Dead Traditionalism vs Living Tradition: A Warning for the South

 

It is not all roses and sunshine in the Orthodox world right now (more on that later).  However, there is still a great yawning chasm between the true, living, holy, apostolic, God-given Tradition of the Orthodox Church and the dead traditionalism of the Roman Catholics and the Protestants.  Rod Dreher provides a poignant illustration of the latter at his blog today as he discusses an essay by Mr Steve Skojec.  The opening word-sharings are Mr Skojec’s followed by Mr Dreher’s comments:

 . . . Without a present-day Church that not only allows but actually lives the traditional Catholic ethos, traditionalism remains akin to that DVD collector or civil war re-enactor: a recreation out of place and time needing to justify its own existence in the present as a nostalgic aberration. It no longer has a context that gives it a place at the heart of the Church, which is the only place it could ever truly belong. It cannot exist as a “preferential option” and be still what it once was: essential.

And so traditionalism, though it retains real treasures from the past that enliven the faithful today, becomes predominately ideological. A version of Catholicism that remains in constant tension with and sometimes open rebellion against the only institution that can give it life: the very Catholic Church that discarded it.

It’s paradigmatic crippled religion. And that is a problem.

This is deep. It helped me to understand what I found so unattractive about Catholic traditionalism, even as I affirmed it as a viable alternative. I had always thought it was just the pockets of bitter reactionary factionalism that were everywhere. I was sensitive to this because reactionary bitterness is a constant temptation of mine, given my character. I saw people — not everybody, and not even most people, but enough to give me pause — who seemed to thrive on anger and spite towards Catholics who weren’t trads. I realized, I think, though it never came to mind as a fully formed thought, that I was looking at my future self if I gave myself over to my darkest impulses.

What I mean is that back then, my inner life was focused heavily on the Catholic Church, and what was wrong with it. I really did think that I was being a faithful Catholic by constantly diagnosing her problems, and talking about them endlessly with my like-minded Catholic friends. Looking back at it, I don’t think we were wrong about a single thing. Where we erred — or at least where I erred — was in thinking that because I thought about the Church all the time, and really wanted her to be better, that I was a good Catholic.

Bitter traditionalism would have been the end game for me, on the path I was following. I was not a trad, but I was plenty bitter — because there is plenty to be bitter about! Read Skojec. But here’s the thing: you can’t build a spiritual life on that — or rather, you can, but if you do you will become deformed and toxic. 

 . . .

Anyway, Skojec’s piece brought to mind Jaroslav Pelikan’s great lines:

“Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.”

There you go. Skojec’s essay made me realize that traditionalism is parasitic on corrupted modern Catholicism, which lives rent-free in their heads.  . . .

My heart goes out to Steve Skojec so much because like him, I had built an identity around my Catholicism (though his Catholic identity is far, far deeper and broader than mine ever was, for reasons that are clear to readers of his essay). Steve writes in his piece:

I’m angry because I feel as though we’ve all been abandoned and left to the wolves, and it’s incredibly frustrating to watch as people turn to this increasingly uncritical tribalism to feel safe, or conspiracy theories to “explain” things, or even in some cases an explicit desire for the end of the world so that the madness will finally cease.

I’m angry because my entire identity, my entire life, has been inextricably intertwined with Catholicism, and as all of this collides and comes apart, I feel as though that identity is being flayed from me, one strip of flesh at a time.

I’m angry — but perhaps even more sad — because I have begged God to help me find my way through all this mess, to do the right thing, and to hold on to my faith, but I get no perceptible answer, and I don’t know where to go from here.

The Toxic Trad thing to do is to turn on a fellow Catholic who says that, and to treat them as heretic scum. But I read that essay and thought, “That poor brother in Christ, I know what that feels like.” If you are the kind of Catholic whose response is to hate on Steve Skojec for that piece, then you are part of the problem, and you will be held responsible by God for it.

Steve goes on:

A good friend of mine who has also been struggling with the faith said to me yesterday:

I hate to say this, because it risks sounding trite, but I don’t think you have ever really been Catholic.

And peeling off this false thing, made of false things, is the first step to finding out who you really are.

I actually am discovering that I do believe in God, and all that, and I think He’s trying to fix you.

Maybe He is. I hope so, because I cared about all of this so much I made it my whole life. I put it before family and friends. I was so invested, I thought it was my dream job. I risked everything I had, in a material sense, to rush to the defense of the Church when I thought she was at her darkest hour.

And I lost everything I had anyway — in a spiritual sense. Which was not at all what I expected.

I look at photos and videos of myself when I started in 2014, versus photos now. I looked like a kid then. But now, I’ve gained a lot of weight. My beard has turned white. I’ve lost a lot of hair. My face looks so much older. My voice has deepened. I suddenly have high blood pressure. I’m unbelievably tired and stressed out all the time. I’ve lost my sense of meaning and purpose.

And I’m left standing here holding the broken pieces of myself, older and more brittle and less resilient and unable to put myself together again to take yet another beating.

I’m done with crippled religion. Crippled religion will ruin you.

Read the whole thing. It is one of the most powerful pieces of spiritual writing that I’ve read in a long time. And I am certain that in it, Steve Skojec doesn’t just speak for burned-out Catholics, but for all people broken by ideological religion. He is offering a solidarity of the shattered.

The way out God offered to me when I was more or less in Steve’s place was in Orthodox Christianity. My wife and I back then could not go back to Protestantism. Cardinal Newman once said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” That’s not strictly true; if it were, all Protestant church historians and other Protestant intellectuals would all be Catholic or Orthodox. But for us, it was true, in the sense that we had learned so much about church history, especially the early church, that we simply could not affirm what Protestants affirm. But we could not be Catholic either, because we could not tolerate the spiritual abuse any longer, the debilitating fear (for our children), and the corrosive anger.

From a Catholic point of view, the Orthodox churches are in schism, but still have valid priestly orders and (therefore) sacraments. My wife and I took our little kids and started going to the Orthodox cathedral in our city, not intending to become Orthodox, but simply wanting to be in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist (though we couldn’t receive) without being savaged by a swarm of doubts and spite, like a swarm of biting flies. The liturgical worship was extraordinarily beautiful — something I had long been craving as a Catholic, even when I went to the Traditional Latin Mass, but never found — and it was a wonderful experience to step into a church that didn’t feel like a combat zone. Eventually we knew we had to become Orthodox.

As I’ve said in this space many times, I became Orthodox in the way that Orthodoxy regards second marriages: as a penitent. As angry as I was at the Catholic Church for the things that drove me out of it, I tried to focus on the things I did wrong myself — chief among them, making an idol of the institutional Catholic Church, and an ideology of Catholicism. I had to make a clear vow to myself not to do the same in Orthodoxy. Fortunately, it’s harder to do in Orthodoxy, because — and this is something I could not have perceived from the outside — Orthodoxy is much less a set of doctrines and much more a way of life. I’m still not exactly sure how Orthodoxy pulls this off, and knowing my own weaknesses, I have refused to dissect it to find the answer, but the stability of the tradition is something within which I could rest, and pursue my salvation. In Orthodoxy I found the spiritual and intellectual depth I had in Catholicism, with an incomparable liturgical beauty, and the focus on individual salvation that I believe is one of the best parts of Evangelicalism. Orthodoxy is not an individualistic form of Christianity, to be sure, but the Orthodox do hold front to mind the principle that the conversion of individual hearts is the main thing. The goal of each and every one of us is not to have all our legal papers in order to make it through passport control in Paradise. It is theosis — to become so filled with the Holy Spirit that we are changed, made like God.  . . .

I have been in touch with Steve Skojec over the years to offer prayer and support as I’ve read in his work about his suffering. I have never tried to convert him to Orthodoxy; it is hateful to me to consider taking advantage of a man who is in pain, to proselytize him. I told him then, and I say publicly, that Jesus is the only thing that matters — that his ability to find ultimate unity with Christ, in theosis, is what salvation means. I believe more than ever, and say for the first time publicly or privately, that that suffering man needs to find Christ in Orthodoxy. But whether he remains a Catholic, or whatever path he takes, he remains a brother in Christ who has carried a terrible cross, and who needs mercy, not judgment. My own spiritual life — my walk with Christ — did not become real until God allowed me and my idolatry of Church to become broken. There is life after being shattered. My solidarity with Steve, whom I’ve never met in person, is the solidarity of the shattered.

--https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/catholicism-steve-skojec-has-had-enough/

We relate this as a warning for the South.  It is not enough for her to merely cling to the molding, rotting bones of her traditions that the Yankees and globalists and Chambers of Commerce have so generously left in our possession.  Traditions detached from the religious roots that nourish them are dead artefacts, museum pieces.  If we pretend they are still alive, we will end up like Mr Skojec:  angry, bewildered, broken-hearted.

But at the same time, it is not enough for Dixie to embrace religious pluralism if she wants to have a vibrant (and lasting!) Christian culture.  As difficult as it is for people in the West after the Schism to admit, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are not the fulness of the Faith; they have kept some parts of the Apostolic deposit, but have jettisoned or changed other parts of it.  The experiences of Misters Skojec, Dreher, Kingsnorth, Hannegraff, St Seraphim of Platina, California, and others, both with the shortcomings of the post-Schism Western versions of Christianity and with the deep, unexplainable power and joy in their encounters with the Orthodox Church, are a testimony to this.

There is no hope for a lasting South outside of the Orthodox Church.  If she chooses another path, the path of dead Protestant or Roman Catholic traditionalism, she will end up bitter and emotionally battered like Mr Skojec -- and eventually broken up into a thousand pieces, some following Buddhism, some the latest reconstituted version of the Anglican or Presbyterian denominations, others some scientific creed.

We know you are a stubborn old mare, Dixieland, but this time be a good gal and place your neck tamely and willingly in the yoke of the Good Lord’s Orthodox Church.  And you will find just what He promised:  Rest for your soul.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!