Capitalis(z)ation Matters

One of the great internal challenges of the Catholic church is what constitutes Tradition. The traditional (sic) understanding is that it is a set of truths handed down from the Apostles in unwritten form through oral teaching which supplements the written tradition contained in Scripture. For Catholics this Tradition includes truths like the perpetual virginity of Mary and her bodily assumption into heaven.

However there ends up being a problem that anything old is considered a tradition and this mindset can result in an over-simplistic analysis of modern documents of the church -such as those produced since the Second Vatican Council- as somehow being naturally inferior to anything "of age".

In the last decade or so that has been a traditionalist (lower case t) revival in the Catholic church that has tended to being a revisionist movement -a movement that sees much of what has happened since Vatican II as in error.

Those who remember Animal Farm will remember the move from "four legs good, two legs bad" to "four legs good, two legs better" -an example of this in the traditionalist movement has been a move to re-interpret "active participation" of the laity in the Eucharist as "you can actively participate by kneeling in silence and doing what you're told". This is a typical example of the traditionalist revisionist agenda and presentation.

One of the particular problems of traditionalism is that, since many of its arguments are specious, it uses half-a-truth plus half-a-truth equals a truth logic. An example of this type of logic relates to the reception of communion in the hand. A traditionalist will tend to use an argument like "every fragment of the Host is the full presence of Christ", "a crumb of Host falling on the floor could result in the body of Christ being trodden underfoot or (worse still) eaten by a mouse (yes -this has actually been used in a Catholic newspaper)" therefore no-one should receive communion in the hand. The fact that in the early church reception in the hand was the norm, and that communion could be taken home for consumption during the week are not arguments that traditionalists will admit to. They will present medieval practices as superior to those of the Apostolic era as they are "organic" developments while presenting Vatican II as a "rupture" with the past.

Anyway by now you will see my "drift". I am concerned that there is some significant mis-information being presented by the neo-traditionalist movement through selective quotation of church documents and history.

My plan is to approach some of the views presented by the traditionalist movement by providing appropriate counter arguments and a possible synthesis.

As an example of this I accept that there has been a visible (if not interior) loss of reverence in receiving communion in the hand, but I believe the solution is in catechisis. Ultimately it is an issue of discipline -not dogma. I would rather teach the faithful how to fully participate in the Eucharist by receiving communion respectfully than return to a practice which renders them passive and contradicts Apostolic practice.