to make this fallacious point. I wrote in another comment:

I just checked my post. The word "schismatic" never appears. I just checked this combox, too, and I never use the term here, either. I did use "schismatic attitude" once, but that is interpreted in context as referring to the attitudes that can lead to formal, legal schism, and was not intended to imply that one who has it is an actual schismatic.

But we are bogged down with this notion that I am supposedly intending to charge you with actual schism. It won't fly.

Take my own positions, which the same denigrates as "quasi-schismatic". Why? I disagree with the positions of the Papacy for 46 years. Why? Because the example of Catholicism for 1962 years stands in contra-distinction to the former.

Thank you for a textbook example of what I am talking about. Readers can draw their own conclusions from this astonishing statement.

Nevertheless, what I find the most interesting is the fact that counter arguments I have leveled have gone unanswered.

I haven't intended to make comprehensive responses, as alluded to above.

We live in a time when the Church has imprudently removed the safeguards against heresy, and when her leaders have been involved in activities more scandalous than Bishop Ostius and Pope Liberius confessing Arianism under the whip of the Emperor Valerian.

Really?

Their [apologists'] opinions are right or wrong based on how closely they teach what the Church has always and everywhere believed.

Bingo! To use a little Catholic lingo . . . That's why I've had a statement on my website and blog for over ten years now:

To the best of my knowledge, all of my theological writing is "orthodox" and not contrary to the official dogmatic and magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. In the event of any (unintentional) doctrinal or moral error on my part having been undeniably demonstrated to be contrary to the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, I will gladly and wholeheartedly submit to the authority and wisdom of the Church (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Timothy 3:15).

The most you can criticize me for is my belief that a future Pope will condemn John Paul for what appears to be a teaching at variance with every author in the Church's tradition (including the original sense of the Greek of Ephesians) on mutual submission. And there I am deferring to a future Pope.

I think describing Pope Benedict XVI as a "modernist" says quite a bit about you, too.

Opinions are either right or wrong because they measure up or don't with truth, not because the person who writes them has credentials. I don't give a damn about someone's credentials, they could be as long as your arm or non existent, but if what you are saying is correct, it doesn't matter.

Likewise, you're just a guy on the Internet and many of your opinions don't measure up to the standard of truth at all, as I have shown.

Concerning my position that the TLM is superior to the Novus Ordo extrinsically, Armstrong wrote:

[these two comments smack of the Donatist rigorist heresy and a denial of ex opere operato]

It is interesting. My position was completely clear, so either Dave Armstrong was reading so fast that he missed it, or he was purposely cutting and pasting so so as to put me in the same camp as the truly radical traditionalists (and be sure they don't like me anymore than they like Dave Armstrong), I can't say. I don't want to assume a bad intention, but it is hard to think otherwise.

I clarified this, too, in the combox. I also apologized if I in fact misrepresented, too.

. . . then labels it Donatist.

I did not do that. I said it "smacks of" that false belief. Now, we're back to the discussion we had over "quasi." It's the exact same dynamic. Hence, the American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition (for the second meaning of the word):

n.

1. 1. A distinctive flavor or taste.
   2. A suggestion or trace.
2. A small amount; a smattering.

intr.v. smacked, smack·ing, smacks

1. To have a distinctive flavor or taste. Used with of.
2. To give an indication; be suggestive. Often used with of: "an agenda that does not smack of compromise" (Time).
   

I have attacked your false premises, and these include false definitions. If words have no objective meanings, we're all out to sea.

Why do so many Catholics believe in heretical doctrines like indifferentism, penal substitution, consubstantiation, all men are saved, the Eucharist is a symbol, that abortion is okay, that contraception is okay, that reincarnation is a viable belief?

Because of lousy catechesis (and lack of apologetics) for a generation and the modernist crisis: the greatest in the history of the Church. We differ on the origin and solution to the crisis, and where the problems lie.

No, that is not what I said. I said that the protestant background leads them potentially to accept, or defend, the disorientation in the Church through the loss of small "t" tradition, and to accept it as if it doesn't mean anything. THAT is what I said.

You also said:

What do you do about thousands of Catholics who don't know any better and follow this disconnect from historical Catholicism that various ex protestants seem to carry with them to the faith?

You make these broad statements about converts as second-class Catholics, infested with past Protestant errors. But you have to look at each person individually. As I said, the ones who are doing this much more so, in my opinion, are "traditionalists" like Matatics and Sungenis.

The "anti-apologetics" motif has indeed become a theme in certain circles. I know, because I've followed it, as a curiosity piece. I don't see you rebuking it. Seems like we're either angels or demons. The "trad" movement runs the gamut! All I see myself doing is defending Holy Mother Church. I'm not "self-proclaimed," I am a professional (since I do this for a living and as my vocation). I make no claim to being the magisterium.

My only real question is what has Robert Sungenis done other than prudential mistakes? What doctrine of the faith does he deny?

Well, for one, the omniscience and immutability of God, since he claimed in his book Not By Bread Alone, that God changed His mind. He also denies that God is outside of time. I've now thoroughly documented this.

But at the end of the day, besides prudential mistakes, what has he done to be put in the same camp as Matatics, whom Sungenis condemns on his website?

I didn't put them in the same camp, as you imply. I only compared them insofar as they are both examples of men whose former Protestantism had too great an influence over their opinions as Catholics (in other words, turning the table on your "converts as neo-conservative apologists" motif). They massively exercised private judgment. None of that entails placing them as equally schismatic.

First, maybe he missed something, I dropped the conspiracy stuff at age 19, right about when I got serious about the Gospel. Those notions have not "typified" my thought for 10 years. Likewise with the liberalism, which I dropped when I went to Steubenville and did what everyone else did, as a neo-con, . . .

Ah, but you did write:

Somewhere between 22 and 26, I underwent a general maturation process, which one can see if they have followed this blog since 2005. Now I'm almost 30, and I look back on the last ten years as silly.

That's what I made reference to. You yourself wrote on my blog, that you don't even abide by opinions you had in 2005 regarding Pope John Paul II. So you had misguided beliefs then, and you still have some erroneous opinions today. If you were still "maturing" in your views less than four years ago, what makes you so sure that this is not still happening now? If so, you should regard my critique as a great blessing; not as a supposed "hit piece."

Am I an extreme person? Probably.

You said it!

The problem here is that I have not gone to extreme radtradism. You can ask rad trads themselves, I don't follow them on several issues, the evilness/invalidity of the NO, the idea that all woman should never wear pants at any time (for which I have been attacked by plenty of trads), that Vatican II contained errors, that the post vatican II Popes have promulgated heresy ipso facto.

Exactly! That's precisely what "quasi-schismatic" signifies. You can see it in my book that I sent you. It's all there. You fit the mindset to a tee.

Thus we have to ask what is the Traditionalist position?

One can only generalize and describe widespread trends and motifs, as I did in my book: never mentioning even one actual name or group. Not even SSPX is mentioned in the book. You can search it for yourself. There are always exceptions to a rule, but that doesn't mean that one cannot generalize and observe common themes.

If Traditionalism is a true remnant it is a hapless one, with little unity and a lot of nuts mixed in with a lot of excellent people, . . . .

You said it . . .

just like among those liberals who still hold to the Church's teaching

How could a liberal hold the Church's teaching? That is a self-defeating proposition.

and amongst the mainstream parishes and apologists.

Who are the "nuts" mixed in with us apologists? I'm dying to know. Of course it depends on definition. There are apologists who do it for a living, and have the credentials, and then there are apologists who are just starting out, with a zeal to defend the faith, and some of those make some big mistakes (though mostly well-intentioned, no doubt). But you have to compare apples with apples, not apples with rotten apples or oranges.

In my next interval between work, baby and renovating I'll develop more of what I was talking about in the last post on the prudential errors that apologists make and then teach in the same authoritative manner by which they claim to expound the Church's teaching.

Why don't you stick to me, since you are critiquing me at this point? Do you believe that I make things authoritative that shouldn't be? Please document it, then. I think you're in a for a big surprise. Others have tried to prove this about my position and my opinions, and failed.